Stumptown is an American crime drama series airing on ABC starring Cobie Smulders, Michael Ealy, and Jake Johnson, based on the graphic novel series of the same name.
In the city of Portland, former Marine intelligence officer Dex Parios makes a living as a private investigator. Unfortunately, she's also got a very bad gambling problem and owes a lot of money to the Confederated Tribes of the Wind Coast. This forces her to take on very tough assignments, some of which bring her into conflict with the local cops, like Detective Miles Hoffman.
The series debuted on September 25, 2019, with its first season concluding on March 25, 2020 and an announcement for a second season made in May 2020. However, ABC cancelled the show on September 16, 2020 due to complication in the second season's production caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. ABC Studios attempted to find a new home for the show but was unable to leading to its cancellation.
This series contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion:
- Jake Johnson as a bar owner.
- Donal Logue as a sleazy jaded PI is not too far removed from his role in Gotham as a sleazy, jaded corrupt cop.
- There's more than one reference to Cobie Smulders' previous series, How I Met Your Mother:
- Dex's Mustang has a tape stuck in the player, just like Marshall Eriksen's beloved Fiero, the difference being that Marshall's tape only played "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" by The Proclaimers, while Dex's fires off several random tunes from a mix tape.
- The second episode deals with a man being duped by a con artist because he thought she was "the one", who waxes poetically about the universe giving him a sign that this may be his one true love. Sounds an awful lot like Ted, does it not?
- At the end of "At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles", Dex and Grey sit on the beach to talk, which is set to Band of Horses' "The Funeral". A similar scene featuring Ted and Robin (Smulders' character) happened during a Season 9 episode of HIMYM, while that same song had also being used for the ending scene of Season 8's premiere.
- Affectionate Nickname: Dex calls Fiona, her ex-girlfriend, Fee.
- The Alcoholic:
- If Dex doesn't keep busy, she drinks. Or worse, gambles.
- In "Dirty Dexy Money", Dex deals with a strip-club owner who is even more of an alcoholic than she is.
- The Alleged Car: Dex's car is a beat-up old piece of crap Mustang with a cassette player that has a habit of turning itself on at inopportune times.
- Arc Villain: Wallace Kane, at least for Episodes 4 & 5. He's a crime boss that Cosgrove mentions as having been suspected of ordering at least fifty deaths, and Grey owes him half a million dollars. At the beginning of Episode 4, he's been sprung from prison and has forcibly enlisted Grey to help him with a plan his sentence put on hold. At the end of Episode 5 he's back in custody, along with his Dragon.
- Artistic License – Cars: In the pilot, multiple people are kept in the trunk of Dex's Mustang. However, that model of Mustang, the 1992 GT, is a hatchback and therefore doesn't have an actual trunk, just a storage space behind the rear seats.
- The Beard: In "November Surprise", Dex is hired to dig up dirt on a gay politician, and learns that when he was a young college professor, he carried on an affair with a female student in an attempt to cover up his homosexuality, which resulted in her giving birth to a son.
- Bedmate Reveal: Going into the Season 1 midseason finale, Dex wakes up next to Grey's girlfriend Liz.
- Betty and Veronica: Dex's two main love interests are Hoffman, a smooth if straight-as-an-arrow police detective, and Gray, an ex-con and publican.
- Big "WHAT?!": Dex in Episode 5, when Hoffman tells her that Grey wasn't just a car thief, he's also an explosives expert and safecracker.
- Blackmail:
- In "Family Ties" corrupt tycoon Randall Tapper is coerced into finishing his work for the reservation and made to provide more for free while also giving up sole custody of his daughter through being Caught on Tape with evidence he'd been trafficking drugs.
- In the second half of season 1, Hoffman blackmails Grey into going undercover in a carjacking ring, threatening to alert the cops to the fact that he bought the Bad Alibi with stolen money if he refuses.
- Dex later blackmails a man at the Defense Department to get her classified information in "The Dex Files" using her knowledge that he's having sex with women other than his wife.
- Blatant Lies: Dex's excuse for hitting Artie Banks' car with a crowbar is that she mixed up her Mustang (a beat-up 1992 model) with Artie's Mustang (a '70s pony car model). When asked why she was trying to break her own car, she claims she read on the internet that her Mustang was the only model year with a piñata hidden inside it. Luckily Cosgrove doesn't like Artie and so she "believes" Dex's story.
- Break His Heart to Save Him: In "Family Ties", Grey sends Ansel away so that he won't be at the bar when Kane comes around. Poor Ansel doesn't understand what is happening and goes home thinking that Grey is angry at him.
