Sunday Pages: "DTF St. Louis"

A limited series by Steven Conrad

Dear Reader,

The seventh and final episode of DTF St. Louis, the superb limited series that wrapped up last Sunday, is titled “No One’s Normal. It Just Looks That Way From Across the Street.” This is both 1) a cute aphorism one of the characters says when being questioned by the two detectives and 2) the theme of the show.

No one could be more normal, when viewed from the other side of the cul-de-sac, than Clark Forrest, the local TV weatherman. He works for a broadcast channel big enough to provide a good living but small enough to not be that big of a deal. He has a wife and two daughters. He has a lovely home in the Missouri suburbs. He rides his bicycle to work. He’s a nice guy. And he’s played by that most normal-seeming of actors, Jason Bateman.

But things are not as they first appear. His house is sterile. His relationship with his family is shallow and disconnected. His bicycle is recumbent. There is a Clark Forrest billboard he sees on his way to work, where he’s shown holding up a cartoon sun, with the caption LET THE SUNSHINE IN; as we soon discover, this is less about Clark delivering sunshine to St. Louis and more about Billboard Clark giving IRL Clark a direct order.

DTF St. Louis is hard to write about without dropping spoilers. It’s hard to write about, period, because it defies classification. The show is funny, but not really a comedy; emotionally moving, but not your typical drama; centered around a whodunnit, but not exactly a mystery; set in a real and very specific place, but simultaneously in a fictitious and nebulous suburb; named for a hook-up app, and replete with what TV Guide might call “sexual situations,” most of them stemming from a crooked penis, but not remotely erotic; and, because it is written and directed by Steven Conrad, the mad genius who gave us 2015’s A++ series Patriot (which, if you have not seen that show, start watching it immediately, do not pass go, do not collect $200): quirky, smart, profound, heartbreaking, and delightful—all at once. It’s not what you think it will be, going in. It’s not even what you think it will be after watching the first episode. Because there is nothing quite like it.

The name of the show is also the name of the aforementioned hook-up app. For those unfamiliar—which I was until E1—“DTF” is a similar abbreviation to “WTF,” but with “down to” instead of “what the.” The plot revolves around the close, and abnormally intimate, new friendship that blossoms between Clark and Floyd Smernitch, the TV network’s new sign language interpreter, who is so nice, so kind, so considerate, that his goodness becomes his fatal flaw.

Floyd has a big gut that he’s constantly making excuses for—and that never shrinks, despite the duo spending an inordinate amount of screen time exercising—and a terrible bushy mustache. The pure, unadulterated, almost childlike kindness radiating off him makes him lovable, but not at all sexy; that he suffers from Peyronie’s disease doesn’t help in that regard. This is a man you want to protect from harm, not get busy with. And that is the cause of much of his deep melancholy. David Harbour’s all-in—we might even say “full on”—performance as Floyd is so convincing that I can’t believe it’s the same guy about whom Lily Allen wrote “Pussy Palace.”

Complicating matters, Floyd’s wife, Carol Love-Smernitch, whom he adorably calls “Carol Love,” begins having an affair with Clark almost as soon as she meets him. She works in some vague capacity in accounting, and monetary concerns are her primary driver; she moonlights as a Little League umpire, for extra cash. She’s a scrapper, a survivor, and a good mother to Richard, her teenage son from a previous marriage, who has special needs. (Her ex-husband was, we’re told, in sign language, a “real fucking asshole.”)

Carol is a tragic figure. Her sadness, imbued with a sort of fatalistic hopelessness, seeps from her pores. She’s the most complex of the three characters in this only-seems-normal-from-across-the-street love triangle, and Linda Cardellini hits all the notes beautifully, endearingly.

When Floyd turns up dead (at the community pool named, for reasons never explained, for Kevin Kline), in what looks like a homicide, two detectives begin investigating—one, Homer, from the city of St. Louis (Richard Jenkins); one, Jodie, from the town of Twyla (Joy Sunday). They, too, are fantastic; Jenkins might be the highlight of the show.

