Television review: Netflix's BLOODLINE

Bloodline’s first season may just have outdone anything else to premiere on Netflix.

From Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler and Daniel Zelman (KZK), the creators of Damages, Bloodline is a swampy sunshine noir that delves into family dynamics and buried history with bracing intelligence, irresistible intrigue and a despairing level of darkness. Aided by explosive performances and moody, evocative imagery, it unfolds with novelistic richness, its structure akin to a classic page-turner and its style a fusion of True Detective and ol’ Damages. But this is, absolutely, it’s own thing: a deeply-felt family drama that meshes seamlessly with psychological thriller.

As is expected of them, KZK has gathered quite the cast for their Florida Keys family saga. Oscar contenders Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepherd, in their first regular series roles, play matriarch Sally and patriarch Robert, respectively; Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz is their volatile, relatively brutish son Kevin; Emmy nominee Linda Cardellini is their people-pleasing, craftily-intelligent daughter Meg; and, as the most grounded child, Kyle Chandler is John, who works with local government as a cop and has a beautiful wife (played by Jacinda Barrett), two children and a lovely home to his name. Sally and Robert run a local hotel which, over decades, established itself as an institution to the Keys. John, Kevin and Meg are all very much a part of their lives as adults, and as a family, all seem to get along quite well. 

But wait, a fourth child! Ben Mendelsohn, relatively unknown among this heavyweight cast, comes into the picture as eldest Danny -- the one who gets in trouble, who doesn’t fit in, who didn’t stay nearby. He’s returned under ambiguous circumstances, with his siblings and parents a little uneasy with his re-appearance. He buddies up with an old friend, Eric (Jaime McShane), and cozies up to his sister, Chelsea (Chloe Sevigny!). His family members are waiting for him to screw up again, or to make a stupid mistake. And meanwhile, John’s deep into an investigation of two bodies found in the mangroves; Meg is cheating on her boyfriend of five years, Marco (Enrique Murciano); and Kevin is trying to keep it together after his wife, Belle (Katie Finneran), leaves him. Oh, and Robert has health problems -- yes, a lot is going on.

Bloodline has a lot to introduce, and it takes its time. Fortunately, there’s enough to chew on from the outset. Johan Renck, a veteran of Breaking Bad, comes on to direct the first two episodes and establishes a magnificent visual template. The show uses its unsettling locale exceptionally well, capturing its way of life -- lots of fishing, dirty t-shirts and beer swigging here -- as well as its geographical peculiarities. In flash-forwards (typical for KZK), the mystery and the weight of the goings-on -- as John trudges through mangroves in the pouring rain -- are maximized, especially when we cut back to present-day, with the sun reflecting against the sea. The visual motifs are constant here, always communicating a mood and infusing a sensation. It’s intoxicating but deliberately insular. Hour by hour, we’re being trapped in the sunshine, and in the pronouncement of the green of the grass, the blue of the sky, the dark of the night. It’s all aided by Chandler’s voice-over, which while opaque and fairly unrevealing is effective as a companion mood piece.

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The flash-forwards and narration fade. We’re digging into the story, and going through the motions. It can feel dense, a little too slow-burn even, if not for the performances. Each actor is totally committed here, and they leave their mark fast. Though each is introduced as a stock-type, and the writing does little (initially) to overcome that, the actors dig in and find nuances. Butz, given a “hothead” archetype, finds a soulful, almost depressive center that aches. Cardellini, as the brainy, washed-over girl of the family, possesses that same gritty strength and radiating intelligence as in Freaks and Geeks and Mad Men. And Chandler’s got his Friday Night Lights thing going on, but there’s a frightening undercurrent to his performance that’s always present -- you just can’t quite put your finger on it. But of all the siblings, it’s Mendelsohn that you can’t take your eyes off of. He’s sensitively monstrous; manipulatively needy; dangerously sad. He is so expressive and so damn unsettling, and in the first few hours, it’s hard to know where he’ll take Danny. A lot about his character and his issues are left unsaid, and as the revelations pile up, his earlier choices as an actor appear all the more impressive. He conveys everything with a glance.

But enough about the acting (for now). The narrative kicks into high-gear in episode five, when Robert unexpectedly passes. The narrative journey of Bloodline lights up, as if someone flicked a switch -- with the fall of the patriarch, it all starts falling into place. We learn in the first four episodes that Danny had been beaten as a child by his father, blamed for the early death of their fifth sibling, Sarah, who drowned on his watch. He was tormented, in fact, and the last words his father ever speaks to him amount to “however much money you want, I’ll give you if you leave and don’t come back.” 

