I was never a Sylvester Stallone fan. I saw the Rocky movies and Rambo movies – some of them, anyway – and I didn’t find them particularly inspiring. I never thought he was a very interesting actor.
So I’m really without explanation as to why I tuned in to Tulsa King, a streaming series on the Paramount+ platform, a series starring Stallone as a very fish-out-of-water Mafia capo who finds himself stranded in Oklahoma.
Part of it might be my interest in how some of the biggest names in movies – Harrison Ford, Henry Cavill, Helen Mirren, Kevin Costner, Gwyneth Paltrow – are now breaking that long-entrenched line between movie star and TV star. Part of it might also be my long-standing interest in the fascinating social dynamics of the culture of organized crime.
In any case, I watched Tulsa King. And I kept watching. And when the first season was fully binged, I hungered for more.
Stallone is terrific, his character is terrific, the cast is terrific, the story is terrific. I am so, so hooked. But this show also pushes other buttons, and they are probably the reason that I think it’s all so terrific.
Sly plays a long-incarcerated Mafia lieutenant with the unlikely name of Dwight Manfredi, capo for New York’s Invernizzi crime family. Released from prison after an excruciating 25 years, during which he never talked once, he expects to be welcomed and rewarded for his loyalty and silence. Instead, he finds himself banished to Tulsa, where not much is happening, on the pretext that he is being rewarded with a territory all his own.
Furious, Dwight heads to Tulsa and immediately realizes that, banishment or no, it is indeed a land of opportunity.
Over the first few episodes, Dwight puts together a crew – his own syndicate. He recruits his Uber driver, Tyler, at the airport when he lands. Out of curiosity, he visits a weed outlet, realizes it’s not legit, and strong-arms Bodhi, the owner, into joining his troupe and coughing up some financing. He befriends the amiable bartender Mitch, an ex-rodeo star (and ex-con); and purely by coincidence, he runs into and takes in Manny, an old Mafia friend from New York who fled West many years ago to escape the Invernizzis.
There are many other very interesting characters – Dwight's sister and daughter, an AFT agent, a horse rancher, and the Invernizzis – but Dwight’s crew is of particular interest.
During the first season, these unlikely allies find themselves going into business together; fighting to defend themselves; going to war against the city’s ruling gang; drawing a line in the sand against the visiting Invernizzis. In short, they become a band of brothers.
This is what pushes my buttons. This fascinating show is a forum in a topic that I have embraced for years now – the natural tribe.
Human beings are naturally social. We huddle in groups because we’re wired to live together, to build, to gather food, to coexist as extended families. Almost all of us belong to one or more such groups – our actual families, our family-by-choice, our neighborhoods, our social circles, our religious communities.
Increasingly, however – especially in the age of social media – our tribes are narrow and uniform. We seldom bond with those who aren’t like us. We join cognitive clusters – groups of people who all think the same way, and therefore do little more than reflect those thoughts back and forth to each other. We see it in politics. In religion. It’s an empty existence, and it’s cognitively and emotionally unhealthy.
But a natural tribe – a tribe that’s not cognitively selected – isn't like that. A natural tribe is cognitively diverse: it will be populated by members who have different worldviews, who think in different ways, and that makes for a much stronger, healthier tribe in the long run.
We don’t see these kinds of natural tribes anymore, owing to our ability to pick and choose. One place they persist, of course, is the military: within a platoon of infantry, you’re likely to find all kinds of different cognitive types.
And that’s why Dwight ends up with. Tyler, the chauffeur, is a young man with a dream, struggling to get out of his father’s shadow; Bodhi, the weed merchant, just wants to be left alone; Mitch, the bartender, has the soul of an artist; and Manny, the ex-Mafia soldier, has become a suburban family man whose biggest concern is keeping the neighbor’s dog off his lawn.
These are people who would never have anything to do with each other, had Dwight not brought them into his world. But once they become a tribe, they bond into family, ready to fight and die together.
And that’s how human beings really work, under the hood. We have a deep impulse to join tribes, to rely on one another, to work together. And though our clustered institutions do their best to discourage the idea that likemindedness is a vice, the earnest human truth is that we are strongest when our differences are embraced, rather than rejected.
That’s a truth worth sharing. I never expected to stumble across it in a Sylvester Stallone crime drama, but there it is. Sly’s crew has won me over. I don’t intend to join up, mind you, but you can bet I’ll keep watching.
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