So much of the core of Lee Raybon as a person, and The Lowdown as a TV show, can be summed up in an exchange early in “Truth’s Easy.” After watching the nefarious prison guard McMann kill Chili Franks at point-blank range, Lee runs off through the forest and hitches his way back to the strip club where he left his van. He’s picked up by a surprisingly friendly bearded trucker (musician Steve Earle), whose name is Dale but who calls himself the Boontill Oracle. Dale doesn’t have any underhanded intentions, despite driving around in a beat-up old truck in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. He gives people rides if they’re too drunk to get where they’re going, and while Lee is sober, he’ll take the help where he can get it. Before dropping him off, Dale echoes a slogan on a mug he’ll eventually gift to Lee, which shares this episode’s title. Lee quickly and curtly replies, “I find it anything but.”

Lee Raybon is raffishly charming, yes, but he’s also deeply cynical. Although he can be his own worst enemy, his cynicism is borne of solid evidence of how the world operates and how he has to operate within it to succeed. Arguably, the most crucial thing he did last season was lie through his teeth, by publishing a more positive story about Dale Washberg that highlighted the good Dale did rather than telling the darker, more important story of recently elected Governor Donald Washberg’s corrupt rise to glory. “Truth’s Easy” puts Lee’s current crisis in a sharp and unpleasant light by its final moments, as he’s inadvertently dragged an innocent bystander into the crosshairs. In the first season finale, Lee came to accept that he should be more forgiving of those around him, even if they don’t present themselves as deserving of grace. It’s a reminder he’s less willing to hear this week. 

While the mystery of Mekko Dean is only getting muddier, it’s already looking clearer that a major part of the second season will focus on Lee granting Frog some emotional clemency. That’s in spite of the fact that the bits and pieces we keep learning about Frog suggest he really was an awful parent. Frog may yet have an ulterior motive for being in Tulsa, but for the moment, he’s effectively trying his hand at being a grandparent, quickly getting his hooks into Francis. She’s glad to have a different paternal presence in her life, and is at the right age to start pushing back even further against her dad. It’s sweet that she exhorts Lee to forgive Frog, but how easily do you forgive a guy who (apparently) told you he never loved you, and slept with your homeroom teacher, and shot you, and so on? Frog certainly doesn’t seem interested in making amends with Lee, tartly asking him, “You gonna have me committed again?”  

Marty does have a bit more to do this week in the C-plot, though I wasn’t expecting him to keep up the thread of the archeological story that Lee chose to drop last week for being too boring. Marty’s ever-present frustration at our hero leads to a very funny moment when he not only realizes that Lee wasn’t lying about how dull the story seems to be, but that the dig leader (Richard Robichaux) thinks Marty’s a fellow expert. Keith David getting to say “this motherfucker” is one of the many joys of The Lowdown, because he always means it with every fiber of his being. Considering that flamboyant antiques dealer Ray (Michael Hitchcock) is piquing Marty’s interest with how items found at these archeological digs can go on the black market, the subplot isn’t going away. It’s this show’s version of Roger Ebert’s Law of Economy of Characters. Right now, I can’t see how this ties to Mekko Dean, but the fact that this story didn’t get dropped makes me think it’ll come back around to Lee soon enough. 

Speaking of, we do learn a bit more about the enigma known as Mekko Dean in “Truth’s Easy,” even if he hasn’t shown his face. Lee quickly concludes that Mekko must have escaped from Boontill Prison, because why else would McMann not know where he is? Though Lee’s frantic texts to Ginger the previous night were pretty ridiculous, his powers of deduction are spot-on. He and Ginger sniff out Otis Sharp, a garrulous relative of Mekko’s (Gary Farmer) at a nearby tourist-friendly village nestled in the woods. Otis is chatty enough and admits that Mekko stopped by his apartment the previous week, but Lee and Ginger don’t buy that he’s fled Oklahoma for good.  

Ginger, as was non-verbally hinted at last week, still harbored some kind of emotional feeling for Mekko. She’s loath to call the guy her crush, but Lee can’t help but pry to get a better sense of the contours of this relationship. Though they primarily spoke over the phone, they did so every day for almost a year. For Ginger, at least, these conversations became awfully intimate. Lee’s teasing her in a schoolboy kind of way, but Betty Gilpin makes the public defender’s memories of her intensely personal phone calls with Mekko potent and emotional. Her impassioned remembrance of those conversations only makes the revelation that Mekko has a son (like Lee, he’s a Junior) even more of a gut punch. Ginger had no idea he had a son, leaving her at a loss. She could “be still” with him, but how well did she actually know this mystery man with a different, unspoken life? 

Hidden identities are a key part of noirs and neo-noirs like The Lowdown. Lee is a pretty open book, but almost everyone he encounters isn’t. Take Lonnie, the guy with the SS tattoo who was on the wrong end of Ginger’s bullet last week. Though he did get shot in the neck, he survived (for now). “Truth’s Easy” climaxes with Lee and Lonnie facing off in the backyard of Lee’s ex Samantha and her new husband Johnny (Rafael Casal). Johnny has, since the series premiere, been presented as a well-meaning dummy but he has his strong suits. In a fight, at least, he’s able to put a sleeper hold on a stranger like Lonnie. In the moment, this ensures Lee remains conscious. But when Johnny sees Lonnie’s deputy sheriff ID, it opens up all sorts of questions and problems. 

Now, seeing as Lonnie was paired with McMann, it tracks that he’s in law enforcement. But that only adds to the fact that the more Lee learns, the more questions he has. He knows Mekko escaped prison and that the Boontill guards are pretending he didn’t. He also learns from Mekko’s wife Angie that the escaped man was disturbed at being forced for hours to sit with a young inmate who died. Except there’s no record of a recently deceased young inmate at Boontill, just the county prison. And now the sheriff’s office is involved. Frog accurately notes that Lee doesn’t fight with his fists, but just because Lee came away relatively unscathed from last year’s brawl doesn’t mean he’ll be better equipped this year. It’s only too clear that he’s only beginning to grasp the depth of this mystery and needs to get himself on solid ground soon. 

Stray observations

• “I’ve watched every Ken Burns doc, even the one about country music!” Of course Marty has! Burns-heads know that Keith David has literally narrated a number of the filmmaker’s documentary series, including Jazz.
• The last time I saw Steve Earle on a TV series, he was picking up a different, charmingly shambolic sleuth from the side of the road, in the now-final scene of Peacock’s Poker Face.
• I consider it the height of restraint that we didn’t see Lee’s frantic texts to Ginger last week, though her annoyed jab that he’s not Jason Bourne was particularly funny.
• Gary Farmer is a lot of fun in his few scenes as Otis, but his best moment is when he confidently tells Lee and Ginger that he was the inspiration for a lead character in The Outsiders: “Pony Guy!”
• There’s an excellent profile of The Lowdown creator Sterlin Harjo in the New York Times, published last week and hinting (I presume) at some of next week’s events, considering that the profile’s author was on set for a scene where Johnny was helping Lee deal with his now-chipped tooth.