Best of 2022: Sylvester Stallone And Martin Starr Of ‘Tulsa King’ Are The Year’s Best Odd Couple

If you were to think of a perfect foil for Sylvester Stallone on his first TV series, Tulsa King, Martin Starr’s name wouldn’t be the first to come to mind. It probably wouldn’t even be the hundredth.

Don’t get us wrong: We’re fans of Martin Starr, from his breakout as the brace-faced but sweet nerd Bill Haverchuck on Freaks And Geeks, to the misanthropic writer-waiter Roman DeBeers in Party Down, through his run as the even more misanthropic coder Bertram Gilfoyle in Silicon Valley. But we would never think that his low-key mutter would work against Sly’s bull-in-a-china shop acting style, especially in the early episodes of Tulsa King, as Sly establishes just how loyal and violent his character, mob capo Dwight Manfredi, can be.

Boy, were we wrong about that. After watching the first six episodes of Tulsa King, the unlikely combo of Stallone and Starr has been so fun to watch that we think they’re the best odd couple on TV right now.

The reason why the pairing works so well is evident in those first episodes, as Dwight rolls into Tulsa, banished by Chickie Invernizzi (Domenick Lombardozzi), the son of the Mafia boss Dwight took the fall for, after 25 years of prison. As part of his effort to figure out where the money flows in the city, he takes over the weed dispensary owned by Starr’s character Bodhi; Dwight threatens to break Bodhi’s feet if he doesn’t hand over 20% of his revenues.

What’s great about the first scene where Stallone and Starr share the screen is that, while Bodhi is obviously scared at being threatened and menaced by this large guy who just walked into his shop, he’s also bewildered by him. “I’ll protect you from the cops,” says Dwight with his low growl. “It’s legal,” Bodhi says incredulously. When Dwight says, “Do we have a deal?”, Bodhi murmurs, “Do I have a choice?”

Not many people can play scared and cynical all at once, but Starr has proven he can over the past 23 years, and that combination is an effective way to undercut Dwight’s tough-guy persona.  Through the early episodes, Bodhi reluctantly works for Dwight, but has no problem telling the capo things like “there was no risk until you came along”; in other words, Dwight came in offering protection, but the only person that Bodhi needed protection from was Dwight.

In the second episode, Dwight and his driver Tyson (Jay Will) come around again to collect some money, and Bodhi lets loose with a line that would have made perfect sense coming out of the mouth of Silicon Valley’s Gilfoyle: “At the risk of you rearranging my internal organs or some other way of inflicting pain, is there some sort of structure to you taking my money?” At every step of their early relationship, Bodhi has no problem telling Dwight that he finds this arrangement to be pointless, despite being scared shitless as he’s saying it.

Dwight, however, seems to slowly chip away at Bodhi’s snarkiness, especially as the capo tells the hippie that keeping all of his cash in the safe and away from the feds is dangerous, but his suggestions for laundering the money feel more like from an early episode of The Sopranos (showrunner Terence Winter has some experience there). Bodhi seems to open up a bit after Dwight negotiates a better price from Bodhi’s supplier, and the two of them getting baked in the back of Dwight’s Navigator showed how these seemingly opposite acting styles can mesh together well.

As the story has pivoted from Dwight building his “team” — i.e. mostly people he’s intimidated into compliance — to the team facing outside threats, like the biker gang whose nitrous turf they’re invading, things between Dwight and Bodhi have gotten less adversarial. He continues to talk crap about Dwight when the biker gang kidnaps him when they find his name in Tyson’s phone, but when the FBI gets wind that Bodhi is involved with Dwight and they raid his store, Bodhi tells Dwight that he told the truth: “We’re business partners.”

He continues, “I don’t know why I didn’t call the FBI the day you came into my shop. I probably should have.” He seems to be begrudgingly acknowledging that Dwight’s been good for his business, even if that involves more danger than your typical stoned dispensary owner would ever experience. It especially hits home for Bodhi when Dwight gives him all of the cash that was in the safe, which he squirreled away when he realized the feds might be coming.

We don’t mind that there might be a bit of a thaw between Bodhi and Dwight; what we’re hoping to see is Dwight and Bodhi enter into more of a “frenemy” vibe, where their opposing personalities make for comedic sparks. But we do want to see more of Stallone and Starr together, if only because it makes Tulsa King a lot more fun to watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.