IR TV Review: LAWMEN - BASS REEVES - PART V [Paramount+]

The essential nature of Bass Reeves is trying to figure out which path serves him best: providing or just being. One offers a certain contentment but doesn't put food on the table. Another reverses the trajectory but lacks a certain peace of mind. Heading into "Part V" of "Lawmen: Bass Reeves", it is about a state of existence that may be too much or just enough to handle for the man. Bass has been gone for nearly 41 days. His daughter and wife greet him but his other kids in his mind (and maybe in theirs) don't know him as much. He is given an order by the judge (through Dennis Quaid's now desk-bound marshall) to bring a certain criminal back to Texas. This man is a former slave but not unlike him in certain ways with different cicumstances. On the path, Reeves is just debating who he is but also keeps his feelings very close.

At one point, they have to take refuge with some Spanish refugees who don't trust the law. The episode then takes a spiritual, slightly ghostly angle for a second (which seems an odd shift in tone but is what the character is dealing with). Reeves is being pulled back and forth and the story told by his transport prisoner is affecting his thought process. The woman sheltering them even tells Crow that "his thoughts are troubled" in regards to Bass. But this isn't going to take him away from his duty and his compass...that is until he realizes who the Texas delivery is to. Back on the home front, Reeves' daughter goes to a Carnival with a boy because her father had to leave. She is headstrong like him but more impulsive because of her young age. There is a scuffle that happens building from an inherent racism that obviously percolates the entire show without being completely overt. This episode sets up these issues on two fronts which will likely come to a head in Part VI. A-

By Tim Wassberg