'DTF St. Louis' Episode 5 Recap And Ending Explained: Carol’s Sealed Conviction

[Spoiler Alert] The fifth episode of DTF St. Louis hints at four possible theories centered around Floyd Smernitch’s murder investigation. The first theory suggests that Floyd might have intentionally killed himself and made his death look like a murder so his family could get the insurance money. I mean, this grown-up man was obsessed with “Batman,” so maybe he was just trying to be a hero for his family, but I don’t think Floyd was smart enough to pull this off by himself. The second theory says that Floyd might have killed himself accidentally after mixing a heavy dose of amphezyne into his energy drink. It’s possible that he might have had a date with Carol at the pool house where he wanted his best friend, Clark Forrest, to witness him in action; however, either in excitement or anxiety, Floyd upped the dose, which apparently shut down his heart. The third theory suggests that Carol had been aware of Floyd’s date night, and she knew about the insurance policy, so she amplified the amphezyne dose to make Floyd’s death look like an accident. This way, she not only cut herself free from the “dead weight” but also mastered the conditions of her life (Yes, this is from her audiobook). And last but not least, the fourth theory says that Floyd and Carol might have planned Floyd’s “murder” together so that his death could save the family from a financial crisis. So, these are the four probable theories that I could come up with after watching the fifth episode, and honestly I am not sure which one of these is going to land. I mean, it’s possible that all of them are wrong and the last two episodes of the show will take this murder investigation in a completely different direction. But other than Floyd’s murder, the episode revealed a bunch of other important details, so allow me to take a closer look at it.

Carol’s Sealed Conviction

For a very long time, I had been wondering about this thing that Carol does, where she suddenly asks people to “speak up.” I mean, we know she’s not deaf. Well, the real reason is that she tries to intimidate the person and dominate the conversation. It’s a tactic she learned from the audiobook “Life Champions,” which she has been constantly listening to while jogging. In episode 5, when Detective Jodie Plumb and Detective Donoghue Homer arrived at her house to interview her about the insurance policy, Carol pulled off the same tactic to intimidate the detectives and break their confidence so that they would leave as quickly as possible. As usual, when questioned about the life insurance policy, Carol played the “plausible deniability” card, because she had asked Clark to not tell her about this policy. And as revealed in the previous episode, Floyd kept this information hidden from her because it was Clark who had been paying the premium, and Floyd didn’t want Carol to find out about it, which was why he kept the policy in a private locker. However, as viewers, we know that this policy had always been Carol’s idea. Either she was certain that Floyd was clumsy (or unhealthy) enough to die in an accident, or she planned his murder to get her hands on the money.

Later, when Homer asked Carol about her previous convictions, she informed the detectives that according to a certain law in Missouri, she is not required to answer this question. After leaving Carol’s house, Plumb looked up this law on the internet only to find out that Carol might have a sealed or expunged conviction. Now there are two possibilities here. Either Carol’s lying about this whole thing in order to mislead the detectives. I mean, she can definitely tell them at the end of the day that she was just letting them know about this particular law, but she never meant to say that she had such a conviction to her name. Or there is actually a sealed conviction that she doesn’t want the world to find out about. Well, no one really knows the correct answer, but if I have to take a shot in the dark, I think it may have something to do with her first husband.

Plump Breaks the Law

The thing is, a sealed conviction is another headache for the detectives. From the very beginning, Homer saw this investigation as an open and shut case, but the crazy life of suburban husbands has started giving him nightmares. He’s definitely not the kind of guy who is willing to go the extra mile to get an official authorization to access Carol’s sealed conviction. And this was why he came up with an easier way for them to access her reports. He told Plump that if a person fills out a job application to a police department, then they are consenting to the head of the department accessing their previous conviction. Plump was the head of Special Crimes in Twyla, which meant if she received an application from Carol, then she could conduct a full background check on her. This was why Plump submitted a Records Clerk job application form in Carol’s name. Needless to say, what Plump’s doing isn’t legal, but maybe she believes that it’s necessary to find out what Carol has been hiding. However, if Carol finds out about this and decides to file an official complaint against the detectives, then Plump may get in trouble. She could even lose her job.

