Dearest Stumpers, it’s time to head back to town. *Puts on sunglasses* Stumptown, that is.
Ahem. Anyways, when we last left our heroine Dex, she had just–in what is becoming a pattern for her–royally screwed up. Her new mentor, veteran PI Artie Banks, double-crossed her and her doe-eyed client Candace, and Dex vowed to set things right. Will she? I don’t know man, I just write the reviews, take it up with her.
Oh. You’re here to read the review. Right. Here’s my thoughts on “Family Ties,” spoilers for the episode below.
1. Rip City Dicks Face Off
As I mentioned last week, Artie Banks felt like a character destined to be a one-off, a slimy weasel who teaches Dex a lesson and then disappears to some other side of town, never to be mentioned again. But Stumptown continues to impress me by breaking my expectations of a procedural, bring Banks back for round two.
Thankfully the creators had enough sense to give Banks a nice arc through the episode. Unlike the last week where Banks was holding back some of his worst aspects to deceive Dex, this week the gloves are off and he gets to go all out. Donal Logue can be a little hammy and he stops just short of twirling his mustache, but ultimately both the performance and the character are a lot of fun.
2. The (Other) Case of the Week
Wallace Cain, the sinister presence from Grey’s past who has been hovering in the ether of the series is broken out from a prison transport. We already knew Cain had his goons murder Grey’s former partner and threaten Grey, but it turns out Cain also has ties to Detective Hoffman’s past–he murdered a criminal informant who happened to be Hoffman’s friend, which Hoffman then used to put him in jail.
The regrets of the past loom large over this series, and in this case they only kind of carry weight. I’m generally a fan of Michael Ealy’s work, but this plotline does not play to his strengths. It’s the hackiest part of an already by-the-numbers series, and it’s full of rote procedural flourishes. Hoffman’s boss straight up tells him he’s getting way too close to this job and that it’s time for him to take that Hawaii vacation he’s always talking about.
There’s also some back and forth here between Hoffman and the widow of the informant. None of it is particularly interesting or novel, but we do get a bit of exposition from one of their exchanges that’ll probably pay off later: Cain is planning some kind of big job now that he’s out of the cage, which Hoffman, of course, is determined to stop.
3. It’s Stumptown, Dexadrine. Nothing Good Happens Here After Dark.
They said the name of the show! That’s all, that’s the whole bullet point.
Frankly, they say Stumptown a lot in this show, and even as a connoisseur of “show titles said within the show” I have to wonder: do people in Portland actually call it Stumptown this much? I’m from Pittsburgh and I can count the number of times I’ve ever said “Steel City” on one hand.
4. People Change
In a nice reversal, it turns out Banks had one last turn left in him, flipping on the abusive husband he’d been aiding after watching the wife be forcibly separated from her child. He’s the key to finding the dirt that finally closes this case, scuttling the husband’s shady business deal and bringing mother and daughter back together.
Banks and Dex’s relationship is back on semi-solid footing by the end of the episode, opening the door for him to return to the series at a later date. The two are a nice pair, not just because of Logue and Smulders’ chemistry, but because the writing smartly sets them up as cut from the same cloth. Dex cares about her clients, and, once upon a time, Banks did, too. I ship it, is what I’m saying.
(I don’t ship it. That was a joke. He’s like 20 years older than her.)
Continued below5. Oh Yeah, Grey’s Life is Still in Danger I Guess?
We don’t end the episode on a high note, however, as in yet another hacky scene Grey’s past catches up with him. Grey goes to investigate a noise in his bar, finds that someone has left the sink on, and when he goes to turn it off he’s abducted by Cain’s goons.
Grey finds himself in the clutches of Cain himself, who tells Grey he owes him $500,000 and that Cain has a plan to get that money–and Grey is going to help him. Cut to credits.
It’s only episode four, and I appreciate how quickly the show is burning through this plot that I only have the barest level of interest in. Next episode seems to be when Dex is going to have to be brought in to her best friend’s problems in an attempt to save him–to be determined on whether that’ll be enough to get me invested in the storyline.
