<\/p>\n
In the new comedic mystery series The Lowdown<\/em>, Ethan Hawke plays writer Lee Raybon, who runs a Tulsa used bookstore by day, but cares more about his sideline as a \u201ctruthstorian\u201d \u2014 a pretentiously on-brand way of telling people that he\u2019s a reporter. Lee is a dogged investigator who has, with virtually no resources outside of a beat-up old panel van with a tape deck, uncovered lots of secrets the rich and powerful of Oklahoma would prefer to keep hidden. But the most impressive thing about him may be his\u00a0gift for talking his way both into and out of trouble.<\/p>\n Near the start of the series, Lee\u2019s approached by Marty (Keith David), a private investigator who knows a lot about Lee\u2019s chief subject, gubernatorial candidate Donald Washberg (Kyle MacLachlan). Marty is an erudite man of letters who has long wanted to meet one of his favorite writers. Within an episode and a half, the mere sight of Lee sets Marty\u2019s teeth grinding, as he complains, \u201cDon\u2019t meet your heroes.\u201d Later, Lee inadvertently stumbles upon an illegal fishing operation, and the criminals seem eager to kill him as much for how annoying they find him as for the danger he poses to their business. In the end, Lee saves himself by dazzling them with the story of the first time he ever did meth. By the time he\u2019s done spinning this yarn, they treat him like an old and dear friend, and you can understand why.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n The Lowdown <\/em>comes from writer-director Sterlin Harjo, creator of the Indigenous-teen comedy Reservation Dogs <\/em>\u2014 a.k.a. one of the very best television shows of the last decade \u2014\u00a0and is a reunion with Hawke, who appeared in the penultimate Rez Dogs <\/em>episode<\/a>. The two men clearly hit it off. Harjo understands better than all but a few of his star\u2019s previous collaborators how to weaponize Hawke\u2019s gift for playing talkative dirtbags who are equal parts insufferable and charming. Lee is a character you may often want to punch in the mouth. But his heart is usually in the right place. And he\u2019s really good with putting words in the exact right order to get people to go along with his latest insane idea.<\/p>\n Most importantly, Lee in fact does get punched in the mouth, and other places, early and often, because the series keenly understands how exasperating its hero is much of the time. It anticipates how the audience will respond to him, and gets right out in front of that reaction to agree that, yes, he\u2019s a lot<\/em>. And that in turn makes The Lowdown <\/em>even more charming than Lee at his best, and without any of the negative qualities that come part and parcel with his whole carefully curated persona as the last honest man in Tulsa. It\u2019s an enormously appealing show, full of big humor, vivid characters, and an engaging mystery, and it has a complete command of its voice from minute one. It borrows the elastic, ingratiating tone not only of Reservation Dogs<\/em>, but of other past quirky gems like Terriers<\/em> and Lodge 49<\/em>, and on top of that adds a\u00a0healthy splash of Big Lebowski<\/em>-style ludicrousness. My only objection to anything about the show is that FX didn\u2019t give critics the whole season in advance, so I have to wait to enjoy the last few episodes.<\/p>\n Our story begins with the apparent suicide of Donald\u2019s brother Dale (Tim Blake Nelson) in the wake of an expose Lee wrote about the Washbergs for a local publication. Where others are chastened by this man\u2019s death, Lee takes it as a sign that he\u2019s onto something and has to keep digging. When his editor encourages him to ease up a little, Lee compares his pursuit of the family to FDR learning about Adolph Hitler. He\u2019s a megalomaniac, and a pretentious, pedantic one at that; while being tortured by a pair of neo-Nazis who are upset he published a story about their racist activity in a newspaper, he replies, \u201cIt\u2019s a long-form magazine! It\u2019s not a newspaper!\u201d<\/p>\n Some of this is a put-on, as we see when he gets tossed out of Dale\u2019s memorial service and begins ranting about the moneylenders being thrown out of the temple in Jerusalem. But a lot of it is that he just can\u2019t help himself. The one purely good thing he has produced for this world is his daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who\u2019s largely being raised by his ex-wife Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn, who played the mythical Deer Lady on Rez Dogs<\/em>). And though Francis worships her dad and enjoys helping him chase down stories, she\u2019s also not blind to the effect he has on people. When Lee insists that everyone is mad at him because the world hates writers, she tells him, \u201cThey don\u2019t hate writers. They just hate you.\u201d<\/p>\n Everyone Lee comes into contact with is at minimum annoyed with him most of the time, if not outright hating him. But he also adds spice to their lives. Dan (Macon Blair) runs his legal practice next to Lee\u2019s bookstore, and frequently makes his office safe available to his neighbor, while also complaining, \u201cI don\u2019t like hiding things that come out of your pants.