"These workhorses are usually tasked with maneuvering players into position for the final episode's climax, ideally making the journey to those marks feel natural. Pacing is an issue. The audience can sense when a series has taken its foot off the gas, but penultimate episodes almost have to - characters can't make too much headway. In lieu of major resolutions that could diminish the impact of the season finale, the loose ends of less important storylines get tied up, often to underwhelming effect."
"But "Tulsa Turnaround" suffers from a bigger problem: It just doesn't feel like the next episode in the series we've been watching. Characters make incomprehensible choices. They interact in ways that don't make sense. I suspected I was watching an episode that had been reverse-engineered from a predetermined finale rather than an episode that followed inevitably from what we'd just seen."
Penultimate episodes must position players for a finale while preserving pacing and avoiding premature major resolutions. "Tulsa Turnaround" exhibits disjointed plotting and character decisions that break established continuity and strain credibility. Key moments feel reverse-engineered rather than organic, including a sharp teenager seeking counsel from an unlikely adult and a dangerous transfer of a loaded weapon to an unreliable freelancer. The episode begins with two figures symbolizing competing power structures: a pastor delivering a segregationist homily about prisons and a performer masquerading as Will Rogers at a fair reenacting 19th-century land runs.
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