Spoiler alert! The entire article is covered in the following article “Mabel,”The fourth episode of “Reservation Dogs”Season 2.
Episode 4 “Reservation Dogs”Season 2, Title “Mabel,”Elora Danan makes her return to California, as she abandons her California dreams to be with her dying grandmother. It’s also star Devery Jacobs’ first foray behind the scenes for the FX show, as she pulls double duty playing and writing for Elora. According to the actress “Mabel”Find out more “warmth and beauty and communal closure”It is not about the pain of grief. “Death isn’t necessarily a bad thing,”In an interview, she shared her thoughts.
Jacobs, along with SterlinHarjo, co-wrote this episode. She stated that she pitched it as a way for her character to be showcased. “healing”The experience of death “right way,”After the suicide attempt of Daniel her friend, Cookie was left with her mother Cookie. As much as “Mabel” is personal to Elora, it’s also a microcosmic exploration of love and care in Native communities.
“In Indigenous communities death is something that’s a really hands-on experience, where I’ve noticed in a lot of Western cultures that it’s a really cold, isolating, taboo experience where the casket is always closed,”She spoke. “Going to my first white funeral, I didn’t understand it. I was so confused. And I’m like, Where’s the closure? Where are the moments of you getting to say goodbye or getting to laugh about the stupid stuff that person did when they were young?”
Read on for ’s Q&A with Jacobs, where she talks about what’s next for Elora, why it was important for her writers credit to reflect her full name, Kawennáhere, and how the Emmy snubs for “Rez Dogs”This is not going to have any impact “creating our show for ourselves and for our communities.”
: Can you take me through the discussions in the writers’ room regarding how this episode was made?
I can remember pitching the idea grandma Mabel should die. I also prefaced it using like. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying this, this person has already gone through so much. Like, What other options are we going to offer her? But there was an element of us discussing and breaking down what it would look like for Elora to experience and witness the passing of somebody in the right way, in the way they’re meant to when they’re older and it’s from natural causes and they’re surrounded by family and what that actually means and does for Elora in being able to process and heal through the grief that she’s experienced before, when it didn’t happen in the right way.
Something bigger that we were talking about was how in Indigenous communities death is something that’s a really hands-on experience, where I’ve noticed in a lot of Western cultures that it’s a really cold, isolating, taboo experience where the casket is always closed. Going to my first white funeral, I didn’t understand it. It was so confusing. And I’m like, Where’s the closure? Is there any moment when you can say goodbye to someone or laugh about the silly things they did as a child? Being somebody who grew up in my community and has been to many funerals, there’s such a warmth and beauty and communal closure that happens there.
It was something I was passionately interested in and why Sterlin asked me for my co-writing of this episode. It was hard work and a lot of pressure, but it was something I felt really happy to do.
And the third part in talking about the lead up to writing this episode is laying out for not only Elora but the audience how what this friend group is experiencing and the fracture that’s happened following the suicide of Daniel, that a similar thing has happened in the generation above them, where Cookie’s [Elora’s late mother]Rita’s friend group of older friends lost her husband, which sent shockwaves through the group. [Bear’s mother]Teenie [Elora’s aunt]Big. [Zahn McClarnon]Coach Bobson [Bill Burr]. Elora also had to be able to look at what her future could look like if she leaves Teenie.
There’s so much in there, and there’s so much love for our communities. It is clear that Sterlin was deeply affected by the loss of his grandmother. It was an intimate episode for each of us.
As you said, there’s some parallels between Elora and Teenie’s journeys. There’s this sense that they maybe feel guilt for leaving, but you also don’t want the narrative to shame them for that. What can you tell us about the balance between being a performer or a writer?
