Alright tough guys and private eyes, time to search for clues, crack some heads, and–dare I say it–stump some towns as we dive into yet another brand new TV comic book adaptation. Created for television by Jason Richman, Stumptown might be a little less familiar to comics fans than recent splashy adaptations like The Boys and Titans, but the writer of its source material is no less prestigious.
Based on a series of graphic novels from writer Greg Rucka and artist Matthew Southworth (who both serve as executive producers on the show), Stumptown follows Dex, a hard drinking war veteran with a gambling problem and untreated PTSD who takes up a PI job to clear some gambling debts. Perhaps a more recognizable comic presence is its lead actress, however–Cobie Smulders, who has recurred as Maria Hill in the MCU ever since 2012’s The Avengers, plays Dex.
Can Cobie, often cast in a supporting role, take the lead? Will Dex manage to clear her debts and crack the case? Can someone please tell me what Stumptown means?* Let’s dive in.
1. Is This a Comic Book Show?
There’s an interesting tension between the show’s marketing and it’s source material. ABC doesn’t seem to be outright hiding that it’s based on a comic book property, but they aren’t emphasizing it either.
Straight away we are introduced to Renee Montoya Kate Kane Lois Lane Dex in medias res in a fun-as-hell car fight/musical number (that I won’t spoil here, even if it was all over the marketing) that shows off how capable, scrappy, and all around kick-ass she is. Though we don’t get a glimpse at her personality in this first scene, it is a clever and important set up for the episode–we get to see her skill and determination shine through, something the rest of the episode will repeatedly undercut.
2. Cobie: Leading Lady
It’s not really a surprise, but it was pleasant to see just how well Cobie Smulders is suited to lead her own show. Prior to her stint as Maria Hill, I–like most people with a Netflix subscription in the late 2000s–became familiar with Smulders from her role on How I Met Your Mother. Even if that show has potentially not aged the best (we all just…let The Naked Man thing go without thinking about it?) Smulders’s work was always charming and magnetic.
Though Smulders’s Dex is cut from a very different mold, she pulls it off quite well. After the opening, we flash back to three days earlier and we get to see Dex more in her element. This is where the show starts to go full on table-setting as it backstory into place. Dex has quite the gambling problem and after yet another failed night at the casino, the casino’s owner–with whom Dex shares a colored backstory–offers to clear her debts if Dex looks for the owner’s granddaughter, Nina.
Dex goes on the hunt for Nina, a mini mission that gives us some insight into her background and, as might be expected, doesn’t play out quite according to plan. Part of the fun of the episode is a standard “how did we get here” putting the pieces together, methodically–and sometimes ploddingly –getting us back to that blast of an opening. A lot of that stuff feels like we’re just checking boxes (some more on that below), but Cobie remains a solid anchor for the material.
3. Assembling the Scooby Gang
Cobie Smolders certainly has the chops to anchor her own show, particularly one in this mold that relies heavily on the strength of her charisma and screen presence. But shows like this are made or broken by their supporting cast.
There’s a deep bench of recognizable TV faces here. We have Jake Johnson, fresh off of wrapping up New Girl, playing Dex’s faithful and probably-in-love-with-her friend Grey; the always reliable Camryn Manheim from The Practice and Ghost Whisperer playing the (understandably) hostile Lieutenant Cosgrove; and Michael Ealy obviously best known (to me and literally no one else) as the android from the sadly cancelled sci-fi crime drama Almost Human playing Detective Hoffman.
They’re a string of strong performers delivering some rote, table setting dialogue that they can’t quite breathe life into, but the depth of talent here speaks volumes for how good this show could be. There’s enough of a fun dynamic set up here–particularly the sparks of a love triangle between Smulders, Johnson, and Ealy’s characters–to hint at a more fun show bubbling beneath the surface.
Continued below4. A Procedure or a Starting Point
Pilots are incredibly difficult, and often they make for a poor way to judge a show. This is doubly true for a procedural, which faces a tough choice right out of the gate: do you start off by simply setting up the characters and the world without introducing any of the procedural–y’know, the stuff that will actually form the backbone of the show–or do you try to juggle both the intro and a case-of-the-week, potentially shrifting one or both and getting things off to a weak start.
Stumptown chooses the former, making it massively difficult to suss out whether this is a show that’ll have legs. As an episode, it’s fine, but it isn’t very propulsive. It’s only at the end of the episode that we’re given a glimpse of where the show might be headed next, as Hoffman recommends Dex for a PI job that will likely form the procedural spine of the series.
5. Hard- or Soft-Boiled
Maybe my biggest disappointment is that this episode feels like Rucka’s work with its edges sanded off. That might have been inevitable–this is an ABC show, after all, not an Amazon or an AMC where you can get away with some bigger swings in material–but it is a little sad for a detective yarn.
Dex, for instance, is written as bisexual in the comics, an element that makes zero appearances in the pilot. The violence of the episode doesn’t feel like it has much weight, and–maybe because the opening scene basically tells us how the episode is going to end–none of the characters ever feel like they’re in that much danger. Overall, especially for a pilot, the stakes are pretty low here.
But, as I said above, pilots are tough! There is more than enough here for me to come back for more, if only because more Cobie Content™ is worth the price of admission.
*Stumptown, apparently, is a nickname for Portland, where the show takes place (see the episode’s nearly a dozen Portland hipster jokes). In case you, like me, get a bizarre shot of adrenaline whenever they say the title of the show inside the show, they do in fact say Stumptown in this episode. You’re welcome.
