DTF St. Louis<\/a><\/p>\nMissouri Mutual Life & Health Insurance Company<\/p>\n
\n Season 1<\/p>\n
Episode 4\n <\/p>\n
\n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n
3 stars<\/p>\n
***\n <\/p>\n
\n \u200bAfter last week\u2019s seething portrait of Carol as a devious black widow, this week\u2019s intro offers up a more sympathetic day in her life.
\n Photo: Tina Rowden\/HBO\n <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the Thunder Boys, we\u2019re gonna ace that mothafuckin\u2019 life-insurance phys-i-cal!\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s been stuck in my head ever since I watched David Harbour and Jason Bateman belt it in unison from their weird recumbent dad bikes. Imagine my wife\u2019s alarm hearing my random exclamations of the phrase \u201clife-insurance physical\u201d throughout the week. Anyway, the moment comes about halfway through the episode, when Clark and Floyd \u2014 having forged a closer bond on a wine-tasting bike trip \u2014 are getting Floyd fit enough to pass the aforementioned life-insurance physical so he can have greater peace of mind. Morbidity looms over Floyd\u2019s description of the demons keeping him up at night, alongside stepson Richard\u2019s borderline personality disorder and school struggles and the tax debt weighing down on every rung up the endless financial ladder. \u201cWhen you lie down in bed, you feel like your heart\u2019s supposed to rest,\u201d Floyd tells Clark over one too many glasses of red. \u201cMy heart just races \u2026 like a bird heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bHarbour\u2019s tragicomic delivery brings the cruel irony out of the phrase \u2014 this gentle giant\u2019s rapid little bird heart will only find rest when it stops beating permanently \u2014 and his performance remains the most engaging element of the series, which makes it all the more a shame that the show\u2019s nonlinear investigative framing device continues to get in the way of the drama. It\u2019s saving key information for thinly drawn \u201creveals\u201d that posture as profound without really adding anything to the experience. \u201cMissouri Mutual Life & Health Insurance Company\u201d also puts us back in the territory of a 48-minute episode that, with a tighter, less back-and-forth narrative construction, would have been a banger half-hour.<\/p>\n
\u200bAfter last week\u2019s seething portrait of Carol as a devious black widow, this week\u2019s intro offers up a more sympathetic, if not equally incriminating, day in Carol\u2019s life as evidence for her life-insurance plot. The morning starts with Carol having to remind a low-energy, bubble-bathing Floyd that she\u2019s umpiring at Little League games at the park near their house for extra cash and to cancel with the lawn-maintenance guys like he said he would the month before. A montage of marginal cost-cutting measures that never quite add up to the extra cash they need for getting Richard into a good school, updating his room furniture, buying nicer plates and stuff for the household, paying therapy bills, etc. is followed by Richard\u2019s milk-bombing incident at the grocery store \u2014 leaving Carol absolutely wrecked on a patio chair in the backyard just in time for Floyd to walk up and \u201cbe honest\u201d about Carol\u2019s umpire gear turning him off. Linda Cardellini offers up a killer breakdown to the roaring chorus of the lawn guy\u2019s infernal leaf blower. Hardly justification for (allegedly) plotting your husband\u2019s death for a life-insurance payout, but it stands out as a key moment of understanding rather than justification. People make drastic decisions inside the hamster wheel of a deteriorating upper-middle-class suburban milieu.<\/p>\n
On the present-day investigation front, there remains nothing concrete in the motive department to tie Carol to Floyd\u2019s demise. No evidence of an insurance claim, but what\u2019s up with this mystery key in their possession? Clark clearly recognizes it but won\u2019t say anything about it. He\u2019s more interested in reminiscing about how he and Floyd became \u201cThunder Boys\u201d for life. A replay of his and Carol\u2019s diabolical cornhole-party meet-cute with menacing Dutch angles deftly clues us in to how Clark is seeing this situation in hindsight. In contrast, showrunner Steven Conrad shoots the wine-tasting bike trip like the second-act fall-deeper-in-love excursion in a rom-com. By the time Floyd gives his \u201cbird heart\u201d speech, you can see Clark erupting with a deep desire to actually help this guy as a friend and not as an accomplice to his mistress\u2019s opaque master plan.<\/p>\n
\u200bFor every physical gag or verbal punch line that doesn\u2019t hit, this show continues to get a genuine belly laugh out of me every week. This week\u2019s episode got me in the LOLs at the end of the Thunder Boys workout-and-diet montage when Floyd passes (not aces) the life-insurance physical and says \u201cClark is gonna be jacked,\u201d to which the doctor replies, \u201cIs that your husband?\u201d I also love the display of platonic male intimacy inherent in calling someone your \u201ccheese cop.\u201d These pivotal memories of Clark and Floyd\u2019s buddy romance amount to another darkly comic portrait of a nontoxic male friendship \u2014 complete with nontraditional definitions of manhood that place meaningful friendships over monolithic strength \u2014 all built on a foundation of lies and insecurities. Goodwill is corrupted on arrival by the modern virtue of avarice. Clark remembers Carol telling him that she wants a physically and emotionally intimate relationship with Floyd again, properly reading the room and pivoting to appeal to Clark\u2019s genuine love for Floyd. As she told her son in the last episode, she\u2019s in the grind-set now \u2014 do whatever it takes to secure the final bag.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cNo one\u2019s normal. It just looks that way from across the street.\u201d \u201cModern Love\u201d delivers the thematic \u201ckey\u201d to the series while unwittingly signaling to Plumb what the literal mystery key might be for. \u201cThat\u2019s why everyone\u2019s got a P.O. box.\u201d Holding the conversation from the center of his roller rink \u2014 club lights blaring as Peter Sarsgaard delivers a clich\u00e9 soliloquy on the virtues of sexual impulsivity \u2014 is a tad obvious. It also strains credibility that that\u2019s what it\u2019d take to get Plumb and Homer to think of checking a local P.O.-box facility, especially if suburbia is brimming with dildo-filled ones as \u201cModern Love\u201d describes. As if on cue, the episode ends on our detectives finding an insurance-policy notification in the P.O. box that matches the mystery key, followed by a quick, cryptic flashback to Floyd finding and exploring Clark and Carol\u2019s room at the Quality Garden. The missing pieces of his interior struggle remain a more compelling mystery than the precise events of his death.<\/p>\n
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