Those still grieving the end of Sterling Harjo’s Reservation Dogs can take more than just solace that his follow-up series, The Lowdown, is every bit as amazing. While still reveling in the nuanced quirkiness of his native Oklahoma, Harjo delivers a perfectly cast and fabulously entertaining comic mystery based in the city of Tulsa.
Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke, in a career-defining role) is a self-proclaimed “truthstorian,” who plies his hand-to-mouth journalistic trade on the fringes of the Tulsa mainstream, flippantly ruffling feathers as he goes. One of his recent pieces, an exposé about a politically connected, powerful Oklahoma family, is about set him on a crash-course with danger. That family is the Washbergs, headlined by Donald (Kyle MacLachlan), a slick-talking politician with eyes on the Oklahoma governorship. When Donald’s oddball brother Dale (Tim Blake Nelson) commits suicide, Lee — whose article is blamed, by some, for pushing Dale over the edge — finds himself on everyone’s shitlist. This only gets worse when he starts digging deeper into Dale’s suicide, which he is convinced was a murder. With reckless abandon, Lee rakes the muck, provoking enemies, alienating friends, and endangering loved ones along the way. But Lee is an idealist, who believes the truth matters above all else, and he’s determined to get to the bottom of the sinister goings-on.
The Lowdown is absolutely first rate in every respect. Like Reservation Dogs, it defies easy categorization; structurally it plays out like a conspiracy thriller or P.I. procedural, but Harjo brings his keen social commentary and quirky sense of humor to the table, while also blending in family drama and character study. For good measure, he stirs in some Twin Peaks influence, flavoring the setting with simmering, small-town menace. The resulting, perfectly paced series is a home run, set again a unique, memorable backdrop that turns Tulsa into an eccentric microcosm of the U.S. — both in its broader contemporary strife and its problematic past. Through it all, Hawke is sensational as the complex Lee Raybon: righteous, fearless, mistake-prone, reckless, and principled to a fault. His erratic journey through the conspiratorial maze is an inspired mashup of Jim Rockford and the Dude, with trace elements of the Terriers private detective duo. His inner circle of family and friends is full of superb support, from Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Macon Blair, Siena East, Michael Hitchcock, Kaniehtiio Horn, Michael “Killer Mike” Render, and — in one absolute highlight of an episode — Peter Dinklage. Meanwhile, Keith David serves brilliantly as a secondary protagonist: Marty Brunner, a P.I. serving as Donald’s head of security. Marty’s position within the Washberg clan gives him a closer angle on the conspiracy’s suspects and heavies, which sports equally terrific support from the likes of Tracy Letts, Tom McCarthy, Scott Shepherd, Paul Sparks, and Jeanne Tripplehorn, among many others. Brunner’s cautious, pragmatic approach, in David’s capable comedic hands, provides hilarious counterpoint to Lee’s Quixotic nonsense. Based on the eight episodes that brought them gradually together, I would follow this odd couple anywhere.
And even as it does so many things just right, The Lowdown does very little that’s expected. Often great new shows appear looking like they’re following a specific blueprint, but this one — like Lee himself does — follows the beat of its own drum, snatching familiar elements from here or there but never losing sight of its own unique voice. More people need to be watching this; it’s absolutely one of a kind.
