The Lowdown episode 2, "The Devil's Mama," begins right after the end of the first episode, as Lee pulls the murdered thugs’ Chevy into a gas station. He’s going to need more than 40 minutes to clean up, but he doesn’t have the time. He changes his shirt and washes his face in the bathroom, but when he passes by the gas station clerk, he offers her $1000 for a ball cap, a big pair of sunglasses, and for her to apply some concealer to his face from the YouTube makeup tutorial that she’s busy watching. It's a deal.
Thus disguised, he makes it on time to the park to meet Samantha, Francis, and Sam’s new boyfriend Johnny (Shane McRae). Lee lies and says his appearance is from new jiu-jitsu lessons he’s taking in Sand Springs. Unhelpfully, Johnny knows the one jiu-jitsu instructor in that town, which forces Lee to invent a string of lies, and while I’d chalk up his bad lying to the severity of his beating, this episode will make clear that he’s just a terrible liar in general. He pays Sam what he owes her and asks out of Frannie’s date, but Samantha holds him to it.
While driving Frannie back to his shop, Lee asks her to Google Akron Development. She does better than that and calls them, which is not what Lee wants. Still, when he talks to them and asks for Allen, he finds out that Allen is an independent contractor who works with Akron but is not an employee. Also, Frannie digs in the Chevy’s glove box and finds a copy of Mein Kampf, which Lee slaps out of her hands for some reason. Frannie wants to know who Allen is, but Lee will only tell her that he’s a bad guy.
At Dale’s house, Betty Jo helps Don dye away his gray hair and lies to him that it looks natural. He’s trying to court the youth vote. He tells her they can’t be seen in public together because he’s running for governor, and she admits that she misses the noise her husband made around the house. There’s a noise outside the house, which turns out to be Don’s wife, Mary Ann (Mary Buss), who is raving and throwing rocks more than you’d expect from a wife who just caught her cheating husband. Neither Don nor Betty Jo seem surprised, though, as Mary Ann screams, “How could you do this again?” Ah, being a politician’s wife.
Back at Hoot Owl Books, Lee starts screaming at Waylon for his inaction during his kidnapping, which Waylon is still clueless about. Waylon protests that he only provides security for the store and asks Lee to hire his cousin Henry (Jude Barnett), who is part of the gang that’s rival to Waylon’s gang. Family trumps gang rivalry for them, which is cool, I guess. Still, Waylon came off like a clown in the pilot episode, and now this cinches it.
Lee continues his tour of paying off all his debts by paying Diedra her back wages. She notices his get-up and calls him “Redneck Elton John,” which is fair. He pays her extra to watch Frannie.
Outside, Lee gives both Waylon and Henry a $100 to get rid of the Chevy. He does not tell them that it’s registered to a couple of dead guys, but maybe he should, because Waylon protests that the car is still good. Lee removes the copy of Mein Kampf because it’s a valuable edition of the book that he can sell.
He goes into Dan Kane’s office and Dan says, “You look like you f----d a werewolf." Lee gives him the Hitler book, which Dan drops like it’s radioactive. He pulls out the manila envelope of cash from his waistband, and Dan says, “I don’t like hiding things that have come out of your pants.” Dan’s got the jokes today. He’s also apparently Lee’s landlord as well as his neighbor, so he takes Lee’s back rent, but unlike Diedra, he’s squeamish about what looks like bloodstains on the cash. Dude, take what you can get.
Lee gives more cash to the homeless guy and the record store owner for Frannie’s latest vinyl purchase, then plants Frannie in a chair at Hoot Owl for Diedra to watch.
At Sweet Emily’s, Lee demands that Sally tell him who Marty is. She can’t stop going on about how fine Marty is and his buttery voice. I’m with her about Keith David’s voice, and he does have that swagger about him whether he’s playing heroes or villains. She thinks Marty is into Lee, which isn’t quite the case.
Lee gets back in his white van and prepares to leave when he spots two cops staking him out. They’re clearly not fans of his writing, and they pepper him with homophobic insults. He calls one of them “s---bird,” which is funny because the officer’s name is Shickford (Andre Hyland). They bark like dogs at Lee in an attempt to intimidate him, and I’m not sure how Lee doesn’t bust out laughing at that.
