The tropes of an episode of television are easy to spot. (They ought to have a website about TV tropes. Ahem.) Some cliches are just part of the language of televisual storytelling, no matter the era or genre. And some of the tropes can sneak up on you before you realize it. Like, say, the idea that a specific episode serves as a swan song for a supporting character who will unexpectedly, tragically die seemingly out of nowhere. Those deaths often occur right at the end of the episode, being so surprising to the lead characters that the show essentially performs a moment of silence for who was just offed.
You can find it in a tense action drama like 24, which would often remove its famous ticking-clock sound effect at the end of an episode when certain supporting characters bit the big one. In its second season, one of Jack Bauer’s former bureaucratic adversaries, George Mason (Xander Berkeley), sacrificed himself for the greater good both because it was the right thing to do and because he had only a week to live due to radiation exposure. And very recently—spoilers ahoy—Ted Lasso gave pub owner Mae (Annette Badland) the spotlight in its penultimate episode only for her to pass away at the episode’s end to everyone’s shock and dismay.
And now, we come to The Lowdown and its latest episode, “Leaving And Coming Back.” The new season was advertised by, among other things, featuring the arrival of the unparalleled acting talent of Tommy Lee Jones as Lee Raybon’s dad, Frog. While Jones fit in snugly to the overall makeup of the show, and early episodes established long-simmering tension between Frog and Lee, Jones and Ethan Hawke hadn’t spent too much screentime together. Lee was both fascinated and repelled by the idea of figuring out why Frog had returned to his life, so the show kept them at a remove.
For each viewer, the realization that “Leaving And Coming Back” fits into the requiem-for-a-supporting-character trope may arrive differently. Maybe you figured it was coming when the episode simply spent a lot more time than expected on the journey to Frog’s storage unit so he could get Francis her birthday present. Maybe it was the scene at the diner where, Lee realizes, Frog first met his mother. (A mother whose maiden name, we learn, was Francis.) Or maybe it was in the long, patient shots of Lee going into a gas station at night and getting his dad’s favorite road-trip snacks, one for him and one for Frog.
No matter what, the idea that Lee and Frog kept missing each other, accidentally or otherwise, befits the concept of this episode’s title. Frog wanted to clear the air, even if Lee had to be worn down to accept that chance. This episode, written and directed masterfully by Olivia Purnell and Rafael Casal, respectively, gives them that chance. Finally, Lee has made some semblance of peace with Frog. So naturally, heartbreakingly, Frog passes away at the conclusion.
The detente at which Lee and Frog arrive doesn’t mean the two men have completely forgiven each other. But Lee finally seems to see a glimmer of the kindly old man who his own daughter instantly glommed onto, someone demonstrating kindness and decency instead of venality and selfishness. Lee doesn’t exactly waver on previously stated ground, emphasizing again that he doesn’t regret having committed his father to an institution decades ago. But the last thing Frog says to Lee before passing away is that he probably “needed a rest” and the institution wasn’t that bad.
“Leaving And Coming Back” dedicates the final 20 minutes to the two Raybons, but gets through a boatload of key plot points before the emotionally wrenching capper. We last saw Ginger having been kidnapped by McMann and Lonnie, but her being a shrewd operator coupled with the two of them being pretty dim-witted ensures that she’s out of captivity quickly. The key turn is that Ginger is adept at making Lonnie realize he occupies a tenuous position. McMann and Lonnie are the latest example of a classic creative choice: There are two henchmen, one of whom is bigger and more brutish than the other, who’s pretty dumb but also less willing to be cruel. Ginger just makes it clear enough to Lonnie that they’re both hanging by a thread, even if she’s the only one literally tied up.
We should spend a little bit of time talking about how amazing Betty Gilpin has been on The Lowdown. She has an immensely challenging role to play in Ginger, someone who’s as intelligent and self-destructive as Lee but is more easily wounded by the world in which she operates. Whatever connection Ginger had with Mekko Dean was maybe only profound to one of them, and the longer she sits in that reality, the more it hurts. But Ginger also knows she can’t wallow in her own pain if she wants to survive. Gilpin gets to display a strong streak of cunning in how Ginger deals with McMann and Lonnie. And she shows off her deadpan line delivery, as when Ginger keeps dryly nitpicking Lonnie’s request for a thank-you. And we see how desperate and terrified Ginger can be when she finally returns to the safe space of Lee’s bookstore. And Gilpin flashes a bit more of the seductive femme-fatale presence she demonstrated at the start of the season when she spends the night with Lee in Sweet Emily’s, hinting at the idea that maybe he won’t write the full story of Mekko Dean to preserve her privacy.
This season of The Lowdown has also, among its bag of creative tricks, shown a strength of building tension by cross-cutting disparate scenes at unexpected moments. There’s a great example of that midway through “Leaving And Coming Back,” where we cut between Sheriff Thorne talking to her husband, Lee trying to convince Marty to write the Mekko Dean story to avoid a conflict of interest, and Ginger cajoling Lonnie about getting away from McMann. Each of these scenes functions by themselves solidly, but end up feeling vastly more urgent because of how swiftly they cut between each other. (Through this brief sequence, too, we learn that the sheriff’s husband Bob isn’t just an expert at cooking chili. He’s an expert at killing people and leaving no trace behind, as was the case with how swiftly he dispatched Nathan Spence’s mom.)
But while the first 30 or so minutes move us closer to an endgame surrounding Mekko Dean’s disappearance, “Leaving And Coming Back” is a special installment because of the final stretch and the men who discuss the premise of that title. At one point, Lee asks the core question that’s driven his antipathy towards his dad. “Why’d you leave?” There’s no satisfying answer, just Frog’s existential musing that leaving and coming back is simply what he did, and what Lee does. (If you look at life a certain way, that’s what we all do.)
The last 20 minutes of “Leaving And Coming Back” is what makes The Lowdown stand apart from so much current TV. The section in which Lee takes Frog to his storage unit to get his (still unknown) present for Francis has nothing to do with the story of Mekko Dean, nor does it have anything to do with the brief midseason foray Frog took into the world of Oklahoman artifacts. It’s not just focused character development, but the core emotions between the two men make clear how similar Lee really is to his dad, and how he’s managed to improve upon his old man’s flaws even as he makes plenty of mistakes on his own. The beauty of this sequence is that you see two of the best living actors feed off each other, and build an unexpectedly tender father-son connection. The heartbreak is that it’s the only such connection they’re able to make.
Stray observations
- • Presumably, a side benefit of The Lowdown existing underneath the vast Disney umbrella is lower licensing fees for Disney-related material. Or maybe Sterlin Harjo just really loves “Oo-de-Lally,” the Roger Miller song that opens the 1973 Disney film Robin Hood and plays over part of the end credits.
- • Also on a Disney track, I sincerely would’ve loved more of Tommy Lee Jones impersonating Donald Duck.
- • It does not seem remotely accidental that the convenience store where Lee makes the pit stop sells the same hat we saw Frog wearing at the start of the season.
- • Ginger is generally very smart, but I was a bit surprised that Lee had to make it clear to her that McMann probably wasn’t Mekko’s friend.
- • Judge Sallsman only makes a brief appearance this week, in which it becomes clear that he and Sheriff Thorne have a, shall we say, thorny working relationship. I did like John Hawkes’ pained reaction when Thorne slams the door of his late father’s abandoned truck.
- • I guess I’ll have to take their word for it, but adding Tang to chili sounds kind of gross.
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