Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched DTF St. Louis’ season finale on HBO or via HBO Max subscription, so be warned!
When a TV episode features Peter Sarsgaard blissfully skating through blinking roller rink lights to the good-time rhythms of The Archie’s “Comes the Sun,” you just don’t naturally expect that episode to end on one of the most gutting “murder” mystery reveals in recent memory. DTF St. Louis is all about such juxtapositioning, though. Thankfully, the finale was also all about delivering answers, and with minimal threads left dangling in the end.
Creator Steven Conrad did manage to buck some of my expectations throughout DTF St. Louis’ concluding chapter, titled “No One’s Normal. It Just Looks That Way From Across the Street.” Not all of my expectations, however, even though the episode’s reveal did indeed eclipse what my darker theories were about. Let’s take one more trip ye olde communitye poole house to go through some of the questions answered.
How Did Floyd Actually Die?
Back in Episode 3, I first questioned whether a twist was even imminent to answer for Floyd’s death, so fully thinking at the time that Carol would be revealed as an insurance-scamming murderer, or something along those lines. At the time, I speculated about the off chance that Floyd was intentionally responsible for his own death by poison, though I didn’t yet have all of the details necessary to support that thought process.
The successive episodes and finale filled in those blanks, however, as Floyd essentially had all of his love-based hopes and desires blown up in his face at every turn. Despite attempts to make the opposite happen, Carol seemed to have lost all sexual desire for her husband. Clark’s attempt to set him up via the titular app went belly-up, literally, when Chris Perfetti’s character rejected Floyd based on sight. Then, when it looked like his BFF Clark might be willing to engage in more than just friendship and dancing around in tighty-whities, even that fell apart.
The heartbreaking last straw for Floyd — something I definitely didn’t see coming — was seeing his stepson Richard outside the pool house, with the boy clearly disturbed by everything he’d just witnessed with Clark. At that point, Floyd realized all avenues to happiness had been tarred over, and he signed an “I Love You” to Richard before downing the rest of his over-medicated drink. Which, in the scheme of things, is perhaps the most f--ked up thing Floyd could have done in that moment, considering the potential trauma involved.
Who knows what might have happened if Richard never showed up that night? If he’d just confessed to his mom early on about hearing Floyd plans, could she have stepped in for a last-ditch effort to revive his will to live? It’s impossible to know.
What Was Carol's Sealed Record About?
Throughout watching Carol's struggles with love, work and money, I've held strong to my belief that some event from her past would play heavily into her role in Floyd's death. I was convinced that it had something to do with Richard's father, and had all the confidence in the world that Episode 5 revealing Carol's sealed record would be the set-up to a gamechanging reveal. Not so gamechanging as opinion-changing, though.
As it turns out, Carol's record revealed her to be the Jean Valjean of DTF St. Louis, as she was caught shoplifting food as a youth, though for nourishment and desperation purposes, as opposed to her being any kind of a troublemaker. The finale doubled-down on Carol's financial perspective when some of her happiest moments were spent buying things to redecorate RIchard's room, something that she'd previously been unable to afford. (I can imagine she'd be just as happy to hear her umpiring evaluation from her teen supervisor Stephen Queece.)
So it would seem that many of Carol's actions throughout the season were committed with mostly a financial upswing (and her son's comfort) as her motivation. I'm sure the sex with Chuck wasn't the worst bonus, but she definitely made money a focus of that relationship by bringing up her debt and Floyd's life insurance on multiple occasions.
Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what Carol's life insurance angle was if she wasn't trying to get that payout sooner rather than later. Was it that she genuinely expected Floyd's health to plummet without the added boner meds?
I also still think Carol hit "What a bitch" territory every time she ran with her "Can you speak up?" ploy that came from her self-help tapes. So that didn't change here, especially when she gave up on it immediately after Det. Jodie called her out on it.
What Was Clark's Motivation In All Of This?
Perhaps it wasn't so surprising to learn that Jason Bateman's Clark, whose only desires on display throughout the season have been tied to banging Carol and hanging out with Floyd (as opposed to his own family), was just...lonely. Like, the loneliest kind of lonely.
Instead of harboring even an iota of ill will towards Floyd, Clark seemingly only wanted the best for his friend, to the point where serving that goal helped to fill the void in his own life. Unfortunately, while Clark's brain was behind the idea that fooling around with Floyd might be helpful, his physical reactions were not nearly as strong.
I think the rest of the Forrest family collectively counts as the most tragic character in this show, since they were all victims of Clark's infidelity. But something about the weatherman's journey feels similar, in that it was after he finally voiced his feelings about loneliness that literally everything in his life was stripped away. He might be a "free man" in the end, but at what cost?
What Actually Happened To Floyd's Bent Penis?
At face value, DTF St. Louis doesn't seem like the kind of show that would lean into the recurring gag of Floyd telling a long and winding Aristocrats-esque story about his bent-penis injury. And yet...
Thankfully, after multiple false starts, David Harbour's character finally landed the anecdote plane, sharing that his early-day job search, which transitioned into an embrace of sign language instruction, led to an evening argument with Carol that left her in tears. Carol herself described that day as one of the worst, but with Floyd's genitals having nothing to do with it; he might have other thoughts.
As it turns out, Richard took major offense to seeing his mother crying, and took a baseball bat to Floyd's groin later that night. Which presents a strange cycle where Richard was tangentially involved in two of Floyd's lowest moments. Hopefully nobody lets him be a pall bearer, or that casket is getting dropped and flipped open.
Now that DTF St. Louis' biggest questions have been answered, we can look forward to other mysteries hitting the 2026 TV schedule and beyond. Such as...why hasn't HBO branded a line of Modern Love Roller Rinks yet?