He’s not done dealing with idiots, because Waylon announces he has sold the Chevy to his aunt for $300. Lee repeats that he wants the car destroyed and promises Henry some additional cash to get it done.
The Tulsa Beat’s windows have been shattered, and Cyrus is blaming Lee’s article about the Tulsa Bootboys. Lee counters that this was done by the same guys who kidnapped him, and Cyrus can’t believe that Lee let that happen after giving him a gun. Everybody’s just blaming Lee for his own abduction, though Cyrus has a point when he says that Lee could have let himself out of the trunk of the Chevy by popping the lever inside.
Lee tells him about the guys buying it and gives Cyrus $800 for his windows, and Cyrus tells him that one of their mothers is giving him trouble over his paper shaming her son. Lee wants an address for the mother.
Lee is geared up, wearing the Tulsa Bootboys cap, a denim vest, and a Lynyrd Skynyrd / Confederate flag t-shirt. He asks the mom, Bonnie, where he can find Blackie. She’s portrayed by Dale Dickey, who plays these redneck women like nobody else. Lee approvingly notes her David Allan Coe poster, and when Bonnie’s suspicious of why he wants to find her son, he fake-admits to her that he met Blackie in prison. He lays it on thick, too, saying Blackie was so proud of his mama and helped Lee get control of his temper. Out of the bathroom comes Bonnie’s boyfriend, Phil (Kerry Malloy), who’s at least 30 years younger than her. Bonnie brings up Lee’s articles about Blackie and swears to kill Lee if she ever sees him, and Lee says, “F--- the media,” which will go far in this house. She says her son always had bad friends, except for Phil. She’s so upset that she goes off to fold laundry, which is how she calms down.
Phil is more forthcoming when he and Lee step out onto the porch. Lee twigs to Phil feeling that Blackie is in real trouble, and he drops Allen’s name. Phil tells him that Allen is a real hard guy and an old-school white supremacist unlike the softies who call themselves that now. Phil’s afraid of Allen and bitter that Blackie worked for him and never invited him in on the action. He mentions something they botched in the town of Skiatook.
Dale and Betty Jo’s daughter, Pearl (Ken Pomeroy), comes back home toting a guitar, so I’m guessing that’s her profession. (Also, Pomeroy is a real-life musician, so that’s another clue.) Anyway, Pearl says her dad sounded fine during their last phone conversation, but Betty Jo says he was like that over the phone. Betty Jo pours herself another champagne mimosa and says it’s natural to be mad at her dad, but Pearl says she isn’t mad, she just thinks her father’s suicide makes no sense. She says, “You could have been nicer to him.” What I find interesting here is that Betty Jo moves to top up her daughter’s mimosa with more bubbles, and Pearl moves her glass away. Then, when she leaves the room, Betty Jo picks that up and starts double-fisting the mimosas.
Lee is getting ready to go to Dale’s memorial service. He won’t let Frannie go, but he will let her do his makeup. She busts him for lying to her about his van being in the shop and asks him if he ever gets scared. He tells her that she doesn’t need to be scared for him, and that getting beaten up is a small price to pay for living the way he wants. She puts bandages on his cuts, and he tells her to go to church like a good boy. Hmm.
Outside Hoot Owl Books, Lee is trying to reach Ray, who has still not shown up with the Jim Thompson books from Dale’s estate. Meanwhile, Frannie gets a good look at her dad’s conspiracy board, which includes clippings stretching all the way back to the infamous 1920 Tulsa race massacre and the Osage murders a few years later that Martin Scorsese depicted in Killers of the Flower Moon. Those historical events have been hovering over this show, and I wonder how they’ll tie in.
At the memorial service, Don is sitting with Mary Ann in the first pew, while Bobbi Jo and Pearl are also in a different pew in the first row, and the Akron guys are behind Don. Lee takes a seat in the back, but he doesn’t escape Marty’s notice. Marty moves to the back, sits next to Lee, and reveals that he’s a private investigator. When Marty refuses to say who has hired him, Lee intuits that it’s Don. Marty says Lee should have expected repercussions from exposing the Washberg family dirt.
