In many ways, HBO’s latest limited series DTF St. Louis, which drops its finale on Sunday night, is an inverse White Lotus. While the latter asks us to figure out which of its characters will be murdered by season’s end, DTF tells us who our victim is in its first episode but leaves us in the dark as to who killed him and why. Mike White’s anthology series has spent each of its seasons highlighting a fresh batch of obscenely wealthy people visiting a new, glamorous, exotic locale, but the main characters on DTF are stuck grappling with their financial woes in a dead-end suburb (the fictional Twyla) of decidedly not-exotic St. Louis.
There are some key similarities in the craft of these modern murder mysteries, though. Despite the deaths at the core of them, both shows are deeply funny. And like The White Lotus, DTF St. Louis — which centers around a kinky (and potentially fatal) love triangle involving a bored weatherman named Clark (Jason Bateman), his ASL interpreter/best friend Floyd (David Harbour) and Floyd’s wife Carol (Linda Cardellini) — is extremely smart. The writing by creator Steven Conrad deserves credit, naturally, but perhaps the best example of the narrative genius at work here is the way the show uses music to enhance its storytelling.
The vast majority of the songs featured on DTF St. Louis are from the late ’60s and ’70s, a conscious choice from music supervisor Kevin J. Edelman that becomes more and more obvious with each new episode. The show is set in the present day, but the music we hear is all the type of soul and classic rock you’d find on any oldies station, which drives home just how stuck in the past these characters are. Floyd yearns to go back to a time when he was younger and thinner and still had a healthy sex life with Carol. (We learn early in the series that a mysterious penile injury left him with Peyronie’s disease and the inability to “get full-on” in the bedroom.) Clark, too, is stuck in a sexless marriage, but as a weatherman, he’s also a relic from the past; as he grimly points out, there’s no need for weathermen anymore when everyone has weather apps on their phones. Meanwhile, Carol is stuck with a husband who can no longer satisfy her sexually, a son who needs to attend an expensive private school due to his borderline personality disorder and a never-ending supply of unpaid bills.
The only two somewhat modern songs we hear on the show — Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss” and Todrick Hall’s “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” — both come during Floyd’s hip-hop dance class scenes. The only time he truly feels uninhibited — free of any day-to-day stressors and comfortable in his body — is when he’s dancing, so it makes sense that these moments would get special sonic treatment. Similarly, Clark and Floyd gleefully improvise a rap as “The Thunder Boys” while bro-ing out and riding recumbent bicycles side by side.
The theme song of DTF St. Louis, on the other hand, does a lot of heavy lifting on the other end of the spectrum. “Let the Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension, thanks to its association with Hair, will always call to mind hippie counterculture and the “free love” movement of the late ’60s. It’s the perfect choice for DTF, as it alludes to the billboard with Clark’s face on it that he drives by every morning, which reads, “Hey St. Louis, let the sunshine in,” but it also hints at the somewhat dated way in which our main characters are seeking sexual liberation (that is, using a hookup app to cheat on their spouses).
What’s perhaps most impressive about the needle drops on DTF is how far beyond something as instantly recognizable as “Let the Sunshine In” it’s willing to go. In episode 5, we’re treated to a flashback scene of Floyd interviewing for a job in Chicago. After a hilarious accident that’s too convoluted to get into here, he’s got two casts on his wrists, and he struggles to open his umbrella before a gust of wind picks it up, allowing him to catch it in his hand right as “Rainbows” by Dennis Wilson begins to play. As the deep cut from the former Beach Boy’s 1977 solo record Pacific Ocean Blue continues, Floyd looks up and stares into the window of a center for the deaf and smiles. Just like that, he’s found his purpose — the rainbow after a downpour that included a bad job interview and two broken arms. (Interestingly, despite never being used in a movie or TV show for nearly 50 years, “Rainbows” is having a bit of a moment all of a sudden; the song was also prominently featured in a feel-good scene in Project Hail Mary, which opened the same weekend that the track was used on DTF.)
Yes, the show relies heavily on weather metaphors to hint at its characters’ states of mind. In addition to “Let the Sunshine In” and “Rainbows,” it has incorporated snippets of “The Sun Is Burning” by Simon & Garfunkel, “Sunshine Help Me” by Spooky Tooth, “Too Much Rain” by Carole King, two different renditions of “I Wish It Would Rain” (Marvin Gaye and The Temptations), “Rainy Day in June” by The Kinks, “Ain’t No Sun Since You’ve Been Gone” by Gladys Knight & The Pips, “Lightning’s Girl” by Nancy Sinatra, “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” by Frankie Valli, “Hello Sunshine” by Aretha Franklin and the Ozzy Osbourne version of “Sunshine of Your Love.”
But there’s more to these selections than just the lyrical cohesion. Each of them also manage to match the mood and feel of the scenes they soundtrack, amplifying their potency. And there are plenty of non-weather-related songs that are expertly deployed as well. A montage of a younger Floyd posing nude for Playgirl (pre-penis injury) is set, hilariously, to Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young.” The Band’s instrumental “Theme From The Last Waltz” plays while Clark hatches a plan to hire a man to hook up with Floyd to boost his friend’s ego — despite insisting he’s straight, Floyd’s encounters on the DTF app have thus far only been with men — and when they finalize the details, the optimism is palpable as The Zombies’ “This Will Be Our Year” starts playing in the background. (Although, in fairness to the weather theme, the latter song does begin with, “The warmth of your love is like the warmth of the sun.”)
Edelman could have easily just gone with the first classic rock tracks he was able to secure the rights to and called it a day — the point about the suburbs being frozen in time would have still been made. But instead, every note of music we hear on DTF St. Louis feels meticulously chosen. We’ll have to wait until Sunday night to find out who killed poor Floyd — but no matter what happens, chances are it’ll be backed by the perfect soundtrack.
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