My initial enthusiasm has turned into a "meh" impression about the show and unfortunately after the most recent episode that I watched, I think I am going to throw in the towel on Tulsa King. The show started out gritty and maybe even a bit dark, but now it is just starting to look like too many different kinds of show all at once and I can already tell where the first season is going to end up.
I don't like being able to predict the outcome of something so early on and I also don't like completely impractical things happening in a show. Unfortunately that is exactly what Tulsa King has done and my enthusiasm for continuing to watch is basically all gone.
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The one episode and one scene in particular might be the straw that broke the camel's back. I was already getting tired of how much of a silly comedy this show was becoming that I previously thought was going to be a mob drama tragedy of sorts. There is one scene where he convinces a bunch of his new "crew" to come to a bat fight in a parking lot of some sort of festival. There are several things that are really wrong about all of this. In the scene they waltz across a busy parking lot with everyone armed with bats.... at a festival.... where they would be lots of security. Yet not only does nobody say anything to them, but they also are able to just walk away without any security or police even getting remotely involved. No one pursues them and no one is arrested. But this isn't the biggest problem that I have with this scene.
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this was a better and more practical bat fight
The biggest problem I had with this scene is that it took place in Oklahoma, a state that is home to some of the loosest firearm carry laws in the world, yet nobody, NOBODY is armed with a gun. In reality these bat-wielding weirdos would have been on the ground before they even got to the people that they were going to beat up.
The "bat fight" scene was necessary in order to set up some sort of beef between Dwight (Stallone) and the white-supremacist (of course) biker gang that is meant to hold some power in the Tulsa area.
I don't like that TV shows have to try to include white supremacist angle in shows because in the PC world of today, this is the only acceptable bad guys anymore. I am quite certain that it is also going to poke fun at how backwards and stupid people from Oklahoma are and how clever and ingenious Dwight is because he is from New York City and therefore much smarter than all of these backwoods idiots in Oklahoma, right? I haven't even watched it yet but I will bet you that this is exactly what is going to happen.
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I really don't like the way that the entertainment industry seems to have an objective to make everything from big city = smart and good while everything from the heartland is a bunch of backwards morons until they are guided to the light by some sort of big-city hero like Stallone's character.
In fact, the only two people in this show that are displayed as capable and intelligent in all of Tulsa are Dwight and his ATF girlfriend Angela.... and both of these characters are from New York City and only relocated to Tulsa against their will. Stop with the preaching already. I kind of expected more from Paramount but Stallone is a producer on this show so perhaps it was his call to do this.
Another thing that is bothering me about this show is Stallone's eyebrows. I mean seriously what are those things?
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The way that this show is panning out almost looks like they don't have a cohesive way of making the pieces of the puzzle actually come together so there is just a bunch of convenient things that happen to sort of make things just fall in Dwight's lap. It's kind of lazy writing. I'll probably watch another episode or two but I gotta be honest, I don't really have high expectations for how this show pans out. If they carry on in this patronizing and demeaning way towards country folks, I'll probably stop watching just out of protest.