Is ‘Stumptown’ About to Go All in on a Grey, Dex & Miles Love Triangle? (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Episode 9 of Stumptown, “Dex Education.”]
The Stumptown winter finale is a rough one on the ABC drama’s relationships.
After waking up in bed with a naked Liz (Monica Barbaro), Dex (Cobie Smulders) can’t remember “any shenanigans.” Liz says her memory’s equally hazy, and they agree not to tell Grey (Jake Johnson). Dex is ready to offer Miles (Michael Ealy) “full disclosure” about the night out when the case interrupts and she loses the nerve.
But then Liz goes from calling the night out “tame” to “an odd one” and tells Grey she’s developing real feelings for him. She’s scared, because she’s worried he’s not in the same place. He assures her he is. Things seem to be going great between them — he’s even going to help her find a new place — until Ansel (Cole Sibus) reveals she spent the night at Dex’s.
When Grey asks Liz point-blank if she and Dex slept together, Liz tells him Dex wanted to keep it quiet and she can’t remember parts of the night after boarding the “Dex train.” Though she claims not to be throwing Dex under the bus, she proceeds to do just that. Waking up naked in her bed wasn’t where she’d hoped the night would end, but she’s not sure Dex would say the same, she continues. And she seems happy when Grey tells Dex to work out of another bar.
Later, Dex tries to talk to Grey, but he just sees this incident as her causing “chaos.” Because she hasn’t processed her past, from her parents to Benny to the war, he compares her to a time bomb. “This is it, Dex,” Grey explains. “You saw that I was finding happiness, and you were finding calm, and for someone like you, calm is the enemy because that’s when things get quiet and feelings come in, if it’s fear or questions, and so a person like you who hasn’t processed their past at all, when they hear that quiet coming, they light a really big fire so they don’t have to deal with it.”
She denies wanting chaos, but he points out that with one move, she destroyed his relationship with Liz and hers with Miles. “I don’t want you around,” he reiterates.
(ABC/Kelsey McNeal)
But then Dex checks the security footage from her night out with Liz and sees that the other woman was dumping her drinks into Dex’s glass. After she sends that to Grey, he confronts Liz about her lie. “It was desperate and wrong,” she admits. “But for the record, I was never the one you wanted to be with. … You can’t have a relationship as long as she’s in your life. No one can get as close to you as she can.”
“You don’t care about me at all, and you’re not going to care about the next girl or the next one after that,” she continues. “I’m sorry for what I did, but you need to face the facts, Grey.”
Meanwhile, Dex gets some much-needed advice from Sue Lynn (Tantoo Cardinal): “Clean up. Make your bed. It begins a path to order. Once you got order, you can start to forgive yourself.”
And so Dex does just that, struggling to make her bed while both Miles and Grey sit at their desks (in the precinct and bar, respectively) thinking about their feelings. In fact, both manage to make the drive to her house in the time it takes her to complete her task.
Miles gets there first. Despite deciding earlier that they should keep things “professional” and pointing out they were never exclusive, Miles tells Dex he’s “not cool with how this day went.” All Grey can do is watch from his car as he walks into her house.
Is Stumptown about to go all in with a love triangle? It’s certainly looking like it’s a possibility. Or will they take one step forward and another couple back, much like they did with Dex when she first met Liz?
(ABC/Rick Rowell)
Stumptown, Wednesdays, 10/9c, ABC