- Call-Back: In "All Quiet on the Dextern Front", Jeremy, the client from "The Past and the Furious", returns to hire Dex on behalf of his cousin, who's facing the prospect of losing custody of her kids after she's accused of assault.
- Caught on Tape:
- Randall Tapper is secretly recorded admitting he trafficked drugs in "Family Ties".
- "The Past and the Furious" has Dex investigating adoption fraud. She gets the woman behind it recorded using her cell phone confessing to this.
- Contrived Coincidence: In "The Dex Factor" Violet, a hitwoman working for drug dealers, seduces Dex and they have sex. Violet is trying to learn where her clients' stolen heroin has gone, which she's unaware that Dex knows. She's shocked to see Dex where the thieves stashed it after tracking them down.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Randall Tapper is a very rich construction company mogul who cares for only his money and power. He abuses his girlfriend and abused his ex-wife, while trying to take away their daughter just for spite. Tapper pays to cover up a tape showing when he'd struck his girlfriend. It turns out that he's involved with drug trafficking as well.
- Dating Catwoman:
- In "The Dex Factor", Dex's new love interest happens to be a hitwoman who's after the gang that Grey has infiltrated.
- Likewise, Gray ends up falling for Max(ine), the mechanic for the car theft gang he infiltrates. Gray tips her off to the bust going down and helps her escape to the reservation, where the Portland Police Bureau doesn't have jurisdiction.
- Dirty Cop:
- Arthur Banks was once a police detective before he stole money from the evidence room. He resigned in a deal to avoid prison time.
- In "Dirty Dexy Money" Jimmy, a detective from narcotics with the Portland Police Bureau, turns out to be dirty and works for drug dealers looking for the heroin which some thieves stole. He gets exposed doing this and is arrested toward the end.
- The title film in "At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles" is also about a police officer fighting his dirty colleagues.
- Domestic Abuse: In "Rip City Dicks" Dex and Artie Banks get evidence that Randall Tapper, their client's ex-husband, abused his girlfriend. His ex-wife says that he did this to her too. In the present he's seeking sole custody of their daughter (who he didn't even want) just because it hurts her.
- Double-Meaning Title: "The Other Woman" can apply to how in said episode Dex has to come face to face with both Naomi, her old flame Benny's ex-wife; and Liz, Grey's current girlfriend. Then it takes yet another meaning at the end of the episode when Dex wakes up to find a nude Liz in bed next to her.
- Engineered Public Confession: In "Til Dex Do Us Part" Dex gets a woman to confess publicly that she killed someone accidentally with her car then fled the scene of the accident.
- False Friend:
- All of Liz's attempts to befriend Dex and Ansel were just part of a plan to manipulate them out of Grey's life.
- In "Dirty Dexy Money", beneath Ginger Lloyd's friendly exterior is a mean drunk who makes Dex's life Hell when Dex crosses her.
- Finger in the Mail: In "Reality Checks Don't Bounce", Dex is hired to find the brother of a TV judge, only to discover that she's blundered into a kidnapping plot. At one point, the kidnappers send the judge an ear.
- Fingore: Dex disables a thug by smashing a car door onto his fingers.
- Flashback: "The Dex Files" has Dex reflect on her time with Benny, having multiple flashbacks about him from years before his death.
- Gene Hunting: In "The Past and the Furious" Dex is hired by a man to find his birth parents, after he had only recently learned of being adopted.
- Hero's Classic Car: Dex has a 1992 Ford Mustang GT. Note that it's a 1990s model and it's treated as very much The Alleged Car, as opposed to 60s/70s Mustang models that are more associated with being a Cool Car.
- Hollywood Law: In "Til Dex Do Us Part" Dex says correctly that as a private investigator she isn't bound by the same rules as police. However, then she works with the police to get a confession, which would make her legally their agent and bound by the same rules for this purpose.
- Honey Trap:
- In "Missed Connections", Dex is hired to track down a young woman who turns out to be part of a con-artist ring that targets lonely rich men.
- "The Dex Files" has Hoffman and Lee going after a beautiful female thief who gets close to rich older men at different swingers clubs then drugs them, stealing their jewelry as they're senseless.
- How We Got Here: It is a recurring theme for episodes to open with Dex in some crazy situation and then flashing back to how it all started. The pilot opens with two shady guys in a car driving somewhere and someone clearly locked in the trunk. Dex then pushes her way out of the trunk through the back seat and attacks the men with the car still in motion. The driver loses control, the car spins out and goes airborne. We then jump back three days to see the events that led up to this.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Most episodes' titles manage to work Dex's name in as a pun: "Dex, Drugs and Rock & Roll", "Dex Education", "Dirty Dexy Money", "The Dex Factor", "The Dex Files", etc.
