There are two sides to every story, and that’s certainly the case with this week’s episode of The Lowdown. Side A: a raucous road-trip one-crazy-day buddy comedy, starring Ethan Hawke and Peter Dinklage as two very different flavors of aging radical brought together in the memory of a fallen comrade when hijinks ensue. Side B: a terrifying journey into the rage and licentiousness of contemporary law-and-order fascism, in which men who threaten women preside over lawless gangs protected by a badge. In other words, it’s of them half-empty, half-full type of glasses we’re drinking from today.
The happy stuff is fun to break down, so we’ll start there. Wendell (Dinklage), one-time co-owner of Lee’s bookstore, comes traipsing in, with clouds of sarcasm, condescension, and weed wafting from him at all times. He’s a hard-livin’ aging punk who has little respect for what he sees as Lee’s compromises with Oklahoma’s “Illuminati,” not to mention his shoddy investigative techniques and disorganized approach to shelving.
Nevertheless, Wendell insists Lee spend the day with him, a years-old tradition they keep up in honor of their late friend Jésus, whose example they both say they’re trying to follow. Their relationship is in fact so antagonistic at first that I figured they were old enemies rather than old friends. It’s only as the episode progresses and you recognize the ease of that antagonistic rapport that you realize, okay, these guys may hate each other, but they still love each other.
If you’re detecting a very Walter/The Dude vibe here, yes, that is correct — right down to Wendell’s instinctive rage against anti-Semites. There’s also an argument about the status of Lee’s lady friend/special lady, Betty Jo, and a character named Jesus, for those keeping track of The Lowdown’s loving Lebowski homages at home.
To my delight, the show also tips its dusty fedora to another Southwestern crime saga, the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe, via the presence of Saul Goodman’s receptionist, actor Tina Parker. She has a small but funny cameo as Sandy, a local official whom Wendell charms into giving up the old maps they need to track down the location over which Dale Washberg wrote he and his brother Donald were feuding. “This is fun,” Wendell says, smiling disingenuously. “This is easy, you and me.” Laugh-out-loud line readings, here.
Anyway, Wendell is skeptical that the land, a patch of nowhere called Indian Head Hills, or Lee’s investigation into the Washbergs in general has anything behind it…until armed gunmen show up at Lee’s van, obviously on the hunt. Between this and a visit from the skinheads that security guard Henry has to break up with a gunshot in the air, Wendell seems to realize Lee really is risking it all for the truth. After a ritual airing of grievances, the two part on better terms. The way the camera lingers on Wendell as he walks away, however, indicates Lee is not convince his friend will make it to their next get-together.
The scarier side of the story is painted red, white, and Tulsa PD blue. In a series of scenes peppered throughout Lee and Wendell’s excellent adventure, right-wing gubernatorial candidate Donald Washberg punches through a cabinet inches from Betty Jo’s face, enraged that she slept with Lee.
Donald then presides over a luncheon for “the 46,” an all-white boys’ club at which the elimination of the legal independence of Oklahoma’s Native American nations is urged by our old friend Frank Martin. It’s the kind of club where Frank, who brags about owning an authentic Nazi firearm, is seen as kind of wishy-washy. Apparently it’s up to him to facilitate that land deal through a series of shell corporations as a payout to Donald for future services rendered — bribery to most of us, though I believe the Supreme Court ruled it legal for reasons best known only to themselves and Harlan Crow.
Donald’s final role in the episode is positively luciferian. Washberg has cops abduct Lee and drag him to a private club that’s hosting an all-out police rager. Orgiastic exhibitionism, massive explosions, rampant gunfire, prodigious substance abuse: all of it is captured in a long, disorienting take, in a sequence that feels like an homage Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s journey through the hellish biker compound in True Detective. The point is neither subtle nor inaccurate: The cops are a gang, too, and this gang works for a guy named Donald.
There’s one final thread weaving through the narrative: Marty goes on a date! His app match, played by Tisha Campbell, is quite charmed by him, but grows wary when she learns of his strange relationship with his employer. If they used to be friends but are no longer, she argues, then maybe it’s time to look closer at what he’s doing without you. Until Marty’s ready to do that, their first date will have to be their last.
I’ve watched enough TV with stacked casts this year to know talent alone can’t make a show good. That said, you really do have to try to screw up an episode that rests on the charms of Ethan Hawke, Peter Dinklage, Jeanne Tripplehorne, Kyle MacLachlan, Keith David, and Tisha Campbell. Those are some charming people! As a result, The Lowdown is a charming show.
Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.