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Like almost all my fellow critics it
took very little for me to fall in love with Reservation Dogs the
hysterical, dark and human masterpieces on FX & Hulu that debuted in 2021.
The recognition for Sterlin Harjo's masterclass began almost immediately with
recognition from the Critics Choice Awards, TCA, the Peabody and in the final
season six Emmy nominations. It is already on the short list for the best
series of the decade and that's not just coming from me: one critic for variety
rated it the third best show of the decade so far. Like any great critic and
fan I couldn't wait for Harjo's next project whatever it was and when it was
announced late last year that he would be collaborating with Ethan Hawke on it
I knew even if it was a complete piece of detritus I would probably watch the
entire thing anyway.
Well The Lowdown premiered on
FX last week (the cable network not on streaming) and I've seen the first three
episodes. To state that it is not a disappointment is, like Lee Raebun would
admonish me, to bury the lead. Indeed, it's easily a candidate for one of the
best shows of the year right now.
Ethan Hawke has been one of the
greatest and most underrated actors in Hollywood for nearly thirty years but in
the last decade he's earned some of his highest praise for playing characters
who are going insane. In Paul Schrader's First Reformed he played an Episcopal
priest who suffering both from physical and mental strain begins to mentally
degenerate to the point that he intends to trap a suicide vest to himself and detonate
at the anniversary of the church where he preaches. In The Good Lord Bird he
went the other direction as John Brown, one of the most controversial figures
in American history. In Hawke's no holds barred portrayal he made it clear from
moment one that even you agreed with what he fought for Brown was, as the
series narrator said early on 'nuttier than a squirrel turd'. That he received not even an Oscar nomination for
the former performance or an Emmy nod for the latter demonstrates that in both
cases the voters showed less sanity.
Now Hawke plays Lee Raebon who is in
Hawke's wheelhouse from moment one. The major difference between Lee and his
two previous characters is that in three episodes almost nobody either respects
him and almost everybody thinks he's crazy. Lee takes this personally even though
he's clearly delusional in many ways. For one thing he describes himself as a
'truthstorian', someone who will speak truth to power even if no one particularly
wants him to and to be very clear everybody around him really wishes Lee would
just shut up. Lee pursues the truth in his home town of Tulsa, a down that is
economically struggling in every way and is under the thumb of a major family
known as the Washbergs. Lee has been writing articles which he believes sound
as clarion calls for change, even though in an era where print journalism is
pretty much dead you get the feeling he's been talking to himself more than
anyone.
Certainly Lee's the only person he
thinks he has to answer to. His ex-wife Samantha wants him to pay his alimony.
(Like many of the character's she's indigenous.) He cares about what his daughter
Francis (the wonderful Ryan Kiera Armstrong) but he has no problem putting her
into danger every time he has custody of her. He has been lying to her about
many things and Francis is just old enough to know about some of his BS but young
enough to think he's a good dad and she may the only one who believes in what
he's doing.
I imagine that Hawke's being cast as
the lead might lead some outsiders to roll their eyes and go: "Great.
Another show with a white male antihero." And I do admit there are certain
qualities of Lee that are reminiscent of certain characters: the narcissism of
Jimmy McNulty who needs to prove how smart he is to everybody; the reckless
abandon of Raylan Givens charging into fights and creating many of them. But
the thing unlike every antihero we've met during the last twenty years Lee is
only good at one thing: writing. At everything else, he's just horrible and
Harjo and his writers delight at showing just how hysterically incompetent he
is at every aspect of his job. He's already been beating up twice by skinheads
(in the Pilot) the latter time getting stuffed in the trunk of their car,
thrown out of a memorial to which he wasn’t invited and made a horrible scene
involving the brother of the deceased, and in the pursuit of used books ended
up getting hit on the head by a group of fisherman producing bootleg caviar. He
was thrown in jail once (when told about this he says: So were Gandhi. Mandela.
