Bloodline Season 3: Peak Shoreline

My wife and I saw the third season on Bloodline on Netflix the past few nights. It's especially good to see on Cape Cod, where the shoreline at the foot of our stairs has a lot in common with the shore that's the swaying backbone of Bloodline.  But Bloodline's especially good to see anytime, being, as it is, one of the finest narratives ever to be on any kind of television screen.

I don't usually start my reviews with the acting, but it was a tour de force, across the board, in Bloodline.  We've been Kyle Chandler fans since Friday Night Lights, but he put in a performance in Bloodline which in some ways exceeded that, given the intensity of torment in his lead character, John Rayburn.  Norbert Leo Butz as John's younger brother Kevin was also superbly memorable, playing a character who is somehow even more complex and realistic, a package of weaknesses and surprising strengths impossible to classify.

When Sally - also wonderfully played by Sissy Spacek - surprisingly lashes out at John at the end (no doubt born of her hated over what he did to her beloved Danny), Kevin suddenly becomes the wiser, protective brother, telling John he doesn't have to absorb this abuse. Unlike John, who's too damaged to keep his wife and family together, Kevin is able to grow into being a father, and even tell his wife the truth about the family she has married into.

On that note, I would have rather seen a different ending - hopeless romantic that I am, I think Kevin and his wife and baby deserved better.  But the Rayburns are manifestly never ever about happy endings.

The storyline has all kinds of shockers, my favorite being the role of the coroner in the early episodes of this final season.  Even the smaller roles are top-notch, with great work by Beau Bridges and Melvin Van Peebles and Ben Mendelsohn.  It was also good to see David Zayas, almost reprising his police role from Dexter, and Linda Cardellini as sister Meg Rayburn.

But back to the storyline - not only would I have liked to see a slightly different ending, I'd be much happier if this was not an ending to the series at all.  There are all kinds of questions hanging, not only what John says to his nephew Nolan (Danny's son) on the dock, but the source of the same dream John, Kevin, and Meg are having, and what exactly happened on the boat years ago with Roy and Robert.  So here's a plea to show creators Glenn and Todd Kessler, and Daniel Zelman, and Netflix, for at least one more season (hey, their superb Damages had five).

The sun is high, the water's just right, so I'm going for a walk by the bay, and thinking how good it would be if we could see another season of Bloodline up here next year.


See also Bloodline Season 1: Mainlining Family ... Bloodline Season 2: Darker Maybe Even Better than the First

Bloodline Season 2: Darker Maybe Even Better than the First

Just finished slow-binging watching - over a few days - the second season of Bloodline, streaming on Netflix.  It was superb - darker, and maybe even better than the first, though such comparisons are tough to make.

Lots of spoilers follow, for both seasons, so read no further if you haven't seen them, and like to be surprised.

The second seasons starts with the immediate aftermath of John killing Danny, and Meg and Kevin helping John cover most of that up.   And actually, whether the cover was of most or less of what happened on that beautiful shore doesn't really matter, because the cover-up is no more lasting than sand in the tides of the Keys.

There are in effect two parts to this second season.   In the first, John lucks out, as his main adversary and obstacle to keeping all of this quiet is fortunately killed by someone else, not in the family, and with no intimate connection to it or John.

He's not so fortunate in the second part, in which Marco takes an increasing interest in the case, and gradually unravels it.   Danny's friend Eric has some crucial info, and John's attempt to get Marco and Sheriff Aguirre off the case narrowly fails.  The result puts the three siblings under unbearable pressure, and they finally fall apart.

I won't tell you the very ending, on the chance that you're watching the second season and have yet to see this, but I will say that one thing I didn't quite get is why Marco is so determined not only to solve this case but destroy the Rayburns in the process.   His anger at Meg leaving and lying to him doesn't quite explain it - especially since she slept with him in the middle of the second season, and seemed to enjoy it, even if he thought he was being used.

But that's a small qualm in a tightly-spun, riveting narrative, with excellent flashbacks of Danny, explanations of earlier events, and a great role for Danny's son Nolan and his mother.

Highly recommended - especially if you're on Cape Cod, as I am now, and can easily imagine walking by the Rayburn's place on the beach ...

See also Bloodline Season 1: Mainlining Family

#SFWApro


not about a dysfunctional family, but a dysfunctional species

   

Narcos on Netflix: Outstanding

We streamed Narcos on Netflix the past few evenings.  Like House of Cards, Peaky Blinders, and Bloodline on Netflix, and The Man in the High Castle on Amazon, Narcos is a powerful, top-notch kind of streaming television, every bit as good as and sometimes even a little better than the best we've seen on cable television.   As I pointed out in McLuhan in an Age of Social Media, we're undergoing a new revolution in television indeed, not just in the process of streaming, but in the narratives that are being streamed.

Wagner Moura's portrayal of Colombian drug king Pablo Escobar - at his height, the seventh richest person in the world - is so strong and sensitive that you almost find yourself rooting for him - that is, until he brutally murders yet another rival or political figure who gets in his way, and anyone that he rightly or wrongly perceives as disloyal.   Escobar was also responsible for the kidnapping - and the death that ensued as a Colombian military unit attempted to free her - of journalist Diana Turbay, and he had no problem bringing down and to their death a whole plane of people in an unsuccessful attempt to do away with a Colombian Presidential candidate who opposed him.

