Sterlin Harjo already made a splash with the riotous Reservation Dogs in 2021, and his newest, The Lowdown, which he wrote and directed, is a small miracle of neo-noir farce with charm to spare. Cue the voice of Bill Hader’s Stefon from Saturday Night Live: “This place has everything!” Drive-by quotes swivel from “Don’t you quote David Foster Wallace to me! Not to me” to “Bovine vagina muscle relaxant?”. If that ain’t range, nothing is.
Set in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo’s hometown, The Lowdown trails Lee Raybon (a ludicrous Ethan Hawke), a devil-may-care, down-on-his-luck, heart-on-his-sleeve bookshop owner who keeps getting in a helluva lot of trouble. A self-proclaimed “truthstorian”, Lee dabbles in investigative journalism, chasing a high by writing incendiary exposes. You know, the kind of stuff a divorced, middle-aged white man would do (he’s all three). From the very first scene, he’s elbows deep in a city-wide quagmire for writing a series of takedown pieces on the most powerful local family, the Washbergs. Sure enough, things only get worse from there.
At the outset, we’re pulled in through a metafictional puzzle: Dale Washberg (a wonderful Tim Blake Nelson) narrates the story of his own suicide. The black sheep of an otherwise callous family, Dale, warm and curious, hides a letter inside a book shortly before dying. Meanwhile, Lee locks heads with Allen Murphy (Scott Shepherd in his most villainous since The Last of Us), the head of a corrupt real estate group who doesn’t appreciate him snooping around.
Ever the pragmatic hustler, Lee sniffs out Dale’s suicide note at an estate sale, gets attacked by skinheads, starts beefing with the Oklahoma governor hopeful and brother of Dale, Donald Washberg (a commanding Kyle MacLachlan), strikes a bargain with an antiques dealer, and gets a gun for self defence from one of the few publishers who still tolerates (and commissions) him. This is just the first 15 minutes of The Lowdown. By the end of the pilot, a kidnapping, a double murder, and an appearance of an envelope full of cash take place, and that’s not even the half of it.
While most “prestige” TV dramas thrive on sharp narrative focus, the main strength of The Lowdown proves to be precisely its anything-goes, genre-busting mashup. At turns a twisty whodunit, historical drama, tender family comedy, and farcical urban safari, it overwhelms, but never wears you down. That said, staying light on one’s feet in the face of chaos is a master storytelling skill, and none of The Lowdown’s many twists would work without some whip-smart writing and a protagonist to sell every bit of the hodgepodge.
Hawke already knocked it out of the park this year with a dazzling turn as Larry Hart in Richard Linklater’s off-kilter biopic Blue Moon, but the veteran thespian can’t seem to get enough of drama. Lee Raybon, the funniest television character this season, seems to have been written for Hawke’s hilarious chops. He nails Lee’s insatiable curiosity and endearing rebelliousness to perfection, fleshing him out as that rarest of characters: a person, and a lovingly relatable one at that.
Lee’s insatiable curiosity and preternatural ability to ignore danger make him the ideal sleuth to guide the flabbergasted viewer, but the supporting characters are no less captivating. Lee’s teenage daughter Francis (a tenacious Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who joins him on his quests, Marty (a superb Keith David), a mysterious stranger with a keen interest in Lee’s whereabouts, or Dale’s widow, Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), who seems to be sleeping around with… you’ll see, all light up The Lowdown’s carnival of skullduggery.
The streets of Tulsa also prove a pulsating, engrossing backdrop for the postcard from moral limbo. The place itself, just about big enough not to be a “town”, but small enough to have an intertwined community, bursts with colorful NPCs (Non-Player Characters) either looking to aid Lee or tear him down. Among them, Michael Hitchcock as antiques dealer Ray and especially Peter Dinklage as Lee’s former business partner Wendell, give riveting performances likely to stick with you long after the Raybons get to the bottom of Dale’s demise.
That’s the fun part, anyway. Harjo, a descendant of the indigenous Muscogee peoples, knows well that any intergenerational story of wealthy white American families likely comes with skeletons in and out of the closet. The Washbergs and their cohorts are no different: privileged and brazen, they maintain an aura of secrecy the way a Klan would. It is no coincidence that Donald is hellbent on becoming governor, but his is the more modest of the ambitions of the influential white locals.
If you’re enthusiastic about the 20th-century history of the US, you likely already know that Harjo’s Lee is inspired by Lee Roy Chapman, a journalist and activist whose research exposed Tulsa’s founder, W. Tate Brady, as a Ku Klux Klan member. Chapman proved Brady’s involvement in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst supremacist crimes in US history.
The Lowdown honors Chapman’s relentless pursuit of justice by imbuing Lee with the same sense of purpose. At the core of the story is the desire of the powerful to (further) dispossess the indigenous community of their land and solidify their supremacist tendencies. How each of the characters factors in this conspiracy is slowly revealed over the course of eight episodes, and, sure enough, Lee plays a pivotal role in untangling the web of corruption and malice.
Like a solid detective novel, The Lowdown uses its many twists to pack up a knockout, while grounding itself in the life of its protagonist. Lee is far from a perfect man – he can barely pay alimony, and he keeps missing his dates with Francis (gotta focus on the pursuit of truth!) – but his bravery and tenacity in the face of institutionalized threat are admirable. Taking the depth and humanity of the story into account, the comedy comes as a mere bonus.
In wicked times like ours, when the truth is deliberately distorted and buried for the ends of the elites, Lee Raybon might just be the hero we need, flaws and all. One can only hope The Lowdown, with its singular repertoire of fascinating personalities, will be back to expose more malfeasance while taking the piss.