Every DTF St. Louis Character, Ranked Worst to Best

DTF St. Louis Season 1 has finally wrapped up, and HBO’s suburban crime drama doesn’t tiptoe around its intent. It dives straight into a heady concoction of lust, deception, midlife restlessness, and murder, and against all odds, the result feels both wickedly amusing and quietly disturbing. The premise thrives on disorder. 

At the center are Clark, played by Bateman, a polished local meteorologist with the kind of outwardly tidy life that usually hides rot beneath the varnish; Floyd, played by David Harbour, an ASL interpreter who feels increasingly trapped by marriage and routine; and Carol, played by Cardellini, whose financial strain and emotional dissatisfaction push her toward dangerous choices of her own. 

With flashbacks, flashforwards, visual gags, and a murder mystery stitched into its dark-comedy frame, DTF St. Louis gives Bateman one of those rare opportunities to use both his comic instincts and his dramatic sharpness in equal measure. Thanks to Harbour and Cardellini, he is not carrying the load alone either. So, with that in mind, here is every major DTF St. Louis character, ranked from worst to best.

7 Jodie Plumb

Jodie Plumb in DTF St. Louis | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Jodie Plumb lands at the bottom, though not because she is poorly played. Sunday gives the character a crisp, credible screen presence, and Jodie matters to the mechanics of the investigation. She is a special crimes officer assigned to the case, so her function is undeniably important.

The problem is not competence but it is narrative weight. DTF St. Louis Season 1 spends far more time nourishing the emotional disrepair of Clark, Floyd, and Carol than it does building Jodie into a force with comparable resonance. She often feels more like an instrument of the plot than a person the show is deeply invested in.

Viewers knows Sunday from Wednesday, where she played Bianca Barclay, and she has also appeared in Bad Hair, Shithouse, and Dear White People.

6 Detective Donoghue Homer

Richard Jenkins plays Donoghue Homer in DTF St. Louis | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Homer has the kind of role that can easily vanish into the wallpaper, but Jenkins is too seasoned an actor to let that happen. As the detective assigned to the case, Homer gives the series a steady hand and a sober face while everybody else keeps making a glorious mess of their lives. Still, this is not a flashy part, and DTF St. Louis is not a show that saves its richest material for the calmest man in the room. Homer exists to anchor the mystery, to ask the right questions, and to keep the show tethered when the central trio begins to fray.

He does that job well. He just does not dominate the show the way the more combustible characters do. Jenkins, of course, has more than earned that kind of authority. He is known for Step Brothers, Burn After Reading, The Cabin in the Woods, The Shape of Water, and The Visitor. He played Lionel Dahmer in Monster, and television fans still remember him from Six Feet Under. 

5 Richard

DTF St. Louis | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Richard is one of the more quietly affecting characters in the series. As Floyd’s stepson, he does not dominate the plot, and he certainly is not treated like a co-lead, but he serves a crucial emotional purpose. Through Richard, the show lets Floyd soften and that matters.

What makes Richard stand out is not noise but tenderness. Harbour’s scenes with him carry a different temperature from Floyd’s more chaotic interactions elsewhere. They reveal decency, awkward affection, and the fragile possibility that Floyd might have been something better if life had bent differently. That gives Richard real value, even if the show does not center him structurally.

He remains a supporting character, and that keeps him out of the top tier. 

4 Carol

Linda Cardellini in “DTF St. Louis” Season 1 | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Carol is where the ranking starts to hurt a little, because Linda Cardellini has done such sterling work that part of you wants to shove her even higher. Floyd’s wife is not simply standing around as an object of desire. She is under financial strain, emotionally stranded, and trying to keep herself afloat while her life grows more brittle by the day. On top of that, she has begun a side hustle as an umpire for a local Little League team, which is exactly the kind of odd, grounded detail that helps the show feel lived-in.

Cardellini gives Carol texture, not just allure. She can be wounded, practical, funny, and unnervingly opaque all in the same stretch. That complexity is why Carol becomes one of the most intriguing people in the series. The frustrating part is that the writing occasionally keeps her trapped inside the men’s orbit when she often seems to deserve the fuller interior life.

Cardellini has been memorable for years, whether you know her from Freaks and Geeks, ER, Mad Men, Dead to Me, Legally Blonde, Brokeback Mountain, the live-action Scooby-Doo movies, or the MCU. 

3 Floyd Smernitch

DTF St. Louis | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Floyd is funny, mournful, embarrassing, sympathetic, and doomed all at once. That is not an easy combination to pull off, but David Harbour makes it look unsettlingly natural. As an ASL interpreter who is deeply dissatisfied with his marriage and suburban life, Floyd becomes one of the main engines of the show’s sadness. He is also, unfortunately, the character whose mysterious death hangs over the series.

This is where DTF St. Louis gets much of its emotional force. Floyd is not just comic relief and not merely a victim. He is a man aching for stimulation, connection, and escape, yet he often seems incapable of steering himself toward anything healthy. Harbour understands exactly how pitiful and endearing that contradiction should feel.

Before his long run as Jim Hopper on Stranger Things, Harbour appeared in series like State of Affairs, Manhattan, and Pan Am, with film credits that include Brokeback Mountain, Quantum of Solace, and Revolutionary Road. He also played Hellboy, appeared in Suicide Squad, and joined the MCU as Red Guardian in Black Widow and Thunderbolts.* 

2 Clark Forrest

DTF St. Louis | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Clark is the show’s prime mover, its resident peacock, and quite possibly its most skilled self-saboteur. As a local weather man accused of killing his friend Floyd, who is also the husband of Clark’s mistress, he sits at the center of the entire catastrophe. Bateman plays him with a slippery blend of smugness, insecurity, charm, and panic that makes him hard to turn away from.

Jason Bateman knows exactly how to weaponize that contradiction. He lets Clark remain funny without softening his selfishness and keeps him compelling without asking the audience to absolve him.

Bateman is still widely associated with Arrested Development and Ozark, and fairly so. Those two roles alone show how comfortably he can live in comedy and drama. Film audiences also know him from Horrible Bosses, Dodgeball, Juno, Game Night, and as the voice of Nick Wilde in Zootopia. 

1 Modern Love

DTF St. Louis | Credit: Tina Rowden/HBO

Modern Love is the most fascinating character in DTF St. Louis, full stop. Played by Sarsgaard, the app persona is not the most visible figure in the series, but visibility is not the same thing as importance. He embodies the show’s central sickness: desire with the humanity drained out of it.

That is why Modern Love takes the crown. He is the sharpest expression of what DTF St. Louis is really saying about fantasy, reinvention, and emotional vacancy. The series is packed with broken people making reckless choices, but Modern Love turns those impulses into a system, an aesthetic, and a lure. He is not just part of the title’s joke. He is the title’s thesis.

So, who is your number one pick in DTF St. Louis? Did Cardellini deserve a higher slot? Did Bateman deserve the crown? Comment below and keep following FandomWire for more updates, rankings, and gloriously messy TV discourse.

DTF St. Louis is streaming on HBO.