{"id":242997,"date":"2025-10-22T07:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T07:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/242997\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T07:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T07:45:12","slug":"the-lowdown-recap-dales-double-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/242997\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Lowdown\u2019 Recap: Dale\u2019s Double Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

The Lowdown<\/a><\/p>\n

Old Indian Trick<\/p>\n

\n Season 1<\/p>\n

Episode 6\n <\/p>\n

\n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n

3 stars<\/p>\n

***\n <\/p>\n

\n Photo: FX\n <\/p>\n

A few episodes back, Betty Jo assured Lee that even if Dale and Donald Washberg were fighting about land, the fight between them wasn\u2019t really about land \u2014 it was about Betty Jo, it was about Pearl, it was about the humiliating ways a family\u2019s golden boy can diminish his black-sheep little brother. Even last week, when we learned that Indian Head Hills was at the center of a preposterous real-estate deal that would catapult the cash-poor Washbergs into the black, I believed Betty Jo was telling Lee the truth, as far as she knew it.<\/p>\n

How I squealed when, in the closing moments of \u201cOld Indian Trick,\u201d Betty Jo reveals herself to be as cunning as the men around her. On the heels of a phone call from loose-lipped Lee \u201calerting\u201d Betty Jo to a secret version of Dale\u2019s will that would disinherit her and Donald, she calls Frank Martin, her dead husband\u2019s brother\u2019s dodgy business associate. This is not a shock response to suddenly finding out that you and your daughter have been left out in the cold. This is a woman making the calculated choice to switch to plan B \u2014 to ally herself with a powerful player, one with a lot to lose.<\/p>\n

Despite the episode\u2019s big reveals \u2014 and there are more than just the existence of a second will \u2014 \u201cOld Indian Trick\u201d doesn\u2019t hum with the same frenzied energy as The Lowdown\u2019s previous installments, which relied on playful antagonism between Lee and whomever he\u2019s roped into helping him. This week, though, Lee enlists Deidra, a bookshop employee whose only real problem with Lee is that he\u2019s low-key uncool. Their tour of Indian Tulsa includes the Indian store, where Lee buys an ill-fitting suede fringe coat from a welcoming salesperson, and the Indian community center, where, sure, he gets called \u201cCuster,\u201d but in a harmless way. Lee\u2019s so uncomfortable with his own whiteness in these contexts that he stops being his pushy, nosy, relentless self. The end result is that no one dislikes him, and Lee\u2019s day passes without much friction, which doesn\u2019t make for blistering TV.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Donald who takes the far wilder ride this week. After dragging Lee to the cookout from hell at the end of the last episode<\/a>, he lets the Tulsa truthstorian go free after delivering a black eye (for sleeping with his girl, Betty Jo) and a threat (if you don\u2019t leave my family alone, these cops in my pocket might find you in a ditch somewhere). But in trying to dissuade Lee from further investigating Dale\u2019s death, he lets slip a new lead. According to Donald, Dale killed himself because \u2014 bear with me here \u2014 he was in the thrall of a gay Native American \u201cstreet person\u201d artist. But even if Lee hadn\u2019t recently been handed a sketch of Dale by a stranger who meets Donald\u2019s exact description, he would never have heeded the warning. Warnings are like fuel to a guy like Lee, who can\u2019t wait to go home and add the words \u201cMystery Indian. Maybe gay?\u201d to his murder board with a piece of string and a pushpin.<\/p>\n

Still, the Lee situation is handled, as far as Donald is concerned. He heads back out on the campaign trail, with Marty now serving as both chauffeur and security detail. Their first whistle stop is at a podunk church called \u201cOne Well,\u201d which shares its name with the LLC offering the Washbergs a ginormous sum for Indian Head Hills. Donald doesn\u2019t realize the connection; in fact, he\u2019s barely suspicious when it becomes clear Pastor Mark \u2014 played by Oklahoma\u2019s own Paul Sparks \u2014 hasn\u2019t invited any parishioners to this meet and greet. Marty\u2019s first act as head of security is to allow the candidate to climb into the flockless pastor\u2019s camo-festooned side-by-side, never mind the rifle mounted just below the vehicle\u2019s roll bar.<\/p>\n

Mark insists on giving Donald a menacing tour of the One Well compound, which actually overlooks Indian Head Hills. Twist! Mark is the mysterious buyer who\u2019s been losing patience with the Washbergs, and the money he\u2019s offering Donald isn\u2019t a bribe. Well, it\u2019s not only a bribe. Mark really needs the parcel of land to support his congregation of recently paroled skinheads \u2014 men like Allen, who can help the brotherhood wrest control back from the tribes. He\u2019s building a homeland for militant, racist lunatics on the very same parcel that made the Washbergs kings of Oklahoma in the first place. In doing so, he\u2019ll funnel money into Donald\u2019s campaign and restore the Washbergs to the top of the Oklahoma food chain. A vote for Washberg is a vote for whites.<\/p>\n

Later in the episode, Frank shows up at the church to shout down Mark for having the nerve to contact Donald directly. Donald is now having second thoughts about the deal, though in reality, he didn\u2019t seem sold on the \u201ctoo good to be true\u201d deal when Frank asked him about it last week. Like Donald, Frank doesn\u2019t seem to understand that the game has changed. Mark drags Frank out to the hole where he buries the bodies of men who break covenant with the One Well army \u2014 men like Blackie, Berta, and Allen. He does it with his highly armed flock surrounding him, including Jimmy, who murdered Allen in broad daylight. Mark isn\u2019t asking to buy the land anymore.<\/p>\n

