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Long Live Longmire, Best Modern Western on The Net

Longmire, the unlikely hit television series that found new life streaming on Neftlix after being canceled by A&E in 2014, is back for its sixth and final season after nearly a two-year absence. I’ve watched the final 10 episodes, and this is my mostly no-spoilers take on the season and the series.

Australian actor Robert Taylor was, pardon the pun, tailor-made to play the role of Walt Longmire, the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming. He slipped into the role like an old favorite pair of ropers in 2012, pretty much eclipsing his previous most visible role (in the U.S.) as Mr. Jones in The Matrix.

Tall, handsome and still physically imposing despite being in his 50s, he is perfectly suited to play the middle-aged, open-minded, recently widowed county sheriff from Craig Johnson’s bestselling mystery novels, on which the TV/streaming series is based.

Johnson, a former cop who relocated to Wyoming and turned rancher/mystery author, essentially writes character-driven police procedurals: a crime is committed, clues are presented, Walt and company doggedly pursue the clues until justice prevails.

What makes Longmire unique is its location, specifically Wyoming, more generally the rural western United States, where despite the panoramic landscape (Longmire is filmed mostly in New Mexico) economic conditions remain bleak and white deplorables fight it out with Native Americans (Cheyenne, Sioux and Crow in this case) over scarce resources.

I grew up in southern Idaho and eastern Washington, so I’m familiar with the territory. Indian reservations are far more visible in those states than California. The Native kids were bused into grade school, junior high and high school from the reservation. It was obvious even to my young eyes that conditions on the reservations were squalid. While the introduction of a literal “casino economy” has improved the plight of many Native American tribes during the past several decades, for many, conditions remain unchanged or even worse.

Through six seasons, Longmire has been one of the few popular dramatic programs to regularly shine a light on Native American issues, putting Native American actors to work in the process. Often, that light is focused directly on Indian Country’s emerging casino economy, which happens to be one of the major burrs in Sheriff Walt Longmire’s saddle.

Walt’s opposition to the Cheyenne tribe building a casino in Absaroka County is never precisely delineated, but we know from the very start of the series that it’s heartfelt, since opposing the casino was his deceased wife’s pet political project. You get the feeling it’s more because Walt is anti-development than anti-gambling.

Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) and Jacop Nighthorse (A Martinez) don’t exactly get along. Ever.

Heading into season six, Walt remains convinced that casino owner Jacob Nighthorse, played with a perpetual scowl by A Martinez, has something to do with his wife’s murder, even though Nighthorse was supposedly exonerated of the crime last season. I can’t get enough of A Martinez. I hope he finds a new gig soon.

While Walt’s anger at Nighthorse seems downright irrational at times, we know he’s not a racist because his longtime best friend is an Indian, Henry Standing Bear, played with unflappable dignity by Lou Diamond Phillips, who begins season six strung out on the high plains in the sun by the genuinely evil Indian Malachi Strand (Graham Greene).

We know Malachi is genuinely evil because Henry and Nighthorse banished him from the Cheyenne reservation for among other things peddling heroin at the casino and murdering people from time to time, for which Malachi is understandably upset for almost the entirety of season six.

We learn of Henry’s dilemma after Walt’s daughter, Cady Longmire (Cassidy Freeman), has a vision while meditating in the Cheyenne reservation’s sweat lodge. Such spiritual interventions, often enhanced by various indigenous psycho-active substances, are a Longmire staple and, at least in Absaroka County, a proven crime-solving technique.

Cady, like many of the younger white characters in the series, is an uneasy resident of the rural west. After leaving home to earn a law degree only to return upon her mother’s death, she’s struggled to find meaning in both her career and a relationship. She thought she’d found the former representing the Cheyenne reservation on Nighthorse’s dime, and the latter in Henry’s arms, at the end of season five. Happiness proves to be more elusive than that, but not non-existent.

Life was, is and always will be hard out here in the rural west, a point hammered home hard in the second episode, when Lucian Connally, Walt’s law enforcement mentor now too old to ply his trade, invents a new way to commit suicide by cop. It’s a fantastic final performance in the series by the great Peter Weller.

Another narrative thread holding season six together is the budding relationship between Walt and former city cop, deputy Victoria “Vic” Moretti (Katee Sackoff). With Vic, Sackoff has created a character as memorable as her turn as Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, and she’s given full range to emote in the final season when Vic is forced to be the aggressor in a May-October workplace romance Walt is simply too decent to openly entertain. Given the recent furor over proper behavior in the workplace, the tension between Walt and Vic is almost unbearable, until it isn’t.

That’s been part of the charm of Longmire all along, the importation of current events, however unlikely, into the rural western landscape. In reality, sometimes it’s not so clear if the modern, tech-driven world is compatible with rural life, but by its very nature, it’s forcing its way in. For six seasons, Walt Longmire has been fighting the future, fighting the casino economy, fighting even getting a cell phone.

Is this the season he finally gives up? You’ll have to stream it to find out.

R.V. Scheide

R.V. Scheide is an award-winning journalist who has covered news, politics, music, arts and culture in Northern California for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in the Tenderloin Times, Sacramento News & Review, Reno News & Review, Chico News & Review, North Bay Bohemian, San Jose Metro, SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Alternet, Boston Phoenix, Creative Loafing and Counterpunch, among many other publications. His honors include winning the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Freedom of Information Act and best columnist awards as well as best commentary from the Society of Professional Journalists, California chapter. Mr. Scheide welcomes your comments and story tips. Contact him at RVScheide@anewscafe.com..

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