- Imagine Spot: Meeting established private eye Artie Banks, Dex briefly imagines the two working together in a cheesy 1970s-style TV cop show.
- Inter-Service Rivalry: In "The Dex Factor” Violet (former US Army) and Dex (ex-Marine) trade some playful barbs toward each other's service branches.
- Invincible Classic Car: Dex's Mustang seems to be. In the pilot, it survives a long, high-speed jump with a long drop without even a scratch on the bodywork.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Artie zigzags this one pretty hard. He agrees to let Dex apprentice under him, then backstabs her and their client for more money after faking a sob story about a drug addict daughter that got Dex to trust him. Nothing Dex does afterward to try and sway him makes a dent until he watches the client lose custody of her infant daughter, and he confesses to Dex that his daughter had actually died in infancy after an experimental therapy failed; this along with the loss of his police career (he stole the money for her procedure from the evidence room) caused him to concentrate on looking out for himself above everything else. He gets Dex her P.I.'s license and seems to have been sincere, but Dex is still unsure whether to fully trust him.
- Sue-Lynn is a hardass most of the time, but she is gentle with Ansel, has helped Dex on more than one occasion, and in "The Past and the Furious", she helps reunite Jeremy Stevens with his Native family.
- Jurisdiction Friction: The Portland cops are not on the best terms with the Confederated Nations, hence why Sue Lynn Blackbird hires Dex to find her granddaughter rather than going to the cops. In "The Other Woman", the Portland police are forced to tread lightly when someone apparently tries to kill Sue Lynn with a car bomb while she's within Portland city limits; in theory, they're responsible for investigating the case, but they can't compel Sue Lynn to cooperate with their investigation.
- Lighter and Softer: Than the source, which if nothing else has swearing that wouldn't fly on network TV.
- Like Goes with Like: In "All Quiet on the Dextern Front" Ansel gets a girlfriend named Lila who has Down Syndrome like him. Grey and Tookie think they were made for each other as a result, but they soon break up.
- Lingerie Scene: In "Til Dex Do Us Part" Dex is shown wearing only her bra as she's getting a tattoo on her shoulder.
- The Lost Lenore: Benjamin Blackbird, Dex's ex-boyfriend, weighs on her as she thinks she'd caused his death.
- Love Triangle: Hoffman and Dex are in a Friends with Benefits arrangement though he clearly wants more. Kara Lee makes it clear that she finds him desirable as well though, and he finds her to be appealing too. They have sex in "The Dex Files" after things finally come to a head between them.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage:
- Part of the reason Sue-Lynn strongly disapproved of Dex being with her son Benny, as she wanted him to marry within the tribe.
- In "The Past and the Furious", Dex's investigation into a veteran's birth parents reveals that he was taken from his Native-American birth mother because a racist church secretary objected to his mixed heritage and felt that a "good Christian" family was the only way to "save" him.
- Meet Cute: Dex and Grey first meet by literally bumping into each other, causing Dex to drop a bottle of beer she scored for thwarting a robbery. They sleep together that very night.
- Morality Pet:
- The main thing keeping Dex grounded is her brother Ansel, who has Down Syndrome.
- Grey likewise tells Ansel that he's what keeps Grey grounded and law-abiding.
- Mr. Vice Guy: Dex drinks heavily and gambles frequently, but she'll do anything for her friends, clients, and especially for her brother Ansel.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Liz seemingly has this reaction when she realizes that her blaming Dex for whatever may have happened between them has nuked Grey and Dex's friendship. Turns out she lied to try and separate them and was intending for that to happen because she thinks Grey and Dex's friendship is keeping both of them from having meaningful relationships with other people.
- Myth Arc: The show has a recurring plot where Dex (and Sue-Lynn) try to move on from Benny's death in Afghanistan, though the former learns of something else that may have killed Benny, which did not involve the Taliban.
- New Old Flame: "Dex, Drugs and Rock & Roll" has Dex's ex-girlfriend Fiona X introduced. The two of them still have a mutual attraction and sleep together.
- Nice Guy: Dex says Benny had been the most empathetic guy she's ever known, which we see during her flashbacks in "The Dex Files".
