After John confronts Carlos about Danny's illicit behavior, John, Kevin and Meg figure out a plan to save the family.
I'm not sure if "Part 11" is the episode of Bloodline I've been waiting for all season long. And yet, it is the episode that is the most realized one so far. The season is finally entering its end game. All season long, the show has been asking us to be patient with the narrative. That patience is finally starting to get rewarded. John, Kevin and Meg are spiraling after learning everything that Danny has been up to at the hotel and the ramifications it can have for both the business and the family name. It's a big deal and the psychological thriller elements of this episode work astonishingly well.At times, it feels as if the slow parts of the season were necessary just so that they could come together in such a strong way in this episode. This episode does have the hints of being a season finale except for the fact that there's still too much story left to tell. It is exciting to see John, Kevin and Meg working together to fix everything that Danny has corrupted in their lives. And yet, that task is just as daunting as it should be. They can arrange for Danny to be a part of the DEA's investigation into Wayne Lowry while simply getting rid of the threat to the hotel and the family. They can use the drugs and Danny's criminal connections as a way to get him out of town for good. There's a lot of effective symmetry between this episode and the series premiere. Once again, John drives Danny to the bus stop to put him on a bus heading out of town. Danny contemplates his life and the decisions he has made - and once again, decides to come back home.
Danny returns because, as devastating as the drugs would be for his family and the business, that's not ultimately why he decided to come home in the first place. His internal conflict was so much more than needing to pay off the people in Miami who he owed money to. As this season has showcased, all of Danny's issues with his family are psychological that stem way back to the day that Sarah dead. Simultaneously, he has a changed a whole lot and very little since that day. This episode gives the audience the fullest telling of the events of that day so far. Danny took Sarah out on the boat by himself to keep her distracted from Robert and Sally's arguing with a fun activity. Danny has always been a rule breaker. John was the one standing on the dock saying that an adult needed to be with Sarah on the boat. John has always followed the rules. Those qualities have been inherent in the brothers since they were even younger than that traumatic day. For the whole season, we've seen the image of Sarah's seahorse necklace as Danny's reminder of his younger sister and how her death has weighed heavily on him for the past few decades. And now, that image carries so much more weight to it because it was her swimming down after it and getting her arm stuck in a crevice that ultimately killed her. It's a brutal moment that is so traumatic to young Danny.
The family has caused Danny so much pain since that day. With everything going on with the will and the unearthing of Lenny Potts' tapes, it was enough to push Danny over the edge and feed his desire to see his family hurt as much as he has. This is a very personal and deliberate plan of attack on Danny's part. John knew that going into this episode. In their final chat in the preceding episode, Danny made his plans known that he wants to take the whole family down with him. And yet, when John, Kevin and Meg are working to fix their lives and get ahead of this potential scandal, they are operating under the assumption that it's Danny's latest fuck up. This time it just has more potentially devastating complications for all of them. The siblings don't really buy that though as they've all been hurt by Danny this season in different ways. And yet, they don't share that psychological pain with the rest of the siblings. Danny has tormented all of them. He made John fearful for his family's safety. He physically had Kevin assaulted. He threatened Meg with the exposure of her insecurities and her affair. Danny has been doing an effective job tearing this family apart. And now, they realize the scope of it and have to figure out what needs to be done.
For a brief moment, I fully believed that John went to the DEA to get out ahead of this issue and Kevin and Meg became rogue agents in moving the drugs off the Rayburn property. And yet, it makes so much sense that it's actually John who is calling all the shots. That is simply what John has been doing his whole life. Without John, Meg and Kevin wouldn't know exactly how to handle this issue. Meg understands what could happen to the family if the drugs are discovered while Kevin is incapable of standing still for too long. He gets increasingly worried the longer he's the one carrying around all the drugs. Everything works out for the siblings though. Their plan goes off well and they get Danny out of their lives for good while keeping the core family strong.
Of course, things were never going to end that easily. John, Kevin and Meg dealt with this problem systematically and without emotion. They are done trying to make Danny a part of this family. He has gone too far and will never be able to be what they all desperately wanted him to be. But something shifts for Danny during that bus ride out of town. He's ready to live on the run out of fear of Wayne finding him and killing him for losing that shipment of drugs. But another conversation with imagination Sarah leads him to find a drive and purpose again. He is no longer operating out of fear of what may happen to him. He wants the family to feel the same way that he is feeling. That may ultimately cost him his life. It's very dangerous for him to return to the hotel again. But it's what he does nevertheless because he still believes he has a mission to complete.
Danny takes things to a whole new level in taking John's daughter, Jane, out to the ocean to swim. Sure, his whole plan hinged on John forgetting that he was suppose to pick up Jane after school so she could help Meg, Sally and Diana with wedding planning. But the episode also makes it easy to go along with that because of that chaotic morning scene with John, Diana and their children where John easily could have missed something being said. I never thought that Danny would actually kill Jane. And yet, it was wildly effective in how the tension and uncertainty rocked John. He had no idea where his daughter was and that was terrifying. Even the simple confirmation that Danny was still in town was a chilling moment. Everything that Danny does in the episode's final act is very deliberate and damaging to John's psyche. It gets to the point where John is so desperate to know if his daughter is okay, that he screams "Where the fuck is my daughter?" to Danny on the phone. Only to then, open the door to see Jane and Sally talking on the porch as if nothing life-threatening is happening. They have no idea what is going on. What a chilling note to end on. Danny's mind games are truly taking their toil on John now and they probably will only get worse now that Danny is still sticking around.
Some more thoughts:
- "Part 11" was written by Arthur Phillips and directed by Ed Bianchi.
- It's honorable that John, Kevin and Meg want to keep all of this information from Sally. But it's also what's keeping her from being a fully engaging character. She doesn't know what's really going on and so that keeps her from being interesting. Good news is she'll likely not be in the dark for too much longer after John's outburst in the end.
- Marco knows that John isn't telling the full truth to the DEA agents and is now the lead investigator on their dead girls' case. Things have gotten too personal for John lately. Marco wants to be a part of the family. He's not yet though which is a big deal.
- Also, as Meg notes, she's not even sure if she and Marco are still going to get married after what all she told him in the last episode.
- Belle is planning on moving to Orlando to get a fresh start. I honestly couldn't care less because she's not an active character in this narrative. Kevin is and, even with him, that scene was rather boring.
- It appears that the gun that Kevin hands to John in the flash-forwards is actually the gun that Eric gave Danny in order to protect himself when he planned on dropping the drugs off with Wayne's new man.