Floyd’s Odd Request

In episode 5, Floyd revealed to Clark that he’d known about his wife’s affair from the very beginning. Carol had told him before and after she initiated things with Clark. However, it’s not Carol’s honesty that’s in question here, but why exactly she told Floyd about it. I mean, it could be one of her manipulation tactics, right? Well, we will never find out. But Floyd was happy with his wife’s honesty. We know that the two of them hadn’t been getting intimate after Carol took the umpire job, so Floyd was happy for her and Clark. But here comes the crazy part. Floyd asked Clark if he could “watch” them together. I think he had already taken Carol’s permission and was just waiting for Clark’s approval, and when Clark said he didn’t have any issues with it, Floyd decided to hide in a closet and watched Clark and Carol during their dream meeting at Quality Garden Suites. Floyd even got them a discount as he was once a member of their Old Friends Program. I am not sure how relevant this information was, but as I see it, Floyd helped Clark save some money, so maybe he was trying to pay him back through these small gestures. Furthermore, Plump spotted these reimbursements on Clark’s bank statement, which made her wonder why Quality Garden Suites had been paying Clark back, and while investigating the matter, she figured out that Floyd was aware of Carol and Clark’s affair and visited the suite with them as he liked to “watch.” When Plump informed Homer about their crazy lives, the look on Homer’s face was Oscar-worthy.

Well, the weird just got weirder when Floyd started giving Clark tips on how to perform better. He sent a text to Clark’s phone to talk about what he’d been doing with Carol. Here Floyd was actually talking about Clark’s performance in bed and wanted to share some constructive criticism, but Homer misread the text and thought this was the moment Floyd found out about his wife’s affair. However, according to Plumb’s investigation, Floyd already knew about it, so this text message doesn’t mean anything now.

Clark Hired a Lawyer

During the initial investigation, Clark had been cooperative with the detectives, as he really wanted to help them solve Floyd’s murder. But when his own secrets started surfacing, Clark stopped talking and asked for a lawyer. At this point, we are not sure what secrets Clark wants to hide. Is it about Floyd’s request, or is it about the insurance policy? Or maybe there’s something else that he’s been hiding (as there are two more episodes left), though the detectives will eventually get to the bottom of the truth. In the fifth episode, Clark told his lawyer, Clara Gilchrist, that he really loved Floyd and didn’t want the rest of the story to come out, as it might hurt Floyd. Okay, let me address the elephant in the room. I don’t think Clark was attracted to Floyd in a sexual way. He just loved him as a friend and as a person, and that scene in his garden where Clark was admiring a dude in his backyard could be a figment of either Homer or Plumb’s imagination, as they were likely entertaining a possibility that Clark might be gay.

Floyd Needed the Drug

In episode 5, Floyd told Clark that he needed a drug called “amphezyne” because he wanted to reignite his intimacy with Carol and believed this medication would help him get aroused. But I think he was lying. I mean, we all know that Floyd hasn’t been able to have sex with Carol because whenever he tries to initiate things, he starts imagining her in her umpire gear. So I am not sure how a drug would have fixed what’s going on inside his head. He further told Clark that a heavy dose of amphezyne could stop the heart, and he was already on a lot of medication, so his doctor wouldn’t prescribe him this drug, which was why he wanted Clark to get it for him. Something I want to point out here. If Floyd had bought this drug and overdosed on it for any reason, then I think his family wouldn’t have been eligible for the life insurance money because his death could be seen as a suicide. So it’s possible that Floyd asked Clark to get it for him so his death would either look like an accident or a murder.

