Pairing Ozark’s Jason Bateman and Stranger Things’ David Harbour in a black comedy about a suburban love triangle sounds like a recipe for outrageous humor. And there are plenty of laughs to be had in DTF St. Louis.
Yet the real beauty of creator Steven Conrad’s six-part HBO miniseries (March 1) is its knack for constantly upending expectations—first with the revelation that it’s actually a murder mystery, and then by simultaneously transforming into a piercing portrait of economic hardship and heartbreaking empathy. The latter comes courtesy of Harbour in a phenomenal performance that repeatedly reveals new, poignant layers.
Floyd Smernitch (Harbour) is struggling to connect, as evidenced by an awkward group therapy session with his stepson, Richard (Arlan Ruf), in which the boy repeatedly emphasizes that Floyd is his stepfather.
His relationship with his wife is barely better, as Carol’s (Linda Cardellini) side gig as a Little League umpire compels her to wear a uniform that’s a brutal turn-off. Not that Floyd is an Adonis. His belly sticking out of and/or hanging over his shirts, he appears to have let himself go.
This fact further chips away at his self-confidence, as do the bills that habitually pile up and, also, his flagging sex life due, to some extent, to his Peyronie’s disease: a condition that, as the result of a severe injury, has left his penis bent radically out of shape.
Things are hard (even while they, ahem, aren’t) for Floyd, but his fraught middle-class life outside St. Louis radically improves when he’s hired to be the American Sign Language interpreter alongside local TV weatherman Clark Forrest (Bateman), whose neck he saves during a treacherous on-the-scene storm report.
Before long, they’re best friends, and at a “cornhole party” thrown on Floyd’s front lawn, Clark first meets Carol, with whom he immediately hits it off—the start of a flirtation destined to lead to disaster.
DTF St. Louis’ early rhythms are disorienting, as the creator provides snippets of key scenes that will later be revisited in greater detail. Six weeks after Floyd’s get-together, Clark tells him about DTF St. Louis, a dating app designed for married people to have casual flings without permanently leaving their spouses.
Clark describes this platform as a way to “spice your life,” and while Floyd is naturally hesitant—a dork by nature, he opts to spend the night playing Hedbanz with Carol and Richard—he eventually gives it a shot, working with Clark on profile language that will make it sound like he’s in shape without actually claiming, dishonestly, that he’s fit.
There’s rarely been a story about infidelity that ends with happily-ever-afters for all involved parties, and DTF St. Louis wastes little time demonstrating that Clark and Floyd’s gambit was unwise, as evidenced by the discovery of Floyd’s dead body at the local swimming pool.
Assigned to the case is St. Louis County Sheriff’s Detective Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins), who immediately clashes—and pulls rank—with special crimes officer Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday). Separated by age, gender, race, and disposition, Homer and Plumb are a perfectly mismatched duo. Yet thanks to Plumb’s canny sleuthing, they slowly get on the same page, even as their investigation takes a handful of surprising turns.
Floyd’s murder provides DTF St. Louis with its whodunit angle, and the clues found at the scene (a can of ready-to-drink Bloody Mary, a Playgirl centerfold with the face scratched out) suggest a scenario that’s soon complicated by additional bombshells. Still, as it heads down a police-procedural path, the series indulges in understated humor that emanates from its characters’ eccentric personalities, such as a brief flashback in which Floyd is overcome by a comic that tricked him into thinking that the Dark Knight was going to die, only to then reveal that “Batman lived.”
Conrad never underlines his punchlines, and that reserve suits the action well, especially once it hits its stride and Floyd, Clark, and Carol come into sharper three-dimensional focus.
Because Clark’s recumbent bicycle was spotted at the pool on the night in question, and he and Carol were having a kinky affair behind Floyd’s back, he becomes Homer and Plumb’s prime suspect. DTF St. Louis, however, merely feigns at dispensing obvious answers, and as it tangles its protagonists in copious flashbacks, it reveals the messy impulses that conspired to create this chaos.
Money troubles breed insecurities and resentment, which beget rash decisions and desperate measures, and Conrad both astutely diagnoses how these forces interact and compassionately considers Floyd, Clark, and Carol as screwy individuals grappling with relatable fears, regrets, and desires.
Transforming DTF St. Louis into a kind-hearted character study is an unexpected and invigorating feat, facilitated by Conrad’s shrewd writing and by a trio of performances that grow deeper with each passing installment. Cardellini and Bateman are excellent as the reckless Clark and conniving Carol, whose trysts are “dream meetings” marked by dom/sub role-play.
It’s Harbour, though, who steals the show. With a vulnerability that’s as endearing as his geeky joviality, he’s so fantastic as Floyd—infusing him with a goodness and gentleness that gets under the skin—that, were he not already so well-known as the star of Stranger Things, his turn would warrant being called a revelation.
Harbour makes Floyd a lovably self-aware loser in search of confidence (an elusive commodity, given his sizeable physique and paltry bank account) and communion, the latter of which he attains with Clark and, more affecting still, with Richard, a kindred outsider in need of a genuine friend.
For a show that’s routinely funny and intriguing, DTF St. Louis is startlingly insightful and moving, recognizing how destitution results in a cascading stream of secondary personal, parental, and marital problems, and how selfless companionship is the sole remedy for crushing loneliness.
Since HBO only provided critics with DTF St. Louis’ initial four episodes, the verdict remains out on whether Conrad sticks the landing without sacrificing some of his material’s silly, sweet, or sinister vitality. Considering the assuredness of its first two-thirds, however, there’s reason to believe that the writer/director has plotted out an end as satisfying as his beginning—one that, hopefully, will do justice to the excellence of a cast that, to this point, hasn’t made a single slip-up.
