Animation
Strip Law
‘Strip Law’ is Netflix’s next carbon-copy adult animated comedy whose unoriginality extends even into its crass content.
Joe Leaphorn isn’t one for unneeded conversation. Or change. He likes things the way they have always been. Which turns out is an easy effort for him as a Navajo tribal police officer.
Overt racism, generational poverty and government overreach are as normal as breathing for Joe and most of the people he knows.
So is murder. Though it shouldn’t be.
Joe and his wife, Emma, lost their son in a horrific accident not long ago. At first, it drew them together—even as it tore at the fabric of their ragged souls. But then Joe realized his son’s accident wasn’t accidental at all; he was murdered.
That revelation steered Joe down a dark path—one steeped in black magic and witchcraft. Worse still, the closer Joe got to the truth, the more it became evident that the person responsible for this horror didn’t want Joe, or anyone connected with him, to remain alive.
Pretty soon the only job Joe had was to keep breathing as he uncovered layers of evil—and to make sure his fellow officers, and his beloved wife, did the same.
But catching killers can sometimes come with a cost. Sometimes it costs the trust you’ve built, the relationships you’ve cherished, your very soul. And as Season 4 opens, that’s a lesson that Joe is still coming to grips with.
AMC+’s TV-14 series Dark Winds is taken from the 1970s novels by journalist Tony Hillerman. It primarily follows three characters, chronicles their intricate daily lives and dramatizes the dark perils that seem to constantly beset their Navajo community.
We meet the staid but educated Joe Leaphorn and his spiritually steeped wife, Emma. Then there’s former-FBI-agent-turned-private-investigator Jim Chee. And finally, we’re introduced to officer Bernadette Manuelito, who is just returning to the reservation after exploring her possible destiny outside it.
While this series obviously follows murder, turning this into an appealing but predictable mystery, the real hook here is in the show’s characters. They’re real, tangible and have a lot of heartfelt backstory, which viewers see doled out in each episode.
But they also see plenty of violence (one of the biggest issues here), hear a smattering of profanity and deal with a lot of ancient tribal spirituality, including dark magic and witchcraft.
Yes, characters bring a lot of heart, forgiveness and kindness to the series. But there’s plenty more that emphasizes the show’s own tagline: “Where the law ends … vengeance begins.”
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Officer Joe Leaphorn and private investigator Jim Chee search for a stolen box that has mysterious links to the death of Joe’s son.
Officers engage in many shootouts, once against a high powered gun. A few characters are shot themselves and bare bloody wounds. An evil man attempts to kill two officers by locking them in a creepy house filled with clowns and dolls and repeatedly shooting the house. Joe finds the remains of a bomb after a man is killed in a car explosion. Joe’s wife is injured and hospitalized after the explosion.
Joe talks to a fellow officer about a prior explosion that killed six men and one boy. A man claims that his two fingers were bitten off by a three-horned sheep (his bloodied hand and bagged fingers are proof). A man is shot in the temple and killed while sitting on the toilet. (We see his bare thighs.)
Joe and Jim learn about a group called the People of Darkness. It’s said that this is a Navajo group, and while the characters are unsure, they find that it’s closely tied to a group of “wealthy, white hippies.” Both Joe and Jim comment on the “crazy dark witchcraft” that is tied to the group. A man believes that a member of the group, a “white man” who is “a witch,” cursed his father and gave him cancer. Joe’s wife asks him to perform a ceremonial act, according to their beliefs, that should restore the “balance” to their family and ward off spirits of death.
A married couple kisses. A man gets out of bed in his underwear.
An elderly woman finds out that her nephew is stealing from her. Jim Chee vows to retrieve a stolen box for a wealthy woman, but he finds that the box contains essential secrets linked to a murder case.
God’s name is misused once, paired with “d–mit.” Other profane words include “a–hole,” “d–n,” “s—” and “bulls—.”
A woman offers Jim Chee a glass of hard liquor and drinks one herself while smoking a cigarette. A young Navajo man is reprimanded for smoking marijuana and abusing “substances.”
Joe, Jim and Bernadette look for a Navajo girl named Billie, who ran away from her boarding school. But the company the girl keeps may pose a bigger threat than any of them expected.
A woman who appears to be a hired assassin pulls some guns from a stash of weapons hidden in her van. She enters a diner with a pistol drawn. Her intended victim, Albert, initially puts up his hands in surrender, but then he punches her and a shootout ensues. The diner’s cook and waitress are both killed in the crossfire. (We later see the waitress had attempted to draw her own gun in self-defense.) Albert gets shot, too, but he escapes in a car.
A couple kisses, and the woman grabs the man’s rear end. It becomes clear that they are cohabitating, though they aren’t married. We see a man wrapped in a towel as he enters a sweat lodge.
Joe asks his mother why she stayed married to his father. (It’s implied the man had PTSD and was abusive.) She tells him that that’s just what people did in those days, but that she would’ve stayed for Joe in any case. Joe grapples with the recent departure of his own wife, Emma. And his mom tells him that if he focuses on making changes in his life for his own sake (and not just for Emma’s), then Emma might return.
A hunter shoots a buck (offscreen) and later says he believes the deer was aware of his presence and accepted its fate. Joe says that Navajo police officers “can’t separate spirituality from upholding the law.” Rather, they need to understand the land and the people’s connection to it.
Nuns preside over Billie’s boarding school. It’s clear the students don’t trust them, and we hear that the nuns withhold food. Someone references chi, a spiritual concept in some Eastern religious traditions. A woman wears a cross necklace and talks about a church auction. Officers joke about a man who believes he saw UFOs on his land.
Characters lie. A hunter examines animal scat. We learn Billie has run away from school before, but this time she was coerced into leaving by her cousin. A shop owner voices concern to police when he notices the cousin yelling at her and throwing things around in anger.
A man whose wife is suffering from memory loss is encouraged by his friend.
We hear three abuses of God’s name paired with “d–n,” and another two uses of “d–n” elsewhere.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
‘Strip Law’ is Netflix’s next carbon-copy adult animated comedy whose unoriginality extends even into its crass content.
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