'Lawmen: Bass Reeves' Is Not the Show the Opening Episodes Promised

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 19, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 19, 2023 |

Spoilers for Season 1 below

Lawmen: Bass Reeves concluded its first (perhaps only?) season on Paramount+, and while the series started strong, it began to lose momentum midway through, ultimately falling apart in a final episode that, unbelievably, potentially suggests the existence of dinosaurs in 1880s Arkansas.

Notwithstanding Taylor Sheridan’s involvement (he only acts as a producer), I was initially excited about a series that might explore a historical figure I’d only just learned about a few years ago in HBO’s The Watchmen despite the fact that he was from my home state. The former slave-turned-lawman was reportedly the inspiration for The Lone Ranger and ultimately deserved better than what Bass Reeves amounts to: A bunch of Western tropes on top of slave-movie tropes.

Hardly a moment goes by when the television series doesn’t remind us that it’s a goddamn television series:

“You a lawman or an outlaw?” a kid asks Reeves in the final episode.
“A bit of both, I reckon,” he says in a thick Southern drawl.
“My daddy says they’re one in the same.”
“Your daddy a smart man,” Reeves tells the kid.

Though Taylor Sheridan did not write any of its episodes, his imprimatur is all over Bass Reeves, mostly in the form of scattered storylines and multiple aborted arcs. Creator Chad Faheen seems to lose interest in complete storylines while rushing others. In the penultimate episode, for instance, Bass Reeves kills a man in a fit of rage, is tried for murder, and is found not guilty by the judge, all in a matter of half an episode of television (this was supposed to mirror the real-life trial of Reeves for accidentally killing a man while cleaning his gun).

The real-life Bass Reeves reportedly made over 3000 arrests and brought in hundreds of fugitives, but the Paramount series wants to, at times, reduce Reeves to a former slave who arrests and brings in other former slaves, as though doing the bidding of the white man. That is essentially what he’s accused of by Mr. Sundown, the season’s big bad (played with terrific menace by Barry Pepper), a character the series returns to periodically before revealing in the finale that he’s been stealing Black criminals headed for execution and making them serve as his slaves. It’s a nasty bit of business, but even here, the final shootout between Reeves and Mr. Sundown (and their respective surrogates) is both painfully drawn out and woefully anticlimactic.

The impact of Hollywood strikes on the series’ writing and production is unclear, but the back half feels disjointed from the front half. The initial episodes aimed to honor Bass Reeves, exploring his backstory and challenges as a former slave-turned-lawman. However, the latter half feels rushed and poorly conceived, resembling a meandering Western with a caricatured Old West lawman.

The fate of the series and the potential focus on the David Oyelowo character also remains unclear. Initially developed as a Yellowstone spin-off, the shift to Lawmen suggested a broader exploration of real-life lawmen and outlaws. The creator is interested in another installment and the premiere ratings were massive, but the streamer hasn’t picked it up for another season. If this is the sole season of Bass Reeves, it leaves frustratingly unresolved storylines and casts doubt on the prospect of learning more about other “lawmen” from additional installments of this series beyond their myths.