DTF St. Louis Series Finale Nails the Tragic Ending With “No One’s Normal, It Just Looks That Way…”

Critic’s Rating: 4.45 / 5.0

4.45

Our struggle for connection is ongoing, and while it seems to spike in our youth, DTF St. Louis has explored how, even as adults, our desire for it can be all-encompassing.

When we’re kids, there are all kinds of opportunities to find it. We can fall down, brush ourselves off, get back up again, and keep going.

There are always more people around, and who knows, maybe one of them will be the person we’re seeking.

But then, you age, and whether you settle down or not, you lose your sense of self. Your body betrays you. You betray the ones you love, not with infidelity, but by changing.

The person you were morphs into someone you may not even like. Of course, it’s not always like that, but a significant portion of the population discovers there isn’t a magic solution to aging and retaining relationships.

That’s what we’ve seen play out on DTF St. Louis. How the sum of our existence crawls along with us, affecting everything about the life we’re trying to live.

It plays into our happiness, our success, and our sadness. Ultimately, DTF St. Louis wasn’t about an indictment of any one person for Floyd’s death, but how all of these factors played into it.

And here we are, at the end of the line, and dare I say, we, at the very least, got one modestly happy ending, and if Floyd were still around, it would be the one he wanted most of all.

I think it might have been during DTF St. Louis Season 1 Episode 1 that it first occurred to me that Floyd could have died by his own hand, but the sadness with which it would unfold never occurred to me.

Honestly, I didn’t expect Modern Love to come back into play. But as a commenter suggested, you don’t bring on Peter Sarsgaard if he doesn’t have a larger purpose.

Yet even his return didn’t make him a more significant player. He merely facilitated the truth that was in retreat, as those who loved Floyd the most were mostly unwilling to reveal it.

Homer and Plumb continued to follow breadcrumbs to solve the case, but in the end, there wasn’t really a case to solve. There were just people living their lives in the best way they knew how, trying to find happiness and running into more closed doors than open ones.

DTF St. Louis Season 1 Episode 5 revealed that Carol’s past might be worth looking into when she refused to answer a simple question: have you ever been convicted of a crime.

Well, Carol’s expunged crime was quite revealing, as it spoke to who she is today and why she was dissatisfied with Floyd’s inability to provide for the family.

She was caught stealing Charmin toilet paper at the age of 12. She grew up very poor, which is why she’s so hurt that they’re struggling financially. She wanted to provide for her family, but she couldn’t get her son more grown-up bedroom items.

She was so damn happy to finally get Richard the more adult items for the bedroom. I loved how she was making up ditties to express it. 

Floyd didn’t seem to recognize how important it was for her to do that for Richard. He had his own way of loving his stepson, but I can’t help but wish he’d paid more attention to Carol.

We still don’t know exactly why Richard had so many emotional issues, but they were serious enough to have had a permanent impact on their family.

Plumb wanted to know what happened to Floyd’s penis, but Carol refused to talk about it. She said that day ruined their lives, but it had nothing to do with whatever happened to Floyd’s dick.

She wasn’t exactly telling the truth.

Richard was angry at Floyd after hearing them discuss how, after a year’s worth of preparation, he didn’t want a job in finance. He wanted to focus on signing, which wouldn’t exactly provide the comfortable living Carol hoped for.

Floyd told Carol that they would always struggle. And those revelations swept up all the sexy fun stuff between them and took it away. It also made Carol cry.

That’s what Richard saw, and to express his anger, he later went to their bedroom, took a baseball bat to Floyd’s penis, and the rest, as they say, is history.

That explains a lot, including why Floyd and Richard were in counseling together. We knew something had happened, but the extent of it was left on the table until DTF St. Louis Season 1 Episode 7. 

That must have weighed on them both, and it gave greater meaning to their attempts to reconnect. It also suggested that Floyd understood how his decisions affected his family, even if he wasn’t willing to go the extra mile to provide a better life for them.

Then again, what is better, exactly?

For Carol, it was always going to be financial. Her upbringing cemented it. Floyd likely experienced things more attuned with Richard when he was growing up, which is why kindness and emotional connection were his focus.

