Last time we saw David Harbour, he was in a small town, saving the world and defeating monsters. Now, we find him taking on his next battle: being a middle-aged man with a struggling sex life. If you thought he had it hard before, think again. Steven Conrad comes with a brand-new show, DTF St. Louis, for HBO, and its biggest driving force isn’t the murder mystery you follow along with.
DTF. St Louis follows the friendship between Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman) and Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), who bond over an app called DTF (Down to Fuck) but find themselves in the middle of a love triangle that ends with one of them dead.
DTF St. Louis has a stacked cast, and that’s going to be its main selling point for people. It was the main selling point for me and the fact that it was also a brand new HBO show. Brands and names sell! For a show that features the likes of Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini, I expected a lot more coming from these first four episodes, which I was given to preview for this review.
The first episode does an excellent job of pulling you into the mystery that’s taking place by allowing the audience to get to know the characters before pulling a time skip and revealing that someone has died. The show really starts to kick in once the death has occurred and we get the introduction of Detective Homer (Richard Jenkins) and Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday).
When Clark first introduces Floyd to DTF, he describes it as an app “where you meet married people who are very happy and want to stay in their healthy marriages, but they’re also down to fuck people they’ve never met before in St. Louis, so you can spice it without making other commitments.” At first it doesn’t pull his interest, but after a while, we find Floyd giving it a shot, and through his usage of this app, we begin to understand and learn a lot more about him as a character.
Floyd hasn’t got the strongest relationship with his stepson; it’s continuously shown that this is something he wants to improve, and he does go through the effort to fix the bond they have. His relationship with his wife, Carol (Linda Cardellini), while it might seem strong to the outside eye, has some struggles, specifically with their sex life. Floyd can’t help but imagine her in her umpire uniform at all times. For Carol, his Peyronies (which causes his penis to curve when erect) causes issues when engaging in sexual activities.
They each find solutions unbeknownst to the other, but these solutions quickly become agendas and motives which could’ve led to Floyd’s death. DTF St. Louis has a way of cutting between the past and present, allowing for the mystery to reveal itself slowly, but this is unfortunately where the show overall fails for me. Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini do such a great job with their performances that they’re able to keep the audience engaged with its mystery.
As with any murder mystery, the show succeeds in making almost every suspect seem guilty of the crime, but overall it feels like there’s something missing from the mystery, and I can’t help but feel as if I’m not completely sold on the overall story of the show. Its highlight isn’t the main cast, and it also isn’t the mystery at hand, so what, exactly, could be the strongest part about this limited series?
Well, I’d have to say that it’s Joy Sunday who plays the intelligent Jodie Plumb. I’m so used to seeing Sunday from Wednesday that when I saw her in a role where she gets to play a much more mature woman who seems to be finding all the clues and connecting all the pieces compared to her veteran partner, I was left surprised and impressed. It’s a role that gets to highlight her capabilities as an actor and only makes you want to see her in more nuanced and mature roles such as this. Whenever she’s on screen, DTF St. Louis found itself becoming engaging once again.
DTF St. Louis is by no means a bad show, but it does struggle to keep the viewers’ attention on the murder mystery throughout these first four episodes. Despite being a limited weekly show, it’s unfortunate to say that from the first half, it seems like it would thrive off a bingeing format. The second half of DTF St. Louis has the possibility to turn around the fate of this show, but for now, it’s one with strong performances and a lacklustre mystery that fails to make you want to return and solve it.