Flustered and afraid, Frank runs home to call his \u201c46\u201d buddy, Trip, to kill the deal with this \u201cunhinged\u201d pastor, but Trip is the one bankrolling Mark\u2019s whole operation. \u201cWe are at war in this country,\u201d Trip reminds Frank, who seems like a JV racist accidentally called up to a team of true believers. If he doesn\u2019t end up at the bottom of Mark\u2019s \u201cstankhole,\u201d I\u2019ll be shocked. Mark needs Trip\u2019s money, and he needs Donald\u2019s deed, but what use to him is a middleman who can\u2019t line things up?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lee spends the day on a field trip through Tulsa hotspots where white people are welcome but not exactly invited: the Indian store, the Indian community center, and, eventually, an Indian housing project. He\u2019s searching for Chutto, the man who Donald believes influenced Dale\u2019s suicide. It\u2019s Deidra who gives Lee the name he\u2019s looking for \u2014 Chutto is well-known enough in Tulsa, at least in Indian circles. They sell his pictures at the Indian store. But Lee doesn\u2019t want to turn up at the Indian store looking like a white guy shopping for moccasins. So he pays Deidra time and a half to accompany him, which makes him look like a white guy with a cultural tour guide.<\/p>\n

It would have been more cost-effective for Lee to have sent Deidra to do the investigation on her own. He\u2019s busy playing handgame at the Indian center while Deidra works the room, eventually learning that Chutto lives at an apartment complex called Whispering Pines. When Lee knocks, it\u2019s Chutto\u2019s grandpa, Arthur, who answers the door. (The role was played by Graham Greene, perhaps the most recognizable First Nations actor in Hollywood, shortly before his death<\/a>.) Maybe because Arthur is suffering from dementia, or maybe because all white people look alike, especially the scruffy ones in boots, Arthur mistakes Lee for Dale, who he knows to be dead. In his state, though, Arthur easily doubts what he knows. Maybe this is Dale. Maybe his grandson was wrong when he told him Dale was killed.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s just starting to pump Arthur for intel about how he knows Dale when Chutto (Mato Wayuhi) comes home. He chucks Lee out of the house \u2014 an aggressive move considering Chutto sought Lee out in the first place. As the men regroup on the front porch, though, Chutto explains that he met Dale outside a gay nightclub where he was drawing portraits. Dale never worked up the nerve to enter the club, but he did ask Chutto to draw him. It\u2019s the first time on The Lowdown that we\u2019ve seen a flashback of Dale that isn\u2019t authored by Dale. In Chutto\u2019s eyes, Dale is just as peculiar, but less forthright. More quiet.<\/p>\n

They became friends, sort of. Really, in the end, Dale turned out to have more in common with Arthur. The older men would play board games and talk about the good old days, back when Oklahoma was nothing but ranchland. Eventually, Arthur revealed to Dale that they share more than their nostalgic streak. By extreme coincidence, the Indian Head Hills parcel that became the cornerstone of the Washbergs\u2019 fortune once belonged to Arthur\u2019s family. Twist! Nathaniel Washberg killed Chutto\u2019s grandfather\u2019s grandfather and used the dead man\u2019s thumb to posthumously \u201csign\u201d the deed over to himself. Moved by Arthur\u2019s story of dispossession, Dale wrote out a new will, which would see his shares of Indian Head Hills returned to Arthur and Chutto. Before his death, Dale asked Arthur to hold on to it and that\u2019s where the secret will remains now: tucked away in the old man\u2019s drawer.<\/p>\n

Lee can\u2019t believe what these men are sitting on. His advice is to lawyer up. But Chutto only sees trouble in the will, which would surely be contested by Donald. Maybe by Betty Jo, too. Dale wasn\u2019t trying to tear apart his family \u2014 he wanted a way out of his white guilt. These, I suppose, are the \u201cideas\u201d Donald claims Chutto put in Dale\u2019s head. But if Donald already knows about Dale\u2019s moral reckoning over the land at Indian Head Hills, then it\u2019s likely word of it reached Betty Jo, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m on the run,\u201d Betty Jo tells the Sunyata receptionist at check-in early in the episode. Sunyata is the bougie, cultish wellness retreat Lee suggests for Betty Jo\u2019s hideaway \u2014 a place where Donald Washberg and his goons on the police force can\u2019t find her. \u201cMan\u2019s trying to kill me,\u201d adds Betty Jo, dressed like she\u2019s just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren catalogue. The receptionist is skeptical, but I wouldn\u2019t be surprised to learn a lot of the Sunyata guests have similar backstories, albeit more metaphorical. Who is an expensive Buddhist retreat in the Osage Hills for if not white women trying to get their lives back?<\/p>\n

Lee handed Betty Jo a way out when she needed it, and this week, he gives her a path forward. After leaving Chutto\u2019s place, he calls Betty Jo on her smuggled phone, recklessly setting off a phone tree that will surely bring to Chutto\u2019s doorstep the trouble he wanted to avoid. Betty Jo calls Frank, who will maybe call Trip, who will call Mark and let him know that there\u2019s a little problem that needs to be cleared up over at Whispering Pines.<\/p>\n

Mark won\u2019t hesitate to send Jimmy over to take care of it, and Trip will feel grateful that he has someone useful like Mark to do his dirty work for him. But, in Mark\u2019s world, power doesn\u2019t lie with politically connected men like Donald or even wealthy ones like Trip. Power is the willingness to live by your code, whatever the means and whatever consequences. They may not know it yet, but Trip and Donald work for Mark now.<\/p>\n

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