Trouble starts when oldest son Danny Rayburn comes home for the 45th anniversary celebration of his parents' hotel in the Florida Keys' Islamorada.
Welcome to my reviews of Netflix's newest original drama series Bloodline. The show dropped all 13 episodes of its first season on Friday. I'm just now getting to the show myself but I am planning on offering daily episodic reviews of the season. This show undoubtedly has one of the best casts on television right now. It is such an impressive lineup, with Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelsohn, Linda Cardellini and Norbert Leo Butz as the four Rayburn siblings (John, Danny, Meg & Kevin) and Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek as the heads of the family, Robert and Sally. The dynamics of this family and their lives in the Florida Keys is the narrative drive of Bloodline.It's easy to get sucked into this show because of the performances. The actors make it look so easy. They feel like a real family - despite them not all having the same accent. It's a subtle chemistry that feels natural. They are all wound up because of the return of troubled, black sheep son Danny to the family hotel during their parents' big celebratory weekend. He has caused the family so much pain and disappointment in the past. No details are fully given about what he did that caused the rest of the family to treat him like an outsider. And yet, they aren't fully needed either. I'm sure answers will come eventually. But right now, it is intriguing seeing these people try to handle his return as best as they can.
You can tell that Danny doesn't want to cause his family any more pain. Sally is the only one truly excited that he has come home again for this weekend. However, it's a choice that he struggles with. The rest of the family sees him not showing up at the bus stop when he said he would as Danny being selfish and not caring about his mother's feelings. To Danny though, he is struggling with what this environment will do to him and how that will further damage his relationship with the family. He gets pulled back in because of his old friend, Eric, who just happens to be a parolee. He's positioned as a temptation to Danny. He's proposing some new gig that's just like the stuff they used to do together. Danny turns him down and later on beats Eric up for bad-mouthing the rest of his family. Underneath it all, Danny wants to be a part of this family and be loved by them. Some of the Rayburns are open to that idea while others remain skeptical that Danny is capable of change. If Danny is going to change, he's going to have to do it in the Keys because he is still causing trouble for the family in the present.
It would too easy for Danny to come back home having fixed all of his problems. The rest of the family has to be right about him in some aspects. The four siblings spend a couple of minutes just talking with each other over whether or not the girl Danny has brought to the big celebration can sit at the family table with him. Kevin is trying not to upset his parents by having some stranger be so close to the rest of them. They should be surrounded by those they love. And yet, Meg sees no problem with the girl being there because it would keep Danny happy and present. Of course, it turns out to be a big mistake as his date is just some party girl who can't keep her mouth shut and just wants to get drunk. Her presence was a small amount of chaos that Danny brought into this celebration, which kept the family from enjoying it as perfectly as they could have. Later on, Danny tries having a heart-to-heart with John about staying around for awhile and that leads to much more discussion from the rest of the family. They all first suspect that he has some angle that he's hoping to drag them all into before he breaks their hearts and leaves suddenly again. Something about this doesn't feel like that but the siblings do have a right to feel that way.
John has been the good son of the family - always protecting them as well as the community through his job as the sheriff. The job does come calling throughout all the personal drama with the family. He discovers a dead teenage girl in the swamp. That scene feels misplaced and largely done to establish some kind of narrative spine for the next few episodes. This first episode is largely great and yet it's intimate and relaxed pacing sometimes drags things down. This murder investigation will likely lead to more trouble. But John barely has any time for that as he's the one faced with making the decision about Danny's future. Robert leaves it up to the other three siblings to decide and Meg is for it and Kevin is against it. At first, John wants to believe that Danny is trying to change. He wants to have a good relationship with his brother again. But then, Danny has a wild night with a girl and wakes up on the pier next to the hotel naked and confused over what happened that night. It's something the family has seen one too many times before and makes them fully believe that he hasn't changed at all. Maybe he hasn't but the desire is still present throughout the character.
The episode is also pointing directing towards Danny's coming home ultimately tearing this family apart. John's narration is at times very unnecessary. It helps establish mood and that things aren't exactly as they are on the surface. And yet, they spell out doom for these characters before they are really established. That is then guided along by flash-forwards that showcase a big event happening between Danny and John. Flash-forwards were a trademark of Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler & Daniel Zelman's last series, the FX/DirecTV drama Damages. As great as that show was, it also really loved messing with the audience and misdirecting them in several different ways before unveiling the truth at the end of each season. That was a narrative decision that was a part of that show's identity. Here, it seems purely used to underline the chaos that Danny's homecoming is destined to have. It keeps things on a fixed timeline that is suppose to unnerve the audience. The flash-forwards aren't as pointed as they were at times on Damages. And yet, concluding the opening episode with John seemingly pouring gasoline on an unconscious Danny mid storm and then lighting him on fire, sure is one way to get people to check out the next episode. It definitely leaves me curious about where this season plans on going. And yet, I'm fairly confident that Bloodline will largely be a show about people who believe themselves to be good struggling with that distinction as they learn the deeper and darker truths about their community and their family.
Some more thoughts:
- "Part 1" was written by Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler & Daniel Zelman and directed by Johan Renck.
- The location shooting and the direction really is breathtaking. Darkness surrounds these characters. And yet, they are surrounded by such gorgeous and distinct scenery.
- Meg's boyfriend of five years and the guy she was having sex with in her first scene are different people, right?
- Danny is so creepy in the way he tells the story of dating a girl with a hitting fetish to his sister-in-law, Diana. She, like the audience, is sensible in thinking that he left right away and that this girl needs help. And then, she's just as perplexed as the rest of us when he says he pitied her and kept dating her for several more months.
- John says that Danny did things for him back when they were younger that Meg and Kevin don't know anything about. Hmmm, that's a little suspicious and I wonder if those secrets will be unearthed as well this season.
- Why is Danny taking pain-killers? Also, what's the importance of the seahorse necklace and the little girl he saw when he was drowning/blacking out?
