It has been a quiet week in my house, at least in terms of television watching — just two ongoing series, plus we caught up on the latest season of Dark Winds.

We also watched a true crime documentary, but I found that I did not have much to say about it beyond the obvious, that marrying children is bad and people should not do it.

Okay, the truth is that the subject matter was very intense, so I watched a lot of it while playing a game on my phone, which is good for mental health, but also means I can’t really make any intelligent comments on the series and should not try.

Let’s watch TV!

Here’s a hot take: Dark Winds is George R. R. Martin’s greatest contribution to popular culture. Not his novels, not the adaptations of his novels, definitely not his TV work from the 1980s, but the adaptation of an almost-forgotten series of detective novels from the 1970s that he co-produced.

Which is not to say it’s flawless, because my criticism of season 3 — that Joe Leaphorn is the only really rich character, and everyone else is a sketch — still stands. But Joe is so interesting that I’m not really mad about it. (Except obviously I still have a whinge, see below.)

And I’m not the only one who thinks so. This season sees a German assassin (played by Franke Potente) become obsessed with him in a way that is frankly … rapetastic. She wants to “honour his culture” (but don’t speak Navajo, Joe, she doesn’t understand it) and play happy families with him (and the teenage Navajo girl she has abducted), and she does not understand that no means no and “you’re under arrest” means “hey, maybe you shouldn’t murder people for money”.

There are so many layers here! The German fascination with Native American culture, the tendency of white people to colonise Indigenous cultures, the tendency of white women, specifically, to objectify and mistreat men of colour. The central mystery is almost disappointingly straightforward compared with all the psychological drama, but it’s still not simple.

Here is my whinge: of the central trio at the heart of this series — Leaphorn and his protegees Bernadette Manuelito and Jim Chee — Bern once again draws the short end of the stick in terms of characterisation. Yes, season 3 gave her a lot, but Chee got the bulk of it in seasons 1, 2 and now 4. And this season puts Bern in a really interesting situation: it’s the 1970s, and her boss is passing over her boyfriend to promote her. I’m not saying I wanted to see Chee go Full Chauvinist, but the series only touches on the gender dynamic at play, and it feels like a cop out.

Not that it matters, because the season ends with the murder of Leaphorn’s best friend Gordo (Gordo is an extremely “best friend of the hero who dies before the series ends” coded name), so Joe will not, in fact, be retiring. But there’s a thread here, and I really wanted to pull it.

I don’t wanna tell Lily and Alex how to live their lives, but if you’ve just leaked classified, highly controversial documents to the press, try not to talk about it in public. That’s just bad opsec. Everything I know about running a resistance movement in a surveillance state, I’ve learned from watching leftists yell at each other on Bluesky, but this seems like common sense to me.

In fairness to these kids, they grew up in the relatively sheltered environment of Mars—and they’re American Martians. Their Soviet friend would probably know better, but they at least had enough common sense not to go confiding in people.

Speaking of the Soviet Union, this episode sees the return of Irina, last seen being arrested by her KGB bosses after Margo’s re-defection. Undefection? Either way, Irina spent a few years in the gulag, enduring interrogations and communicating with her neighbours by using her tooth to tap out messages in Morse code.

But you can’t keep a good operative down, and along with her freedom, she has been rehabilitated and now runs security for Helios’s rival, Kugarin.

Confirmation that Kugarin is a Russian company is an interesting worldbuilding wrinkle—I take it from this that the USSR has survived this long because, like China in the ‘80s, it has pivoted from strict Communism to being an authoritarian state with a free market economy under the tight control of the government and the Party. This makes sense to me—authoritarian states which provide a high standard of living for their citizens tend to last longer than the ones which combine material deprivation with political oppression. I know it’s not the point of the show, but I just find late Soviet history interesting, and I’m delighted to have an answer to a question which has been bugging me for a while.

What I’m supposed to be paying attention to is the crackdown on Martian protesters, and Boyd’s ongoing investigation into Yoon’s death. To Boyd’s surprise (but not mine) she learns that her partner, Fred, not only killed Yoon, but was the one who bonked her on the head a couple of episodes ago. She is even more dismayed to learn that this goes all the way to the top (the top being her boss, the sheriff). It’s a good thing that Mirielle Enos is so good at acting, because her expression is so profoundly betrayed that I can’t even ding Boyd for being gullible. Much.

Speaking of people who shouldn’t be this gullible: obviously I am glad that Aleida wasn’t in on the automation plan, but ALSO, as Helios CEO, she should have been in on the automation plan. Like. It’s her job. To know. What is happening. In the company she is running.

But I can’t be too mad, because Aleida has always been better at maths than politics, and this feels like a classic glass cliff scenario. Dev needs someone to exercise his will (when he chooses to share it) and do the hard work of running the company, and to take the fall when stuff goes wrong, who better than a woman of colour? If Twitter exists in the FAM timeline, it is absolutely rich with Discourse about Aleida Rosales, girlboss feminism and the capitalist project in space.

The final entry in this week’s roundup of People Who Are Bad At Their Jobs: Lenya Polivanov. I will give him credit for trying to shake hands and make nice with the angry citizens, when that is absolutely not something his background in the Politburo trained him for. And I guess he did not actually order the MPK to shoot people. But he is in way over his head and bringing a real ginger cat energy to the crisis. Obviously his wife had the braincell, and with her returning to Earth, he’s just endlessly chasing the laser.

AKA The One Where Deborah Dates Harry Styles.

But more importantly, Ava dates a sex worker (and she’s totally cool with that) who aspires to become a magician (which is NOT okay). Between Arrested Development and pick-up artists, I feel like magicians have been ruined for several generations of women.

This is a slight episode, but that’s okay. It made me laugh, we got to see our ladies make out with some attractive young men, and now an international rock star’s fans are very angry with Deborah. Which won’t go badly at all.