Tulsa King Part 5 is the fifth chapter of an American crime drama television series created by Taylor Sheridan with Terence Winter showrunning for Paramount+. The series stars Sylvester Stallone, marking his first leading role in a scripted television series. Stallone plays a Mafia capo who just got out of prison and is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he tries to set up a criminal organization. (Wikipedia)
S P O I L E R S
Entitled “Token Joe”, Tulsa King Part 5 finds Dwight Manfredi at the mid-point of the season punched down and with no way else out, resorts to what he knows best – violence. While Manfredi is away in New York for the funeral of his younger brother Joe, back in Tulsa, his crime organisation is being dismantled by the Black McAdam gang. A bit naive of Manfredi to believe that there would be no repercussions from the events of the previous episode.
Whatever is happening in Tulsa, the main narrative focus of Tulsa King Part 5 is Manfredi in New York and things are not going well. Manfredi is trying hard to reconnect and reconcile with his daughter but she is having none of it. Manfredi discovers that Pete his boss never fulfilled the promise of looking after his family while he was incarcerated and worse still, his daughter reveals that she was sexually assaulted by one of the gang members! The aftermath of that revelation is somewhat predictable!
Alright, here’s our problem with this episode. What is Manfredi’s status within the New York gang? He is/was a capo, gets ordered about by Chickie (Pete’s son) and hated on by Vince (a capo) but his 25 year silence in prison seems to have gotten him absolutely nothing. Is the series trying to tell us that Manfredi is naive or plain dumb? Perhaps that violent ending marks a change in the status quo but is that even realistic in the circumstances? We shall see …
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