The Lowdown recap, Episode 7: 'Tulsa Turnaround'
Lee tries really hard to be a caring white boy in the season's penultimate chapter
A review of this week's The Lowdown, "Tulsa Turnaround" — with spoilers — coming up just as soon I compare myself to Hunter S. Thompson...
Alan Sepinwall
Midway through "Tulsa Turnaround," Lee meets Cyrus' cousin Daymond, a local attorney he hopes can help Arthur and Chutto reclaim their family's land using Dale's improvised will. Daymond is confused about Lee's angle on this, but after Lee gives him the whole "truthstorian" spiel, the lawyer gets it. "One of them caring white boys, I see," he says of Lee.
A few scenes later, Lee arrives late to a parent-teacher meeting at Francis' school, and is stunned to find Johnny is there with Samantha — not just because the two have reconciled after Samantha just told Lee that she broke off the engagement, but because Johnny is playing the role of paternal figure that Lee himself has so often struggled to be. Lee storms out of the school, embarrassed and hurt — the latter feeling increased when Francis explains that it was her idea to have her future stepdad come. Full of guilt for all his failures as a husband and father, he impulsively tells her that his primary role as her dad going forward will be to show her "what a good man looks like. I am going to show you how to follow your dreams." Francis, who loves Lee dearly despite his many flaws, pleads, "I just want you to be my dad." Lee won't hear her, because he's too caught up in both self-loathing and self-mythologizing, and replies, "And I want to be somebody worth admiring."
Lee wants to be worth admiring. He wants to be good. He wants to do good. He is a caring white boy, really and truly. It's not a pose. That's what makes everyone close to him — including us in the audience — indulge his many flaws. But in some days, and in some episodes, he's harder to love than in others, because he has blinders on about how he comes across to the rest of the world, and also how the world functions versus how it should function.
