Tulsa King is Another Decent Fish-Out-Of-Water Crime Story

Thanks to the success of Yellowstone, I think Taylor Sheridan has produced more original content for Paramount in the last five years than anyone else.  (And aaaactually, by original I don't mean Star Trek or Transformers or other existing properties.)  Besides 5 seasons of Yellowstone on the Paramount Network (whatever and wherever that is) Sheridan has also done 2 prequel shows (and counting), Mayor of Kingstown with Jeremy Renner (starting season 2), and now Tulsa King starring Sly Stallone.

I hadn't heard a lot about the show before it started dropping on Paramount+.  But I liked Stallone in the Rocky movies, Cop Land, Demolition Man, and even Oscar (less so the Rambo movies, The Expendables movies, Judge Dredd, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, or Over the Top) and I had little else I wanted to watch, so I said what the hell.  As the title of the entry suggests, it is another decent fish-out-of-water crime story.

What do I mean by "fish-out-of-water crime story?"  Good question, Phantom Readers!  That's the description I came up with for shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Dogs on Amazon, Ozark on Netflix, Startup on Crackle, and I'm sure a ton more where you have someone get involved in the criminal world who is really out of their element.  Walter White in Breaking Bad is the gold standard; he was a mild-mannered chemistry teacher who wound up creating a meth empire.  In the first season especially, Walter is completely overmatched by everything that goes into crime from getting ingredients, cooking the product, distributing it, and dealing with rivals.  Over time he solves those problems and becomes a criminal.

The twist with Tulsa King is that Dwight "the General" Manfredi is already a criminal.  But he's a criminal who was in prison for 25 years.  Before that he was a long-time member of a New York crime family.  You know, like The Godfather or Goodfellas only in the 70s-90s.  He was busted for a murder (which we see later had extenuating circumstances though he had certainly done lots of actual murders) and sentenced to 25 years.  Being a "stand up guy," he didn't cut a deal or roll on anyone to get a lighter sentence, even though he had a wife and daughter.

When he's released, Dwight assumes the family is going to reward his loyalty.  Instead, they give him a ticket to Tulsa, Oklahoma and tell him to try to make some new contacts there.  How it becomes a fish-out-of-water story is that Dwight does not know Oklahoma or its culture and he doesn't know about modern technology/manners.  He doesn't have a smartphone or even a credit card!  Which most adults in the late 90s had at least one credit card (fewer had a debit card yet) but Dwight's world was mostly done on a cash basis.

To me the most fun parts of the show are Dwight adapting to the new world--or making it adapt to him.  He flags down a cab driven by a young black man and then gives the kid a wad of cash to be his personal driver--and to get him a new vehicle.  When the dealer won't sell a Navigator to a young black guy with a bunch of cash, Dwight persuades him with a mix of violence and threats.  When they pass a pot dispensary, Dwight goes inside and forces Bodhi, the owner, to start paying him "protection."  Protection from what?  Protection from Dwight, of course.  Later, Dwight sees a horse running wild in the city and a barista tells him it's going to be put down.  So he buys the horse, rents part of a stable, and drafts the barista to become its caretaker.  Bodda-boom, bodda-bing!  Problem solved!

Dwight building a protection racket would make for a good video game, but I suppose less so a TV show.  So we have to build some conflict in besides him not getting caught.  At a bar he meets a drunk woman who's part of a bachelorette party; later the woman, an ATF agent, realizes Dwight is a former (and probably current) criminal.  There's also the old New York family, the new head of which hates Dwight because he was so close to the guy's father.  And when Dwight decides to expand into the nitrous business, he clashes with a biker gang led by some Irish guy, who's also wanted by the ATF.  Plus Dwight wants to see his now-grown daughter and her children, but she doesn't really want to see him.

So there are a lot of moving parts in the 9 episodes.  Through it all, Dwight has to adapt to the new world while still trying to maintain his old Mafioso principles of loyalty, honor, and revenge and so on.  Through most of it, Stallone has more of the Rocky charm in seeming like a fairly decent, respectable guy even when he is engaged in essentially selling drugs and literally beats a guy to death.  If you like some of those shows I mentioned earlier, you'd probably like this.

The biggest thing I didn't like is in the final episode, some things get wrapped up too easily.  The New York mob backs down way too easily and the bikers are dealt with too easily.  But there is a twist at the end to set up another season.  My only other real complaint is about someone raping Dwight's daughter while he was in the joint, which sets up the literal beating to death.  Did we really have to go there?  It kinda sucked the fun out of that particular episode and probably the one after it.

Anyway, I would definitely be down for a season 2.  You can stream all 9 episodes on Paramount+ so if you're already subscribed to watch Star Trek or Top Gun 2 or whatever, why not?