All the messy psychosexual complications — and all the big-heartedness — of “DTF St. Louis” came out in one scene that moves from a motel room to a swimming pool.
Series creator Steven Conrad “was able to deliver these very awkward, original moments in a way that you’re just taken as a viewer into a place that you didn’t think you were going,” Jason Bateman said during Variety’s Making a Scene conversation, presented by HBO Max. This scene is a prime example, moving from farce to something more tender: Floyd (David Harbour) is watching Carol (Linda Cardellini), his wife, and Clark (Jason Bateman), his best friend, being intimate from behind a closet door; Carol and Clark are well aware of his presence, as all of this is a sex game between the trio. Suddenly, Floyd — an American Sign Language interpreter — sees through the window a young man meandering toward the motel’s pool, on the verge of falling in. Floyd has the presence of mind to realize that the wanderer, who does not respond to shouted prompts, is both blind and deaf, and, as such, will likely drown if not stopped. He intercepts the fellow and signs into his hand in order to communicate.
The progression of the scene reveals Floyd’s empathy and resourcefulness. It also gave Harbour, who’d been standing inertly as he watched sex between two people he loved, some real physicality to play. “ASL communicated between two deaf people is one thing, but when you’re sharing ASL with someone who’s blind, it has a real physical element,” writer-director Conrad said. “The signs are placed in the palm of the blind person’s hand.”