But, as if often the case with these sociopaths, for whom the life of just about anyone other than his immediate family is a commodity to be bartered and expended with if necessary in pursuit of his business, Escobar at least in this narrative on Netflix commands at very least our keen interest, and for that reason alone a part of us in not unhappy when he escapes against all odds over and over again.

Even as those who pursue him in the narrative become less human as their frustrations mount.   By the end of the first season, DEA agent Steve Murphy and Colombian President Gaviria, each compassionate in their own ways for most of this story, have become ruthless to the point of almost nothing else mattering except the killing of Escobar.

Superbly acted, beautifully photographed in verdant Colombia, the best news about Narcos is that it will be back for a second season - maybe a little later than expected, as recently reported - but it will be much welcome viewing whenever it's back.

See also Narcos 2: In League with The Godfather Saga

Beau Willimon at Fordham

I saw Beau Willimon at Fordham University earlier this evening - thanks to my colleague Beth Knobel (erstwhile CBS Moscow bureau chief) for arranging this.   The hour was the best of this kind I've ever attended.   By which I mean, a creator of a landmark work talking incisively, truthfully, vividly about the creative and business processes employed in bringing the work to life.

Among the highlights of Willimon's disclosures and lessons imparted -

• He started his creative life as an illustrator and painter, but found the static image insufficient to tell the stories he wanted to tell.   (See illustrator Joel Iskowitz for an opposite point of view.)
• Willimon says the revolution in television-making founded and exemplified by his House of Cards is that a writer, producer, creator can sell not just a pilot but an entire season of a series to a distributor like Netflix.   I'd say that this, in effect, is the creator's side of what we viewers experience and enjoy as binge all-at-once watching of a television series, and  this increase of creative control in the producer's hands may be the beginning for television of what Kindle publishing has done for authors on Amazon.
• Willimon thinks that there's here's no such thing as writer's block - I've long thought much the same, that cries of writer's block are evasions.   Willimon put an even finer point on this, explaining that writer's block is really not inability to write but unwillingness to confront a possible failure. 
• Indeed, Willimon emphasized that we should embrace not run from failure - a view very much in tune with Kark Popper's (one of my favorite 20th century philosophers) that we learn more from our mistakes than our successes.
• Willimon says the auteur theory of film (and, by extension, television) is overrated and untrue - these creative forms are inherently collaborative efforts.   (I was thinking that one of the reasons I like writing novels and short stories is that I don't have to collaborate too much with anyone.)
• Willimon's favorite scene in the third season of House of Cards was Frank Underwood and Tom Yates first getting down to brass takes about Tom's life.   Just about every scene with Tom was among my favorites in the third season.

One of the great perks of the academic life is getting an hour like this - reflections from someone whose work initiated what I think of as the third golden age of television (title of a book in progress) - the first being in the 1950s, the second in the first decade of the 21st century with shows like The Sopranos (no commercials, no FCC restrictions on content), and the third being right now with House of Cards - already joined by Peaky Blinders, Bosch, Bloodline, and more.

See also House of Cards 3: Frank, Claire, "Putin," and Superb ... House of Cards Season 2: Even Better than the First, and Why ...  House of Cards Season 1: A Review

And also Thomas Maier: Masters of Sex and Biography Come to Life

Bloodline: Mainlining Family

Just finished Bloodline, the latest all-at-once television series on Netflix.  My wife and I slow binge-watched it, for a variety of reasons, mostly because the complex drama was better savored with a just an episode or two each evening.   Netflix has once again hit the mark with an outstanding series, right up up there in its own way with House of Cards and Peaky Blinders, and Amazon's Bosch.

First, the locale is evocative, and best seen in high definition.  We spend lots of time on Cape Cod, which makes me a sucker for anything with a similar land and seascape.   The Florida Keys in Bloodline work just fine as a surrogate Cape.

The story is about a dysfunctional family - to say the least - and the deaths and dynamics of its members make Bloodline a distant cousin, I suppose, of Ray Donovan.   But the narrative is unique and original and all its own.

Ben Mendelsohn puts in a standout performance as Danny, a black sheep prodigal son who returns for a family gathering.   We soon see he's been scapegoated - whether fairly or unfairly - and the family is split about being happy to see him again, with his mother, played Sissy Spacek, most in favor.   What I can tell you, without giving two much away, is that Danny is a masterful deconstructionist, able in any conversation with a family member to pull out just the right stone from their foundation which will cause them to crumble, or close to it.   He also has a good head for crime.

His prime check is his slightly younger brother John, a local lawman, played by Kyle Chandler, in easily his best role since the immortal Coach in Friday Night Lights.   Strong performances are indeed on hand from everyone, and its was especially good to see Linda Cardellini (Mad Men!) as sister Meg, Sam Shepard as the father, and Big Love's Chloë  Sevigny as Danny's sorta girlfriend.

The series is a creation of Glenn and Todd Kessler - best known for their superb Damages - and Bloodline bears the same stamp - dark, deadly, human souls stripped almost bear, and glimpses of the ending to tease the audience, which might have worked better in Damages then in Bloodline, which still should be at the top of your binge-watching television list.

#SFWApro


not about a dysfunctional family, but a dysfunctional species