Road House is all over the map when it comes to crusty weird old guy solidarity. It is undoubtedly true that a Frank Tilghman/Pete Strodenmire/Red Webster/Emmett alliance tandem-murders Brad Wesley to end his reign of terror and free Jasper forever. But this requires the sacrifice of their comrade in grizzledness Wade Garrett, as well as a great deal of groundwork laid by young Dalton, who murdered five people and incapacitated a sixth with a stuffed polar bear so that the old timers could infiltrate the Wesley compound. Moreover, it is precisely the lack of solidarity shown by Brad Wesley, himself a weird old man, that necessitated this revolution of the geriatrics in the first place. And where does this leave Big T and the red-hatted gentlemen who are among the Four Car Salesmen of Jasper, Missouri? Excluded, alienated, and atomized, that’s where.

Dalton, perforce, addresses a similar breach as his deeply weird bad date with Dr. Elizabeth Clay winds to a close. “Pretty soon I’m gonna have to start charging that bum rent!” growls the counterman at the diner, presumably the owner judging from his literal rent-seeking behavior, regarding the exhausted and/or drunk gentleman Dalton kept from collapsing onto the floor a few seconds earlier. Stepping in to do so once again, Dalton reaches into the pocket of his ostentatiously loose-fitting white trousers and throws some money onto the counter in the owner’s direction. “Tonight’s rent,” he deadpans, leaving the old bastard to scowl and the other old bastard to sleep in peace.

Here we see the fraying seam between Dalton’s priggish elitism and his salt-of-the-earth affectations more clearly than ever before. He rights for the rights of everydrunk, provided he’s not being paid to keep such men out of his place of work. (Recall if you will the power drinkers and the trustees of modern chemistry.) He’s a liberator armed with the money he earns in the course of oppression. He’ll take care of tonight but tomorrow you’re on your own. Maybe Doc is right. Maybe he isn’t a nice guy after all.