This week's episode of Tulsa King, entitled "Token Joe," is a lot, whichever way you split it. Sylvester Stallone's Dwight Manfredi returns to The Big Apple for a somber occasion, and a shocking revelation from his daughter leads "The General" to go five-star on one of Chickie's capos. The killing is likely the match to light the powder keg between Dwight and the Ivernizzis. And it'll be a war fought on two fronts: Back in Tulsa, Black Macadam takes Tyson and Bodhi for all that they've got.
The chess pieces are starting to move into place in the Taylor Sheridan-created Paramount+ show (which was renewed for a second season), but the series is not letting up on the emotional stakes. Episode 5 is disturbing and funny, nail-biting and meditative.
And, as ever, Stallone is at the heart of the show's comedy-drama hybrid success. The seasoned action star is really in a league of his own, and the depth and weight he brings to the fish-out-of-water story makes even this Western-gangster crossover skeptic's heart flutter.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for 'Tulsa King' Episode 5, "Token Joe."
Dwight is Back in Brooklyn
We open with a few close-ups of Dwight in his boudoir. (It's like a gangster perfume ad.) Back in Brooklyn, getting spiffed-up for his brother Joe's funeral, Dwight has added some Southern flair to his mafioso uniform: His belt features a golden alligator mouth clasp, and he's wearing what look to be alligator skin boots — a callback to the gruff, but friendly Tulsans he met at the Bred 2 Buck in the first episode.
The entire Manfredi family is gathered at the F.G. Guido (a nice touch) Funeral Home for the wake. Dwight's sister, Joanne (The Kitchen's Annabella Sciorra), greets him warmly. We finally see his daughter, Tina, played by Tatiana Zappardino (This Is Us). She's giving Dwight the cold shoulder.
According to Joanne, Tina's a "wonderful woman." She runs her own flower shop, and her husband, "nice guy" Emory (Boardwalk Empire's Loren Dunn), works in finance. They have a set of five-or-six-year-old twins. To Dwight's surprise, their names are Cody and Ryan. Real yuppie stuff going on here.
That night, Dwight receives a call from the world's most needy mobster, Chickie (Domenick Lombardozzi), who refers to Dwight's deceased brother as (title drop!) "Token Joe." Pete's in the hospital, and Dwight skipped a visit to the boss in order to attend Joe's wake. "Remember your first and highest obligation," Chickie tells him. "My father was a brother to you, too. Don't you f****** forget that."
Caolan Waltrip is Out for Blood
At an ice cream parlor in Tulsa, a member of Black Macadam is putting pressure on a couple of police officers to respond in the wake of last week's Ogallala Land incident, where Dwight's crew made out with Macadam's nitrous tanks and earnings. "Big man's not happy," a leather-clad biker says. "He'd like your attention to this. Pronto." He hands the cops Tyson's license plate number. Black Macadam leader Caolan Waltrip (Ritchie Coster) is parked on his bike a ways off, licking an ice cream cone menacingly.
Free of Dwight for a couple of days, Tyson (Jay Will) is driving around Tulsa, bragging to some girl on the phone that he's got his own place now. (Evidently, Mark kicked him out of the house for real.) Tyson is pulled over by the two Black Macadam-bought officers. "Now, you're not under arrest, but for my protection I am gonna cuff ya and give ya a good toss," the cop says as he lays Tyson across the hood of the car. They find Dwight's old blunt from episode 2, and Tyson is taken in. At the jail, Tyson wastes his one phone call on Dwight, who's not picking up.
Big Shot
In Brooklyn, Dwight's hosting a post-funeral dinner for the Manfredi family at a swanky restaurant. (Turns out he paid for the memorial service, too.) He takes the opportunity to bust his son-in-law's chops: "You could've called and sought my blessing before you married my daughter."
Tina's not having it. Everything she held back at the funeral comes to a head. "You're the one who stopped calling us," she says. She accuses Dwight of selfishly trying to butter the family up with a fancy dinner. None of this is about honoring "Uncle Joey." It's Dwight trying to look like a big shot. Why is he helping out now after 25 years of radio silence? Tina storms out, commanding Emory to come with her. He follows, begrudgingly.
