Stumptown Review: At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles (Season 1 Episode 15)

There is a lot happening on Stumptown Season 1 Episode 15 “At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles,” and maybe a little too much to really serve the episode well.

There is nothing particularly bad about “At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles.”  It has a number of important revelations and is certainly not without its highlights. It’s just with so much plot to cover and so many stories to tell the episode ends up underserving most of them.

The case of the week is hurt the most. Normally, Dex’s cases are one of the strong points of an episode of Stumptown but the case for “At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles,” feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The best part of this storyline is the first scene when Dex meets with her client. Mary Passeri, who plays Dex’s client Camille Costas, captures the heart of the entire case in that short scene and immediately makes you root for her.

She is the only reason to care about the case. She gets one scene to bring viewers in and she does it beautifully. Outside of that, this is one of the least developed cases of the season, which is a shame given that they are in Hollywood and there is so much fun to be had with Dex in LA.

The other story that suffers on “At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles,” is Miles and Tookie’s Bad Alibi storyline. With a quirky, likable character like Tookie, there is always the potential for eccentric, secondary plotlines that end up stealing the show, but that’s not what we get here.

Instead of a fun goofy compliment Dex and Grey’s story in LA, it feels tacted on.

Not even Tookie could add enough heart to make the story feel anything but flat. Centering things on Miles and Tookie doesn’t work. Their energies don’t immediately complement each other the way we see with Tookie and other characters and they don’t have enough screen time to create any kind of rapport within the episode.

The better choice would have been to focus on Tookie and Ansel who already have an established and endearing dynamic rather than bringing in Miles and his family.

Speaking of Miles, it’s not clear what the point of having Tookie cast suspicion on his family is other than to make Miles come off as a jerk again.

It’s not unreasonable for Tookie to think one of Miles’s guests took the gun from Grey’s office. Miles really has no business being insulted or mean to Tookie for asking, especially when he asks as apologetically as he does.

The strongest parts of the episode, as they are intended to be, are Dex and Grey dealing with new unexpected information about their families, and the way they help each other be brave. Both Jake Johnson and Cobie Smulders have fantastic scenes with long lost relatives, and their scene on the beach is just about perfect.

Standout performances are par for the course with Smulders by now. She always manages to have at least one scene on almost any episode that stays with you and makes you feel everything Dex is experiencing at that moment.

For “At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles,” that moment is the scene with her Aunt and, in particular, when Dex tells her they should just sit for a while.

Grey’s scene with his dad is perhaps Johnson’s best work of the season, and the reveal of his younger half-brother is an interesting choice. It seems unlikely that this is the last we’ve seen of Grey’s new brother, and I think there are a lot of compelling directions they can take it.

Sometimes episodes of TV are greater than the sum of their parts giving us scenes that work together to enhance the entire hour and make the experience of watching them feel that much more satisfying. “At All Costs: The Conrad Costas Chronicles” is decidedly the opposite of that.

The episode is fine and the different pieces that make it up are even great at times. They just never really come together in a satisfying way and it makes all those wonderful pieces shine a little less bright.

What did you think of this episode of Stumptown? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Stumptown airs Wednesday at 10/9 on ABC.

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