Django – Season 1 Episode 3 “Nagadoches” Recap & Review

Nagadoches

Episode 3 of Django starts back in New Babylon. Django wants his gun back but of course that means breaking the well-established rules of this commune. Between the tobacco case and his revenge mission, Django wants reassurance while he’s staying in town, but the group have a bigger mission at hand. In fact, they intend to head out to Nagadoches to buy an oil rig from an old comrade.

John leads the charge but on the route, they find a man hung on a tree; an ominous warning as this happens to be one of the guys from New Babylon who left to go it alone. John buries him in the dead of night, where Django uses the opportunity to get John Ellis in private, who admits he buried all of Sarah’s family after the war.

Fingering the gun in his back pocket, he asks John whether he killed their family outright but John’s incredulous look seems to hint that he didn’t. He was the only one left with Sarah in town but John didn’t get to see the people who did kill them. Sarah did tell John Ellis “that the blood of the family was on her father’s hands.” Which, of course, is referencing Django himself. This seems to confirm that John Ellis is not the murderer here and as such, Django puts his gun away.

There are flashbacks interspersed throughout this episode showing Django’s complicated feelings toward his feeling. This is only compounded further when Elijah, the man whom he’s been with all this time, ends up kissing him and the pair share an intimate moment under the fire together.

Back in the present, Sarah decides to join them on the trip, believing that someone needs to keep an eye on Django to make sure he keeps out of trouble. She keeps a distance though as they meet two men, Oscar and Walter. These are the guys who own the oil rig and John immediately gets down to business, wanting to buy it off them. In exchange, he offers $2000. It’s a lucrative deal, but one wracked with danger.

Armed bandits approach on horseback, led by Elizabeth. She keeps a distance though while a shootout ensues. Once more, it comes down to a one on one stand-off between Elizabeth and John. Elizabeth has tears in her eyes, as her voice echoes through with flashes of their history, namely that of Django betraying her for his brethren. Eventually the pair decide against shooting one another and Elizabeth leaves, heading back to Elmsdale.

After the ensuing chaos, it’s immediately clear that Walter has ended up badly injured. As he bleeds out, Django is tasked with putting the man out of his misery, shooting him in the head. “You can take your fucking rig.” Oscar bitterly retorts as grief swirls around him.

Off the back of this, Django and John Ellis end up with a newfound respect for one another, but there’s something still niggling away at the back of the stranger. “Why didn’t you kill her [Elizabeth]?” Ellis pauses: “She’s my oldest friend.”

The group eventually make it back to New Babylon, but Sarah isn’t in the mood to chat to her father. He tries to explain himself, wanting to repair their severed relationship. Django brings up John Ellis’ chatter the night before about second chances, and believes he should be given that same honour. The thing is, Django’s army killed Ellis’ son so that idea of forgiveness is not going to go down well.

The Episode Review

There was much chatter last week about the filming of this series and, in particular, the terrible lighting. That much is still evident here and the scenes at night are particularly egregious. It may well be because I’m watching with the brightness cranked all the way up to max but you can definitely understand the complaints in that department for those who don’t have a similar set-up.

The small pocket of action does work quite well with the pacing but the characters themselves just aren’t all that endearing. Sarah in particular gets very few lines in this and even worse, she really shouldn’t have been at Nagadoches given the shootout that ensued and her lack of involvement outside of keeping an eye on Django.

However, with two episodes released a week, there’s plenty of time for the next chapter to pick up the pace.