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Thurman Smutney
Thurman Smutney
Played By: Andrew Bird
A Kansas City undertaker who becomes indebted to Cannon Limited.
- Bumbling Dad: Thurman fails to fully understand the dangers of dealing with a man like Loy Cannon, and comes across as hopelessly out of his depth.
- Good Is Dumb: Possibly the most moral person this season, and certainly the most gaffes-prone.
Dibrell Smuthney
Dibrell Smutney
Played By: Anji White
Wife to Thurman, mother to Ethelrida, and sister to Zelmare Roulette.
- Foolish Husband, Responsible Wife: Unlike her husband, she understands the danger that her family is in due to their connections to Loy Cannon.
- Pride: Her biggest flaw, as she admits herself.
- Proper Lady: She is pious, polite, and refined, and tries to give those values to her daughter.
- Real Men Love Jesus: She is rather fiercely religious.
Ethelrida Smutney
Ethelrida Pearl Smutney
Played By: Emyri Crutchfield
The daughter of a pair of undertakers, caught in the middle of the season's events due to her parents owing a significant amount of money to Loy Cannon.
- Black and Nerdy: She is an exceptionally well-read teenager. She also brings a notebook to Oraetta's apartment so that she can tabulate how much to charge her for cleaning.
- Chekhov's Skill: Her surprisingly thorough knowledge of the history of organized crime in Kansas City pays off when she realizes the significance of Don Fadda's ring and uses it to make a deal with Loy Cannon.
- Foreign Culture Fetish: She listens to French singers and speaks the language perfectly.
- Meet Cute: She and Lemuel bond rather quickly, despite Ethelrida initially being shocked to see gangsters inside her home.
- Snooping Little Kid: A teen rather than a little kid, but her innocent snooping in Oraetta's apartment clues her in to Oraetta's crimes.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: She is constantly being punished for the fact that she is smarter than her white peers at school.
- Weirdness Magnet: Ethelrida seems to attract a spectral entity that her aunt calls Mr. Snowman.
Zelmare and Swanee
Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capps
Played By: Karen Aldridge and Kelsey Asbille
A pair of half-bright bank robbers. Having recently escaped prison, they are enlisted by Zelmare's brother-in-law Thurman Smutney to acquire money to help him pay off his debts to Loy.
- And This Is for...: Zelmare reappears in the finale to murder Loy Cannon in revenge for his selling her and Swanee out. She specifically invokes Swanee's name as she stabs Loy.
- Beware the Silly Ones: Zelmare and Swanee are comic relief more often than not, but they not only successfully get the drop on Gaetano Fadda, but they wipe out nearly the entirety of the team Deafy Wickware assembled to apprehend them, on top of a whole lot of civilians.
- Big Sister Instinct: When Zelmare hears of her sister's financial troubles, she and Swanee bust out of prison to help her.
- Boom, Headshot!: Swanee dies after Odis shoots her in the head.
- Cool Aunt: While Zelmare and Swanee get a chilly reception from Dibrell and Thurman when they show up unexpectedly, Ethelrida runs up and hugs Zelmare. Zelmare for her part utterly adores Ethelrida.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Swanee's father was mentally ill, and when she was taken away by the state, she was sent to schools where she claims the teachers sexually abused her.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Their crimes in Kansas City are initially motivated solely by Zelmare's desire to help her beloved sister and niece.
- Expy: They are a gender-flipped Gale and Evelle Snoats from Raising Arizona, recreating the duo's iconic prison escape scene in their Second Episode Introduction and lifting dialogue directly from that script.
- Fartillery: One of the many lovely side effects of the food poisoning that makes Swanee violently ill.
- Insistent Terminology: They prefer to be called outlaws, not "criminals". "Criminal" implies that they simply failed to live within society's rules, whereas they have no interest whatsoever in following society's rules.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The only thing Zelmare's recurring idiotic decisions and penchant to die as an outlaw earn her are over a dozen dead civilians and the love of her life, Swanee, gunned down right in front of her, ensuring she'll be broken and alone for the rest of her life. This actually sets her up as the Laser-Guided Karma to Loy Cannon, whom she returns to murder in the finale after his order to dispose of her end up destroying her life.
- Lover and Beloved: According to their rap sheets, Zelmare is a good 13 years older than Swanee, and seems to be the leader in the relationship.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage:
- Swanee was supposedly the product of a marriage between a Chinese laborer and a Native American woman, and has spent most of her life being subject to racism of one kind or another.
- Zelmare and Swanee's own relationship would probably fall under this trope; in 1950, a middle-aged black woman and her young mixed-race girlfriend aren't likely to be welcome anywhere in America, even if they'd been law-abiding citizens.
- Now or Never Kiss: They finally share a long on-screen kiss, just before going on their fatal rampage in the train station.
- Outlaw Couple: They may be criminals, but they love each other.
- Pretty in Mink: Zelmare holds a fur coat she stole to a woman the night of her evasion. It gets ostensibly dirtier as time passes.
- Rape as Backstory:
- Swanee says that her teachers spent years trying to "rape the Indian" out of her.
- Zelmare claims that she hasn't been innocent "since Uncle Charlie cornered me in the shed" when she was a teenager.
- Satisfied Street Rat: They cherish the outlaw life: a short free existence and a violent death.
- Stupid Crooks: Their brilliant plan to help out the Smutneys involves robbing Cannon Limited, the same group to whom the Smutneys owe money. The robbery is a disaster, the only reason they survive is because Loy initially believes that they were sent by the Faddas, and Swanee accidentally pukes on the stolen money, and even after Zelmare literally launders every single bill, the stench remains, and thus when Thurman hands it over to Cannon, Cannon quickly realizes that it was stolen from him. Next thing they know, they're quickly found by Loy and forced to do his bidding.
- Wickware reveals that they've always been that dangerously incompetent; Zelmare was originally locked up after accidentally killing a pregnant woman in an armed robbery that netted less than ten dollars.
- Sweet Tooth: Swanee loves candies.
