Review by C.J. Bunce
We’ve seen Old Man Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Last Stand, Terminator: Dark Fate, and FUBAR. We’ve seen Old Man Robert Redford in The Old Man & the Gun and Old Man Kevin Costner in The Highwaymen. Bruce Willis (G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Glass, Looper, A Good Day to Die Hard) and Clint Eastwood (Space Cowboys, Unforgiven, Gran Torino, The Mule) were in too many Old Man movies to list. You could add Robert De Niro and Al Pacino roles. And three-time Oscar nominee Sylvester Stallone has played Old Man Stallone in just as many movies as anyone, in The Expendables, Samaritan, Rambo: Last Blood, and two or three movies in the Rocky franchise. The Old Man trope is a good one, and it works when done right. The first season of the Paramount+ series Tulsa King represented the right way, with Stallone embodying a layered character: Released from prison after 25 years, his character Dwight Manfredi was relegated by the mob family he protected to live out the rest of his days earning them some money out in dusty Tulsa, Oklahoma, far from where he couldn’t possibly cause trouble for anyone back in New York.
So why did it fall apart in the second season?
Crime does not pay. The series writers respected this rule in the first season. Stallone’s character, for the most part, was driven by it. But in the second season the writers forgot about the subtlety and nuance of Manfredi, which Stallone showed a surprising adeptness at portraying. Did they not understand the character they presented in the first season? The story being built was an almost sweet story of redemption and growth for Manfredi. He learned his lessons, but this needed to be balanced with a crime world trying to pull him back in, Godfather III-style. Viewers enjoyed watching Manfredi re-introduced to a world that had drastically changed while he was incarcerated, one where he missed the development of the Internet, cell phones, and… the legal selling of drugs.
Beyond the writers room losing consistency with the characters and the plot across nineteen episodes, they also seem to have given up on any fresh and new ideas. Season Two was one of several series this year about infighting among drug peddlers, a trope that has been played out, milked, overdone, and exhausted pretty much every year since Howard Hesseman played a drug addict in 1968 on Dragnet.
All along, the fine cast of actors did their part. Stallone delivered some impressive dialogue when he wasn’t punching, fighting, and killing. Leading man actor Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) was stuck in a supporting role that didn’t have any purpose. Any brains and promise Jay Will’s character Tyson had simply vanished. Max Casella (Ray Donovan, Doogie Howser, M.D.) got to emote like never before, only to be stuck in a preposterous story thread. Series newcomer Neal McDonough (Captain America: The First Avenger, Timeline, The Flash, Altered Carbon, Walking Tall) is so typecast now as the steely-eyed villain, he couldn’t possibly deliver any surprises, although setting him up as the villain only to bring in a surprise villain at season’s end was disappointing, too. And Dana Delany (China Beach, Magnum, p.i.) was there to smile and laugh. I’m sure she can do much more with better scripts. They all can. Martin Starr’s dry-as-toast small business owner turned criminal really was a stand-in for the viewer. He always looks like he doesn’t want to be there.
Did the second season writers pay any attention to the first season or character development in other writers’ episodes? It didn’t seem so. In one episode Frank Grillo’s competing mob leader was ruthless and vengeful, in the next he was willing to be friends, and in the next he was back to being the villain again. Which is it? Stallone’s Manfredi of Season One appeared to be on the path toward trying to do something, anything, good. Maybe horses as a hobby? Maybe using his brain to turn around the competing interests in the modern drug trade and mob world? No, suddenly the good that was conveyed through Stallone’s performance in Season One was lost. Not a speck of goodness remained with no explanation. Now he’s just another thug that is destined to return to prison. The weak cliffhanger of last year was a return to jail, and we should have known this was going downhill when the writers had him represent himself in court and win.
It should have continued the interesting thought-provoking Old Man role of the first season. Tulsa King was a fun show that lost all originality, squandering the promise it built up. Instead it left fans with just another mindless mob series.
Both seasons of Tulsa King are now streaming on Paramount+.
