Season 2, Episode 3: ‘Truth’s Easy’
“The Lowdown” is one of the funniest shows on television, and this episode demonstrates why from start to finish.
In the opening seconds, Lee Raybon realizes he’s been attempting to hitchhike in front of a large road sign reading “HITCHHIKERS MAY BE ESCAPING INMATES.” As sight gags go, it would be to be tough for this season to top … yet the episode manages to do just that several scenes later, when a thoroughly dirtied-up Lee borrows a clean but skintight T-shirt shirt from Ginger that reads “DUMP HIM.”
But wait, there’s more! In the closing moments, Johnny (Rafael Casal), the sports-enthusiast husband of Lee’s ex Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn), asks “Did I just choke out a cop?” after a fight in his backyard prompted by Lee’s presence. The episode ends with a freeze-frame on Lee’s ridiculous, bloody, broken-toothed, guilty grin that wouldn’t be out of place concluding a sketch on Tim Robinson’s “I Think You Should Leave.” It’s that awkward, that funny and that artfully done.
Naturally, Lee has a lot of adventuring to do in between these flashes of comedic brilliance. After fleeing the murderous prison guard McMann to a highway near the woods, he’s given a ride by a kind soul named Dale (musician and actor Steve Earle, himself no stranger to hard roads). Whether it’s a coincidence that he shares a first name with the sensitive soul whose murder Lee solved last season or not, the man certainly functions like a guardian angel, providing free rides to “the drunk and lost” when the bars close. Lee just happened to pop up on his way back from such a run.
“You got hellhounds on your trail, Lee?” he asks. “I did pick you up at a crossroads.”
Before he drops him off, Dale gives Lee a coffee mug that reads “Truth’s Easy.” “I find it anything but,” Lee says, but Dale insists it’s easier than the alternative: lying. The moment reminds me of the biblical billboard that appeared in the Season 1 finale: “A poor man is better than a liar.”
Once he makes it back to civilization (to the chaotic tune of “Loose” by the Stooges), Lee must defuse two separate crises. First, he has to break up a breakfast being shared by his daughter, Francis, and his father, Lee Sr., also known as Frog. Lee’s hatred for this man, his utter refusal to believe a single word he says, is a fearsome break from our hero’s standard chill demeanor. We later learn that Lee had his father involuntarily committed; “You were out of your mind” is as much detail as we receive. But Francis simply sees Lee’s attempt to stop her from talking to her grandpa as more erratic behavior from a liar who’d always said that her grandfather was dead.
No one notices that the man with the SS tattoo whom Ginger shot through her living room window is watching them when Lee drops Francis off at her mother’s house.
Lee’s next stop is Ginger, who has been beside herself (it seems that’s where she spends most of her time) while unable to reach Lee during his long night in the woods. Lee explains to her that McMann and his fellow guards don’t know where Mekko is either, which means he must have made a prison break. Their only lead is a “shifty uncle” Mekko spoke about.
In the process of hashing this out, Lee draws out of Ginger the story of her and Mekko’s relationship. When the convict happened to quote “Of Mice and Men,” it made her realize how lonely he must feel, something she could relate to. She began talking to him on the phone, adding up to hundreds of hours of deep, intimate conversation. OK, so there was a little phone sex, but apparently Lee was once a professional phone sex operator, so he’s not judging. Besides, if you’ve ever had one of those late-night phone relationships, you know how powerful they can be, even if you and your partner remain hundreds or thousands of miles apart.
But there’s a lot about Mekko that Ginger does not know. His “sketchy” Uncle Otis (Gary Farmer), who claims to be the inspiration for Pony Boy in S.E. Hinton’s “The Outsiders,” tells them that Mekko stopped by his house, grabbed some cash, said his goodbyes and vanished. They don’t believe him. They follow Otis to a health care facility, where they meet Mekko Jr. (Mosiah Crowfoot) and his mother, Angie (Shyla Lefner), Mekko’s ex. Ginger had no idea her beloved Mekko even had a son.
Angie gives the investigators some vital intel. Mekko came by her place the other day, and he isn’t scared, he’s angry. He told her an unspecified “they” made him stand watch over a dead teenager’s corpse in prison, and he wants revenge. She says she can tell “he’s about to go hurt some people,” a notion that clearly shakes Ginger, who has never seen that side of him.
Meanwhile, with the help of the gossipy antiques dealer Ray Moseley (Michael Hitchcock), Marty prepares to turn a boring archaeological-dig story Lee dumped on him into an exposé of Oklahoma’s black market for Indigenous artifacts.
Finally, during an awkward “family” dinner with Francis, Samantha and Johnny, Lee spots someone skulking around the backyard. He grabs a poker and comes face to face with the guy who’s been following him. The two men lower their weapons … and Lee charges, quickly finding himself bested by his opponent. But Johnny comes to the rescue: He applies an M.M.A. chokehold to the intruder, knocking him unconscious. Only after he goes through the guy’s wallet does he discover he has just applied a rear naked choke to a deputy sheriff.
This revelation raises an intriguing suite of possibilities. Is he another crooked cop, representing another dirty law enforcement agency, all of them in on it together? Are they rival gangs with competing motives? Or is he undercover, investigating whatever crime among the prison guards prompted Mekko Dean to make a run for it?
I’m speculating like crazy, because “The Lowdown” is a show designed to get you worked up. Lee is constantly escaping jams by the skin of his teeth, only to return home to his growing pile of personal calamities. The high-anxiety presence of Ginger as his partner in crime-fighting only adds to show’s race-against-the-clock energy.
The result makes you feel like you’re watching your favorite team’s running back dodge an entire defensive line in a last-ditch attempt to score a game-winning, season-saving touchdown: Sure, it isn’t actually you out there on the field, but for the minutes you’re watching, it can sure feel like it. The same is true of watching Lee careen around Tulsa in his beat-up white van, causing commotions and dodging disasters like a human Looney Tunes character. That anvil could drop any minute, and you’re right there with him as he races to avoid it.
This is why the unlikely love story of Ginger and Mekko hits so hard when she describes it to Lee. “I could just be still with him,” she says. “You know? Like, how many people can you say that about?”
You can barely hear Lee’s reply: “No one.” Perhaps it displays insufficient critical distance to wish the protagonists of a television show the best, but here’s hoping both Lee and Ginger find the stillness they so desperately need. At the rate they’re going, they might die of exhaustion otherwise.
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