Photo: Brian Douglas/Paramount+
Dwight Manfredi don’t need no education. Dwight Manfredi don’t need no thought control. No self-expression and creativity, basketball with no points, and gender-neutral Little Orphan Annies in the classroom. Teacher, leave dem kids alone. Eyyy, teacher, leave dem kids alone!
In a cold open that could have been co-written by a Moms for Liberty chapter, Tulsa King lets its charming troglodyte anti(ish)-hero Dwight Manfredi take a few swings at the state of modern education in the form of the cartoonish progressive day school to which his grandchildren are to be sent. It’s the kind of scene in which Dwight asks if they have football and the principal literally responds, “Heavens, no! Far too violent.” You don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to understand who the audience of Tulsa King is supposed to sympathize with here, and it’s not the guy who wants to “develop [kids] into kind and thoughtful members of society.” It’s the guy who thinks children should be beaten with rulers when they misbehave. Hey, the nuns did that to him, and he turned out just fine! Other than the past 25 years, I mean!
It continues when they get home. “They’re training them to be patsies and fall guys,” he hollers. “Wimps!” When his daughter and sister chide him that the world is not the dog-eat-dog hellscape he believes it to be, he replies, “Do you not watch the news? You gotta be ready for everything. You can’t be naïve and gullible, like they want you to be, and listen to what they’re saying all the time.” Add “YMCA” and you’ve got a Trump rally. Is he supposed to sound a little over the top? Sure, but his heart’s in the right place, and that’s what really counts, right?
At least this little sequence is just kind of a random one-off, Dwight’s weekly Andy Rooney rant about some way or other that things just ain’t like they used to be when we was kids growin’ up or whatever. The climax, in which Dwight and his crew beat a group of nameless Chinese immigrant thugs into submission after they’re used as cannon fodder by Cal Thresher to sabotage Dwight’s wind turbines, is more important to the plot and even uglier. Maybe there’s a good reason to include a scene in which a flock of undocumented Asian immigrants gets beaten with baseball bats on your show in 2024, but “it gives septuagenarian Sylvester Stallone a chance to look tough” isn’t it.
This kind of stuff makes Tulsa King’s less reactionary moments all the more confounding. Take the story line where Dwight and Mitch purchase a car dealership in order to expand their empire. Donnie Shore, the seller, explains to Mitch the logic behind offering amenities and freebies to customers: “Give ’em a little for free; it creates a sense they owe you. They become loyal, no matter how much you upsell ’em!” Shore is a fake cowboy putting up an air of authenticity to part fools from their money. And he’s the legitimate businessman here!
At the wind-turbine farm, Dwight and Jimmy briefly chat about the urban myth that Indigenous people have no fear of heights. While it’s true that Mohawk “Skywalkers” are responsible for constructing many of the most famous buildings in New York in particular, it’s less an innate absence of acrophobia and more a Dune Bene Gesserit mastery-of-fear kind of thing, according to many of the workers; for his part, Jimmy chalks up the connection to the trade to a matter of taking jobs no one else would.
Speaking of New York ethnic groups, the Italians are trying to settle the beef. At the instigation of Vince, who’s trying to set himself up as the replacement for the combustible — and patricidal — Chickie, a sit-down is set up between New York, Kansas City, and Tulsa in the neutral ground of Atlanta. (I’m sure Georgia’s tax breaks for film production and Tulsa King’s relocation from its namesake city to the ATL for filming have nothing to do with it.)
Rounding out our tour of the cast, Tyson and Armand try to big-dog one another. Cal argues with Dwight over both the turbines and their mutual romantic interest Margaret (for her part, she’s chosen Dwight, not that it matters to Cal). Cal also argues with his Triad partner, Dwight, which leads me to wonder how much longer he’s going to be left in charge of his own operation. (Dwight takes Thresher’s eventual betrayal by the Chinese mob as a given, assuming they’ve always seen the weed baron as a mark, not a partner.)
Tulsa King’s tics are still on display this week. Several scenes in which Dwight briefly argues with someone close to him end, as they tend to do, with the whole gang laughing happily together at Dwight’s lovable nature. The scene where Dwight argues with his sister and daughter that “human nature does not change” ends with all being forgiven because they bought him a La-Z-Boy. Margaret and Dwight laugh their way out of the scene where he tells her Thresher’s being taken advantage of by the Triads. The episode ends with the happy couple buying bottle after bottle of a restaurant’s most expensive Champagne on Thresher’s dime, all smiles.
It’s just so odd to think of this show in the context of the rest of the work of head writer Terence Winter. “Human nature does not change” is something you might have heard on The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, but those shows wrestled with the implications of that statement until they were bloody with them. Tulsa King uses it as a reason why boys shouldn’t be allowed to star as Little Orphan Annie in the school play. It feels so diminished and cheap.
Of course characters don’t speak for their writers, and television shows are not campaign platforms. But as these recaps have argued before, you simply can’t point to any place in Tulsa King where Dwight has acted in a way we’re supposed to find seriously immoral. Shaking down Bodhi, killing some bikers, jokingly humiliating his ex-girlfriend on the witness stand — less than ideal, but nothing you’re not supposed to be able to live with. Nothing you’re not supposed to find outright entertaining, in fact.
So when Dwight says school is turning boys into sissies, when Dwight’s primary interaction with immigrants comes at the end of a baseball bat, you can’t point to some really odious murder that demonstrates the show’s understanding that its main character is a piece of shit the way you could with Tony Soprano or Nucky Thompson. Dwight’s a delight! That’s his whole schtick. What’s the matter? Aren’t you delighted?
