Tulsa King is becoming a mini-empire in the Taylor Sheridan universe; it’s already been renewed for a New York-centric fifth season, and the Samuel L. Jackson-led spinoff Frisco King is set to premiere in December, with a massive assist from Sylvester Stallone. The most welcome news for fans of the show, though, is the return of Terence Winter, who ran things in the first season.
TULSA KING SEASON 4 STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone) and his sister Joanne (Annabella Sciorra) are in a tailor shop. Joanne is looking for her brother to have an updated, brighter wardrobe instead of his “New York mobster” suits.
The Gist: Things are going well for Dwight and his crew in Tulsa. He has a federal liquor license to distribute Montague Distillery’s 50-year-old bourbon nationally. He tells his crew — Goodie (Chris Caldovino), Tyson (Jay Will), Mitch (Garrett Hedlund), Bodhi (Martin Starr), Grace (McKenna Quigley Harrington), and Bigfoot (Mike “Cash Flo” Walden) — to try as much as possible to keep on the legal side of the fence. His business with FBI Special Agent Musso (Kevin Pollak) is more collaborative than adversarial. His relationship with Margaret Devereaux (Dana Delany) is going great, and he’s looking forward to the advantages of having Oklahoma’s new governor, Cal Thresher (Neal McDonough), in his pocket.
Dwight even managed to mend fences with mob boss Quiet Ray (James Russo), settling on giving Ray a reasonable percentage of the distillery business and asserting himself as the boss of his own family. But during a meeting of bosses from around the country, Ray reminds Dwight and KC boss Bill Bevilaqua (Frank Grillo) just how vicious he can be. And Bill has his own agenda, and not just because he wants to protect his cut of the distillery business.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tulsa King, which is part of Taylor Sheridan’s massive roster of series, is a cross between The Sopranos and Yellowstone.
Our Take: Terence Winter has returned to the fold for Season 4 of Tulsa King, and he wrote the season premiere. His presence shows in a more emotionally-grounded season with high stakes that are rooted somewhat in reality instead of what sometimes feels like a cartoonish battle between Stallone and a season’s designated “big bad.” In fact, a tragedy that we can’t mention is going to rock Dwight’s sense of invincibility, and gives us some of the best acting we’ve seen from Stallone in this series.
What we find intriguing about this season is that the “big bad” isn’t going to be some cartoonish villain, as much as we liked Robert Patrick as Dunmire in Season 3. It’s going to be Thresher’s law-and-order lieutenant governor, Amanda Clark (Gretchen Mol), who seems to be in the pocket of tech bro Fula Borg (Bradley Van Heusen). It’s going to be the Ecstasy side hustle run by Tyson and Spencer (Scarlet Rose Stallone) running afoul of some highly-connected dealers. It’s going to be Bevilaqua trying to play both sides of the tension between Dwight and Quiet Ray, who now has former Invernizzi capo Vince (Vincent Piazza) working for him.
And, of course, he’s going to find a new shady business to get into, involving a restauranteur (Rhys Corio) peddling fake rare wines for four figures per bottle. So, there will always be a lot going on in this version of Tulsa. But with the shocking events of the first episode, there’s at least going to be an emotional grounding that was generally missing during the two seasons Winter was less involved with the show.
Performance Worth Watching: Since we already mentioned Sly, we’ll talk about the performance that Martin Starr puts in during the first couple of episodes. At times it feels like he’s been on the show to give Guilfoyle-style quips and little else, but Bodhi reasserts himself in the early going as someone who is surprisingly important to Dwight.
Sex And Skin: There’s some nudity during the season, but not much in the way of sex.
Parting Shot: As Mitch oversees an insurance scam at the vintage car dealership, Dwight finds out some horrible news from Joanna.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not going to exactly call the fourth season of Tulsa King “grittier” than the past two seasons, but it sure feels like it’s going to be less cartoonish, thanks to the return of Terence Winter.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.