After two ensemble-led opening episodes, Reservation Dogs season two seems to be transitioning back into single-character focused entries, mirroring the structure of the first season. Episode three centers on Bear, giving the audience more insight into his strained relationship with his father and his interconnected journey to find a job that can help him feel more mature.
Unfortunately, Bear still seems to be focused more on how things look than on interior growth. The episode opens with him trying to make his tool belt look “rugged” so the other guys at his new construction job won’t tease him. (Spoiler: It doesn’t work — teasing is a Native American traditional pedagogy.) Bear’s horrified mother asks him to kindly not wreck his brand-new belt, and things get only worse when Bear asks her to “go back inside” so his new co-workers don’t see her helping him out. This isn’t new behavior for Bear; it’s kind of his character’s defining nature this season. So far, his inconsiderate attitude has been played up so much that it seems as if everything is building toward some transformation, hopefully in which Bear realizes that, by haphazardly trying to avoid behaving like his father, he’s actually just following exactly in his dad’s footsteps.
At the jobsite, Bear struggles to find his footing, both literally and metaphorically. First, his two co-workers trick him into going on a wild-goose chase for a piece of equipment that doesn’t exist; then he finds himself unable to nail in a board when he becomes overwhelmed with memories of his father abandoning him. When Bear retreats to the porta-potties, he tries to garner some sympathy from Spirit, complaining that he isn’t being taught how to do the work and that the men simply expect him to pick everything up on his own. Spirit responds that this is the way Native people tend to teach youth (“Just get out there and learn, fucker”), which is, honestly, pretty brutally accurate. Spirit then proceeds to remind Bear that his ancestors dealt with these hardships and worse. Also there are poop jokes and drawings of wieners.
What’s messing up Bear most this episode is the fact that Daniel’s dad (who is also named Danny, which is a whole messy, haunting situation in and of itself) is also working on the jobsite. In the season opener, Bear saw that Daniel’s old house was empty, so he probably assumed the …….
Source: https://www.vulture.com/article/reservation-dogs-season-2-episode-3-recap-roofing.html