Bloodline Series Premiere Review: I Want to Believe It Will Get Better

Bloodline S01E01, S01E02, and S01E03: "Part 1," "Part 2," and "Part 3"

Note: This review covers the first three episodes of Netflix's Bloodline, so if you haven't yet made it that far into Season 1 and you wish to remain unspoiled, back away slowly, go watch the episodes, and then come back to discuss them here!

If you've seen any of the promos for Netflix's newest drama Bloodline, you're already well aware that it hails "from the creators of Damages," a series I first watched a few years ago when it popped up on the streaming service as recommended viewing. And from the moment those elevator doors opened on a bloody and half-naked Rose Byrne, I was hooked. Thinking about it now, watching Damages must've been an agonizing experience for the poor, unfortunate souls who had to wait a whole week between episodes; the series' methodical approach to unfolding and revealing its many rich, dense layers made me crave instant gratification, and I devoured the whole thing while feeling grateful that I'd somehow missed its initial run.

Thus, given Bloodline's oft-repeated, "from the creators of Damages" pedigree—not to mention its supremely talented cast and its promise of a complicated mystery about mostly good people doing a bad thing, this time set against the idyllic backdrop of the Florida Keys—I went in expecting more of the same edge-of-your-seat drama. And after three episodes, I'm disappointed to report that it's good, but not great.

Brothers Glenn and Todd Kessler and their partner Daniel Zelman (a.k.a. the aforementioned creators of Damages) have assembled possibly the most prestigious roster of talent I've seen on a TV show in recent memory: Bloodline is a Serious Drama about a family whose secrets and emotional scars are exposed when their eldest son, Ben Mendelsohn's Danny, returns home to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his parents' inn. Played by Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek, said parents are respectable pillars of the community, as are their three other adult children, played by Kyle Chandler, in his first regular role since Friday Night Lights, as Respectable Law Man John; Linda Cardellini as the couple's only daughter, the Commitment-Challenged Lawyer Meg; and Norbert Leo Butz as the Fun-Loving But Hot-Headed Kevin.

There's nothing obviously wrong with Bloodline, unless you consider slow-moving drama to be offensive, in which case the show might very well bore you to tears. Whereas Damages was splashy and sexy and moved with a sense of urgency befitting of its New York setting, Bloodline takes its time and embodies the relaxing nature of the Florida Keys, almost to a fault. The series simply drifts along with the current, floating back and forth and erasing some of its progress with each new wave that comes crashing ashore.

Each of the first three episodes seemed content to just relax in the sun until the very end, at which point they would typically conclude with a hook designed to bring viewers back for more—John lugging Danny's body onto the boat and blowing it up in "Part 1," for example, or the implication at the end of "Part 3" that Meg is the one who's responsible for what happened to Danny. And due to the nature of its last-minute reveals, Bloodline will probably benefit from airing on Netflix, where viewers can watch the next episode immediately. However, if I had to wait seven days to find out what happened next, I'm not sure I'd be dying to return, as Bloodline seems to more concerned with the appearance of being dark and mysterious than it is with actually telling a story about the people at its core.

From the moment Bloodline began, it was clear that Danny no longer fit into his family's world, and that detail was nearly impossible to forget because the series jumped at every opportunity to tell us as much. The guy does drugs (of course he does!), he has questionable friends (who will probably only get him in more trouble!), he's always late (if he shows up at all!), he doesn't have a car (how embarrassing!), he's often unreliable (but totally wants to fix that!), and to top it all off, he brought a loud and obnoxious guest as his date to the big anniversary dinner celebration (the horror!). Mendelsohn is doing his best to sell Danny's struggles as a man who seemingly wants to be better but is hindered by the low expectations of his less-than-supportive family. Despite the fact that everyone expected Danny to fail, he proved himself capable of taking over his father's scuba-diving charters after his father was hospitalized. But how is Danny ever going change if no one believes that he can?

Bloodline's first three hours presented several questions that, at first glance, were unrelated to the bulk of the series' story involving the four adult siblings. Who is Mia Kirshner's character and why is Danny the only one who can see her? How is the death of the young woman whose body was found in Episode 1 going to play into the rest of the series? Will Jamie McShane's Eric have more to do than drag Danny back down to whatever level he was at prior to escaping their small hometown? And why should I keep watching this show if its dragging format and unanswered questions keeps beating me down alongside Danny? I'm still interested in this story, because you don't assemble a cast of his caliber and then lock them into a mediocre plot that doesn't have any payoff (at least I hope not), but so far, I'm not too impressed. It's not that I need to know everything right away, it's that Bloodline's pacing feels off and I want to feel like I'm getting something in return for my time.

Perhaps even more frustrating than the show's lack of answers—at least early on—is the creative decision to use voiceover narration as a storytelling device. As much as I've longed to hear Kyle Chandler's smooth drawl outside of my dreams and Friday Night Lights reruns, John's musings don't really add anything to the plot. In theory, they're supposed to enhance what's being depicted on screen, but so far, they're just emphatically beating a dead horse. We know that these people are mostly stand-up citizens. We know they're not inherently bad people. Yes, Meg is having an affair and she initially lied about redoing the will to exclude Danny, and sure, Kevin and his wife (the always amazing Katie Finneran) are lying about the fact that they're separated, but until Danny's death in a flashfoward, their issues felt like the pretty standard trappings of adulthood. I guess I want to know why I should care about the Rayburns and this deep rift in their family, when they don't really seem to care to fix it?

Even though we've seen hints that Kevin has always been quick to pounce on his weaker older sibling, we still don't know what inspired Danny to leave the Keys in the first place. And that's fine, because what happened in the past is clearly part of the big reveal that Bloodline has planned, but so much of the series feels like just another story about Pretty White People With Problems, and we've already seen that a hundred times. What makes Bloodline different? Why should I stick around to find out? Three episodes in, I feel like I'm constantly fighting against the current instead of enjoying a swim.

We don't yet know why Danny had to die—or at the very least, why his siblings needed to dispose of his body—but it's clear that everyone in this family wrote him off a long time ago. Kevin just assumed that Danny tried to kill their father, when in reality he suffered a stroke; is that because Danny is the reason their late sister Sarah (the one Meg will never ever, ever, ever be able to live up to) is dead? Did he accidentally kill her while high or drunk? Sarah was their father's favorite child, so it would certainly help to explain why he wanted to disown Danny, as well as why Kevin was so quick to assume the worst.

There's a lot of Rayburn family history in Bloodline that's yet to be revealed, and I do want to get to the bottom of what appears to be a pretty traumatic family saga. The show's cast is immensely talented, and I know the creative team has successfully pulled off this sort of mystery before. But the damn ocean keeps swallowing up all of Bloodline's secrets just as soon as the series presents them, and it's kind of tiring to have to constantly fight to make it through.

NOTES

– The current theory among the TV.com staff is that Kirshner's character is the ghost of Sarah, the sister who died around 1983/1984. If Danny is responsible for her death, it would explain why he's the only one who sees her and why she appears when he returns to Florida. And the fact that he sees her as an adult and not as a child, is interesting; if she is Sarah's ghost, it seems likely that she's been haunting him for 30 years.

– I'm somewhat drawn to Chloe Sevigny's character Chelsea (or Cece, as Danny calls her), and I like that she treats Danny normally. I don't know what role she'll play going forward, but she feels like a good audience stand-in, or at least someone who can provide an outsider's perspective. For instance, she has Meg pegged as a woman who seemingly has it all and still isn't happy. Of course, we already know that's because Meg can't and hasn't lived up to her father's expectations; she's not Sarah and she never will be. But still, Cece's got a good eye.

– I know Kevin and his wife Belle are struggling to cope in the wake of suffering a miscarriage, but would a Norbert Leo Butz/Katie Finneran duet be too much to ask for? The Broadway lover in my heart needs this.

– Jacinda Barrett plays John's wife... meh. Maybe she'll have more to do later. Right now she's just there.

What did you think of Bloodline's debut? And if you've watched beyond Episode 3, please tell the rest of the class, without spoiling anything, whether you'd recommend sticking with it!