STUMPTOWN. “Forget It Dex, It’s Stumptown.” ABC, 25 September 2019. (Season 1, Episode 1.) Cobie Smulders (Dex Parios), Jake Johnson, Tantoo Cardinal, Cole Sibus. Based on a series of comic books by Greg Rucka (story) & Matthew Southworth (art). Director: James Griffiths. Currently streaming on Amazon and Apple TV.

   First thought: What an ugly title for a TV show. I didn’t find out until quite a while later that the TV show was preceded by a series of comic books later  collected in graphic novel format. I also later discovered that “Stumptown” is a nickname for the city of Portland OR. (This may be the only time that Portland OR is the home of a (non-licensed) PI.)

   Said PI is female, a former Marine in Afghanistan named Dex Parios. She is now suffering from PTSD, gambling debts, and caring for a younger brother with Down’s Syndrome. Offered a job to find a missing granddaughter, she hesitates at first, then decides to take it. She can use the money.

   The plot suffers a bit from trying to tell a story along with filling us in with all of the people in her life, most of whom will show up again over the course of  the rest of the season. Stumptown was successful enough in its first season to be renewed for a second season only to be cancelled when Covid comes along.

   Cobie Smulders is an actress new to me, but she’s been around for a while, including long stints on the CBS series How I Met Your Mother (2005–2014) and as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill in the Marvel movies. (I’ve never watched either.) I also haven’t watched any of the other shows in the TV series to see which way the wind blew after this one, but based on this one, its future success, if any, would of course depend almost totally on her performance.

   Which, to coin a phrase, better than satisfactory. Smulders does, I thought, overdo it at time in terms of portraying a woman living a lousy life and being sour and witty and clever about it, but otherwise she is just fine. The young lady, at the end of this first episode, sort of decides she likes the job she has just done, and it is clear that, when offered another, she is almost assuredly going to take it.