As I said, it’s hard to write about DTF without giving too much away. But, at the risk of ruining the experience, here are some thoughts and observations:

St. Louis, the city, is right there in the title of the show. But we don’t actually see St. Louis. The billboard sequence could be anywhere—and was, in fact, shot in Georgia. Nothing centers this in actual St. Louis. There is no Arch. There is no shot of the stadium where the Cardinals play. It’s generic. And the suburb, called Twyla, is made up entirely. The lobby and rooms at the police department are lit like a Caravaggio. The bar where the detectives hang out could be a salon at Charlottenburg Palace. Why St. Louis, then? Is it a nod to the canonized king Louis IX of France, who participated in the Albigensian Crusade that eliminated the Cathars from Languedoc? Or is the invocation of this long-dead saint intended merely as a stark contrast to “DTF”—the sacred touching the profane, à la “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” or Miracle on 34th Street?

Conrad plays around with the time sequence. What is initially presented in a certain order winds up being non-sequential. Gaps in the action are backfilled as the episodes go on. This is done to great effect, to ramp up the suspense and whet our curiosity. What seems like it will be a big deal winds up being trivial, and what seems trivial is anything but. It’s a master class in how to tell a story, on how to play with, and how to thwart, our expectations.

Without exception, all of the characters, major and minor—even the weird dude who turns up courtesy of the ill-advised “Denny’s plan;” even Homer, once his grouchy façade melts away—are nice people, kind people, considerate people. All of them care about others. All of them want to connect. But in the end, the kindness doesn’t help them, doesn’t save them. Like a recumbent bike, niceness will only get you so far.

The show is about middle age—middle-aged people navigating the period of life when ardor cools, kids grow up, friends get cancer, parents die, debts accumulate, lines of work obsolesce, life choices disappoint, bodies break down, and opportunities for re-invention are fewer and farther between. Even the likable meteorologist on the billboard who promises sunshine is stuck under overcast skies. How to get back our mojo? How to locate the confidence, the footloose-and-fancy-freedom, of our youth? Is that even possible? Or is it, as Carol would say, “No way, Jose on that?”

In one of the more memorable scenes in the show, “Modern Love,” the gay roller rink owner and habitual user of the DTF app—played to perfection by Peter Sarsgaard—is talking to the two detectives. He is trying to explain the appeal of the app—its purpose, why it’s good. “What do you hope for from DTF encounters?” Homer asks him, and he replies:

Do you remember in school that they had recess? School can be hard for some kids. It can be hard to concentrate on something difficult for that long a period of time. So at some point during the school day, they just stop the thing, let you go outside and have fun.

But at some point, the tasks get harder, like algebra, chemistry, whatever. But there’s no more recess. It’s gone. You know, they don’t even tell you. It’s just gone.

And it never comes back.

The show is also about connection. With the exception of Joy Sunday’s Jodie, who is “porn positive” and has a loving husband she seems to have a great relationship with—but who is also, significantly, a generation or two younger than the other characters—these are lonely people. Clark Forrest is lonely. Floyd Smernitch is lonely. Carol Love-Smernitch is lonely. Richard is lonely. At its best, DTF St. Louis, the app, can bring people closer together. The risk is that it will instead drive them further apart.

Clark and Floyd genuinely love each other. They admire each other. They find joy in one another’s company. But they can’t be everything for one another, because that’s just not how they’re wired. Biology defeats them.

And as “Modern Love” points out, there’s no such thing as normal:

MODERN LOVE: Mm-hmm. No one knows what they’re doing with each other. We find our way, and it can be clumsy. ( chuckles ) Yeah.

JODIE: “No one’s normal. It just looks that way from across the street.” This is your saying?

MODERN LOVE: I guess so. Uh, you know, it’s just something I pass around to the DTF community to encourage people to care a little less about what the neighbors think. That’s why God invented PO boxes.

HOMER: That’s why what?

