Welcome back gumshoes! When last we saw Dex and friends, she’d been left with the knowledge that someone else was responsible for her dead lover Benny’s death. How will she cope with the resurfacing of her old trauma? Incredibly well, obviously, as she has handled all prior setbacks in her personal li–yeah I can’t even finish that. Poorly. She handles it poorly.
Here’s five thoughts on Stumptown’s “The Dex Files,” spoilers below.
1. B-b-b-Benny and the Dex
Our cold open offers the long awaited first look at one of the series’ major players, whose memory has haunted nearly every episode of the show: Benny Blackbird (Sam Marra), the love of Dex’s life, in the flesh. This is our first time truly seeing Benny, after him being spoken about so reverently for an entire season. There was a danger in holding back from showing him for so long that the idea of him might be too much for a real version of him to handle.
Wouldn’t you know it, he lives up to the hype. He’s charming, witty, full of heart, and (not for nothing) a complete stud muffin. Marra and Smulders’s chemistry is great. The glimpses we see of their courtship and relationship give weight to all of Dex’s struggles so far this season, so much so that it almost feels like we should have seen them sooner.
2. Whistleblower, I Hardly Knew ‘Er
Benny is the case of the week this week, as Dex tries to dig into the truth of what happened to her love. Her former client Jeremy introduces her to a government official who reveals that a different group in Afghanistan was responsible for Benny’s death than she originally thought, but the details don’t add up. When Dex pushes him for more info, he clams up–apparently the file is classified. With some digging, she’s able to put enough pieces together to understand that there was something criminal going on in Benny’s unit.
The episode tries to imply that maybe Benny wasn’t fully the saint Dex thinks he was, which doesn’t really work–as soon as we know Benny’s unit might be dirty, it’s pretty much a given that sinister forces in his unit were behind his death. Dex figures out at the end of the episode that Benny was the whistleblower, not the wrongdoer, but there’s not enough tension to make that news feel like a revelation. That’s maybe a statement on Dex being too close to the case to see it clearly, but it feels more like a statement on the plot heavy-handedly needing to move from point A to point B.
3. Burning Bridges
What’s at stake in the episode isn’t just answers, however; it’s Dex’s ability to move forward. When Grey asks her whether the truth will bring her peace, Dex sums up the truth at the heart of the series quite succinctly: “I don’t know, I don’t know if I know what peace feels like.”
All throughout the season we’ve seen Dex burn bridges and hurt people with her single-minded–and often selfish–focus on her trauma. This episode is no exception as her hunt for the truth pulls the ever helpful Jeremy into the maelstrom. It’s rough to watch her take advantage of and hurt someone who is portrayed as so kind, though I wouldn’t put it past this show to have him inexplicably be involved in the conspiracy.
Dex truly feels at a tipping point in this episode, where her inability to move on from her past is threatening her ability to function rationally. She commits multiple crimes, blackmails a government worker without a second thought, and is risking prison to expose something that might not even be a cover-up. The season finale next week has a lot of threads to wrap up, but chief among them is whether Dex will be able to settle the storm inside her or if it will finally consume her entire life.
4. A Swing and a Miss
The various B-plots of the episode all have our supporting cast coming together–or falling apart. Detective Hoffman and his fellow cop Kara Lee (played by the wonderful Fiona Rene, one of the standout recurring performers on the show) are on the case at a swingers bar, looking for someone who’s swindling patrons out of their possessions. They crack the case, but unfortunately unearth a secondary problem–Tookie’s wife is at the bar, having an affair.
Continued belowThat news isn’t surprising to anyone who’s been paying attention to the brief glimpses we’ve seen of her throughout the season, but it’s still heartbreaking to watch the normally chipper and silly Tookie go through the trauma of discovering the infidelity. Grey is there to offer some emotional support as he commiserates over his own recent emotional letdown: his long estranged father, after promising to finally come visit, failed to show. This isn’t a surprise either, and Tookie and Grey’s scene plays out in a series of pained cliches, but the two of them being kind to each other offers a nice dose of warmth that helps keep this episode from being too dour.
Speaking of, uh, heat, Hoffman and Lee also get some time to get closer while they’re undercover. It might just be the natural energy that comes from having two hot people make “do me” eyes at each other for an hour, but these two have some positively electric chemistry. It’s been on display in previous episodes, but mostly in short spurts–this is the first time the two of them have gotten an extended opportunity to act on their brief flirtations.
Act on it they do. I’m certainly rooting for these two crazy kids, and I find them far more compelling as a romantic pairing than I find Hoffman and Dex, but Stumptown might have its chips invested elsewhere.
5. Out Cold
When Dex finally gets the message from her blackmail victim that seemingly confirms Benny as the whistleblower, she heads to the house of one of Benny’s army buddies in a rage to pump him for more information. She breaks into his house (again, not making the best decisions) and yells out for him, only to find him collapsed on the ground. A masked stranger ambushes her from behind and–cut to black.
Stumptown excels at a good end of episode cliff-hanger, though this one is maybe a little too basic to appropriately tee up the season finale. Or, potentially, series finale–our troubled detective has yet to be renewed for a second season, and with the many problems Hollywood is facing due to COVID-19 any announcement on that front might be a long way off. For now, we’ll just have to make due with next week’s episode. No pressure, Stumptown.
