‘Longmire’ season 3, episode 4 review: A crawl, or a big step forward?

Last week, “Longmire” had arguably its strongest episode of the entire season: A thrilling look at Henry’s release and also a pageant tied deeply to the tribal community. Everything felt full-circle, and all of that proved to be extremely interesting.

However, tonight’s episode took a slightly different approach. The story of Henry and many of the show’s other characters were somewhat relegated to the background as we saw more of a standalone case that barely touched on Henry, and gave us more of a sideplot about Vic’s personal life that did not have enough burn to be truly effective. Obviously, her relationship with Sean is on the outs, and her job is a reason why. That is mostly what we got out of this.

Beyond that, the progression forward in the murder of Longmire’s wife was slow and methodical at best. With him putting up names on a board at the end of the episode, this was starting to feel a little more like “Fargo” or “Homeland” than anything else. But the way that this story has been handled this season is not as powerful as it could be. We haven’t yet felt the full emotional weight that this has on Walt, and while we are sure that we will in time, it doesn’t have the say oomph to it just yet that even the Henry trail did.

This episode felt a little too much like the show putting on the breaks. After all the momentum that we had, we would have preferred pushing some of the procedural stuff to the side and focusing more on continuing what we had last week. We felt our mind drifting a little during the episode, and after a full day’s work of work, we want this show to keep us glued to the set throughout. Grade: C+.

What did you think about this “Longmire” episode as a whole? Share your thoughts with a comment.