As Bloodline reminds again and again, some wounds never heal, some cracks in the foundation only worsen. And so Danny, beaten down and kept an outsider by his father, is suddenly provided an opportunity with his death. He doesn’t have to be his screw-up. He doesn’t have to leave. He can thrive, a Rayburn.

That is, until the roots of the family dynamics reveal themselves. We see how no one stuck up for Danny; that he grew up alone, afraid, in a house in which no one could defend him. We learn John told Danny not to take their late sister out on that fateful day, and he inevitably blames him for her death. We realize Meg doesn't remember a thing, that her role to stand by and do as-told was instilled before she could make a decision on her own. And we come to understand that Kevin’s self-hatred has manifested out of his paradoxical admiration for his father, a man he knew very young to be a tormentor. It all gets put on Danny. He can’t make things right for Meg, he can’t help but remind Kevin of their father’s nasty side, he can’t help but wrack John’s guilt and trigger his resentment. He is the outcast.

In Bloodline, still sunshine gives way to windy grey skies, and petty family arguments escalate into psychological warfare. Danny immerses himself in the crime scene, establishing himself as directly opposite his man-of-the-law brother. Throughout the middle of Bloodline, these two adjust to new dynamics, and it’s splendid to watch. Chandler and Mendelsohn bring their A-game with each other, pouring it all out in scenes as loving and comfortable as they are resentful and damning. There’s too much mistrust, and too many underlying feelings, to truly bridge what’s between them. And these actors make you feel it -- it’s just gut-wrenching to watch.

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Bloodline is principally concerned with familial roles. It takes archetypal figures and meticulously subverts them. The show’s writers methodically reveal how these roles came to be, and ultimately, how flimsy they now are. They’re all in a state of transition here, trying to affirm that they are beyond what they’d settled as. Danny, extending from black sheep to a man of independent agency and capability, is the obvious example. But so is Meg's decision to write Danny out of the will, not understanding the damage that such a choice would do to him as a person who desperately needs people on his side. So is John’s night of binge-drinking with his brother, perving at other women and revealing a wistful side. And so is Sally’s defensiveness of Danny, trying to right a horrible wrong. 

But these roles are entrenched; the damage is irredeemable. The first episode tells us where Danny ends up, and unlike in Damages, that idea isn’t really contested. It’s an inevitability. A tragic one, at that: he will die, at the hand of his brother. Within this skeleton of crime-family-thriller, the climax lands devastatingly. 

Quite antithetical to the Damages approach, Bloodline doesn’t play any games with its audience. But you almost, kind of, want it to. The reality is so horrifying, and the build-up so intensely, endlessly simmering, that to confront what we learn in episode one as where we end up is painfully raw. Danny turns monstrous by the time he meets his fate, but somehow, he remains the heart and soul of Bloodline, the one who could die and be discarded at the hand of his own family just for the preservation of the Rayburn name.

Eventually, this idea of family dissolves. The foundation is shattered. In a sense, the terrible irony of the season’s conclusion is that the three siblings left standing can move forward and, again, neglect the past. Kevin gets Belle back; there’s no one he has to look at that forces him to face himself. Meg leaves for bigger opportunities; there’s no weight holding her down, no ancillary force. And John, well, he gets a promotion: county sheriff. He gets to be the good guy, with no one around to say (or, perhaps, remind) otherwise. We’ve seen in literature and on television how the re-emergence of that “black sheep” festers up old wounds. But Bloodline lays out such a clear, truthful path in the journey of its characters that it overcomes the trope. And it refuses an easy answer: Danny may be dead, but the traumas inflicted upon every member of this family remain. Kevin was already having family problems; Meg already struggling to make a commitment beyond her family. Everything will re-surface. The pain never goes away, And as a jolt of a season cliffhanger reminds, what’s done is not done.

In Bloodline, character development and narrative progression is terrifyingly linear and consistent. The dynamics established, between resentment and guilt and love and hatred and everything in-between, are perfectly pitched and suitably emotional. The performances pack a collective wallop. And in the sunny Florida Keys, the poetic tonal shifts of paradise and what lurks underneath tell the story in a way no line of dialogue ever could. Bloodline establishes a family history, and treats secrets as matter-of-fact. It’s what those secrets do to people -- brothers, sisters, parents -- that drives this story: how roles develop, how abuse manifests, how the expression of affection can mirror guilt more than love. Gripping, haunting and layered with menace, Bloodline is television’s sharpest and most intellectually ambitious foray into the American family. For the Rayburns, the past isn’t only inescapable: it’s who they are. And the more you watch, the more you realize: it’s who we all are.

Grade: A