- Oblivious Adoption: In "The Past and the Furious", Dex is hired to find the birth mother of a fellow veteran who only recently learned that he was adopted.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Dex suspects that Baxter Hall might be behind the kidnapping, so she approaches him in his club. He seems to admit to it and even offers to hand "her" over to Dex. Dex then discovers that he was really talking about a stolen car. A woman hired him to get her a rare car and he mistook Dex for the buyer.
- Only Known by Their Nickname:
- Dex prefers to be called "Dex" and pretty much everybody complies with her wish. Calling her "Dexedrine" is a quick way to ruin her day.
- Max is almost never called Maxine, her full name.
- Parental Marriage Veto: In her youth, Dex wanted to marry Sue Lynn's son Benny. Sue Lynn did not give her blessing, they broke up, and Benny married someone from within the tribe. Years later, they divorced, he joined the Army to track Dex down, and was killed in action while they were on patrol.
- Phony Veteran: The opening scene has Dex being hit on by a guy in a bar who claims to have served in Afghanistan. She lets him talk a bit about his experience before cutting him off and listing the holes in his story: his dog tags don't match the name on his credit card, no one calls Afghanistan "the 'Stan," and he doesn't know what language is spoken there.
- Practically Different Generations:
- Dex is clearly much older than her little brother Ansel. His actor is fifteen years younger than hers.
- Grey also learns he has a half-brother from his dad's second wife who's so young he could be Grey's son in "At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles".
- Private Detective: Dex is a private investigator, and she's licensed through apprenticing under Arthur Banks, who's initially much shadier than her.
- Punk in the Trunk: The pilot opens with two shady guys driving somewhere with Dex locked in the trunk. It ends with Dex turning the tables on them:Dex: Two more in the trunk.
- Queer Establishing Moment:
- In "Missed Connections" Dex mentions while talking with Grey how she once had sex with Sammy, who is a woman, after being previously attracted to men, establishing she's bisexual.
- In "Dex, Drugs and Rock & Roll" star musician Fiona X is introduced, and almost immediately established as an ex-girlfriend of Dex's.
- In "The Dex Factor" Violet turns out to be queer, flirting with Dex, seducing her and then the two of them hooking up.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Grey delivers one to Dex after finding out that she may have slept with Liz, accusing her of being obsessed with chaos and incapable of handling calm situations, and telling her to find another bar.
- Right Through the Wall: In "Dirty Dexy Money" Dex awkwardly listens to Ginger while she loudly has sex with a man nearby inside her bedroom.
- Rogue Soldier: In "All Hands on Dex" it turns out that Benny was really murdered by members of his own unit from the US Marines for planning to report the fact they had stolen millions of dollars. They later murder another former Marine and frame Dex after this to cover it up.
- Running Gag: Hoffman going to Lee with his and Dex's relationship problems.
- Scatterbrained Senior: In "At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles" Dex visits her aunt Mirabel whom she thinks knows where Dex's parents went. She not only doesn't know, she's senile and mistakes Dex for Dex's mom, her sister.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: All of the sex that Dex has is handled by the scenes cutting to afterward, and this also goes for other characters.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Dex and Hoffman are having sex fairly regularly, though both deny that they're a couple, rather than just Friends with Benefits.
- Shout-Out: The Season 1 poster shows Dex laying on a crushed car as if she fell on it. This seems to be based on the famous photo of Evelyn McHale's 1947 suicide,
◊ known as "The Most Beautiful Suicide." - Shown Their Work:
- It's hard to see since the scene is dark, but Dex is wearing appropriate MARPAT camouflage in the Afghanistan flashbacks, and even has correct collar pins which indicate she's a corporal.
- Dex's uniform seen in episode 8 is highly accurate, down to her awards being both real and in the correct order of precedence.
- Episode 9 name-checks both Dante's, a popular Portland nightclub, and the New Season school references New Seasons, a Whole Foods-esque upscale grocery chain in Portland. Averted, though, with a junkyard described as being located in 920 SE Belmont. 920 SE Belmont is in a hipster-yuppie neighborhood in Portland; a junkyard would never be there, unless it's an ironic junkyard.
- Averted in "Reality Checks Don't Bounce" - Hoffman is seen pumping gas in one scene. Self-service is banned in Oregon (although it has been temporarily allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic).
- In "Dirty Dexy Money", Dex works for the owner of Hold the Meat, a vegan strip club – this is a gender-flipped version of Casa Diablo, a well-known Portland vegan strip club.
- The props department snagged authentic Portland recycling bins (yellow with blue printing), seen behind the Bad Alibi in "'Til Dex Do Us Part".