MODERN LOVE: Okay. Well, in these strip malls in the suburbs, karate, tanning salons, Mail Boxes Etc. You ever been in one?

HOMER: Sure.

MODERN LOVE: What’s in there?

HOMER: PO boxes.

MODERN LOVE: Yeah. All along the wall, PO boxes. It’s for privacy. That’s where all the dіldоs go, sir. (to Jodie) Yeah, you know, you get it.

JODIE: Yes. That’s where all the dіldоs go.

MODERN LOVE: Mail Boxes Etc. They should call it Dіldоs Etc.

Finally, and crucially, DTF St. Louis is about financial difficulties. About debt and bankruptcy and the hopelessness of being economically crushed. And—although it never makes the explicit connection—the relationship between financial hardship and libidinal desiccation.

Conrad spoke about this in an interview with The Wrap:

Money is the quiet plight of so many people’s lives that robs their sleep, because you can’t find a way out.

Obviously, the show also has middle age on its mind and middle age is a terrifying time because you have to confront the idea that you’re not going to get the promotion. The invention you’ve been working on is still in the garage. It’s still years and years away. The solution has eluded you and now you’re facing more years of the same, and the same isn’t the same anymore because suddenly the same is a sinking hole. So money, it just felt like an identifiable pressure and something that could ultimately be tied to sexuality. The show obviously has sex on the mind and those two things — money and sex — are two things that come swimming around in middle age, for sure.

Floyd in particular is keenly aware of his financial plight. The guilt and shame of it literally sap his will to live. Like, he’s so broke, he can’t even buy a board game at the toy store. To his new friend, he is open and forthcoming about his struggles with money:

FLOYD: Then my secrets are known.

CLARK: Like what?

FLOYD: Like I owe, like, 48 thousand dollars, easy. Probably more now. I mean, I don’t even look at the tax bills anymore. And like... Like that’s what I leave. Just that. It’s, like, not nothing; it’s worse. I worry about Richard. I worry about Carol. And you know, when you lie down in bed, you feel like your heart's supposed to rest, right? Your heart’s supposed to go... (shushes) And mine just races. It’s like I got, like, a bird heart.

CLARK: How?

FLOYD: They work so hard, you know, to fly, and their heart just races. My heart’s like that. It’s like a bird heart. But I can’t fly.

All of the effort, none of the reward.

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Back in the ancient history known as the Obama years, I was working on a novel that explored financial hardship, and the insidious psychological effect of debt. It never quite came together, but there are parts of it that worked. Pondering DTF St. Louis, I revisited some of the passages in that abandoned novel. Rather than spoil anything further about the limited series, I’m going to share two of these excerpts.

When the narrator comes clean to the reader about how much he owes, he says:

One hundred fourteen thousand four hundred eight dollars and ninety five cents. Because one hundred fourteen thousand four hundred eight dollars just isn’t enough. Like the national debt, like infinity, the number is frankly hard to wrap my mind around, not least because I can’t get a bead on it, it’s a moving target, never at rest, it grows bigger every day, without fail, fertilized by the super-charged guano of American capitalism.

This passage, I think, echoes how Floyd and especially Carol feel:

A study I came across a few years back determined that once a certain income threshold is reached, the relationship between money and happiness no longer correlates. I can’t recall the name of the university attached to the study, or where I read it—perhaps Iffat found it on Facebook and emailed it to me, the sole resident of Los Angeles not to have an account on that black hole of leisure time—nor do I remember what exactly the income threshold was. Fifty grand? Sixty? A number well north of the poverty line but at the same time attainable for most college-educated Americans. Once that certain amount of coin is banked, like magic, poof, the dollar ceases to be quite so almighty. Depressed millionaires remain depressed, and fancy-free folk who are just getting by remain fancy-free. Conclusion: just as all those schmaltzy songs on the radio claim, money cannot buy happiness. Note the study’s fine-print qualifier, though. Like craps tables in Atlantic City, there is a minimum. You must have some. Money is like food. You can only eat so much lobster at one sitting, no matter how much you enjoy that buttery dish. But if you don’t have enough to eat, eventually, you will wither and die. Money cannot buy happiness, but the lack of money, and the consequences of the emergency measures taken to stave off that lack, erodes happiness as surely as a nail in a glass of Coca-Cola will eventually dissolve to nothingness. Happiness cannot be purchased, not for all the gold in Fort Knox, but despair can be readily paid for on the installment plan. And so forth.

