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Lee Raybon (The Lowdown)

kevinburtonsmith

Created by Sterlin Harjo

“I’m a writer, huh? Most people call me an asshole, you know?”
— Lee Raybon

The 2025 TV series The Lowdown occupies the turf somewhere between Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, with a dash of the Coen Bros tossed in for good measure. It’s a slapstick noir world of bad guys, bad ideas, and bad luck; the ostensible good guy hero possibly only marginally smarter than the villains.

In other words, it’s a hoot.

Ethan Hawke apparently had a lot of fun playing Tulsa, Oklahoma “indie journalist” LEE RAYBON, and it shows.

He’s a self-styled, pretentious “truthstorian” with a gift for gab, and a single-minded determination to root out “the truth,” digging up dirt on the rich and powerful of Tulsa, while eking out a living running Hoot Owl Books, a used bookstore (he lives in a shabby room upstairs), occasionally flipping pieces of art or rare books, and freelancing for a local rag (“It’s a long-form magazine! It’s not a newspaper!” he claims defensively).

His mission, as he sees it? “To set off a flare, kick up the rocks, and see what the roaches do at night.’

He fancies himself  a local hero, but he’s far more impressed with himself than anyone else is, except maybe for his thirteen-year-old daughter Francis and a poetry-loving local Black private eye, Marty Brunner, who admires his prose style, although even he admits, upon finally meeting Lee in person, that there’s “nothing worse than a white man who cares” and concludes “Never meet your heroes.”

And Lee certainly is a hard man to like. He just never shuts up, talking himself in and out of trouble at a furious clip. He’s pushy, unreliable, misses appointments, and is prone to stretching the truth. He dresses like a befuddled cowboy on his last round-up (he seemingly never met a dirty or blood-spattered shirt he didn’t wear for “just one more day”). He drinks too much, vapes like a madman, and drives around in a battered, windowless white van. He’s obsessed with conspiracy theories (some of which turn out to be true), and has a knack for being annoying, questioning any sort of authority —or even advice. His wife has left him, and the long-suffering Deidra, his sole employee at the bookstore, tolerates him at best. His best, and possibly only real friend, is Wendell (memorably played by Peter Dinklage), whom he sees maybe once a year to get wasted in honour of a long-gone former colleague.

The local powers-that-be think Lee’s mostly a pain in the ass; harmless but mostly just exasperating.

Until he starts to sniff around the apparent suicide of the deeply closeted Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), that is. Dale was the oddball member of a powerful Tulsa clan. At the time of his death, Dale was at odds with not just his wife (Jeanne Tripplehorn) but with the rest of his family, and especially , whose brother, super smarmy Donald Washberg (Kyle MacLachlan), is running for governor of Oklahoma on an extremely conservative, far-right platform.

But a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and so Lee, discovering Dale supposedly left secret messages behind in his collection of first edition Jim Thompson paperbacks, decides to crash the memorial in search of the books. Unfortunately, Lee is about as inept as they come, and as the series unwinds, he seems incapable of making a good choice — or even dodging a punch. In the course of events, he’s beaten, kidnapped, beaten up some more and knocked unconscious a few times, frequently appearing disheveled and sporting a colorful array of bandages, cuts and bruises.

There are layers within layers, and surprising connections and motives, as Lee bounces around Tulsa, encountering white supremacists, an illegal fishing business, a conniving preacher, inept bodyguards, heavily armed Christians, a witch, a possible real estate scam, an alcoholic antiques dealer, a pair of less-than-brilliant self-proclaimed members of the “Indian Mafia,” a horny widow, and plenty of mind-altering substances. Yet, as disagreeable as Lee can be, there’s also something — so help me — charming about him. Sorta like a cute, wide-eye puppy who eats your slippers and pees on your floor. Despite his faults and weaknesses and the inadvertent destruction he leaves in his wake, he does seem to be on the side of the angels, and there’s no denying his dogged determination and that wondrous gift of gab.

Like I said, it’s a hoot.

UNDER OATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sterlin Harjo is a Native American writer and director, best known for television’s Reservation Dogs.

THE EVIDENCE

TELEVISION

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Illustration by Kristian Hammerstad taken from September 29, 2025 issue of The New Yorker.

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