‘DTF St. Louis’ Episode 4 Recap: The Thunder Boys

PHoto: HBO Max

Floyd Smernitch was wonderful. That’s the idea, anyway. His best friend, Clark Forrest, thought so. His stepson, Richard, thought so too. Why wouldn’t they? Floyd lavished attention on them without judgment, dedicating his life to enriching theirs. In exchange he asked for nothing they weren’t able to freely give.

What if you’re Carol Love-Smernitch, though? Tens of thousands of dollars in debt thanks in large part to Floyd’s inability to get his act together, you find the things you want to improve your quality of life — “nicer plates and bowls for the household” and “more grown-up furniture for Richard” are repeated like mantras — maddeningly out of reach. That’s to say nothing of the more important stuff, like tuition for a private school where Richard won’t be so left out. They’ve got to cut corners and say “no way José” (repeatedly) to excess spending untIl then.

Of course it’s wonderful to see how much Floyd believes in her son’s potential, but from where she’s sitting he’s also helping to squander it. She has to get a second job to make ends meet, working as an umpire — a job she dislikes, in a sport she barely understands, taking orders from teenagers. This prevents her from being there for her son when he vandalizes the dairy aisle of a grocery store in hilarious fashion (well, hilarious to me, anyway)…which he’s doing despite Floyd telling her how great the private conversations he and Richard are having in lieu of therapy are going.

At the end of the day she’s sitting exhausted in the backyard when Floyd comes over to tell her the umpire outfit is a turnoff. Then the landscapers that Floyd promised to cancel because they can no longer afford them show up, leaf blowers roaring. The tears that were already flowing from Carol’s eyes devolve into full-blown sobbing. She can’t count on this man for anything. Do nice guys finish last? Who can say — but the women who marry them sure do, from where Carol is sitting. The overall effect of the scene is like watching someone get punched, hard, while they’re already down for the count.

All this happens before the opening titles. It’s a knockout cold open, one which takes the drama’s least sympathetic character and reframes the story from her perspective. Now we see why the officious, mendacious, successful, put-together Clark seemed like not just a breath of fresh air but an actual lifeline for Carol, and why lovable loser Floyd was only sporadically lovable where Carol is concerned. 

And this is just one of several truly masterful sequences in this episode, which moves from strength to strength. Floyd and Clark take a romantic — there’s no other way to put it — “wine bike trip” together, pedaling their ridiculous recumbents and sharing increasingly intimate sentiments about their lives while stopping every so often for another half liter or so of tastings. Floyd describes himself as having “a bird heart” — constantly aflutter, but with no ability to take wing and fly. 

It’s here that Clark advances his and Carol’s idea for him to start covering some of Floyd’s bills, especially a life insurance policy Carol makes Clark repeatedly promise not to tell her about. But the sequence is more notable for its depiction of how two grown men really can love each other as friends, a love as deep as any other kind. That the figures involved are comical makes the results no less poignant.

Or ridiculous, when that’s called for. Later in the episode we’re treated to an entire rap performance, in which Clark and Floyd — still on those goddamn bikes — refer to themselves as “the Thunder Boys” and talk about how Floyd is “gonna ace that motherfuckin’ life insurance physical.” This is both massive departure from the tone of the rest of the show, and a completely believable thing these two doofues would do together. I was half surprised the “performance” appeared to exist only in the moment, not preserved in a video saved to Floyd’s phone and now being watched by Homer and Plumb in their eerie police station.

In between the biking, though, Floyd takes time to take Richard to the school where Clark will secretly be paying his tuition. Richard straight-up tells Floyd he’s a good dad figure, the kind of comment a stepfather can dine out on for a lifetime. Again, whether or not Floyd Smernitch was wonderful is a matter of perspective.

In fact, that’s the angle Carol works in order to swear Clark to secrecy. She’d like to have a happy, healthy sex life with wonderful Floyd again, despite how his “weird dick” and self-esteem issues keep him from “popping boners.” For that reason, and surely for no other, Clark can’t let Floyd know that Carol knows about any of this .

In the present, however, Detectives Plumb and Homer are privy to little to none of this. Plumb keeps wondering what the mystery fifth key is on Floyd’s keychain, and how to prove to her bespectacled older colleague that Floyd really wasn’t out to meet guys on DTF St. Louis, as Homer’s theory of the case dictates. 

So they get back in touch with Modern Love in the white-on-white roller rink he owns and performs in. With that marvelous purring cadence that only Peter Sarsgaard is capable of delivering, Modern Love explains that this isn’t a matter of Floyd being a “normal guy” seeking a thrill, since there’s no such thing as normal at all. 

That said, he backs up Clark’s story and confirms that Floyd wasn’t really into their parking-lot kiss after their breakfast date. But hey, these things happen. “No one knows what they’re doing with each other,” he explains to the cops. “We find our way, and it can be clumsy.” This is what PO boxes at places like Mailboxes Etc. are for — so that people can clumsily find their way in private.

That’s the break in the case both Plumb and Homer, now a true believer in his younger colleague’s instincts, need. The key is clearly for a PO box, which they find in a preposterously framed grid of boxes stretching high above their heads. They don’t find Playgirls or love letters or dildos — they find Floyd’s secret life insurance policy, which pays out at over a million dollars in the event of his death. Suddenly, the missus has a motive even Homer can agree on.

In one final twist, we flash back to Floyd paying a visit to the no-tell motel where Clark and Carol have their liaisons. In what seems like it had to have been prearranged with Clark — though not with Carol — he hides in the closet Blue Velvet style and prepares to watch his wife and his best friend play out Clark’s pool boy fantasy. It’s another memorable image in what is fast becoming one of my favorite shows of the year.