Let us contemplate the ones who have departed: Dale Washberg, Blackie, Berta, and now, Allen. How are these men connected? Blackie and Berta attempted to take Dale's life, and Allen paid them back for their failure with his own. While Allen was implicated in their failure, whether he was killed for that act, for his murder of Blackie, or for some other unknown reason remains a mystery. It's unlikely that Dale knew the other men before his demise, yet his death sets off a chain of interconnected murders. If this wave of violence seems improbable in dusty Oklahoma, Sterlin Harjo has anticipated your skepticism: Tulsa boasts the highest crime rate in the nation, as Lee mentions a few episodes prior.
The man bathed in the sinister red light of refracted explosions at the end of "This Land," presumed Governor Donald Washberg, seems to be behind it all. So obvious, in fact, that he probably isn't. But even if "the candidate in the study with the revolver" isn't the ultimate culprit, Donald's odiousness makes it hard to imagine loathing the real triggerman more. Even if he's not our killer, this man is our villain. Thus, the driving force of each episode isn't Lee's quest to uncover Donald's identity; it's the friends he makes and loses along the way. Last week, it was Betty Jo. Before that, Francis and Ray's Wild Ride. This week, we meet misanthropic Wendell, Lee's oldest friend who can barely stand him.
Lee is still sleeping off his hangover with his duct-taped buckaroo boots on when Francis barrels into the bedroom, agitated by what she's seen on the local news: Allen, the man who walked into Hoot Owl Books and threatened her dad, was gunned down in broad daylight. Lee is surprised by the turn of events, impressed that his teen daughter watches the news ("That's cool... They lie sometimes."), and mildly disapproving of the fact that Francis cut class to find him. It seems to have reawakened him to the fact that he's her parent. Before dropping her back at school, Lee tells Francis that it's too dangerous for her to be part of his investigation. It's a line he should have drawn a few episodes ago, before he dragged her to the marina to find the missing books. Now, Lee's ban feels unfair to her and his reasoning capricious—it was okay for Francis to play Clue when she was saving the letters her dad wanted.
Wendell (played by Peter Dinklage) has come to town for the pair's annual memorial to a friend who overdosed, and his arrival serves as an unwelcome mirror for Lee. Once he learns what his old pal is up to, Wendell warns Lee that he's being selfish and will get Francis hurt. That's what Lee does. Incidentally, their friend Jesus' relapse a few years ago isn't Lee's fault, but as Wendell reminds him, Lee was supposed to check on him that day.
To a certain degree, Lee and Wendell are two facets of the same coin: slick Gen Xers who've forged a persona out of their cunning and penchant for pot smoking; they're biting, acerbic fellows who take pride in owning nothing more formal than a graphic tee. When Wendell learns that Lee wants to bail on Jesus Day in favor of gumshoeing, he's momentarily displeased, but the opportunity to prove his superiority over Lee, who's struggling to pinpoint the location of the land Dale and Donald were bickering over, is too good to resist. Is a place truly existent if it's not on Google Maps?
As he delves into the case, Wendell boasts that he can find Indian Head Hills in less than two hours. And so begins this week's scavenger hunt. Their first stop is the Skiatook Municipal Courthouse, where Wendell charms an exhausted clerk into digging up an atlas from before 1950. Lee can't believe how far a little flirting can go, but he doesn't stop to notice what others need. Even with Betty Jo last week, it took him a few tries. Indian Head Hills is a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, but when they arrive, they find the next clue: a "no trespassing" sign posted by White Elk LLC. Wendell thinks it's a ridiculous name; there are no elk in Oklahoma. Lee counters that there are elk in Oklahoma. The point is that these men can argue about anything. Maybe they were friends once, but now Wendell can't stand anything about Lee, from the way he orders a Dr. Pepper cocktail to his stubborn belief in himself.
The simmering tension between them spills into violence on the Indian Head Hills that Lee didn't believe existed, played for humor. They each land at least one good punch, but the fight's choreography is less concerned with naming a winner than landing a joke—Lee's face ends up in the same patch of grass where Wendell recently relieved himself. And before either man can do much damage, a truck pulls up behind Lee's van. The guys who get out carry machine guns, but they don't spot Wendell and Lee on the hill. At least now, Wendell believes that Lee is onto something sinister.
Their third stop on their friendship-destroying, intelligence-gathering tour is at Lee's ever-resourceful realtor, Vicky. She learns that White Elk is selling the Indian Head Hills plot to a company called One Well at four times the market value, with no other bidders involved. Suspicious indeed. But when Lee remarks that "that sounds like a great way to launder a bribe to a future governor," it implies that he's figured out something Wendell hasn't already considered. You can see what's been getting on Wendell's nerves over the past few decades—the subtle insistence that Lee is sharper than everyone else in the room.
The men eventually converge in a hallowed space—an abandoned parking lot—for Jesus's sacred rite: sitting in a circle around a bucket fire, fueled by books consumed by Lee and Wendell, the irony of which they undoubtedly savor. As they pass a photo of Jesus back and forth, they confide in their absent friend the things they are most ashamed of. Today marks the first time Wendell has awoken in 72 days, and he says, "I'm a mess." Lee has put Francis in harm's way and is on the verge of losing the bookstore, "I too, am a mess." In the Loser Olympics, there are no winners.
Lee tells Wendell that he has become a person who no longer likes anything. Wendell, on the other hand, tells Lee that he doesn't trust him. So why does Wendell still want to make this annual pilgrimage? He calls Jesus's death "the hellhound on my trail," words that Lee borrows to describe the experience of being friends with someone as nihilistic and destructive as Wendell. Wendell's foot is in a cast for reasons he won't discuss, and he carries painkillers into a courthouse while on probation. Jesus may haunt Wendell, but Wendell terrifies Lee.
Finally, we get the needle drop that we've all been waiting for: "Tulsa Queen" by Emmylou Harris. As Lee drives around Osage County, Betty Jo sits at the vanity, deciding whether to put on her wedding ring. She's still there, figuring out how to fill up the hours of a long day, when she hears a door slam downstairs. It's scorned Donald, who saw scoundrel Lee leaving his mistress's house this morning.
Betty Jo argues that she's the scorned party here—if Donald still cares about her, why did he send Marty to pay her off? She insists she didn't tell Lee anything about Dale or Pearl, but she's scared. Livid, Donald puts his fist through her kitchen cabinet as he leaves, taking her brother's gun with him. Then, Betty Jo wisely calls her new boyfriend.
Donald didn't have time to reconcile with her anyway. He's slated to shake hands at a meeting of The 46, a group of powerful, aggrieved men named for the order in which Oklahoma gained statehood. I assume they're a racist organization because (a) Frank is giving a speech there and (b) the speech includes the suspicious line "it's not about race" to a single-race crowd. "These Indian tribes," Frank warns the nodding audience, "are like foreign governments set up right here, under our nose, beholden to no man and no laws except those of their own making." (Yes, Frank, that is more or less the definition of an autonomous tribal nation, at least in relation to state laws.)
After the speech, Frank and Donald talk. Frank wants to know why the White Elk deal hasn't gone through. "My buyer's getting impatient," he tells Donald, suggesting perhaps a bigger baddie—a player with more money than Frank and more power than Donald.
A good rule of thumb is that the more Jeanne Tripplehorn an episode has, the better it's going to be. So it's dark news that Betty Jo is heading into hiding after meeting with Lee. They agree she's not safe in Tulsa anymore. Lee suggests she check into a women's retreat he happened to see on a flyer at Hoot Owl and agrees to tell her daughter the plan. In a faintly mind-bending scene