The episode also revealed how Floyd learned American Sign Language. On his way to the interview for a job in financial trading, Floyd saw a man talking to his colleagues in ASL inside the Lillian Roeser Deaf Center, and this caught Floyd’s attention. He didn’t go to the interview. Instead, he learned ASL from the internet on his way back home and tried to show it to Carol, but she wasn’t impressed. Through ASL, Floyd wanted to give back to the community (that’s why Clark loved him, because Floyd cared about people), but all Carol was concerned about were the piled-up bills and the taxes they owed. As an artist, one can understand Floyd’s inclination towards something creative like ASL, but if you see it from Carol’s perspective, then Floyd was slowly becoming a burden and a liability for her. She was drowning in his debts and eagerly wanted a way out of this mess. Later in the episode, while the two friends were at the pool, Clark told Floyd that he finally had an insurance policy. Here, Floyd remarked that he couldn’t hear his heart anymore. It’s a reference to his previous comment when Floyd told Clark that his heart beats like “bird heart” because of his financial worries, making it difficult for him to sleep at night. However, that’s not what caught my attention. Floyd further added that “it (his heart) stopped.” Ironically, his heart actually stopped due to an amphezyne overdose that caused his death. So was that always Floyd’s plan?

Floyd Wanted Clark To Watch

At the end of the episode, Floyd invited Clark to his house to ask Carol’s permission to let Clark watch them have sex. As mentioned earlier, Floyd wanted to rekindle his intimacy with Carol (using a drug), and he wanted Clark to watch so that the poor guy wouldn’t feel guilty for sleeping with his best friend’s wife. I am not sure what exactly Floyd was thinking when he said that, but it obviously made Carol uncomfortable, but she maintained her calm. However, some interesting information was revealed here. In ASL, Floyd mentioned to Clark that Carol’s first husband was a prick (not exactly the word he used, but you get the jist). I think Carol’s sealed conviction has something to do with her ex-husband, and it’s possible that her first husband might also be responsible for Richard’s mental health issues. I don’t exactly remember when Carol’s first husband was last mentioned in the show, but I think he might be an important piece of the puzzle in this mystery. Well, whatever the case is, we will definitely find out more about him in the next episode.

During this conversation, Floyd told Carol about amphezyne, and she knew what a heavy dose of the drug could do to Floyd’s heart. Coincidentally, this was the exact moment when Floyd revealed that they didn’t have lemon in the house, or sugar, so he couldn’t make the lemonade for Clark. It obviously highlights the family’s financial condition, and while they were struggling with this burden, this guy was busy thinking about sex and stuff. So what exactly is Carol thinking in this scene? 

The detectives found the second bike

In the first episode, Plumb had found CCTV footage in which she spotted a handcycle similar to Clark’s parked near the crime scene, which made the detectives believe that Clark was with Floyd on the night of the murder. I think he was, as something tells me that Floyd’s dream meeting with Carol didn’t take place at Quality Garden Suites. Instead, he fixed a date with her at the Kevin Kline Community Pool, and might have invited Clark to watch. Or it could be the other way around. Maybe Clark fixed a surprise date for Carol and Floyd (Clark sent him a text on DTF) as he wanted the couple to get back on track. A brief flashback scene in episode 1 depicted that Clark was there at the pool. However, he told the detectives that the handcycle wasn’t his. In the previous episode, Clark had given one of his handcycles to Floyd so he could use it to lose some weight, but we know that Carol had been riding it too. Throughout the episode, Homer and Plumb had been trying to locate this second handcycle, and in the end, they finally found it in Carol’s garage, thereby suggesting to them (though it might not be true) that Carol was present at the crime scene at the time of the murder, and now that they had a motive to link her to the crime, this might give them the authority to arrest her and bring her in for interrogation. However, if the show is making us believe that it is Carol who killed her husband, then I think it’s really a red herring, and it’s either Floyd killed himself or there’s someone else involved in his murder. Well, what’s your theory? Do drop your comments below.

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