A Show I'd Gladly Stump for: Stumptown

Cobie Smulders has always been one of those actresses that is hard not to like. Whether for her delightful performance as Robin, the object of everybody’s affection in How I Met Your Mother, or her work as SHIELD Agent Maria Hill, in so many of the better Marvel movies, she has the ability to always make you like her. That charisma does her very well in Stumptown, ABC’s series based on yet another series of graphic novels I haven’t read.

Smulders plays Dex, a late thirtyish veteran of Afghanistan who trouble always seems to find on the few occasions she’s not going out of her way to look for it. Physically and psychological scarred from her service, as well as the fact that her lover ended up dying as a result of her being there, she now drives around Portland in a car so broken down Crazy Eddie would have had trouble selling it that seems to plays seventies and eighties music based on its mood. A heavy drinker, indiscriminate bed hopper, whose only elements of stability seem to be her autistic younger brother and her bartender/ friend Grey (Jake Johnson, finally adding some depth to that nice guy persona he’s carried for so long), Dex takes an assignment to try and rescue a kidnap victim more out of the need to pay a gambling debt that out of any personal good feeling, even though the victim is the daughter of her former lover.

Unlike the Marvel characters she’s associated with, Dex has no superpowers, unless you can count the ability to get into fights. But after an interaction with the Portland police, she decides to become a PI mainly because ‘it might keep me out of trouble’ Considering that she’s already had a one night stand with one of the Portland detectives (Michael Ealy), and seems unable to stop pissing off is Lieutenant (Camryn Manheim), that seems unlikely.

In presentation, Stumptown doesn’t seem that far removed from Emergence, a series whose main difference from series that they are ripping off but with a female lead. Why am I so charmed by the former more than the latter? A lot of it has to do with what this series has the latter doesn’t – a real sense of humor. Granted, it’s a fairly dark one that would not be far removed from, say, Justified. That in itself wouldn’t be a bad thing. If anything, TV in general could benefit from a few rip-offs of that show, which I considered one of the most undervalued of the decade just past. And indeed, from the early episodes, Dex is a good Raylan pastiche – always pissing off authority figures, her few friends, and basically anyone she cares about – we saw something similar in last night episode where we see just how quickly she nearly ruined her friendship with Grey in an origin story.

And it helps that the characters are already more than stick figures. Grey was revealed in the previous episode that he was involved in some kind of criminal activity, and has pissed off a boss who is not afraid to kill people who get on his bad side. Ealy’s character seems to be a sharp detective, who also lost a friend overseas. And the stories have an intriguing element – we’ve gotten so used to everything being serialized, it’s refreshing to have a show which has standalone stories front and center.

I’m not saying Stumptown is perfect. For what it is, though – a franchise series based on a franchise few people are likely to have heard of – it works very well. And it’s a female lead series not led by Shonda Rhimes with a lead I actually like. Considering Rhimes just abandoned ABC for a Netflix, this is just what the network needs.

My score: 4 stars.