Photo: Brian Douglas/Paramount+
There’s exactly one highly effective scene in this week’s chapter of the adventures of Dwight Manfredi. On a show that’s been pretty proficient with violence on the occasions it chooses to pull the trigger (no pun intended), maybe it’s no surprise that the scene involves murder.
Throughout this week’s episode, we’ve watched Dwight’s underboss, Goodie, entertain the entreaties of Chickie, his one-time boss, to re-defect and help his ally, Kansas City boss Bill Bevilacqua, take Dwight down from within. When Dwight proves unwilling to negotiate a price for sharing Tulsa, Bevilacqua decides to settle things a different way: sending a hitman to kill our guy under the guise of making a new offer. It’s Goodie’s job to maneuver Dwight from the big party where they’re celebrating his acquittal (more on that later) to the back parking lot, where he’ll be assassinated.
On his way out of the casino, everyone seems strangely nervous to see him go, as if they sense something’s off. Dwight’s his usual smiley self, because why wouldn’t he be — anticipating the arguments used by the Supreme Court to legalize their way out of a bribery scandal, he gets off scot-free by claiming his offer of a million dollars to his lover, ATF Agent Stacy Beale, wasn’t a bribe, it was him doing something nice for a friend. The guy’s a Teflon don.
So when Goodie slides into position behind Dwight, it looks like the General has grown overconfident. Glances are exchanged. A knife is drawn. A gun is pulled. A figure looms up from the background.
And suddenly, what’s happening becomes apparent. Goodie hasn’t turned Brutus on Dwight — he’s knifing the hitman, with the help of the hulking henchman Bigfoot, who’s holding the guy in place. Instead of turning traitor, Goodie must have reported the offer and the plan to his boss, hence this triple-cross. Through careful editing, the use of Dwight’s almost always bubbly personality as a smokescreen, and a performance by Chris Caldovino as Goodie that never shows its hand until after what’s happening has already happened, you get a nice little jolt of gangland-thriller tension and surprise here.
This, unfortunately, is just about the only time Tulsa King does anything unexpected at all this week. Well, anything unexpected that isn’t also mortifying, like making poor Andrea Savage sit there as Sylvester Stallone asks her really objectionably leading questions about their characters’ sex life on the witness stand. I’ll admit I didn’t expect that.
Beyond that, though? Dwight is found not guilty of bribery, which raises the question of why the show introduced the idea in the first place if the payoff was a one-episode trial “arc” that ended with the status quo ante. Dwight acts all tough and condescending with Bill, proclaiming himself independent of both Kansas City and New York because that’s the only way he knows how to operate with tough guys like himself. Both these outcomes are drearily predictable. (They’re also interesting to consider in tandem — Dwight always tries to charm civilians but is never more than five seconds away from a fuck-you to other criminals. It makes you wonder how he survived 25 years in prison.)
Sometimes the rote writing is aided by heavy-handed editing. Take Mitch and Tina, for example. The second they cut away from Mitch performing ZZ Top’s tenderly romantic ballad “Tush” to show us Tina watching him appreciatively, it’s obvious we’re headed for a love connection. Some follow-up dialogue in which Tina expresses admiration for his performance makes it even clearer. There are almost no digressions on this show, none of the narrative curlicues and flourishes that elevate work above serviceable. What you see is what you get.
Anyway, what Dwight gets is laid. Mere seconds after orchestrating a murder and overseeing the removal of the corpse, he’s dancing in the arms of Margaret, the glamorous, twinkle-eyed rancher who has well and truly jilted her evil suitor, Cal Thresher, for Dwight. (“You’ll go for a criminal greaseball in a pinky ring.” “Honestly, there’s more class in that pinky ring than in your entire body.” Was this a first draft?) The next morning he’s leaving her house. Man, that was a big day for Dwight Manfredi, huh?
But Thresher has another way to get at Dwight, or at least that’s the idea. He offers Armand, who’s taking a beating in the divorce he instigated by going to work for Dwight in the first place, a huge wad of cash free of charge to pay off his debts to his wife and Dwight … in exchange, maybe, for a favor to be named somewhere down the line. Now, if I’m Armand, I pull a Goodie and go to Dwight immediately, with both the money owed and an explanation of who it came from and why. But having employed that maneuver once in this episode, it’s hard to see the show trying it again.
Considering the sense that the whole show is running with its training wheels attached, it’s often hard to believe this show comes in part from the pen of the same Terence Winter of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire fame. Yet there are moments when what sure sounds like his voice comes through. Take an early cross-cultural conversation between Goodie and Mitch as the two hang out at the casino. Apropos of nothing, Goodie takes an interest in what Mitch is jotting down in his notebook and asks him if writing lyrics is difficult. Mitch says that he finds it hard if he’s feeling happy, “but when it rains … it pours.” I like how the pronoun “it” is used to refer to two different things here — first, the circumstances of life, and second, the flow of inspiration — broken up by Garrett Hedlund’s leathery delivery. There’s some poetry in how that line reading is put together.
And even though everyone laughs at everything Dwight does or says because he’s just so darn delightful, there are times when he’s actually funny, not just “oh, Dwight, you scamp” funny. After he uses one two many jokes that fall into the latter category on Bevilaqua, the K.C. kingpin has had enough. “You got a sense of humor,” he observes with a sarcastic smile.
“Sometimes,” Dwight says, smiling back.
“I don’t,” Bevilaqua snaps.
Dwight’s response is a deadpan “Yeah, well, I’m sure you’ve got other qualities.” It made me laugh, anyway!
Tulsa King doesn’t seem interested in being much more than the “Isn’t it fun for Sylvester Stallone to play a mobster on a TV show” show. I can’t say I’ve made my peace with it, but I at least understand and accept that it’s the case. But we’re wading in this thing; we might as well keep panning for gold. Every now and then, there’s a nugget.