We also discovered the truth behind the Tiger Tiger account, and it came from a place of love. 

One of the last conversations Clark and Floyd had was Clark trying to show Floyd what a good person he was, so caring, and that the work he does was more important than his own. Finally, we understood why Clark conjured up the deep-sea lie he told Carol.

He was embarrassed to be a weatherman. He saw it as a useless role, especially in light of the fact that you can have up-to-the-minute weather in the palm of your hand any time you want it.

So Clark saw something in Floyd that he wanted for himself. That sense of joy in the way he lived his life. They had nicknames for each other to express how they felt. Floyd called Clark “Sunshine.” Clark called Floyd “Bitchin’ Heart of Gold.” Their relationship was so meaningful.

Clark just wanted to matter to someone. Floyd reminded him about his family, but for Clark, it just wasn’t enough. He mattered to his family for 12 straight years, but he wanted to matter to someone else, too. And that’s why he was with Carol that summer.

But as much as his actions hurt Floyd, it was never his intention. If anything, he wanted his friend to really feel the love he had for him.

The Tiger Tiger account was an attempt to show Floyd, after the awful sexual fiasco from DTF St. Louis Season 1 Episode 6, that he was enough. But just like Floyd’s turn with Carol at the Quality Garden, it blew up spectacularly.

Faux Tiger Tiger, aka Kevin, wasn’t a bad kid at all. He was sweet, having decided not to potentially further humiliate Floyd if he couldn’t get aroused, which he was pretty sure he wouldn’t.

But he did set up the meet at the pool. He called it off, and when he talked with Homer and Plumb, he wondered why Floyd would have still gone. 

Our theory when we began putting it all together — the pool, the magazine, the bloody mary — was that Floyd wanted to be with himself to see if he could arouse himself.

But even that wasn’t quite right.

Because Clark told Floyd to go to the pool in the morning. The Tiger Tiger thing may have fallen apart, but he promised there would be a surprise there. Clark told him to take his Playgirl spread. Floyd even wondered if he should take his curve cocktail, and Clark said to be ready for anything.

Clark had no alibi because he was at the pool with Floyd. He thought he could give Floyd what he needed. He probably thought he might give himself what he needed, too.

After all, we have seen Clark trying to sift through his complex feelings after he was assaulted by kids in his youth. The way he associated the weight of boys on top of him with sexual pleasure. How he honed in on the guy next door during the corn hole party.

So Clark decided to just go for it with his complex “friendship feelings” for Floyd. He admitted his love and admiration for Floyd, who was full of love and comedy. He felt safe with Floyd. He witnessed the things that Floyd did for others, and it filled his heart.

Clark even said he didn’t feel safe with the slender Playboy-model version of Floyd that Floyd remembered, but with Floyd, exactly as he was at that moment. Clark wanted his friend to love himself like he loved his friend. 

To find that kind of friendship later in life is such a gift. If only they had all been strong enough to see it through. 

I wasn’t too far off about how things went down with Richard, and he was a catalyst in Floyd’s death, even if it was unintended. 

Richard’s night was terrible. He saw Tiger Tiger’s invitation to the pool, and it sent him into a tailspin. He wound up in the hospital, and later, Carol sat vigil over her troubled son. But once she fell asleep, he managed to go to the pool, and that’s where he found Floyd.

But Floyd wasn’t alone. He wasn’t pleasuring himself. Nobody was being pleasured, even if it might have looked like it from the outside. 

Richard saw two adult men dancing in their underwear, and nobody would have been blamed for questioning what they saw. 

It just so happened that Richard revealed himself to Floyd moments after Clark left Floyd alone at the pool. Clark had the best intentions, but he wasn’t gay. He loved his friend and had been trying to understand who the hell he was, but when they took a step in that direction, it all became clear.

If Richard hadn’t spotted them in the window, things might have ended differently. 

Floyd wasn’t going to suffer lasting consequences because he and his best friend weren’t going to have a romantic relationship. 

The love they felt was real, but it was friendship and nothing more. They cared so much for each other that they were willing to consider the alternative. But it just wasn’t their destiny. 

