BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Availability Heuristic, and Hasty Generalization, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 25.1% saturation with 251 hits. Analysis detected 1,531 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,000 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 69.7% and a BS Rank of 78% (4,605 of 20,367 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 77.40% of the article peer group.
At first glance, HBO’s DTF St.
Louis has the formula of a predictable prime time series: a midlife crisis, an extramarital affair and a suspicious death.
But over its seven episodes, it becomes a tender, often uncomfortable, exploration into the nature of male friendship between Clark (Jason Bateman)and Floyd (David Harbour).
Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by critics Vinson Cunningham and Michel Ghanem to dissect what DTF St.
Louis reveals about real-life male friendships.
We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity.
For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube:
Elamin: Everything about DTF St.
Louis feels like you’re watching a murder mystery, like even the lighting of it is kind of set up in that way.
And yet it’s not.
How does DTF St.
Louis sort of play with the tropes of a murder mystery?
Like the thing that you expect to sort of unravel before you when you settle in for a murder mystery?
Michel: I mean, we know in the industry right now that it’s hard to sell a show without a murder mystery, like there needs to be a dead body in what we’re watching, I guess.
So that’s what we are getting very conditioned to watching.
And DTF St.
Louis, at first, doesn’t seem any different, it presents the murder mystery at the end of the pilot as sort of the big twist.
But the investigation kind of unspools alongside a non-linear narrative, and the show’s focus isn’t necessarily just a whodunit.
Yes, there are sort of red herrings, the show will pull attention towards different characters to make you think at some points that they might have been involved specifically around Carol, the wife, and an insurance plot.
But there’s so much more to the picture.
And I think the show, just like Vinson was describing, really pulls you in and plays on your sense of curiosity around these characters.
I think that’s a testament to the great writing of this story and the different kinds of tones that it’s playing with.
This isn’t like a serious, like, Mare of Easttown-type show.
There’s a lot more going on.
Vinson: To what Michel was saying, yeah, it’s a whodunit, but it’s lots of other things.
And in a really, really dark, twisted way, it’s a romantic comedy.
At the beginning, we see Floyd and Clark meet; it’s a meet-cute.
There’s a big storm that Clark the weatherman is working on, and Floyd is his [sign language] interpreter.
And the guys have palpable chemistry from moment one.
All of a sudden, I’m inviting you to my“cornhole party.”
I want you to meet my wife.
I want to tell you about this app.
It’s about the love between two men.
If there’s an alienation in this version of the suburbs — along the lines of Cheever and Updike and other people who chronicle this stuff – there’s just no space for these two men to be friends as deeply and closely as they want to be.
So all the subterfuge, all the lying, all the secrets, is about them trying to build a relationship that the society really can’t hold.
It’s really beautiful.
Michel: This one in particular has the extra layer around sexuality.
And I think that’s really what stands out for me.
As these characters get closer and closer, the way that their friendship is depicted is very physical.
They get to know each other at the gym and they’re very physical with each other, and it’s still showcased in a way that doesn’t feel like they’re necessarily romantically entangled.
But, you know, they’re both sleeping with the same person.
I think the show starts to introduce sexuality beyond a binary of straight or queer or gay.
You know, I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve heard of the Kinsey Scale, or the idea that sexuality is like a river and changes and flows.
I love that the show is willing to go there and start exploring that.
Elamin: But Vinson, these characters, like, truly love each other.
But they’re also suffering because of all the other things that’s kind of weighing them down.
I think it’s maybe easy to pity them as you watch the show; maybe it’s easy to envy them because they do have or want this incredibly deep, nuanced relationship.
What makes the characters lovable?
Vinson: Maybe parallel to this thing that Michel was saying about this kind of physicalized intimacy that sort of scrambles our notions of sexuality.
Another way to say that is that TV sometimes has a hard time depicting male kindness.
Just being nice, it’s almost like the anti-hero trope, for example.
One of the premises of that is to be interesting, you have to be a little bit evil.
And yeah, these guys can be blah, they can be a little out of it, or they can be a little stupid at times or thoughtless.
But the main characteristic of both of these men, especially Floyd, is his kindness.
He’s got this stepson who, at the beginning of the show we kind of see, doesn’t show respect for him.
One of the subplots of the show is just Floyd — in all these flashbacks, you know, now he’s dead — relating to this kid, really putting in all the effort that you would want to see from a father figure, despite the resistance of the child.
And so it’s like a portrait of a very kind and tender soul.
And it’s weird that it’s strange.
It says bad things about masculinity and how it’s constructed, that kindness is a kind of queerness in this show.
You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Panel produced by Jessica Low.
Speakers
3speakers85%attributed speech150writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Selected voice
90%flagged-word coverageMichel Ghanem
336 attributed words40% of attributed speech82% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Loading…
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.