At the hospital, Chickie's crew sits in the lobby playing cards. There's the now-healed Vinny (Vincent Piazza), one Nico (The Irishman's John Cenatiempo), and a couple of their glamor-puss, big-haired wives. Dwight arrives and almost gets into it (again) with Vinny, but Nico and Chickie break it up. Dwight gave the guy a $100k payout. It's time Vinny puts their dispute to bed.
Dwight has come to speak to Pete, but he's asleep. Chickie warns him that the next time he calls, Dwight had better show up immediately. Dwight hits back: "You ought to get a cocker spaniel. They come every time."
Dwight calls Stacy (Andrea Savage), and she kinda sorta comforts him about the whole Tina thing. She warns Dwight that there's more he needs to know about the "nitrous guys." Dwight hangs up to answer an incoming call from Tyson — only Tyson isn't on the other end of the phone. A few Black Macadam gang members got Tyson's phone from the cops, and they've kidnapped Bodhi (Martin Starr).
Tyson is released from jail, but the police have confiscated his phone, and the $1,200 Tyson was carrying when he was arrested. Tough look for our guy.
Saying Goodbye to "Token Joe"
Turns out Dwight wrote a eulogy for Joe. He calls Joe's widow, Denise (Phyllis Pastore), and recites it over voicemail. It's a touching ode to the stand-up guy his brother was, and a peek, perhaps, at the kind of man Dwight wants to be.
In the world of Tulsa King, anytime Stallone puts on those readers, you know he's about to drop some poetry. And he does. Guys like Joe are rare, he says. "They don't drop names, they pick up the slack. They don't raise their voices, they lower the temperature. They don't hold grudges, they unlock potential. They don't show off, they show up." Boom.
At the Fennario Ranch, one of the ranch hands, a fast-talking young woman, warns Manny (Max Casella) that his little music festival "tussle" could land him in very hot water. Turns out her father is Black Macadam's "sergeant-at-arms." The group runs the nitrous game, and Manny was unwise to cross them. (Manny's never heard of Black Macadam.) "They'll kill anyone that gets in their way," she warns.
"Mitch the Stick"
Speak of the devil: Black Macadam has taken Bodhi hostage. He's tied to a chair in some nondescript outdoor location, and Caolan Waltrip holds a knife to his throat while asking about Dwight Manfredi. Bodhi tells him that Dwight is "the bane of [his] f****** existence." Dwight's extorting him, he says.
For his part, Waltrip says that Dwight is trying to drain his operation by trespassing into the nitrous game. Bodhi offers to relay the message to Dwight, and Waltrip promises, "You will. But not quite yet." Whatever that means...
Later that night, Mitch Keller (Garrett Hedlund) has a run-in with the law at his saloon, and the quiet bartender finally gets his day in the sun. The same two officers that picked up Tyson bring a handcuffed Bodhi to the Bred 2 Buck, demanding "a word" with Mitch, "aka Mitch the Stick." But the bar sits on Native land, where the cops have no jurisdiction.
Mitch's takedown is the most verve we've seen from the character all season, and it's exhilarating: "Since this establishment is situated on Cherokee land, where you have absolutely no authority, I suggest that you get your fat, sorry, f****** cottage cheese a**** out of here." (Who knew Mitch had it in him?)
With that, the officers uncuff Bodhi and take their leave, tossing out a menacing, "See you soon."
In the safety of his home (with the neighbor dog barking in the background), Manny Googles Black Macadam, and a slew of disturbing headlines pop up. One of the articles features an image of Caolan Waltrip with the headline, "Mayhem to Meth to Murder: Biker Leader Cleared in Triple Homicide." Always one to panic (we love him for it), Manny shuts his laptop screen with a chill.
"What a Good Father Does"
In New York, we hear Tina's side of the story for the first time, and it's heartbreaking. Dwight drops by her flower shop for a heart-to-heart after that dinner scene, but Tina says he's a lost cause. He spent 25 years protecting his mob family while abandoning his own wife and daughter. And he's learned nothing from it. She knows he's doing the Ivernizzi family's bidding in Oklahoma.