Their friendship could have been their ultimate salvation.

But Richard arrived and misinterpreted it, and after the night of violence he had already experienced, seeing it was too much for him.

Yet Richard didn’t kill Floyd. 

Floyd wanted to matter, and he loved being a father. So when he saw the look on Richard’s face, Floyd told Richard he loved him in sign language (which Richard mistook for “rock on”) and gulped the entire Bloody Mary, knowing damn well it was the last thing he’d do on this planet.

He did take his life, seemingly to give those he loved a way out. It was a misguided and permanent solution to a temporary problem. 

Yet even though it was a terrible ending, and Richard could have been scarred for life by it, what Richard got from Floyd was impactful. You could tell, when he proudly showed everyone what Floyd showed him on the park bench, that the love Floyd shared with Richard had changed his life.

And what more could a parent really ask for? 

Dangling Threads

Steven Queece, Carol’s umpire manager, came into play, which made his previous appearances more significant. 

He awarded Carol the Umpire of the Year award. It wasn’t mailed; it was placed in her box when he did his paper route.

He had such kind things to say about her. He had noticed she had stayed to learn about the game and had taken great care of the kids, which was his main predictor of the award’s recipient. She would give kids who struck out a pat on the back and would say, “You’ll get ’em next time.” It didn’t go unnoticed.

He was also her alibi for Floyd’s death, as he saw her sleeping in the living room when he delivered the award, which Carol never received, mind you, since Plumb took it from the box before she received it.

And the title of the episode, “No one’s normal. It just looks like that from across the street,” was spoken more than once, and it’s rather comforting. 

Homer was shocked by what goes on behind closed doors. Whether Plumb knew all about sexual fetishes because she was porn positive or by way of this investigation, who knows? But the whole conversation at the end of the hour was hilarious.

She told Homer that he was so normal that it was weird. I mean, there are worse things that one could aspire to, right, than being normal? 

What can I say? Vanilla is my favorite flavor. I’ve experienced enough to know that I’ll take chocolate syrup and sprinkles, but I don’t want anyone dumping pineapple on top, either. We all have varying degrees of normal.

We didn’t get answers to everything, but darn close. Considering the point of the show was broader and more personal than a mere murder mystery, that says a lot.

The people on DTF St. Louis wanted connection, and in their attempts to find it, they found pain instead.

I’m not even sure that Carol will get the money from the life insurance policy. They probably don’t even need to prove Floyd took his own life. After all, he was taking drugs that he wasn’t prescribed. Surely, there is a caveat in the coverage for something like that in a million-dollar-plus policy. 

After all that, she’ll probably still have nothing, but at least her debt is cleared, and Floyd isn’t there to make more.

And Clark’s family, which was at best an afterthought and at worst completely invisible to him, left him with nothing but the shell of his home remaining. Looking back, I wonder if they left him before he was arrested. If I recall correctly, Clark’s phone call to her from jail went unanswered. 

Do we even know how long he was in jail? The way the story unfolded made it hard to tell. He and Carol never met up after Floyd’s death. That’s likely because Clark was in jail, unable to do much of anything.

Even what could have been a decent relationship between Clark and Carol could never happen after all they went through. 

But Richard? He’s the hope Floyd left behind, the proof that little things count. Striving for connection in this massive world sometimes lands exactly as you’d hope.

DTF St. Louis was billed as a dark comedy, but it’s far more soulful than that. Shows like this don’t come around often. I’d say it’s up there with Succession in its ability to tap into the darker aspects of humanity with sharp insight laced with compassion.

Real life isn’t a comedy or a drama. It’s not always beautiful, but it’s not always ugly, either. There’s a bit of everything in each of us, and DTF St. Louis captured those nuances in the most entertaining way.

I’d like to see Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini acknowledged during awards season, and if they see fit to honor Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday in supporting categories, and Steve Conrad for bringing it all to life, I’d be thrilled.

So, what did you think of the conclusion? Were the loose ends tied up enough for you? Did the truth of Floyd’s death strike you right in the heart?

Drop me a comment below. Thank you for taking this journey with me!