Penultimate episodes are tricky to pull off. 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. To some extent, these pitfalls are unavoidable.

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

See Full Page