DTF St. Louis Recap: That’s My Jamba Juice

DTF St. Louis
Snag It
Season 1 Episode 2
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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I can’t be the only one thinking DTF St. Louis is a Netflix show that somehow conned its way onto HBO’s coveted Sunday-night slot. It looks like a Netflix show — complete with what folks are not so affectionately referring to as “Netflix lighting” — stars three of the megastreamer’s most recognizable faces (maybe the most in David Harbour, give or take a Millie Bobby Brown), and its “wait till next week to find out” hooks are culled from a shoddy, incremental withholding of critical information.

What we’re left with is a weak structural foundation from which the three leads can cook. But, hey, they do cook. Especially Harbour, which checks out, seeing how showrunner Steven Conrad claims to have built the series around the actor’s perpetually warm, aw-shucks persona. “Snag It” kicks off with a second flashback to Clark and Carol’s diabolical meet-cute at Floyd’s neighborhood cornhole party. (I’m workshopping a new slang: “cornholed,” a.k.a. being cuckolded at a neighborhood cornhole party or some equivalent suburban lawn activity.) As soon as he picks up on Carol’s flattery and thinly veiled advances, Clark makes up a weird story about having a side gig as a demolition-business owner. Once Jason Bateman gets to the punch line of his lie — “They call me the ‘Bang Master’” — the whole thing sounds so silly that it’s difficult to parse whether he’s knowingly telling an absurd story for the sake of the double entendre or he really wants Carol to think he’s an alpha small-business owner. I can’t tell if this doesn’t land because I’m not quite locking into the show’s tone yet, or if the show itself is stumbling to strike a workable balance between its absurd comedic dialogue and its straight procedural, Netflix aesthetic?

Either way, Conrad’s love affair with the idea of David Harbour pops off as soon as we switch to Harbour, who manifests this nice guy so vibrantly in every scene, you almost forget he’s dead before we flash forward to the investigation. Conrad is full of wordy comic dialogue that often sings in its idiosyncrasy but also elicits little more than a chuckle. But both episodes so far have gotten a few killer guffaws out of me. This week’s included the reaction to Floyd’s overwhelming warmth and earnestness as he talks about taking up the kid’s dance lessons his stepson never took up, so he can bring some heat to his gig signing the hip-hop stage at a local music festival. The other was the dance class itself, brilliantly played by Harbour and the crew of hype children. And a great character beat as Clark looks on in befuddled admiration. Floyd was a guy who lived a rich life. Sure, he was cringe and a little cowardly and sometimes annoying, but his lust for life was infectious everywhere he went. The dance class also establishes him as a John Belushi–style hyperactive, overweight guy, which made me realize that “uncharacteristically athletic for body type” is one of my favorite character traits, both on TV and in real life. 

I’m not sure what we’re supposed to get out of Floyd’s unfinished Peyronie’s disease origin story. If it’s just meant to be a funny little character-study moment for Floyd — guy can’t help but help people and see the best in folks, but, like, abrasively — sure, that’s great. If there’s a Peyronie’s payoff later down the road, it’d better be juicy, no pun intended. 

I must say Jamba Juice makes for a hell of an effective bit of brand placement, narratively even. An adulterous pair of Waspy upper-middle-class whites talking in hypersexual code through the names of their “go-to” orders … it just works, you know? Not too shabby as “world building” either. This is also where we get further confirmation that Carol is the one leading this dalliance. Linda Cardellini walks toward Clark’s billboard (already one of the show’s favorite visual motifs) with a chilling look and air of determination. By the time we get to the baseball game and Carol gives Clark the go-ahead, “snag” a home-run beer held between the thighs, Clark also reveals himself as more passive and, by extension, more like the guy he’s cucking than Bateman’s confident patter might’ve suggested at first glance. 

Only Clark’s passivity seems more out of the boredom of having peaked at local-news celebrity status than anything else. At the next Jamba Juice date, Bateman suggests she do “tasks … on [her] phone” while she sits on his face — another standout guffaw moment of the episode — which is followed by the sad mundanity of actually playing out that scenario at the Quality Garden Suites. These middle-age social-climbing suburbanites, man, they never dream BIG enough. Nor do they see it coming when their extramarital fling coaxes them into jealousy by saying how great her husband is and how she could never leave him. 

Flash forward to the aftermath of Clark and Carol’s dream palace: Detectives Homer and Plumb are still quietly working at odds. For Homer, the case is coming together nicely and straightforwardly. A chat with DTF handle “Modern Love” (complete with “David Bowie in a dress” profile pic and played with an undeniable amount of ham by Peter Sarsgaard) confirms Floyd was meeting men on the DTF St. Louis platform. And, as luck would have it, “Tiger Tiger,” the DTF St. Louis profile linked to Floyd’s murder scene, belongs to Clark. So does a prescription for the same drug found in the pre-canned Bloody Mary that killed Floyd. Enough to make Clark’s arrest for the murder official. Richard Jenkins delivers the line “It’s a Palomar” with the veiled giddiness of an old office-bound cop whose only thrill in life has ever been the end of a case wrapped up tight like the strongest knot known to man.

But for Plumb, the investigation has just begun. Still hung up on the “Indiana Jones jackoff classics,” as Homer affectionately calls the Playgirl magazine from the crime scene, and upon Homer’s urgency, she pays a visit to Carol at home. Carol makes herself suspicious straight away, defensively demanding Plumb “speak up” every time she asks her guilty question. That’s become a worthwhile recurring thematic thread this episode: people covering up their guilt or any number of uncomfortable feelings with noise. The noise of the street. Of buzzing phones, cars running, the noise of everything going on inside our junk-filled heads at any minute. Then, the sound of our submission.

But it’s cold, naked (hehe) evidence that confirms Plumb’s suspicions. With a warrant to search the Smernitches’ hutch of financial papers, etc., she uncovers a copy of the Playgirl from the crime scene, only this one doesn’t have the subject’s face scratched out. Whaddayaknow, it’s a hunky, young Floyd (clearly a double and not Harbour with his li’l Smernitch out, I regret to inform). She also confirms by way of the gals at Jamba Juice that Carol is not a “Go-Getter” but, in fact, a “Watermelon Breeze.” So Midwest Barbie, am I right? Also, what sort of absolute psychopath would lie about their Jamba order?

As “Snag It” ends on Plumb cutting through the noise and finding evidence that Carol was the seducer and not the seducee, it doesn’t feel like the big revelation that the show thinks it is. And it leaves one with a feeling of a half-hour episode dragged out to an hour. Not a great feeling with which to leave a sophomore chapter in a seven-part miniseries. Still, “Snag It” gives us a clearer view of DTF St. Louis as delivering inspired moments and performances while structurally biting off more than it can chew.