Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Tori Preston | TV | October 22, 2025
This week’s episode - “Old Indian Trick” - picked up right where last week’s left off, with Lee meeting Donald Washberg in that gazebo outside the cop kegger. Was it finally time for Kyle MacLachlan to go full Black Lodge? Not really. I mean, he punched Lee in the face, but then he offered him a handkerchief to wipe his bloody nose with. BOB would never. Instead, Ol’ Donny comes out of the episode looking not just innocent but also in danger himself — but we’ll get to that.
As for their conversation? Donald brought Lee there in front of all those law-upholding, gun-slinging witnesses to tell him to quit digging into Washberg family business. Lee counters that he’s just trying to figure out who murdered Dale, and shouldn’t Donald also be curious about that? Well, the thing is that Donald doesn’t think Dale was murdered at all. He claims that Dale met someone - an Indian street hustler, and “a Gaybo for sure” - who somehow manipulated Dale into killing himself. It’s not a lot to go on, but hey - didn’t some street artist turn up to sell Lee a portrait of Dale a few episodes ago? That’s the guy!
Armed with this new lead, Lee sets out to track down this mysterious artist - and he needs Deidra’s help. Not because she has her finger on the pulse of Tulsa’s art community, oh no. Just because Lee is aware that his search will take him into Native American gathering spaces (the Indian Store, the Indian Center), and he’s just woke enough to know how cringey it’ll look for a white guy to go without someone from the community escorting him. So Deidra, for her own amusement, makes sure their journey is plenty cringey anyway. This involves convincing Lee to don a fringe jacket, which earns him the nickname “Custer” from everyone he meets, but it’s all worth it when she obtains the artist’s home address for him.
The artist, Chutto, lives with his grandfather, Arthur. The late Graham Greene plays Arthur, in one of his final roles, and even though it’s a short appearance, it’s absolutely pivotal (and a little heart-wrenching). Though Dale pursued a friendship with Chutto because he had a crush on the young artist, he developed a genuine friendship with Arthur - and that’s how Dale learned the true history of Indian Head Hills. That land belonged to Arthur’s grandfather, and when he refused to sell it, the Washbergs murdered him. Arthur then shows Lee a copy of Dale’s will, which was entrusted to him for safekeeping. In it, Dale bequeathed his stake in Indian Head Hills to Arthur and Chutto.
Now we know what the hold-up is with Donald’s sale, but unfortunately, the buyers aren’t really the waiting type. When Donald and Marty head out to a campaign meet and greet at the tiny church of One Well, we get our first look at the folks on the other end of the Indian Head Hills deal - and Donald realizes he’s in trouble. The church is a group of ex-cons who want to turn the parcel into their own homeland, and they can afford it because they have a wealthy benefactor in the 46, which is that Oklahoma Illuminati group of racist white dudes whose luncheon Donald attended. The church’s threat of violence may have been more subtle with Donald, but they made it pretty darn explicit with Frank, their representative in the sale. They show him the bodies of the skinheads Allen killed and admit they murdered Allen for his many mistakes.
So, One Well was targeting Dale, likely believing that he was holding up the sale. Allen died because his men failed to kill Dale. The question is, did One Well eventually succeed, or did Dale really kill himself? I’m leaning toward the latter, mostly because it just makes perfect sense to me that Lee would accidentally uncover a massive scandal while investigating a murder that never actually happened. That’s just his brand of insufferable: Right, even when he’s wrong.
It’s also clear that neither Donald nor Frank knew what they were getting into with this land deal until now. Donald just saw the dollar signs and didn’t realize the implication of the obvious bribe he’d be accepting, and Frank got involved because his friend Trip is the mysterious benefactor funding One Well’s operation. Now that they understand the people they’re dealing with, the pressure is on to close the deal - which brings us back to Dale’s will.
At the end of the episode, Lee calls Betty Jo at her little spa retreat to tell her about Dale’s secret will, including the location of Chutto and Arthur. Then Betty Jo immediately calls… Frank. So maybe Betty Jo is our femme fatale after all! What I wanna know is, did Lee tell her because he trusts her, or did he tell her because he doesn’t and now all he needs to do is keep an eye on Chutto’s apartment and see who comes sniffing around? With only two more episodes left in the season, we won’t have to wait long to see how this mystery shakes out - and who’s left standing when it does.
