WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Reservation Dogs Season 1, Episode 4, “What About Your Dad,” which aired Monday on FX on Hulu.
This week, Reservation Dogs follows the rez gang to the edge of an unraveling, as it’s about Bear’s emotional but slightly narrow-minded quest to make his rapper dad’s visit as cool as possible. There are plenty of laughs along the way, and one of the funniest moments comes when Bear decided to get his dad a gift. It leads him to a beadworker, and before he notices this artisan’s particular aesthetic, there’s another gag to underline the show’s Tarantino influence.
In 1994, Pulp Fiction reignited and reimagined the noir genre for blockbuster movies. Tarantino’s hyper-violent follow-up to Reservoir Dogs ties a bunch of pulpy action stories together via recurring characters and important plot devices. The most infamous of these is the silver briefcase, its mysterious contents glowing softly. While it motivates the plots of Marcellus Wallace and his hitmen, the briefcase is just a MacGuffin.
In Reservation Dogs, the briefcase gets an ironic callout when Bear enters the beadworker’s home. The woman is an artisan; although, she’s paranoid, greeting the kids with a boxcutter knife. Still, the promise of getting paid for her work cools the situation, and Bear rummages through her finished goods for something that his rapper dad might like.
Bear picks up a small case and opens it, light blaring up into his face, like the case in Pulp Fiction. However, here, the object is identified, unlike whatever is in Wallace’s suitcase, and it’s a hand-beaded pickle amulet. The pickle amulet and its Tarantino-inspired roots function the same way. The plot moves forward from here, and as Bear declines the pickle amulet, he commissions something more symbolic for his dad: a beaded microphone.
Along with the gag, there’s a bit of thematic criticism to unpack in this episode. Pulp Fiction has taken a place in discussions about toxic masculinity, with its hardboiled detective roots and hyper-violent crooks and heroes. Reservation Dogs takes all that potential nuance and deflates it with a visual gag that’s on par with The Naked Gun. When Bear comes back for his piece, it’s then that he realizes this artisan has an unusual aesthetic.
The beaded microphone is flanked by two spiraled cables at its base, looking phallic. All the artisan’s pieces have a similar motif, including the pickle. While visually funny, the jokes have a point. It’s masculine imagery and themes get in the way of the emotional heart of the situation. Bear’s so focused on pleasing his actively distant dad that he’s forgetting about the needs of his friends close to home.
With Bear unable to give his dad the microphone necklace, it takes on a similar role to the Pulp Fiction suitcase, as its actual identity and value is not the point. It’s MacGuffin, and it makes a point about how buying stuff can’t replace the real work needed to make an emotional connection. It’s not the lesson Tarantino set out to teach in Pulp Fiction, but it’s the one Bear needs right now.
Created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, Reservation Dogs drops new episodes every Monday on FX on Hulu.
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