Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
The Wild West is long gone. No longer do Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok ride tall in the saddle, trading hot lead with cattle rustlers and card sharks. The prairie’s been tamed, the mountains have been mapped. The days of dime-store cowboys and frontier justice are over.
Except, perhaps, in Absaroka County, Wyoming.
It’s not as if the county is a place that time forgot. If you want to build a barn, chances are you still need a building permit. But in this rural backwater, a hint of frontier remains. Only a handful of law officers are on hand to patrol an area that seems as big and sprawling as the skies above, and Wyoming’s wide open scrubland offers plenty of space to conduct illegal activities such as, you know, burying the occasional body. And just like in the old days, the lawmen themselves have their own skeletons to hide.
In the drama Longmire, which is based on a series of mysteries written by Craig Johnson, Walt Longmire is the sheriff in the aforementioned Absaroka County—Wyoming through and through. He looks the part, as if he was raised on sagebrush and whiskey. He’s a pragmatic man, knowing instinctively what petty issues to let slide for the community’s greater good. And even though he’s on friendly terms with most in the area, he won’t hesitate to take someone down if they get in his (or the law’s) way.
Walt lost one of his deputies in tragic fashion when this lauded A&E show moved to Netflix—his sometime rival and second-in-command Branch Connolly. But two of his longtime cohorts are still on the job: Victoria “Vic” Moretti, a one-time cop from Philly (who seems to be bit attracted to the grizzled widower); and the well-meaning but sometimes inept Ferg. Longmire also gets some off-the-books help from Henry Standing Bear, a local barkeep and Longmire’s best friend.
But even as Longmire and Co. do what they can to take the bad guys down, they’re not above stretching the law to catch the folks who outright break it.
One example: Longmire’s cancer-assailed wife was murdered not too long ago, and he’s determined to bring the culprit to justice. Both he and Henry, in trying to untangle the complicated web around the plot, have run afoul of the law and, in Henry’s case, even been accused of murder as well. It’s a brutal, personal case, and more bodies will surely turn up before the true culprit is brought to justice.
At its core, Longmire (the fourth season having been released in its entirety on Netflix) is a crime procedural, just like so many of its scripted compatriots. Yet it somehow feels more believable. The setting looks rough and dusty, as it should. The actors flesh out their roles in convincing ways. Even the squeaks and thumps heard in the interior of the hard-used SUV the sheriff drives speaks to a rare authenticity here. And that gives Longmire some atmospheric grit. This is a hard land that sometimes attracts desperate people, after all, and the camera doesn’t flinch from their misdeeds.
OK. It does flinch more often than, say, Game of Thrones or House of Cards or Fargo. But some of this show’s problems have, perhaps not too surprisingly, gotten worse with its move to Netflix. Whereas crude dialogue was most often sequestered to more mild profanities when Longmire was on A&E, the new incarnation strays into harsher language—s-words most predominant. The dead bodies seem to be a bit bloodier, too.
Good television doesn’t have to always be bad. And that’s something I might have tried to argue on Longmire’s behalf some years back. Just like the dry and cracked land we see onscreen, though, it’s a harder sell now.
Branch is found dead, nearly naked, half-submerged in a river—apparently the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. But a piece of evidence suggests that maybe the guy didn’t kill himself after all.
Branch’s face is bloodied and pocked, the result of the birdshot blown into it. (The doctor performing the autopsy on the boxers-clad body picks out 196 pellets.) And Walt puts a shotgun in his mouth to see if it was possible for Branch to have killed himself. Walt also seems bent on killing the man he believes is responsible for his wife’s death, but Henry wrestles him to the ground and takes away his rifle. When Walt pulls out a pistol instead, Henry hops on his back. “If you fire that gun now, you will kill everything you’ve stood for,” Henry says, and Walt grudgingly holsters his weapon. Vic hits a possum, killing it.
Vic looks ready to seduce Walt, unbuttoning her top to reveal cleavage while toting a six-pack of beer to his cabin. (She finds Henry there instead.) There’s talk of another couple sleeping together.
Wine and beer get quite a lot of screen time, sometimes at a bar. Drugs are found at Branch’s house. We hear the s-word at least eight times, along with “h—” and “a–.” God’s name is combined with “d–n” a couple of times. Jesus’ name is abused twice as well.
“Reports of My Death”
A man turns up dead on a park bench outside the sheriff’s office, and Longmire believes it could be the long-lost heir of one of Wyoming’s wealthiest families. Meanwhile, Henry—accused of murder but released on bail—breaks free of his tracking bracelet and sneaks away to take pictures that, he hopes, will help lead to the real killer.
Henry obviously breaks the law, but his misdeed is covered up by his lawyer, Cady (Longmire’s daughter). Henry also confronts his two-timing girlfriend (who wears a revealing top and tight shorts), shaking her roughly and shoving her against furniture.
There’s talk of drunkenness and a deadly opiate overdose. We hear that someone was forced to take peyote. We see a syringe get jammed in a man’s leg, and autopsy stitches running down his chest. Folks drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes, frequenting bars. One s-word fouls the dialogue, along with “h—” (twice) and “d–n” (once). God’s name is misused a handful of times.
“The Great Spirit”
A man is shot when a gun-shooting trick goes awry. He survives—but the next day the shooter himself is found dead, shot through the neck and dragged through the scrub by a horse. (The corpse is a mess, the face grotesquely torn.) Suspicion falls on the “illegals” who worked for the dead man. But Longmire uncovers other unsavory truths: The workers were being trafficked in from Mexico; they were given false promises, had their families taken away and were forced into indentured servitude.
A splash of blood is seen when that trick goes wrong, and a bloody bandage afterwards. A flashback shows Longmire staggering into Henry’s hotel room, bleeding profusely from his back. (We watch a woman stitch up the long wound.) Longmire ties a guy to a horse and threatens to let the beast drag him if he doesn’t confess. Someone gets punched in the face.
To get some information, Vic flirts with a trick shooter—admiring the man’s holster and telling him she’s “into leather.”
Henry offers a visiting police officer free beer. Folks pour booze. They shoot bottles and liquor-filled glasses. They discuss meth addicts. Two people smoke cigars. Gambling and gambling debt turns up in the story, as do the words “a‑‑” and “d‑‑n” (once each), “h‑‑‑” (three or four times). God’s name is misused a couple of times.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
