My husband and I were excited to watch Godless on Netflix. My husband did background work on it, since it was filmed in New Mexico. We were hopeful we would see him on screen. Sadly, he did not make an appearance (unless you count a shapeless brown blur an appearance). He did, however, get to dress up like a cowboy for a couple days, so it wasn’t a total waste. Also, Episode Three features a WOC knitting!

We’ve only watched the first three episodes of Godless so far. (No spoilers please!) I think it’s definitely good for a western, but is it actually, standalone good? I’m not so sure. I like that the female characters have more agency than a typical western movie or TV show, but it’s still a good guy vs. bad guy story. Not to mention how loudly I groaned when the white character, Roy Goode, teaches the native teenager how to ride horses — asking such helpful questions as “What kind of Indian are you? You can’t ride a horse?” Thank goodness this white man is here to remind him of his culture! This kid would have never figured it out!

I have to admit, though, long sequences about horseback riding are still really fun to watch.

There was certainly one highlight in Episode Three for me, and that was a woman of color knitting and laying down the truth about the interracial flirting going on under the guise of a painfully noisy violin lesson.

godless

“I’m just going to be knitting to keep you warm while you try to figure out the obvious.”

I certainly don’t see a lot of women of color knitting on TV. Typically, knitting is to denote what a wealthy white female villain does to pass the time. (See Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale.) So I was pretty happy that, even though she’s most likely been given knitting as a prop due to the time period, she’s still there knitting like a boss in really crappy lighting. Because that’s how amazing women had to be to survive in the wild land of New Mexico.

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