The makers of mafia-related media would do well to keep in mind that “My offer to you is this: nothing” was not Michael Corleone’s opening gambit. Mike seemed perfectly willing to negotiate with that crooked Nevada senator until the man got belligerent and racist and insulted Michael’s family. Only then did the Don slam the negotiation window shut. What kind of businessman would he be if his initial offer were always “fuck you”?
Well, he’d be the same kind of businessman as Dwight Manfredi. Anytime he quote-unquote “negotiates” with a rival, the so-called General never gives an inch of ground — and somehow, this strategy always works. Dwight tells four different crime bosses where to stick it in this episode alone and suffers no consequences whatsoever. It’s hard to stay invested in the story of a man who’s always right.
First on the docket is oil heir and weed baron Cal Thresher. In gratitude for Dwight’s role in eliminating his rogue Triad partners, Thresher is willing to let Dwight name his price for compensation. Dwight simply tells Cal he’s taking over the entire Thresher weed empire, lock stock and barrel — down the barrel of his hulking enforcer Bigfoot’s gun. Not even Thresher’s courage in the face of this threat earns him any consideration from Dwight. One of the season’s big villains simply turns and walks away from everything he’d built out there because Dwight Manfredi told him to.
The next recipient of that Manfredi charm is Vince, the newly crowned boss of Dwight’s old family back in New York. When he tries to make good with his former enemy, Dwight tells him he wishes he’d get hit by a bus and hangs up. Look, man, even “my way or the highway” characters have to take the highway now and then, just to keep things interesting.
Bill Bevilaqua gets the brushoff next. As the man who both tipped Dwight off to the Triad threat when he easily could have kept quiet and the guy who provided half the muscle required to take them out, Bill makes what seems to me to be the very reasonable request of 50 percent of the resulting weed operation, no further complications necessary. Dwight won’t budge from 25 percent because Bill’s men killed Dwight’s guy Jimmy the Creek, but that particular door of violence swings both ways and a reasonable person might just take the deal to avoid more dead Jimmy the Creeks. Not Dwight!
The final fuck-you goes to Chickie Invernizzi, whose demotion from boss to messenger boy is not sitting well with him. Instead of pitching Dwight merely on a return to New York’s financial fold as he’s supposed to, Chickie makes a case of his own. From banishing Dwight to Tulsa to ousting Chickie from the top spot, New York’s rules have broken down. Chickie asks Dwight to return with him to New York, kill Vince, and restore order, presumably with Chickie on top.
Now, granted, this isn’t that great an offer. Chickie’s an unreliable asshole who killed his own dad, and he’s making this play from a position of desperation, with no support from either his family or from the other New York outfits. I’d probably decline it too. And Chickie’s negotiation tactics leave a lot to be desired as well: You can’t say, “This is not a negotiation” to someone who has all the money and all the muscle. But Dwight picks the fight by almost immediately accusing Chickie of patricide, which happens to be true but won’t win you any brownie points, for sure. So another potential deal gets shot in the head by Dwight’s arrogance.
Yet all this nonsense leads to one of the show’s best scenes. Rejected by Dwight, Chickie seeks an alliance with Bill, suggesting they kill Dwight and divide his empire between them. The two mobsters arrive at Dwight’s casino to make what appears to be a bullshit pitch on expanding Tulsa-style operations to other midwestern cities and splitting the profits three ways. Again, it seems as if Dwight isn’t even listening. And just as Chickie tries to redirect his attention, BLAM, he’s cut off mid-pitch by a bullet to the head from Bill. With this last betrayal, he convinces Dwight to give him that 50 percent cut after all. “You earned it,” Dwight growls.
That right there? That’s the stuff. With the script credited to both Terence Winter and Sylvester Stallone, it’s hard to know who to credit for what, but this kind of unexpected last-second assassination was Boardwalk Empire’s stock in trade, so I’d favor the former here. Whoever came up with it shocked the hell out of me, that’s for sure. If this was the kind of serious gangster business Tulsa King did regularly, it’d be a heck of a show.
But you’ve still got a surfeit of Tulsa King nonsense to put up with. A lot of jokey weed-based scenes. Mitch cutting a cheesy commercial for the new car dealership he purchased this season for some reason, in a lengthy subplot with no perceivable payoff. Dwight basking in the adulation of his band of misfits, all of whom adore him for being so adorable. No psychological fallout for Tyson after his cold-blooded ax murder of a helpless dude in the last episode. No sign of Dwight’s ex-girlfriend or daughter, both of whom seem to have vanished from the show without a trace, the latter of whom leaving behind a teased romance with Mitch that went nowhere. All those repetitive Dwight Manfredi non-negotiation scenes make him seem less scary than simply obstinate and obnoxious.
And after all that, the ending comes from out of nowhere. Federal agents burst into Margaret’s ranch in the middle of the night, black-bagging Dwight at gunpoint and relocating him to an undisclosed location where a voice from off-camera tells him, “You work for us now.” Will this American entrepreneur triumph against the faceless agents of the Democrat Party’s Deep State? The way Dwight — a man who is never wrong, morally or strategically, and is thus flatter than the prairie as a character — negotiates, he’ll be their boss before long.