“The Lowdown” Season 2 begins by giving Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) the very thing his acclaimed FX series was unjustly denied in real life: an award. For his earth-shaking exposé on Dale Washberg (aka the mystery he cracked in Season 1), Lee is named Tulsa’s Citizen Journalist of the Year, complete with a shiny trophy, a fancy dinner, and free booze. As much as writers, in particular, cherish that last perk, what the honor represents should matter even more. Finally, the oft-beaten but never broken gonzo journalist has proof — irrefutable, tangible validation — that his “obsession with the truth” is valued by his city, as is he, their dogged, self-identified “truthstorian.”
Related Stories
So, naturally, Lee belittles the gesture, along with the “liars and sellouts” who gave it to him.
High on mushrooms and his own unmoored ego, Lee’s not-quite-acceptance speech casts our protagonist as far from the heroic spotlight as anyone literally standing in one can get. His daughter, Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), is embarrassed, his friends are deflated, and his audience — both the other honorees trying to enjoy their ceremony and those of us watching it all unfold through our screens — is disappointed. What happened to the committed father, community pillar, and righteous crusader who saved the day in Season 1?
That’s him. He’s right there. This Lee Raybon is the same as that Lee Raybon — only now, creator, writer, and director Sterlin Harjo catches him in a harsher light. Lee’s old self is still there, it’s whether that’s his one, true self that comes into question. Is he a force for objective good, as he believes himself to be? Or is Lee something darker and more dangerous, driven by anger and fear, while coasting on charisma and good intentions?
“There are a lot of truths out there,” a wise man says midway through “The Lowdown‘s” second chapter. “And the kind of truth you’re interested in, Lee, gets people hurt.”
Through six of eight episodes, Harjo’s Southern noir remains an immensely enjoyable TV series. His nimble little gem doesn’t let its core existential quandaries weigh things down, preferring to pop Lee in the face whenever he’s getting too full of himself, or tip its high-minded thoughts into delightful absurdity whenever the opportunity rises. Beautifully staged and shot in Oklahoma, the hourlong genre-bender — dubbed a comedy for its awards runs, yet equal parts honest human drama and shady sweeping mystery — is easy to sink into, surprisingly moving, and consistently funny in Season 2, even as it embraces a less-flattering vision of Hawke’s de facto detective.
Lee’s perpetual cuts and bruises can make it easy to forget he doesn’t bear the brunt of his search for truth — not the worst of it anyway. In Season 1, Lee successfully honored Dale’s wishes to restore the Washberg’s land to its rightful owners, the Osage Nation. But his quest also resulted in a number of deaths, including Arthur Williams (Graham Greene), an innocent man who was shot and killed in his own home as a direct result of Lee’s lack of restraint. Arthur’s grandson, Chutto (Mato Wayuhi), certainly wouldn’t vote to honor Lee with anything, and Season 2 often feels like it’s framed from a similar stance: through the ghosts of a past Lee prefers to forget.
One such stubborn revenant is Lee Raybon Sr. (Tommy Lee Jones), the father Lee previously claimed was dead. Senior, like his son, is a man of many truths. He’s a retired preacher and bookstore owner who earned the nickname “Frog” for jumping out of helicopters during Vietnam. Now, he’s an old man on his last legs suffering from dementia, just looking to reconnect with his family before his time is up.
But to Lee Jr., his dad is none of those things: He’s a grifter who conned anyone he could, including his own son. His bookstore was nothing more than an illegal porn shop, and Lee insists his father never went to Vietnam. He isn’t buying Senior’s “changed man” routine, either, even doubting his memory loss.
“Who are you?” Senior says, staring blankly into his son’s face. “Bullshit,” Lee replies.
Which is true? Which version is true? Which Lee is true — the grandfather who wants to meet and get to know his granddaughter, or the father who never cared to know his son? “The Lowdown” is simultaneously subtle and clear in suggesting, “Why not both?” Jones, a casting coup in another pitch-perfect ensemble from CDs Angelique Midthunder and Jennifer Garrett, deftly toes the line between the best and worst interpretations of his character, threading the cantankerous graybeard with grace and wisdom as well as confusion and regret. Senior is at once another inconvenient reminder of Lee’s repressed demons and his own man, back in Tulsa to “settle some scores,” whether Jr. wants to engage or not.
Where the younger Lee prefers to engage is with his new case, brought about by his new love interest. Ginger (recent Emmy winner Betty Gilpin) sparks to the honesty in Lee’s awful speech, but she’s no rube. She sees his sea of red flags (“A good guy in a white van?” she says when he offers her a ride. “It would be history’s first!”), and carves a path between them to get what she needs: Mekko, a former client who ended up in prison, stopped returning her calls. When she goes to visit him, she’s told he’s is unavailable. When Lee goes to visit him, they bring out a different guy claiming to be Mekko.
A bad con plus his burgeoning crush are all Lee needs to believe he’s found his next big story, which means dumping his old one on Marty (Keith David), now the Heartland Press managing editor, and throwing himself headfirst into another grand conspiracy involving [deep breath] Paul Schneider as a bleached-blonde prison guard who’s weirdly proud of his sautéed cheeseburgers; Martha Plimpton as a county sheriff whose pristine manicure masks her dirty professional baggage; John Hawkes as a popular judge who wants to bring back public hangings; and returning favorites like Michael Hitchcock (as a Raybon family friend and antique dealer), Michael “Killer Mike” Render (the eye-patched owner of the Tulsa Beat), and Siena East (who runs Hoot Owl Books in Lee’s absence) along with all her cousins and buddies.
The ensemble alone makes “The Lowdown” irresistible. Such great and grand groups have been wasted in lesser series, but each talented actor gets to strut their stuff without disrupting the story or getting short-changed. With Gilpin matching Hawke’s manic energy in a combustible whirlwind of physical comedy and budding attraction, Jones provides the ideal, stoic counterbalance for his character’s spiraling son, and Harjo ropes them all together to tell a story about weighing the greater good against our immediate responsibility to others.
Early in Season 2, a friend gives Lee a tarot card reading and informs him he’s “ignoring the cup.” What really matters is right in front of his face, and he either can’t see it or he won’t. Be it his award’s true meaning, his investigation’s true victims, or his father’s true intentions, Lee runs from many potential cups, and in doing so, ends up exactly where most empowered white guys need to be: closer to the truth that exists outside his own vision. By the end of this chapter, our fearless truthstorian may have to accept there are a lot of truths out there, and sometimes, you just have to choose the ones you can live with.
Grade: A-
“The Lowdown” premieres Wednesday, October 14 at 9 p.m. ET on FX and Hulu with two episodes. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale (Episode 8) on November 25.