Note: This article contains spoilers from “DTF St. Louis” Episode 6.
Like its characters’ lives, there are two halves to “DTF St. Louis.” There is the messy, blurred-lines love triangle between Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman), Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) and the latter’s wife, Carol Love-Smernitch (Linda Cardellini), all of which plays out in flashback. And then there is the present-day investigation into Floyd’s mysterious death, which is headed by the show’s odd-couple detective duo, Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins) and Special Crimes Officer Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday).
Homer is an old-school TV detective. He’s got the trench coat and glasses and the monotone voice, as well as the ability to imagine the worst in people. He is good at his job, and also wholly unprepared to see the full, lonely and horny mess that Floyd, Clark and Carol all got caught in. That is where Jodie, a “porn-positive” woman who wears Church clothes and has a kink-friendly marriage, as well as a dogged hunger for the truth, comes in.
The two take center stage in “DTF St. Louis” Episode 6, titled “The Denny’s Plan,” which was once again written and directed by series creator Steven Conrad. After coming to the conclusion that Clark was not responsible for Floyd’s death, the two reconvene with the St. Louis weatherman to get to the truth. The episode’s final moment, the realization that Clark’s planned, orchestrated Tiger Tiger meet-up for Floyd fell through, leads Jenkins’ Detective Homer to ask a question that directly sets up the “DTF St. Louis” finale next week.
Why did Floyd go to the Kevin Kline Community Pools if he knew no one was going to be there?
Viewers will have to wait seven days to find out the answer to that mystery. But it is a testament to how well “DTF St. Louis” has pulled off the unlikely alchemy between its two lead detectives that the moment, as well as every other revelation that Jodie and Homer have uncovered leading up to this, lands with as much weight as it does.
“I still can’t put my finger on it. It was one of those things you have to trust and just do the scenes and see where they lead you, and they led us to a good place by the end of this,” Jenkins told TheWrap, reflecting on his character and Sunday’s odd chemistry together.
Jenkins is quick to give credit to Conrad and the creator’s ability to handle information in a way that is not just elegant but also dramatically satisfying.
“It’s art. There’s a real art to his writing. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to write exposition. It’s hard to write foreshadowing,” Jenkins said. “You see bad writing all the time where they’ll say stuff like, ‘You’re my brother, and do you remember last night when our mom died?’ It’s that kind of stuff. Steve lets you find stuff out. It’s just organic. One character will say something and then someone will say something back and you, as the viewer, will go, ‘Oh!’ That’s so hard to do.”
“You don’t see flashbacks to Jodie and Homer’s lives before the show, and yet you know a lot about them by the end of this piece because they’ve done nothing but try to solve this case,” the actor added. “So you know who they are. And they’ve changed. That’s hard to write, and Steve’s just brilliant. The scripts are brilliant.”
Both Jenkins and Sunday look back on the scenes they shared with Bateman in Episode 6 — and all the episodes before that — with real fondness. “Jason’s really a great actor. After one take, I turned to him, I said, ‘How did you get so good?’ You just never know what he’s gonna do, and whatever you do, he always responds to it — or chooses not to,” Jenkins said.
“He’s really good, and it’s taking everything in your power to not just geek out as an actor when you’re working opposite him,” Sunday added, echoing her co-stars’ thoughts. “Because every moment is just so spontaneous.”
In Jodie, the level-headed, open-minded outcast detective at the center of “DTF St. Louis,” Sunday sees not only an intelligent professional but also someone who reflects the very themes Conrad wanted to explore in the HBO show.
“When I was auditioning, I was thinking of this character very traditionally, and then I booked it and I went out to Atlanta, showed up to my fitting and I saw a whole range of just Sunday Best clothing,” Sunday told TheWrap. “I was immediately taken aback, but I also immediately bought into it.”
“It speaks to Steve’s vision,” Sunday explained. “He had told me going into the fitting that he wanted her to stand out from the backdrop of the police station. She doesn’t belong here, right? And that’s because she’s really a servant of the truth, as opposed to just being a detective. She wants to find out what happened.”
“It spoke to the universe that Steve was building,” Sunday concluded. Or, as Jenkins put it in his conversation with TheWrap, “Beware of assumptions. That is what this whole thing is about.”
The finale of “DTF St. Louis” premieres Sunday, April 12 on HBO and HBO Max.
