Summary
Tulsa King Season 3 gets off a solid start in Episode 1, perhaps not quite recapturing its first season form but introducing a ruthless new villain to kick things off.
Tulsa King was a bit of a disappointment in Season 2. I think enough time has passed to admit that, right? So, Season 3 has its work cut out, both in the sense of having to build on a lot of character drama that has been percolating for a while now, but also as a course correction, getting Taylor Sheridan’s crime drama back into something resembling its first season form. I’m not sure that Episode 1, “Blood and Bourbon”, necessarily accomplishes that, but it does put its best foot forward, introducing Robert Patrick – fresh from Peacemaker – as a ruthless new villain, and putting Dwight in a sticky situation following his surprise last-minute kidnapping at the end of Season 2.
On the subject of that kidnapping, we were right to suspect the FBI. Special Agent Musso is Dwight’s new boss, but he isn’t new to him, having been watching him and holding a grudge ever since Dwight mercy-killed his confidential informant back in New York and did 25 years in jail for it. Musso is aware of all of Dwight’s activities in Oklahoma, in that magical way that government muckety-mucks in TV shows always are, but he’s not interested in taking Dwight to task for any of his many misgivings as long as he does what he’s told.
For now, it’s totally unclear what Musso might want Dwight to do. He doesn’t even contact him until the end of the premiere, and even then, there’s no clarity. But, even so, Dwight will inevitably hate it, which is more to the point. This is a guy who spent a quarter-century in prison on the back of someone else’s crime and never said a word. Being a rat isn’t in his dictionary. But he now has so many people he loves and wants to protect, including his own motley crew, that it doesn’t look like he’s going to have any other choice.
Dwight’s being leaned on from all angles. Ray, a representative from the New York Families, is impressed by what he has built in Tulsa and would like him to replicate the efforts in the Big Apple, but Dwight isn’t interested. There’s no real reason this scene should be here if it isn’t going to matter later, but Taylor Sheridan is known for this sort of thing, so you can never quite tell. Either way, it’s something else to keep an eye on, even if it isn’t the most pressing matter in “Blood and Bourbon”.
That honour goes to another potentially lucrative business opportunity, the purchase of a distillery owned by a guy named Theo, the father of Mitch’s old friend, Cleo. Theo has already agreed to sell the distillery to an old family rival, Jeremiah Dunmire (this is the Robert Patrick character), but it’s clear his arm was twisted up his back when he did so. Mitch’s interest in the place is pretty selfish – he’s clearly envisioning him and Cleo running it together like a happy couple – but it may still present a valuable opportunity, so Dwight explores the possibility. He intuits immediately that Theo is too frightened to turn against Jeremiah, so part of his sales pitch is essentially an offer of protection. When Dwight gets into bed with someone – figuratively – their friends become his friends, and their enemies become his enemies. In other words, he’ll deal with Jeremiah.
Elsewhere in Tulsa King Season 3, Episode 1, Grace, Bodhi, and Tyson go to deliver Bill his cut after the deal he made with Dwight in the Season 2 finale. This seemingly simple errand is complicated by a couple of things – first, Bodhi’s electric car runs out of battery, so the meeting spot has to be changed, and then the Kansas City crew is furious to discover that Bodhi, distracted by his anger over the KC mob having killed Jimmy, delivered a bag of comics instead of a bag of cash. This might have been intentional, since Bodhi uses the trip back to Even Higher Plane to pick up the cash to ambush one of the KC goons and hold him at gunpoint. He doesn’t kill him, only pistol-whips him, and the money is handed over in full, but it shows another, more unstable side of Bodhi, and a simmering sense of underlying resentment towards the deal, which doesn’t exactly speak to a healthy long-term business arrangement. Dwight takes Bodhi’s side when Bill calls him complaining about it, but there are only so many times something like this can happen.
This does seem to be the least of the potential issues in “Blood and Bourbon”, though. What’s especially pressing is the fact that when Jeremiah’s son, Cole, tells him that Theo reneged on the distillery deal, he decides to take matters into his own hands. He goes to see Theo in person, and when he realizes Theo has finally stood up to him, he has Cole and several other henchmen kill Theo and burn his mansion down. It’s a very clear and dramatic mission statement. Dwight will inevitably be furious about it, and probably also a little guilty about having persuaded Theo into a deal that got him killed, but his one-sided relationship with Musso is going to limit how he’s able to respond. How is Dwight going to deal with someone as evidently ruthless as Jeremiah with one arm tied behind his back?
Either way, it should be fun finding out.
RELATED:
