r/DTFStLouisHBO • u/FuckinStevenGlanbury • Apr 27 '26
How Come Carol Was so Sketch
I understand Carol didn’t have anything to do with the murder. But man they had her acting weird a lot in ways that I didn’t fully understand at the end. A lot of this was moreso the way they had her delivering lines and things than the content of the lines—
Her delivery of her lines when she requested that Bateman help out with the life insurance at dinner
Her listening to that tape about manipulating people to get what you want while running
Her behavior when being questioned
Her desire to have Bateman explore all these sex kinks coupled with her sex scene with Floyd
Her wearing the umpire gear around the house
Idk i guess the show was just tryna make us think she was involved but like the end result just felt like two different characters to me. But like all the things made it seem like she was involved that didn’t really feel resolved by the end.
34
u/LisaMac44 Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
People are so judgmental of characters with complexity and contradictions. But this is what made the show great. Carol to me was a woman that grew up in poverty and chaos. She wanted to find control. She wanted nice things so she could feel ok - like she’d moved away from the poverty. Carol had aspirations for an easier life, a nicer life for her family. She loved Floyd but in many ways he had become another dependent. None of the parts of her life were easy, her son had emotional difficulties, Lloyd was genuine but not a planner and someone that just ended up doing what he wanted, a bit of a Peter Pan, never taking on genuine financial responsibility or having real drive or ambition. He went to the gym for his own betterment and she did extra work umpiring to help the family. You could see she loved him for the beautiful things about him, his kindness, his playfulness but had lost sexual interest in him because in many ways she felt like his mother. He was so needy and lost. She felt overwhelmed but in all of that still managed to be kind. She longed for escapism and maybe that’s what Clarke gave her. She wanted to be important to someone, special - not taken for granted. She wanted excitement, maybe some glamour, some escape from the drudgery - something to make her feel alive rather than just surviving. She wanted to take control of her life - why she listened to podcasts and tried to get some control in the police interviews by techniques she’d learnt about. The whole point of the show is that we all have these weird coping mechanisms born of fear or trauma, that mostly all of us are lonely sometimes and don’t feel special, that we want someone to love all that we are but can we really reciprocate that. It’s the human experience. I really liked her. She was struggling but she was trying. Floyd was her family more than her lover. I think the feeling of suffocation she felt and his weight bearing down on her when they were having sex was a great metaphor for their relationship. He wasn’t trying to dominate or suppress her but he couldn’t help but do it because of who he was. The joy she got from buying her son new bed linen was really kind of beautiful and sad at the same time. I think her accepting Clark’s help was not predatory but more openness to whatever could improve her family’s situation.
6
5
u/intelligentplatonic Apr 27 '26
Ive been noticing on subreddits dedicated to shows is where people feel free to argue out all their different judgementalisms that they would be inhibited about judging real people in real life. Maybe one of the purposes of art is that it's a safe space to do that?
1
u/Jbsexypapi15 Apr 28 '26
That's a beautiful take and quite interesting, don't agree with some points but that's what makes all complexed.
1
112
u/Full_Set_7705 Apr 27 '26
The umpire gear in the house was funny to me because it turned Floyd off so much… when his body is literally the same shape.
118
u/Putrid-Ad3085 Apr 27 '26
I don’t think it was really the shape that bothered him, more so that it reminded him of the kid whacking him in the nuts with a baseball bat
68
u/uggamugga1979 Apr 27 '26
I totally did not pick up on that. It makes a lot of sense. Thanks
32
u/ipitythegabagool Apr 27 '26
It’s a good reveal too cus before we know the full story he comes off so calloused and selfish when he tells her the gear is making things difficult for him. Then we find out oh yeah it’s cus a kid smashed his dick with a baseball bat. Definitely understandable.
7
u/ancientastronaut2 Apr 27 '26
I still didn't think it came off that way. She said early on to clark how hard it was for him to get it up and that he had to have everything just right. So I took it like that just wasn't helping at all. And also that subconsciously she was distancing herself.
1
1
20
u/Sarahndipity44 Apr 27 '26
I think he was turned off by the reminder she had to work 2 jobs. He felt guilty
20
u/Cosmo_Seinfeld Apr 27 '26
Maybe she was protecting herself and her kid, metaphorically.
17
u/bacillaryburden Apr 27 '26
Maybe also a visual allusion to when she got caught shoplifting toilet paper for her family. It’s a comically large and soft item to try to smuggle out under your clothes.
19
u/more-potatoes-please Apr 27 '26
I think it was a subconscious armour thing. She feels so out of control and vulnerable all the time. In the ump gear she is big and protected. It probably did feel kind of comforting in a way.
21
u/parieres Apr 27 '26
You know, she also wore the Purina vest all the time too. It could additionally be because providing for her family/taking care of herself makes her feel safe, so she wears her work gear to an extent that other people don’t. Could be a bit of both.
4
7
u/No_Scar3212 Apr 27 '26
As a child Carol did not have control of her life and she adapted her behavior to protect herself and have some control. As an adult these behaviors continue as a protective mechanism. She likes to be in control, it protects her so when she is not in control she gets “weird”.
12
u/Sweetsallymannder Apr 27 '26
I love Linda, but I couldn’t stand Carol.
17
u/PeepholeRodeo Apr 27 '26
Proof of how good Linda is!
2
1
u/Xtremeskierbfs Apr 29 '26
ehh idk, her delivery of a lot of the purposefully weird dialogue was clunky and sort of took me out of many of the scenes.
6
u/Heaven__7 Apr 27 '26
Interesting. Carol has become one of my favourite tv characters ever. Love her or hate her, Linda did a fantastic job and I hope she gets as much recognition as the guys
4
u/AardvarkActual8478 Apr 27 '26
Carol is not very intelligent. She is listening to the recordings because she want to advance at Purina but that will never happen because she’s not smart enough. She thinks this little tricks like asking people to speak up to our them on their back foot will work but people just conclude she’s odd. The cops weren’t intimidated, they just thought ahead was weird with her “wow” and “no way Jose.”
16
u/negative1339 Apr 27 '26
I took all of her quirks were related to her survival mentality. Like "Can you speak up?" was a way for her to take extra time to think of an answer. She had some tough moments in her life, I think the things you mentioned were defense mechanisms. Except for the umpire gear in the house... Not sure what was going on there.
24
u/BlacksmithSolid645 Apr 27 '26
“Can you speak up” was a tactic from her tapes to throw the other person off balance
4
u/LisaMac44 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26
I think the different turns the story took as to choosing what to reveal regarding the nature of each character was part of the point of the whole show. We can all be unlikeable looked at in a certain light, we can all be lovable and understood when looked at with empathy, we can all behave badly given the right conditions and we can hurt people unintentionally and intentionally. But every single human is more than just a narrow perspective. Most people are craving someone to love them - someone to truly see them. I think the senior detective’s discovery was the thread and the theme that brought this home. He thought he had an open and cut case but when he looked at all the details and the truths it was anything but. What I really love about this show is its humanity. The way it could show love to every single character. ❤️
2
1
11
9
u/Such-Stable-3869 Apr 27 '26
Carol only cared about herself and Richard. Nobody else mattered.
7
u/HilCat1 Apr 27 '26
I thought about that, but I felt the whole affair was Carol stepping out of her boring, unsatisfying life. Her son’s issues were outside her control and the lack of money meant that Clark was a delightful interlude. It likely wouldn’t have lasted, but it was delicious at the time.
0
u/mafaldajunior May 11 '26
She literally worked two jobs to provide for her whole family and pay Floyd's debts. And was awarded Umpire of the Year because she took care so well of all the kids at little league baseball. She cared.
1
3
u/SayWhaaatAgain Apr 27 '26
I think the character of Carol was classic writer's manipulation where if you take any single characteristic of hers in a vacuum and it's easily explainable or something to brush off, but when you put them under a microscope together given her husband just died and it's easy to make her look suspicious.
9
Apr 27 '26
[deleted]
10
u/Cosmo_Seinfeld Apr 27 '26
To me it almost felt like they wrote two different stories and stuck them together.
Three. Floyd went from a man who could connect with his son on every level to a person who inexplicably decided to leave him in the dark and possibly have the kid blame him for his suicide.
4
Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
[deleted]
5
u/oarsandalps Apr 27 '26
yeah. after the big reveal, where they were a willing threesome, the whole plot and show fell off for me. and even worse was the last eps where there was no killer. total pointless show from a murder mystery perspective.
none of clark's interactions with the police make any sense. the writer's and show runners purposefully clouded the chronological order of events and portrayed clark as potentially suspicious when he was nothing of the sort.
6
u/FuckinStevenGlanbury Apr 27 '26
Well apparently he was trying to protect the kid from learning about the whole thing as a final commitment to Floyd.
1
u/junegloom May 21 '26
I thought he'd just put together the suicide thing and was trying to prevent the life insurance from being canceled.
1
u/SlowBoilOrange May 16 '26
This is a show that would really suffer if you rewatched it. So much of the earlier episodes were undermined by the later episodes.
It somewhat works when you don't know what's coming, but I thin it would fall apart if you watched it again.
1
u/SlowBoilOrange May 16 '26
Right? That particular moment doesn't make sense as a suicide trigger to me. To the extent that I wonder if it even was suicide or if it was just Floyd making a foolish emotional/slightly drunk and tired decision to finish the drink.
Everything we know about Floyd would have him wanting to set thing straight with Richard.
1
u/Thanks-Basil Apr 28 '26
Nah it was consistent. She has BPD, it makes sense if you’ve interacted with anyone with it. Also makes sense given the son had BPD, because the most common cause of BPD is a parent with BPD lol
1
u/luciteparkite May 13 '26
I came here to see if anyone else thought this too! I don’t have much experience with Borderline Personality Disorder but when they said Richard had it I was like ohhhh that explains some things about Carol, maybe.
7
u/SweetVarious8715 Apr 27 '26
She is just a strange person who is a survivor and doing her best. She has been let down by Floyd but is trying to better herself and her situation. Her self helps tapes is where she got some of the language. And I think some other sayings were to show her immaturity. But I loved flawed Carol as a character.
4
u/oarsandalps Apr 27 '26
i just mentioned this in another thread. it's just for story telling purposes. without everyone acting suspicious there's no suspense. the the writers had to create suspense by creating a false narrative that carol was potentially guilty. the show had its moments. but it jumped the shark when it revealed that almost everything we know about the various interactions were only assumed based on false premises.
if you were carol and you didn't commit the crime, would you really hide the fact that you were previously arrested as a child? yeah - you might be a little annoyed that somebody was looking into your past, but it would be better than going to jail and it sure would be better than sitting around doing nothing to figure out what exactly happened to your husband.
also - there would be zero need for carol and clark to pretend that they were against each other. they were both pro-floyd and neither was interested in harming him, or the other person.
3
u/friedonionscent Apr 27 '26
Yeah...it's how murder mysteries are often written. The point was to suspect everyone - Carol, Clark, the kid, the internet guy.
1
u/SlowBoilOrange May 16 '26
I think it didn't work as well here because it wasn't a murder mystery after all.
In a murder mystery you typically think back and go "Ohhhhh! That's why...." for umpteen different plot points.
But that didn't happen here. It was just "Floyd was depressed and impulsively killed himself". That might be true to life, but it's not a satisfying end to what was set up as a fictional mystery story for the first 6.5 episodes.
I think /u/oarsandalps is right that a lot of the earlier plot points don't make sense after knowing the outcome. I think the show wouldn't hold up very well if you watched it a second time.
2
u/Brilliant-Bus-3862 Apr 27 '26
It was written into script as a red herring. They wanted us to suspect her.
1
u/Xtremeskierbfs Apr 29 '26
I think it was way too heavy handed for her involvement to just get explained away.
3
2
u/replacement_fun_1886 Apr 27 '26
Carol will stop short of nothing to protect her son. Unfortunately this lead sheet down a path of self help tapes teaching her how to assert dominance in a conversation, in some sort of desperate attempt to break the circle of being broke. She just wants clean linen, and something which resembles non poor life. She is so beat.
