Comedy
Peacemaker
Peacemaker is to superhero as ringworm is to earthworm. It might seem like these two things are related based on their names, but they aren’t.
Yosemite National Park, located in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, is arguably one of the most beautiful places in the world. Breathtaking views, untamed wildlife and untold adventures await the hundreds of thousands of tourists who flock to the park every year.
But with untold adventures come some untold dangers, too. After all, you can’t spell wilderness without wild.
So when a young woman falls off the edge of a cliff to her death, park rangers are ready to dismiss the death as an accident. Evidence even shows she had been attacked by coyotes beforehand. But Special Agent Kyle Turner isn’t so sure.
Turner works for ISB, a specialized unit of the National Park Service that investigates criminal activity. And he’s seen plenty of murders that looked like accidents in his time.
It isn’t long before Turner discovers that the woman, Lucy, was shot first, then attacked by animals before she took her fateful plunge—though whether she fell or was pushed remains to be seen.
But Turner’s investigation, it turns out, isn’t just about Lucy. Her death is linked to other disappearances within the park, a drug cartel and even a death within Turner’s own family. And Turner will need to work quickly, because the more questions he asks, the more people keep turning up dead.
This Netflix miniseries hit the Top Ten almost instantly after being released. But just because it’s popular doesn’t mean it’s appropriate.
Turner has a strong moral compass and always tries to do the right thing, even to his own detriment. However, he’s still reeling emotionally from his own son’s death. He and his wife split up over the ordeal, which led him to the bottle and led her to depression.
Naya Vasquez, a young park ranger assigned to help Turner on the case, has her own problems, too. She left the police force in L.A. to escape her abusive ex. Now, her time is split between proving herself a capable ranger and providing a stable home for her young son. And all the while, her ex keeps pestering her, issuing thinly veiled threats against her and their son.
And Lucy, the woman whose murder they’re trying to solve, seems to have been a victim of child abuse and, later on, domestic abuse. Her own baby daddy got her involved in a drug cartel. And as the series unfolds, it’s revealed that she may have struggled with her own mental health troubles as well.
Foul language, bloody deaths and alcoholism all make frequent appearances. The plot itself includes child abuse, murder (including that of a child) and suicide, much of which is depicted onscreen.
All that leaves Untamed feeling rather unhinged. And it’s probably not going to make most viewers feel too great themselves by the time they finish watching.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Kyle Turner faces opposition as he begins an investigation into the death of a woman in Yosemite.
A woman falls off the summit of mountain, hitting the cliff on her way down. Her body gets caught in two climbers’ ropes, knocking them off the cliff as well, but they’re saved by their safety hooks. Later, investigators inspect the woman’s corpse, discovering bloody wounds from an animal attack and from climbing without proper footwear or gear.
Turner follows a trail of the woman’s blood down the mountain. He finds bloody ropes from where the woman tried to put a tourniquet her bleeding leg. He also discovers a bullet embedded in a tree, which helps the coroner find a bullet wound in the woman’s leg that had been hidden by her other injuries. Flashbacks show us some of the woman’s actions as she fled something or someone prior to her death. Someone rudely suggests that she may have been on drugs and jumped off the mountain.
Vasquez gets knocked over by a bear when she goes to open the door of a shack. Turner scares the animal off by firing his gun into the air before it can get through the door. Someone says hundreds of people go missing in the park every year. We hear about animal poachers. An animal skull hangs on a door. We see a hawk eating the bloody scraps of its prey.
Vasquez says her son’s father isn’t her husband. A man snuggles with his wife while sleeping. Turner is divorced, and his ex-wife has remarried. Turner sometimes crosses boundaries, asking probing questions into his ex-wife’s new relationship and happiness.
Turner drinks throughout the episode, often to excess. His friend, who can smell the booze on Turner’s breath, tries to offer support. And after he drunkenly calls his ex-wife in the middle of the night, she tries to set up boundaries. Another man says he’s raising his granddaughter because her mother has had a substance abuse relapse.
Characters lie. A man makes several bets. The park superintendent gets mad when rumors about the woman’s death start trending online, since the sensational story could affect tourism. Turner is scolded for refusing to speak to a lawyer about an open investigation. We hear someone urinating in the background of a scene.
A Native American man makes an odd joke about how “white men” took his land and killed his people. He also seems to make some predictions after watching the night sky.
Bruce Milch, a senior ranger, is rude and condescending to everyone. Turner can also be blunt, but it’s only because he’s very dedicated to his job. Milch badmouths Turner to Vasquez, but Vasquez doesn’t let it affect her opinion of Turner.
We hear multiple uses of the f-word and s-word. God and Jesus’ names are both abused several times, the former paired with “d–n,” once. “A–” is also used once, and someone makes a crude reference to male genitalia.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Peacemaker is to superhero as ringworm is to earthworm. It might seem like these two things are related based on their names, but they aren’t.
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