- Sinister Minister: Kale Murphy in "All Hands on Dex” is a former Rogue Soldier who's committed armed robbery and murder. He's a Catholic priest by the time of his appearance and it's made clear he hasn't really changed as Murphy runs away with his share of stolen money.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Almost every character Dex snarks to responds in kind in one form or another.
- So Proud of You: In "Til Dex Do Us Part" Lionel Hoffman tells his son Miles he's proud of him for exposing that Lionel abused his employees.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Fights and other action scenes are commonly set to upbeat oldies tunes. Usually crossed with Left the Background Music On as the songs usually play on the radio of Dex's car.
- Spotting the Thread: In one of the first scenes, Dex is hit on by a guy who claims to be an Afghanistan vet, but she easily notices holes in his story, like the fact that he doesn't know what Pashto is. Part of her Sherlock Scan, above.
- Star-Crossed Lovers:
- Dex and Benny Blackbird were in love but his mother did not want him to marry outside the tribe. They broke up, Dex joined the Marines and Benny married a woman his mother approved of. However, Benny's marriage broke up and he defied his mother by joining the Army. He deployed to Afghanistan and while on leave he went looking for Dex with an engagement ring in his pocket. Before he could reach her, his vehicle hit a bomb and Benny was killed.
- Subverted with Nina and Michael. They try to elope and get away from Sue Lynn but are stopped by Dex who feels really guilty about it. However, it was all just part of Michael's plan to have Nina kidnapped and hold her for ransom.
- Tank-Top Tomboy:
- Dex is a tough PI and ex Marine who's still good at fighting, coming off as The Lad-ette overall. Most of the time she has on a tanktop or similar somewhat masculine attire.
- Max is a Wrench Wench who's also always in tanktops.
- Teacher/Student Romance: In "November Surprise" it turns out Councilman Dan fathered a son with a student when he was a college professor. He didn't know until Dex told him as the boy's mother kept it a secret. Dan was only using her as The Beard
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In "The Other Woman", Dex is forced to work with Naomi Blackbird - the ex-wife of her late flame Benny - in order to figure out who's trying to kill Sue Lynn.
- Token Minority:
- Ansel has Down Syndrome and is the only disabled main character.
- Hoffman is Black and Tookie Latino. They are the only two main men of color on the show.
- Kara Lee is a supporting character, played by Chinese-American Fiona Rene. She is the only recurring East Asian person.
- Liz Malero, a character in a few episodes, was played Latina actress Monica Barbaro. She is the sole Latina on the show.
- Token Minority Couple: In "All Quiet on the Dextern Front", Ansel gets a girlfriend who also has Down syndrome, and Grey and Tookie gush about how perfect she is for him, even though she's only been on the show for a few minutes. They're the only two disabled people on the show.
- Tomboyish Name:
- In "Missed Connections" Dex mentions she once had sex with a woman named Sammy.
- "Bobby" is usually a nickname for men. She's a slightly butch police captain.
- In "The Past and the Furious", Grey goes undercover in a car theft ring in order to meet the elusive Max... who turns out to be a woman. She's a Tank-Top Tomboy and Wrench Wench too.
- Tracking Device:
- In "Rip City Dicks Dex" sets a tracker on the undercarriage of a car to follow its driver.
- During "The Past and the Furious" the car which Grey passes as stolen is also given a tracker for police to follow as he's infiltrating a car theft ring. He removes it so their Wrench Wench Max won't find this.
- Trapped by Gambling Debts: Dex Parios has a bad gambling problem and consequently owes a lot of money to the Confederated Tribes of the Wind River, who run the local casino. Dex has taken a few jobs directly from chief Sue Lynn Blackbird in exchange for paying down her debts, most notably searching for her granddaughter in the pilot.
- Trauma Button: Dex is triggered by hearing gunshots and other things, having violent flashbacks to her time as a Marine because of them.
- Twofer Token Minority: Violet in "The Dex Factor" is a Black queer woman, with the other characters being mostly white and straight. She only appears in that episode as well.
- Undercover as Lovers: In "The Dex Files" Hoffman and Lee play a couple while they go undercover pursuing a thief at a swingers club.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: "Dirty Dexy Money" features a male strip club, and thus naturally has handsome men who work as strippers walking around shirtless at all times.
- Wham Episode:
- "At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles" suggests that Dex and Ansel may have been left by their parents to protect them from... something.
- "The Dex Files" suggests that Benny's death in Afghanistan was arranged because he was going to be a whistleblower, while Tookie discovers his wife has been cheating on him.