King), we see him stealing paintings from rich people who he's interviewing and
trying to use the money to buy rare books, which he won't tell anyone about. The more you watch Hawke pursue things, you're
not so much surprised bad things keep happening to him, but that he's lived this
long.
Watching Lee pursue the truth, I
couldn't help but wonder if this could have been Fox Mulder in an alternative
universe; if instead of going to Oxford and joining the Bureau, he'd decided to
pursue the path of being an investigative reporter. Lee definitely has the
attitude of a conspiracy nut; prominent in the apartment above his book shop
(where he lives because he's always cash-strapped) is one of those conspiracy
board where he's trying to prove that the Washberg family is connected to all
the horrible things in this town. He has Mulder's similar lack of grace and
charm when it comes to dealing with authority figures as well as the ability to
stick his nose where it absolutely shouldn't be. The main difference is Mulder
at least had a badge to give him some authority and a Scully to hold him back.
That Lee manages to survive is as much due to blind luck as anything else.
Harjo described The Lowdown as
Tulsa noir and it does have a very Elmore Leonard feel to it not just in the
fact that so much of it involves a reckless lead at its center and a bunch of
dime novels. Just as with Reservation Dogs Harjo populates The
Lowdown with a group of wondrous and fascinating characters at every step
of the way. However, one of the benefits of dealing with so many powerful people
is that Harjo has more freedom to cast than he did in Reservation Dogs. And
as a result some of the best character actors in TV history are in the show
along with Hawke.
Here is Tim Blake Nelson as Dale
Washberg who we hear (but don't see) getting killed before the opening credits.
In those dime novels that lined his study were letters in which he related the
history of his family and much of the time we see Nelson reading them to Hawke
from beyond the grave. Here is Jeanne Tripplehorn playing Dale's widow even
though Dale was deeply closeted. We see her acting the part of the bereaved
spouse, then see her having sex with the man's brother in the day before
memorial. It's not clear how smart she is or the relation she has to his
daughter; it is clear the daughter loathes her and the wife is clueless in some
ways not in others. Here is Kyle MacLachlan, playing Donald running for governor of Oklahoma, trying to
get the youth vote, sensitive and delicate – so much so that he says a
go-between to evict the woman he was sleeping with from the house. Here is that
magisterial actor Keith David, playing a
private eye who quotes poetry when he meets Lee and who may be the only person
who has read his work regularly. David brings both his build and gravitas as
well as his gift for comedy. He has situational awareness and after one session
with him says: "Never meet your heroes." I eagerly await the arrival
of Peter Dinklage who plays an old friend of Lee's; we've already seen Dale
Dickey in a memorable role as a dead skinhead's mother.
In the midst of this is an industrial
company called Akron that has a connection to skinheads, oil and some kind of
dark conspiracy. I expect it will all be revealed when we get there though how
much logic is at the center is hard to know: this is a noir after all, and
character often matters far more than plot. I also think that will be part of
the fun because if Lee manages to figure out how the dots connect it will be
done entirely by accident and despite his trying to figure it out, not because
of his efforts. And I'm very sure Lee will be the victim of more
violence, gunshots and explosions and that his ability to escape (relatively)
unscathed will be pure dumb luck as well as his ability to turn a phrase.
That is more considerable than you'd
think. Remember that encounter with the caviar thieves? Lee manages to get out
of trouble by describing how he ended up in jail and begins my saying the first
time he took meth. We only hear the end of the story (which of course really
makes us want to hear the whole thing) and by that point the men who have held
him at gunpoint and knifepoint are clearly spellbound and say that believe him.
"No one but a writer could have that level of detail," one says. Not
only do they bring him back safely to his daughter but Lee actually composes a
poem that he believes will help him woo back his ex-wife. Among its many, many
other virtues The Lowdown argues that the ability to write is a more
valuable skill than most of us think, that it might be able to save us even in
a world that is as awful as Harjo's Tulsa seems to be. As someone who is a
proud 'knight of the keyboard' himself, there's a lot to love about a show that
does that.
My score: 4.75 stars.
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