Tulsa King Episode 1: Sylvester Stallone is back on the silver screen and also making his scripted TV Debut with Paramount+ Original “Tulsa King” which is a crime drama television series that tells the story of a Mafia Capo Dwight “The General” Manfredi who gets out of prison after a 25-year sentence and is sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma as compensation to set up a criminal organization for the Mafia. Here’s the recap of the first Episode titled “Go West, Old Man”.
The Episode starts with the voice of Dwight as he tells us about his prison life and how he tried to stop his mind from deteriorating and not letting the prison get to him by reading some good literature and writing some bad poems and then we see him getting out of the prison after 25 years after he took a fall for the mafia by covering for the boss and killing someone who he actually liked and didn’t deserve getting killed. After Dwight is out of the prison, we see him getting picked up and driven to a place in Long Island and we see him soaking everything up as he looks out of the driving car and the changes that have happened to the city of New York.
As he comes to his destination, he’s asked to wait for a second and when allowed him, he’s met by a room full of people, some close associates that used to work for him and in the front his old boss sitting as he’s welcomed by Chickie who was a kid when Dwight was sentenced and now he’s the underboss and has a capo as well.
Dwight feels disrespected when he’s asked to sit on a chair but there are people standing behind him watching the door and he says that and also mentions that it isn’t the welcome he was expecting from the people he took the fall for.
Then he’s told that he is to go and set up their base in Tulsa, Oklahoma because there’s basically nobody doing anything and there’s a big scope for things and the organization wants Dwight to go there but Dwight sees that as they don’t want him here and feels that they’re trying to get rid of him also feeling that the organization doesn’t value him which he clearly states that he’s done everything for the organization and now it feels like he’s nothing to the mafia and now he has nothing left, the mafia doesn’t seem to have anything left for him. The argument gets heated and Dwight knocks out Chickie’s capo when he disrespects him by telling him that now he’s in diapers.
Dwight has no choice but to accept what is given to him and he goes to Tulsa where he’s welcome with holy water to his mouth after he makes a rude comment in front of a lady.
Dwight starts to make himself known as a strong personality but also a dinosaur because he’s not aware of the advancements that have happened in the world while he was in prison and also is not aware of the lingo black people use these days when his black driver calls him “gangster” which he clearly takes in the wrong way. On his way to find a hotel where no one would bother Dwight and his doings meaning he could do all his illegal stuff; he sees a shop where marijuana is being sold as a medicinal drug and he goes inside asking the driver to wait for him by giving him more than enough money to stay there.
While inside, he’s stopped to see his medical ID but mentions that he just wants to take a look around and then asks the desk attendant to find the shop owner when the guard asks him to back off and get out for that when Dwight orders him to get Bodhi, the shop owner. Dwight comes out and goes back inside with a metal bottle and when that same guard asks him to get out, he throws that bottle straight to his face getting him unconscious then Bodhi comes out, and Dwight and he goes into his office where Dwight asks Bodhi to show him his books.
Dwight finds the books to be highly profitable and asks Bodhi where he keeps the money to which Bodhi answers that it’s in the bank even Dwight knows that it’s illegal and if put inside the bank, the Feds would come the next day and take it all away. Dwight asks Bodhi again but this time in a threatening way where does he keep that money and Bodhi shows him the safe and tells him that there’s half a million dollars inside the safe and then Dwight makes a proposal to Bodhi about protection from anything and for that protection, Dwight is going to take a commission of 20 percent and takes his first cut right then and leaves. When outside, Dwight gives Tyson, his driver to buy a Navigator for him and come back the next day with a collared shift and giving him a job to be his driver.
Dwight goes out to a bar at night and meets the bar owner who is friendly and also, two people and gets along with one of them as they bond over their lizard shoes.
The next day, Dwight finds Tyson not coming with the Navigator as he asked him to so he asks him and Tyson answers that when he went to buy that from the dealership, the person refused to sell it to him and said he was a drug dealer.
Dwight asks Tyson to drive him to that dealership and then Dwight beats up the owner and forces him to sell that Navigator for $50,000 before delivering a short monologue about how the dealership owner’s eyes deceived him by looking at the clothes of a person and making assumptions about them. While on their way, Dwight asks Tyson to stop by “The Higher Plane” which is Bodhi’s dispensary, and upon entering, he gives Advil to Fred, the guy whose face he threw the bottle on, and then asks Bodhi about the profit and giving him the security cameras. He also asks him about his source, and where does the marijuana come from, as well. After that, Dwight goes to the bar where he’s talking to the bar owner when a lady comes to him and asks to get a picture taken but Dwight refuses to and then another lady comes to confront him and then starts complimenting Dwight.
She tells him that the other lady was there to invite him to a Karaoke party but Dwight says that a Karaoke Party is not a party and then takes all of them to a strip club mall and the women start to party where he pays the manager to keep the pervs away from the lady but still one starts to grope a woman and Dwight instantly punches that guy without anyone noticing. After that, the girl who invited him to the party, Stacy asks Dwight to take him to his place and they engage in sexual intercourse. Stacy gets to know after a conversation that Dwight is 75 years old and feels that she’s made a mistake because she thought him to be 55 and that’s way too much of an age gap for her so she grabs her things and gets out leaving Dwight.
In the end of the Episode, we see Dwight looking at his daughter’s letter where she gave him a dollar that she saved from her allowance for Dwight to buy himself something when he was in the prison and he’s telling us that he feels that he’s sentenced to start from the scratch but it’s fine by him and if they send him to a place like Tulsa, he’s going to do what he was meant to do and he is going to do it.
We also see someone named Armand identifying Dwight when he was in the mall with Tyson eating ice cream and calls Eddie to confirm if he saw Dwight Manfredi in Tulsa, Oklahoma which means that people are starting to recognize him in Tulsa and this can bring a lot of problems for him in future. Also, we see that Stacy, the woman Dwight slept with works with law enforcement and when they are talking about any recent news, Dwight’s profile comes to the screen with his old record mentioning that he can be a dangerous one.
The next episode of the series is going to give us more about the series’ developments and with it, it’s going to make life a bit harder for Dwight and we’re going to see more amazing moments as we did in the first Episode.