Reasons To Watch The Lowdown, Ranked

The Lowdown, my favorite show of 2025, returned for a second season last week with a two-episode premiere. It is already off to a terrific start. It is my opinion that more people — most people, probably — should watch this show. To help make this case, I will list my top ten reasons to watch The Lowdown. I need your attention here.

Focus.

This is important.

Off we go…

TEN: Ethan Hawke is doing some great dirtbag acting

The description of the show, in its broadest strokes, looks something like this…

A determined bookstore owner in Tulsa moonlights as an investigative journalist, digging into local corruption. When his reporting uncovers sinister connections, he must protect both his family and the truth.

… which is somehow both true and completely off-point. Like, yes, he is all of that and does do that, kind of, but there’s so much more going on here. His character, Lee Raybon (based loosely on real-life Tulsa journalist Lee Roy Chapman), calls himself a “truthstorian” and does the kind of counterculture, anti-corruption stuff you’d see from an alt-weekly. He's a kook and goof who always sees a thread that needs pulling to unravel a deeper conspiracy. Sometimes he’s even right, which leads him down a series of kooky and goofy paths.

He is very good at this. It’s a little infuriating, honestly, watching the very cool and handsome man thrive at portraying an unshowered slob, like in the same way “Ryan Gosling should not be this good at comedy” is kind of infuriating. This is, in its own way, a very nice compliment from me.

NINE: I think a visual aid will help here…

This is:

• From a scene in the first season where he is kind of being held captive by white supremacists
• A really funny sentence delivered in a way that makes it even funnier
• A fun screencap to drop into your group chats when a friend says something stupid

Moving on.

EIGHT: You love a good mystery

The first season of the show started with an apparent suicide and followed a winding mystery that featured everything from a racist cult to Oklahoma politics to dark family secrets to land stolen out from under the Native groups that settled the area first.

The second season, which, again, is just getting started, is already neck-deep in a plot about a corrupt prison system and underfunded public defenders and jailhouse chicanery to cover up the truth.

It’s the kind of show where everything leads to another thing and gets more dangerous and confusing and sends the characters down increasingly bizarre paths on the hunt for answers.

It is not a boring experience.

SEVEN: It is also hilarious btw

See, you wouldn’t think a show about stuff like jerkoff white supremacists and a broken prison system would be funny, but buddy, this one sure is. Sometimes it’s funny in really stupid little ways that cut the tension just when the story needs it. Ethan Hawke spends a non-zero amount of time bumbling through his investigations in his underpants. There is nonsense wordplay, like the running thing so far in season two where multiple characters refer to a “rope-a-dope” as a “rupidoop,” much to Ethan Hawke's confusion. There are lots of jokes about his creepy van.

The only downside here is that you might laugh really hard at something just as another person walks into the room and find yourself trying to explain why you’re hooting and hollering about the show where neo-Nazis are killing people.

You’ll figure it out.

SIX: Shoutout Rez Dogs

The show was created by Sterlin Harjo, who also created Reservation Dogs, another perfect show. The mix of silly and serious is similar, but there are also fun little Easter eggs in there. My favorite is in the opening of the series premiere when we see Ethan Hawke walk past Pauline Alexis on the streets of Tulsa, which Alan Sepinwall dug into to discover this…

"Sterlin Harjo told me that Paulina Alexis was playing Willie Jack in her cameo, which means that The Lowdown and Reservation Dogs take place in the same fictional universe. Which means that William Knifeman could potentially figure into the plot down the road."

This makes me very happy.

FIVE: Just some killer casting straight through

A sampling:

• Killer Mike as the editor of a “booty magazine” who always wears an eyepatch that matches his shirt
• Peter Dinklage as Ethan Hawke’s former business partner and/or nemesis
• Tommy Lee Jones as his deadbeat con man dad
• Kyle MacLachlan as an idiot politician
• Jeanne Tripplehorn as a femme fatale
• Freakin’ Betty Gilpin, dude

More on this last one in a minute.

FOUR: No, I didn’t forget Keith David

I’m just giving him his own section.

He plays a private investigator in the first season, a semi-antagonist who starts out on the opposite side of the mystery before everything gets jumbled up and makes for strange bedfellows. He’s back in the second season, too. In fact, not only is he back, the season premiere full-on opens with a lengthy voiceover that he begins by saying this…

A few things are true here simultaneously:

• Keith David is the freaking coolest dude alive
• If you have him and his voice just sitting around the set, you would be a fool not to have him record narration for, like, anything
• This is actually an even better example of the fun dumb humor of the show than anything I listed earlier

Pretend I said this back then.

THREE: There really is nothing else like it on television right now

I mean that. It’s always so cool to see a show operate by its own rules and set its own pace and blow your expectations to smithereens. It flip-flops through genres and is thrilling and funny and sweet all at once, with heart-pounding chase scenes followed by heart-melting father-daughter chats followed by Ethan Hawke vaping in his underpants. It‘s important to support something like that, something so deeply original, even if it’s just on principle, just so we can keep getting more of it.

It's also a blast where the good guys end up winning, for the most part. This sucker isn't homework.

TWO: Betty Gilpin is cooking out here

Once again, a few things are true simultaneously:

• Betty Gilpin is in the second season as a public defender with a missing client who catches Ethan Hawke’s character’s eye at a local award ceremony where he gives an acceptance speech just as a mushroom gummy kicks in
• She is, like, so good, already, giving it the full Betty Gilpin, all nervous energy and timing and mystery in a way that bounces pretty perfectly off of Ethan Hawke as a bozo dirtbag with a heart of gold who wants to change the world
• That screencap up there is her character smoking a cigarette in a moment of stress while wearing a Weezer shirt, which, for a segment of viewers whose formative years took place between, say, 1997 and 2004, might be the most relatable thing ever depicted on a television show

Again, perfect casting straight through.

ONE: If you watch The Lowdown, I will have more people to talk about The Lowdown with

The first season is on Hulu and is a perfect weekend binge. You can get caught up and pop into the second season by the middle of the action if you get started soon.

Please.

Do it for yourself because it’s a good show.

But also do it for me.

Thank you.

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STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Rachel Handler wrote a fascinating (and very long) blog about chocolate and conspiracies and capitalism (gift link)

— Alan Sepinwall wrote a good blog about comedy writers who are obsessed with Studio 60

— Scott Tobias wrote an important blog about Confess, Fletch and Jon Hamm

— cool interview with Pablo Torre about the Kelly Clarkson bird fiasco, which is somehow only the second coolest thing he did this week, because…

— “Nic Cage and Antonio Banderas in a season of True Detective” is like something someone ripped from my disturbingly vivid melatonin dreams

— so is “John Wilson directing a Harry Styles documentary”

— The Simpsons brought back Apu with a new voice actor 

— Jesse Eisenberg is done with Zuck

— pleased to see that Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, a completely nutso show, is getting a second season

— SNL UK is having a good time

— OJ conspiracy question mark

— egg cartel question mark

— incredible headline: “New details revealed in $7,000 watermelon theft case in Premont”

— second incredible headline: “Man arrested at airport after allegedly smuggling birds in underwear”

— basketball season starts today so here are some Allen Iverson highlights

Okay, that’s it for this week. Please share and subscribe and watch the shows I tell you to watch.