Don is eulogizing Dale by saying that as a child, he always wanted to play with the Black kids. Maybe this is why Dale evidently wanted his memorial to be at a Black church? Marty tells Lee that he has a history with Don and initially didn’t want to take the job because he liked Lee’s writing. Don weeps fake tears about Dale’s family for the benefit of the TV cameras recording the event. Funny, Pearl has been dry-eyed up till now, but she seems like she’s about to cry here
The reception after the memorial, where Mary Ann gives Betty Jo a frosty reception at the handshake line. Lee sits down with Marty, but then sees Don go into the men’s room and follows. He goes in, unzips, and takes the other urinal next to the one that Don’s using, and Don doesn’t realize who Lee is until he sees him. Lee gives him that Post-It business card, and Don drops it in the urinal. Lee starts making fun of his hair dye. Don promises his great-grandmother Elsbeth would have killed Lee, and Lee finds it funny that he’s using his dead ancestor to threaten him. He challenges Don to name an inaccuracy in his article and calls him out for hiring Marty. When Lee blocks Don’s path to the exit, Don cites the fact that they’re at his brother’s memorial, which maybe he should have led with.
The argument spills into the hall, where Lee tells the preacher that Don is having him followed and hiring neo-Nazis. With everybody’s voices rising, Don turns to the uniformed cops to have Lee thrown out, one of whom is Shickford. Don tries to grab Lee by his necktie, but it comes off in his hand because it’s a clip-on. Heh. As Marty escorts Lee out, Lee calls Don a white supremacist and shouts “Throw the moneylenders out of the temple!” He doesn’t strike me as the Christian type. Shickford takes a bite of his spare rib and barks like a dog again. Who does that actually work on?
Outside the church, Marty asks whether Lee’s insane, and Lee can’t believe Marty’s still working for Don after seeing what Allen did. Ah, but Marty didn’t see that part of it, because he lost their Chevy and only caught up with it on the bridge after Allen had left. Lee doesn’t believe him. You know, extending a little benefit of the doubt might go a long way here.
When Marty brings up Dale, Lee tells him that Dale was murdered. We’ve heard that before, but the way the scene in the pilot was filmed, it sure looked like Dale killed himself. Yes, the timing of Dale’s death is convenient for the rest of his family, but somebody else might look at how the murder might have been accomplished instead of throwing around accusations. Lee brings up the job in Skiatook, where Dale lived, but Marty says lots of people live in Skiatook. (Not really, it’s less than 9,000, per the latest census.)
Marty thinks Lee has a conspiracy board on his wall, and he’s right. He starts to walk away, but when Lee calls him a sellout and says he’s working for The Man, that makes Marty good and mad. This guy has a conscience. Maybe he can be turned around to fight for the good guys.
Meanwhile, Waylon and Henry have shot a video in front of a burning car. Is that the Chevy? If so, clever of them to destroy it and get some use out of it in the same move. While they’re congratulating themselves on how many likes their video is getting, Diedra is teaching Frannie to play blackjack when Allen walks in the front door looking for Lee. I don’t think you can blame Waylon and Henry for this one, since I doubt Lee warned them about Allen. When Diedra asks if he’s looking for a book, he just stands there and says, “No.” Lee walks in and greets Francis, but his sunny demeanor drops completely when he sees Allen.
He sends Frannie upstairs and Diedra home, and what follows is a confrontation between a guy who’s trying to play it cool and a guy who is ice-cold. Allen says Lee has been asking about him at Akron, and Lee says he’s working on a story about employing convicted felons, which Allen seems to be doing. Lee points to Waylon and Henry as ex-cons that he’s employing himself, and while that’s not a bad ploy, Lee totally botches the execution. (“They kill people. Yeah, they kill people.”) Allen’s not impressed by them, and he reaches into his vest pocket, only to pull out a business card that is not written on a Post-It and tells Lee to call him directly.
Before leaving, he offers to take Lee on a ride to one of his properties, and Scott Shepherd does a great job of implying that he intends to bury Lee in the foundation of a house. It's way scarier than barking like a dog Just as the episode ends, Lee turns and sees that Frannie was hidden among the bookshelves and heard all of this.
And now we know who the most dangerous person on the show is. Then again, maybe Lee could just tell Bonnie that Allen killed her son. She could give Allen something to remember her by.
We'll find out what's next in The Lowdown episode 3 on FX and Hulu!