It is the favorite miniseries ahead of the Emmys along with ‘Bronca 2’. Its five lead actors are nominated (David Harbor and Linda Cardellini have a good chance of winning), as is Steven Conrad’s script and direction. The best that can be said about ‘DTF St. Louis’ (HBO), given the current context of “algorithmic” fictions, is that it is unclassifiable. Is it a criminal intrigue? A comedy of corner humor? A family and marital drama? A dark satire on suburban America? A very sad reflection on the midlife crisis? A buddy movie? A love story?
‘DTF St. Louis’ stands out precisely for its heterodoxy, both tonal and narrative. As for the first, Conrad, creator of ‘Patriot’ (Prime Video) and the unreleased in Spain ‘Perpetual Grace, LTD’ (he also wrote ‘The Weather Man’, a film with which this series has more than one point in common), achieves a fabulous balance between drama, comedy and police intrigue. The same scene can start out as an absurd situation, drift towards discomfort, and end up revealing unfathomable sadness.
Conrad doesn’t redline or flash any of those record changes. He lets them coexist, sometimes even within the same conversation, trusting that it is the viewer, whom he does not treat as if he had the retention of a two-month-old baby, who decides whether what he is seeing is bizarre (that bike, for God’s sake), pathetic or moving.
Something similar happens with its structure. The series begins with the promise of a classic mystery: an event and an antithetical pair of police officers. But the whodunit is almost an excuse. Through interrogations, flashbacks and scenes that return again and again from different perspectives, ‘DTF St. Louis’ re(de)constructs the complex relationship between the (magnificent) protagonist trio: Floyd (Harbour), his wife Carol (Cardellini) and his friend Clark (Jason Bateman). Each new piece of the puzzle not only brings us closer to solving the mystery, but also changes what we thought we knew about the characters and their relationships.
Dosage of information for dramatic purposes or deceptions of a trilero scriptwriter? Conrad balances both. Although at times it comes dangerously close to the crudest manipulation, especially when it comes to the “femme fatale” character, it never falls squarely into the dirtiest trap. Play with our expectations, yes; but, in general, he does it in a very intelligent and elegant way.
In fact, that game with the point of view is the greatest success of the series. Almost everything that seems obvious ends up being more ambiguous than expected, especially relationships between men. As the title of the last episode says, ‘No One’s Normal. It Just Looks That Way From Across The Street’. That is the fascinating journey of knowledge that the series proposes: from the sidewalk in front of you to the other side of the door.
