Down to Binge DTF St. Louis

No one is normal. It just looks that way from across the street. The seventh and final episode of the new HBO dark crime comedy DTF St. Louis beautifully explores what most shows centered around sex don’t do well, which is that sex isn’t just about the physical attraction in the moment. It’s about connection, feeling valuable and feeling seen. 

A slow burn that initially is about who killed Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) in a pool house turns into a mystery of intrigue, motives and an exploration into what is under our basic appearances that often turn much weirder once you learn more about them. The main suspects are St. Louis area weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman) and Smernitch’s wife, Carol Love-Smernitch (Linda Cardellini), but the mystery splinters from just who killed Smernitch into the perplexing love triangle between the Smernitches and Forrest. 

Floyd serves as the victim in this tragedy as a middle-aged man overwhelmed by his low self-esteem caused by a devastating combination of being severely overweight, suffering from Peyronie’s Disease (painful curved erections) and the feeling of losing his wife Carol’s attraction. He is a lionhearted man who always puts others over himself. Throughout the show, he ends up frenching a gay man on his DTF meetup app despite being straight to not hurt his feelings, counsels Carol’s lonely son Richard regularly because his Borderline Personality Disorder is a prime factor in his struggles to connect with other kids at school and even gives tips to Forrest on how to fuck Carol better becasue he values Forrest’s attraction and wants his wife to have fun with what she is doing. It is fitting he became a sign language interpreter, because what he enjoys most is making people feel valuable and safe, and his job allows him to help deaf people feel included.

All Floyd ever wants is to feel accepted and included, so when he learns Forrest is having an affair with his wife, he isn’t angry. He just asks if he can watch them fool around from inside the hotel closet, so he feels more included in what’s going on. In contrast, Carol’s character is introduced to us while jogging, listening to self-help tapes that give her strategies on how to have conversational advantage and dominance over others, like asking the other person to speak up even when you can hear them, which throws them off their train of thought. At Jamba Juice, she always orders a Watermelon Breeze but copies Forrest’s Go-Getter order when they start dating because every choice she makes is about an endgame that gives her financial flexibility and freedom. From her meet-cute with Forrest to her domineering presence over both Forrest and Floyd sexually, she is someone who craves power and control above all else. It’s no surprise her side hustle allows her full autonomy over her environment, which is as an umpire in little league. 

Carol has Forrest in the palm of her hand sexually, as she enchants him with her looks and also her willingness to indulge his fetish for being “powerhoused,” which mostly includes Carol sitting all her weight on his face, pretending to bully him as a young pool boy and using him as a sex robot that recharges with her riding him, eliciting a robot arm motion even staying in character while having sex. In between encounters, Carol gets Forrest to pay for things on Floyd’s behalf, which is secretly to shield his already crushed self-esteem that is omnipresent in every episode, like taking out life insurance for Floyd. Forrest is caught in the middle of an affair and the alleged murder of his best friend due to a complete loss of identity and purpose. When detectives wonder why he engaged in the affair, he reveals he had an on-air episode during the weather report, where he suddenly became motionless, then did an impromptu karate move before yelling “Beware!” and then went back into the weather like nothing happened. He explains how being a weatherman is unfulfilling because everyone gets their weather from their phone, rendering his career pointless, so he likens his actions to wondering what underwater sex would be like since he has never had it. The “Porn Positive” female detective tells him it isn’t as good as it looks, to which he says that is the point. He explains that it would be nice to try underwater sex and realize it isn’t great with a partner who agrees that indeed there was too much friction. He believes stuff like that means you are still learning, growing and experiencing life. It’s about being present. So at that moment, he decided to cheat on his wife. 

What makes DTF St. Louis unique is its ability to set up an ordinary world in appearance and deliver a punchline from its character underneath that feels sincere and human in the weirdest ways possible. Floyd French kisses a man who matches him on DTF even though he is straight to spare his feelings. Number one suspect Forrest is caught creating a dating profile that led Floyd to the place of his death the night of his murder, but it was a larger scheme to get a guy to get aroused by Floyd in order to give his self-esteem a lift. Floyd entertains getting a guy hard because of the honesty a boner conveys and because he is so starved of human connection and feeling wanted. 

At its core, DTF St. Louis is about the lengths people will go to just to not be lonely and the lengths people will unfortunately go to if they feel lonely long enough. The season finale ends with solving the mystery of who killed Floyd, which was himself after ingesting a lethal amount of the fictional drug Amphezyne, which Floyd convinces Forrest to get for him to help him get an erection, even though higher doses could kill him when mixed with his Peyronie’s medications. 

In a devastating final moment of Floyd’s life, Forrest is there seeing if his strong but admittedly confused feelings of love toward Floyd can be sexual; the two dance in their underwear at the poolhouse trying to ignite a spark before Forrest breaks down, apologizing that he isn’t feeling what he thought he would. This final rejection, after Forrest paid someone to get aroused by Floyd to build his self-esteem, backed out after seeing how out of shape he was, along with Richard telling him off for discovering his secret on DTF, brought him to complete isolation. He  killed himself alone, scratching out his face in the Playgirl magazine he was in back in his youth. 

Harbour, Bateman and Cardellini thrive in their roles, showing how devastating and alone the people you love the most can make you feel. With the case being open and shot in St. Louis, hopefully show creator Steven Conrad can follow the example of fellow HBO show White Lotus and create an anthology series born from the base of the complicated dynamics of dating apps rather than luxury hotels across the world. —Sean Rinn

Check out more reviews from Sean Rinn:
South Park’s Surprising Civil Duty
Screenings So Bad: A Secondhand Screenings Special