I think Elora’s feelings about Teenie are complicated, and we didn’t want to create it in one definitive way. We wanted there to be room for all of Elora’s feelings towards her aunt. One of those feelings being anger and resentment for not being there when she could have been and should have been for Elora; the other being Teenie’s guilt for having stayed away when she sees how grown Elora is, and it bringing back all of her own memories of Cookie and how Elora really resembles Cookie and reminds her of her. Elora should also see that even though she is gone, there are ways to stay connected to the community.
All of us in the writers room, we’re all people who were born on our reserves or reservations and are people who ended up leaving for work purposes, for life purposes, and there’s ways for us to stay connected to community.
It was Tamara Podemski who had in mind the role when she wrote it. In the hope that she would be able to perform it, we wrote it entirely for her. I loved Sarah Podemski’s chemistry and how it translated on screen. It was also the first time that they were able to play opposite one another.
Big’s comment is one of my favourite lines from the episode. “seems like we all should have gotten together before something like death,” and I think that’s so relatable and poignant to so many people. Would you be willing to talk about this particular scene?
We joked about this — that funerals and wakes and the passing of people [are]It’s the most bizarre, but effective, aphrodisiac available to Native people. And so that was definitely in there, and it was also an opportunity to show another side of Big — usually he’s this dorky, funny character and for him to be given a glimpse into a little bit of his history was something that we wanted to explore.
How did the passing scene come together, and what went behind the decision to end it on maybe a lighter note, where Mabel’s spirit is telling Elora “you did good”?
Going back to, this being actually a healing experience for Elora — that death isn’t necessarily a bad thing. How that means that this person can then pass on in a good way being an experience where Elora can let go of a lot of the grief that she’s had, not only for the passing of Mabel and the relationship that she wanted to have with her but couldn’t, but also being able to let go of the grief she’s hanging on to for Daniel and also for her mom, Cookie.
It is a great idea to end it on a lighter note. ‘Rez Dogs,’ and I loved how Geraldine Keams had delivered it — just rugged and in her bingo outfit being like, I’m a spirit now!It was perfect.
In one of the scenes, Jackie asks Elora if they’re still going to leave after the mourning period is over and it seemed that Elora was having doubts. What can you tell Elora about the next stage of her journey?
Elora’s runaway with Jackie and it not turning out as she had hoped. [being] still haunted by these memories of Daniel, that Elora learns that this wasn’t necessarily the thing that she needed, or this wasn’t the way she had hoped to heal from the experience she had with Daniel. I think that there are definitely some doubts with Elora about the future of her California living, but we’re gonna have to find out what happens through the season. It was unexpected for us in the writers room, how it ended up playing out, and so I think it’s gonna be a pleasant surprise for all of our audience members.
Could you please talk about how important it is to use your full name as the writer credits for this episode?
My full name, my first name is Kawennáhere. I always used Devery when I was off my rez because people had a hard time pronouncing names that are not English, but more so it’s a really personal name for me, and it was given to me by my tóta, my grandmother. It is directly translated to ‘her word is above,’What I say is important. It is my goal to live up that name. As an actor, my role is to help others tell their stories and bring them into reality. When it comes to filmmaking, I leave a personal part of myself in whatever I create, and so in this writers room, we all drew so much from our personal experiences, and it just made sense to include Kawennáhere in the writers credit.
If you would like to comment, I want you to have the opportunity to address the Emmy snubs. ‘Reservation Dogs.’
Of course I would love for the people I’ve been a part of this show with to be recognized and it would mean so much, but also Indigenous folks have existed on the margins of society — of Western society — since 1492. For me, it was disappointing but kind of unsurprising, and we’re going to be creating our show for ourselves and for our communities regardless of if we’re being recognized or not. At the end of the day, I’m just so glad that it’s resonating with audiences.
Halloween is a pretty contentious time for Native folks because there’s usually so many people making a mockery of Indigenous folks in costume, and so for this past Halloween last year to see so many rez kids and Native kids dressing up as the Rez Dogs during that day, for us, was just solidifying that we’re creating the show that we needed to see growing up for this younger generation and that’s the greatest impact that we could have.