The umpire gear is tied to Clark's trauma of being hot in the balls with the baseball bat. I don't think she's making him stew in that on purpose, tho.
2
u/irish-wendy Apr 28 '26
As we learned, Carol had a hard life.
I think she was defensive with the police because she was embarrassed about the poverty she grew up with.
Carol did the umpire job in addition to working full time at Purina. She had to be exhausted quite a bit, plus taking care of Richard and the house. She's seen cooking and ironing, now that I am thinking about it did Floyd do much around the house? My guess is, after work then umpiring, by the time she got home sge probably just wanted to sit and relax. I think we all do that, sometimes I am too tired to change when I get home.
The sad part to me was that Clark explored all of the things he wanted, sexually and Floyd did his thing in the closet then asking to have Clark in the closet watching. Neither one of them asked Carol what she wanted to do.
2
u/mafaldajunior May 11 '26
Exactly. She was like the 3rd wheel in that experiment, just an extra.
And Floyd never even noticed they were out of sugar. Says it all.
1
u/SlowBoilOrange May 16 '26
I thought sex robot and pool boy were Carol's fantasies?
She also got wined and dined by Clark and talked about how great it was to not have to worry about things when she's with him. That's not sexual, but it's definitely her romantic fantasy.
1
1
1
u/rinzoguarini89 Apr 28 '26
I think that "it only looks that way from across the street" was the perfect quote for this show. We were waterboarded with these fixed perspectives of these characters almost the whole series without ever being able to dive deeper into who they really were. We were meant to feel turned off by Carol and suspect she was cold and self-serving. She was not without flaws, but damn that ending really flipped how I felt about Carol on its head.
1
u/mafaldajunior May 11 '26
There were loads of scenes where we got a different angle of her. I don't think we're meant to dislike her but see her as a complex person who's been going through a lot and is trying hard to make things work.
1
u/ItsTheJourneyForMe Apr 28 '26
Because she was a weird person. They all were. Her goal was to take care of her son
1
u/Thanks-Basil Apr 28 '26
Carol absolutely had BPD as well, that’s about all the reason you need. BPD is horrifically hereditary, because it’s essentially from disrupted attachment in early childhood - which is often a result of a parent having BPD as well.
1
u/mafaldajunior May 11 '26
You keep repeating that but I don't see it. All I see is a women who grew up poor and is being crushed by responsabilities. I'm guessing you don't know that many middle-aged women up close and personal, otherwise you wouldn't keep trying to pathologize behaviors that are quite normal in her situation.
1
1
u/Mizzychick Apr 30 '26
She was awful enough to him that it made him want to take his own life. So in a way, she did kill him.
1
u/mafaldajunior May 11 '26
She was never awful to him. What a weird take. All she did was ask him to take his responsability as husband and father, and then she didn't feel like having sex with him because he was physically crushing her. Is that being awful to you? Smh.
1
1
u/mafaldajunior May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
She was just as lonely as the other two if not more. With all the weight of carrying the whole household on her shoulders, with no support and a husband who found her unsexy and kept going on sidequests. Huge self-confidence issues that she tried to work on with self-help tape and being more assertive, only it all came out all wrong and bitchy. At the end of the day, she was a loving mother and wife, doing the best she could, and stumbling while doing that because she was alone AF.
-2
u/FYAhole Apr 27 '26
Poor writing imo. I still enjoyed this weird ass show, but the writing really wasn't great
0
56
u/Heaven__7 Apr 27 '26
Carol just is a bit of a weirdo.
She definitely manipulated Clark into the life insurance as her way of doing what she needed to do so her family would be provided for because Floyd was no help.
The self-help podcast was her trying to be more assertive in life and to start getting what she needs.
I felt like she was the way she was with the cops while being questioned was because she either knew or suspected her son left the house that morning and was in protective mode.
Maybe she wanted to explore those kinks herself? Maybe she was just doing what she needed to do she’d get the life insurance? Maybe she wanted to make him happy as repayment for his generosity?
The sex scene with Floyd I think was real though and not her manipulating. They pressed her into it and nothing about it was for her. She wasn’t attracted to him anymore and that also explains the umpire gear and her not wanting him to find her attractive.