But that’s Lee for you, making friends wherever he goes. He almost instantaneously strikes up a rapport with a recently fired corrections officer with the improbable name of Chili Franks (a delightfully unhinged Paul Schneider). His hair is a thistle of frosted tips, his uniform is still on regardless of his actual employment status, he has a reputation for being a depressive sort … and he makes the best cheeseburgers you’ve ever had. Or so he insists, anyway, when he invites Lee back to his place to keep their conversation going.
By now, Lee has learned that the officer who menaced him and Ginger is named McMann — he saw a shirtless photo of him in a charity calendar. (The guy’s a slab of beef.) Over a long, drunken, cringe-inducing evening, Chili tells Lee that McMann is the unofficial boss of the guards and fired him for reasons he doesn’t specify.
At one point, Chili grabs a shotgun and appears ready to kill himself over it. But when Lee reveals he’s a reporter out to take powerful people like McMann down, Chili suggests they go out for more beers and instead drives Lee to McMann’s house. The ex-guard sees this as his chance to get back in the boss’s good graces.
In the episode’s funniest sight gag, Lee flees into the trees surrounding McMann’s house, dodging shotgun blasts … only to discover that every tree he hides behind has a motion-activated floodlight rigged to it, revealing his location over and over and over. It’s like something out of “Coyote vs. Acme.”
I reviewed the second of tonight’s two episodes of The Lowdown for the New York Times. (Gift link!)
Tags: new york times, the lowdown, TV, TV reviews