Tina explains how Uncle Joey and Aunt Joanne pitched in to help raise her. But her mother didn't even have a checking account when Dwight was put away, and the two were left penniless and unprotected. In a disturbing sequence, Tina mentions that Nico, the Ivernizzi capo Dwight just ran into at the hospital, stopped by their home one night when Tina's mother was working a double shift. She stops short of speaking it outright, but it's clear that Nico sexually assaulted her.
Dwight is panicked and enraged. With tears in his eyes, he begs her to tell him the full truth of what happened, but Tina refuses to speak of it. She makes him promise that he won't do anything. "Alright," he says.
Cut to Dwight storming the hospital, fists clenched, thirsty for Nico's blood. But Chickie and the gang have gone to the club, and Dwight finds Pete alone in his room. The boss is in bad shape, but he seems genuinely happy to see Dwight. (It's a great performance by A.C. Peterson.)
That ship has sailed. Pete was, and is, a poor excuse of a Don. What comes next is a complete reversal of the warm deference Dwight's shown the boss in previous episodes.
In an incredibly well-performed monologue, Dwight lays it all on the table — well, everything except the part where Pete put a hit on him in prison. "Now, I realize what I missed. Seeing my daughter grow up, become a woman, get married. She did all that without me protecting her. And that kills me. Because that's what a good father does. Protects the ones they're responsible for," Dwight says. "And then there's you. You swore on the soul of your mother you'd watch out for my wife, my kid. You swore that. And then this Nico. Did you know?"
Five-Star General
Pete is taken aback. Dwight grabs his face and asks a second time, but Pete is completely baffled. He has no idea what Dwight is referring to.
Dwight takes his rage to "the club" (it looks like the basement of a laundromat), where Chickie, Vinny, Nico and one Jerry sit at a card table. Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea" plays as Dwight goes berserk on Nico, throwing him across the floor and breaking a chair over his head. He holds his face against a red-hot stovetop, shoves him through a glass table and wraps a TV cord around his neck. All the while, Chickie and company stand there limp, warning Dwight that he could kill Nico. Dwight delivers one final stomp, doing just that. (The sound effects here are...a lot.)
The gruesome scene is immediately undercut with a twist of dark humor. "You clean up," Dwight says as he saunters out, covered in blood.
And so begins what we can only assume will be the New York front of the war on Dwight. Maybe Pete understood enough of what Dwight was hinting at regarding Nico and Tina to call Chickie and his dogs off, but would Chickie even follow his ailing father's orders at this point? The guy's got capos of his own now, and both Pete and Dwight are relics of a bygone era. Chickie might just as well depose his own father and put an end to Dwight, who seems to be the only person making trouble for the Ivernizzi mob.
Theories
As for the two-front war Dwight's fighting, maybe "The General" has more muscle than his weak numbers show at present. A few theories:
- Manny has ties to the New York mob. Sure, he fled Brooklyn for what he knew about the Ivernizzis. But we know he has at least one contact: one Eddy. Maybe Manny can muster some stray Italians for Dwight's cause.
- Dwight's sweetheart Stacy is an ATF Agent. She's gotten him out of trouble once before. Would she lend a helping hand again? Dwight could turn state's evidence, leading the ATF straight to Black Macadam.
- No sight of Fennario Ranch owner Margaret Deveraux (Dana Delaney) this episode, but she and Dwight had some sort of chemistry/mutual respect thing going on. And the ranch takes bets on horse races, so whoever this Mr. or Mrs. Fennario is, they're definitely Italian and probably mob-connected. Could Margaret, or the mystery Fennario, aid Dwight in any way?
- This one's pretty wild, but here it goes. If the Italians invade Tulsa to take on Dwight, could Dwight join forces with Black Macadam? Dwight seems to have found new purpose in Tulsa — and even an appreciation for the culture. (The guy literally wears alligator shoes now.) Maybe, just maybe, he'd side with the Irish to keep those pesky Italians out of his newfound paradise.
Dwight Manfredi is not the type to ride off into the sunset. Something big is coming, and he'll need all the allies he can get. Problem is, he keeps making enemies.
New episodes of Tulsa King stream Sundays exclusively on Paramount+.
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