\u201d Powerful real estate developer Frank (Tracy Letts) looks at Lee like a pesky bug that keeps flitting about, yet he\u2019s also amused by his antics. Peter Dinklage turns up for a wonderful episode as Lee\u2019s old frenemy Wendell, and when Wendell hears a summary of what\u2019s been happening lately, he quips, \u201cOh, you live in a bad crime novel now?\u201d<\/p>\n The Lowdown <\/em>very much feels like a good<\/em> crime novel. The hardboiled works of Jim Thompson are a recurring plot point, but Harjo and company are operating more like they\u2019re in Elmore Leonard or Donald E. Westlake country, mixing self-aware humor(*) with genuine intrigue and menace, along with a scuzzy atmosphere and a rich, detailed sense of place. Lee is a man out of time, full of retro affectations (plus an ironic Confederate flag tattoo that comes in handy whenever he has to pose as a kindred spirit to a racist), in a show that\u2019s set in the present day but has a deep affection for offbeat Seventies crime movies.<\/p>\n (*) The casting of Tracy Letts \u2014\u00a0in his second journalism-oriented show this month, after his recurring role on <\/em>The Paper<\/a> \u2014\u00a0puts him a short drive away from the setting of his Pulitzer-winning play <\/em>August: Osage County. There are a lot of subtle winks like that in the series, including someone other than Kyle MacLachlan playing a character named Agent Cooper, and even a reference to Hawke\u2019s hilarious, <\/em>thunderously great performance<\/em><\/a> as John Brown in <\/em>The Good Lord Bird.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It\u2019s an Ethan Hawke star vehicle, with a suitable introduction(*), as we meet Lee while he\u2019s strutting down the street in cowboy boots and hat, tugging on a vape pen. But the other characters are so well-drawn that it\u2019s easy to imagine the camera following them home for a bit while Lee is sleeping off the latest injury he\u2019s brought upon himself. Dale appears often in sequences where he reads aloud from his diary, and Tim Blake Nelson\u2019s voice is so velvety smooth, it\u2019s startling to realize that somehow, an actor in a show co-starring Keith David and Peter Dinklage sounds even more interesting than they always do. (That said, Keith David gets to quote Hamlet, so it\u2019s not like his own light being hidden under a bushel.) Jeanne Tripplehorn is having a blast as Dale\u2019s caustic widow Betty Jo. And it feels like there are entire parallel narratives to tell about both Ray (Michael Hitchcock), an antiques dealer who usually has to drink heavily to get through encounters with Lee, and Cyrus (Killer Mike), who occasionally publishes Lee\u2019s articles in his skin mag and usually comes to regret it.<\/p>\n (*) That said, it\u2019s only the second-best character introduction of the series. The best is when Lee finds Wendell in the shabby living quarters above the bookstore. \u201cDid you just take a shit in my bathroom?\u201d Lee asks, incredulous. \u201cIndeed I did,\u201d Wendell replies smugly. \u201cIt was treacherous.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Early on in the premiere, Lee punctuates a meeting by pointing finger guns at Frank and declaring, \u201cGotcha!\u201d He\u2019s so pleased with how he felt the moment came off that he privately recreates it while driving home in his van. This compulsion to celebrate himself in general, and to celebrate such a juvenile, harmless gesture in particular, should be yet another reason to lose all patience with Lee Raybon. But, like everything about The Lowdown<\/em>, it\u2019s endearing, and fun.<\/p>\n More please, FX. Quickly?<\/p>\n The Lowdown premieres Sept. 23 on FX, with episodes releasing weekly and available the next day on Hulu. I\u2019ve seen the first five of eight episodes.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the new comedic mystery series The Lowdown, Ethan Hawke plays writer Lee Raybon, who runs a Tulsa used bookstore by day, but cares more about his sideline as a \u201ctruthstorian\u201d \u2014 a pretentiously on-brand way of telling people that he\u2019s a reporter. Lee is a dogged investigator who has, with virtually no resources outside […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1998192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[312614,362512,305436,351338],"class_list":["post-1998191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ethan-hawke","tag-keith-david","tag-lee","tag-sterlin-harjo"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Ethan-Hawke-Is-a-Mad-Genius-in-This-Gloriously-Off-Kilter.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1998191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1998192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1998191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1998191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1998191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}