An adjective often used to describe debt is crushing. Although so common as to be cliché, I nevertheless find this word singularly apt. That horrible scene from The Crucible, condemned witch Giles Corey and the peine forte et dure at his trial, heavy stones piled on planks on his chest, and all he utters are the two words More weight until finally he is pressed to death, crushed beneath the dreadful mass of deaf and pitiless stones. I am Giles Corey. That may sound melodramatic, but it is so. I wake up every morning from my fitful sleep, and for the first fleeting moments am happy, or if not happy at least eager to smilingly greet the new day, and then the reality of my situation sets in, and I become Giles Corey, literally gasping for breath, pinned beneath the weight of my pressing obligations, the only way out to be full-on crushed, to meet my Maker, and with that sweet release to, as another old radio favorite puts it, break even. Our enlightened and evolved society has managed to devise a sophisticated means of torture that has the same psychological effect of the peine forte et dure, while keeping the stones metaphorical. Jesus was right to condemn the usurers.

More weight.

Alex Welch, who interviewed Conrad for The Wrap, makes an important point about DTF: “It is very rare to see characters in a show or movie who are financially struggling the way Carol and Floyd are. Their heads and mouths are basically just floating right at the water line the whole show.”

They are at the water line, yes, well put; they are almost drowning. Until Clark, who is well-off, helps them. Gives them a lifeline. Lets the sunshine in, if you will. But even then, it doesn’t really matter.

DTF St. Louis exposes everything. The sunshine is brought in. By the end of “No One’s Normal. It Just Looks That Way From Across the Street,” all of the characters’ secrets are known. We know about the crushing financial difficulties. We know about Carol’s humiliating criminal record. We know about Richard’s mental health issues. We know about Clark’s strange (and mostly vanilla) sexual “dreams.” We know about Floyd’s curved penis, and ultimately, we know how it got that way. The dirty laundry is all out in the open, displayed like the clean laundry on the clothesline behind the Smernitch house. It’s refreshing, if agonizing, to watch a show tackle themes we don’t usually see explored, with such brutal and unflinching honesty.

I am 53 years old now, just a few years younger than Steven Conrad. Live this long, and you bank enough failures, enough heartbreaks, enough losses, enough humiliations, enough regrets, enough times when you’re hurt someone’s feelings (or worse), enough squandering of money and time and energy and goodwill, that the sheer weight of all of it is its own sort of peine forte et dure. This is inevitable, when you’ve been on earth for five decades plus. There are plenty of positives, too, of course—but it’s human nature to focus on the negative. For me, I’ve found that the best way to not dwell on these moments of past weakness and shame and doubt and rue is to keep moving forward—especially now, in the Trump Redux, when living in the moment means engaging with the Straits of Hormuz, Donald as Jesus, and severed raccoon penises.

There’s no recess anymore—and there never will be again. Similarly, the United States of America we knew and loved is lost and gone forever. But that doesn’t mean that what comes next won’t be better. And it doesn’t mean we don’t have the power to make it happen.

Our hearts are still in it. And just because we have yet to fly doesn’t mean we never will.

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ICYMI

Alex Hall-Hall was our guest on The Five 8:

Jim Campbell was kind enough to have me on his podcast, which dropped this morning. We talked all things Epstein:

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PROGRAMMING NOTE

Next Sunday I will be speaking at the Writers Resist! benefit in Woodstock. It’s a great lineup. Please come out if you’re around.

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P.S.

We’re stuck with JD Vance. Chunk killed it with the animation this week: