It’s true, it really is the ‘Golden Age of Television’. Properties that we all know, digest and discuss, your Breaking Bad’s and Game of Thrones’ have set the bar for big budget television drama. Now, with companies like Netflix and Amazon producing their own in-house series, aiming to capture our screens as well as our subscriptions, the market has become a somewhat saturated.
Netflix especially, seems to currently have a mammoth output of original content, ranging from comedy to drama. Scrolling through their menu screen can be a little daunting, faced simply with too much choice. Sifting the good from the shit is difficult, and it’s a big choice in deciding what to watch considering that a television series is a considerable investment in terms of hours and mental space. Bloodline however, despite the rather uninspiring and ambiguous title, is worth your while.
I dismissed it as another rushed ‘original show’, produced purely to illustrate that Netflix is making things just as much as everyone else is. The tagline: ‘We’re not bad people, we just did a bad thing’ again, isn’t the most gripping. However, two of its leading actors, Ben Mendelsohn and Kyle Chandler were recently nominated for Best Actor Emmy’s. Shallowly, this is why I began watching the show, but thankfully, it’s not why I continued.
Bloodline is based on a ‘perfect’, close-knit family of four siblings and their ageing parents, whose life is thrown into chaos after the oldest sibling, and black-sheep of the family, Danny, returns to unwelcome arms. Set in the Florida Keys, which allows for some stunning cinematography, the Rayburns run a small beach-side hotel, in which Robert Rayburn (Sam Shepard) and his wife, Sally (Sissy Spacek), throw a party in celebration of being honoured in their town. Their children, Meg (Linda Cardellini), John (Kyle Chandler) – who are both dramatic TV veterans – Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz), and Danny (Ben Mendelsohn), all convene back in the Keys for the party, setting in motion the events of the series. What follows is a family drama, that borders on thriller, of changing tensions, constant questions, and changing sympathies for the audience.
Bloodline, despite the rather uninspiring and ambiguous title, is worth your while
The first episode introduces you to the pace of the show – slow, very slow. However, two timelines are shown in unison, the present which starts with Danny arriving home for the party, and flash forwards that bookend each episode, revealing tidbits of the ’bad thing’ that the Rayburns’ do. To some, this is a cheap storytelling trick, encouraging binge-watching, which is now how most people watch content. If viewers aren’t hooked on an episode, sadly, series just don’t survive.
To illustrate, at the end of the first episode we see a flash-forward in which Danny is either unconscious or dead, being dragged through the water of the Keys by his older brother, John. To some, this sets off a whole boat-load of questions and desire to watch more, to others, this trick is the major flaw of the series, as you essentially know what’s going to happen. Arguably, however, it is this knowledge and waiting that makes the show so watchable. It’s the twists and turns, the changing allegiances between siblings, the backstory, making us want to see what path is taken to make the Rayburns’ do their ‘bad thing’.
Over the thirteen episodes, we get backstory, lots and lots of backstory. Ben Mendelsohn’s Danny, and Kyle Chandler’s John are given the most development, allowing their characters to manifest into entirely different propositions in comparison to what we were given in the beginning. Kyle Chandler is great as the detective and family peace-maker, but Ben Mendelsohn is really fantastic, outshining everyone in the cast. When he’s on screen, his presence is electric, turning from ‘good Danny’ to ‘bad Danny’ in a matter of moments, psychologically affecting the audience and the characters around him, akin to that of Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight. Bar Kyle Chandler, the rest of the cast pale in comparison, Norbert Leo Butz being the weak edge of the group of siblings. Although, I suppose with so many characters, some of them had to take a backseat, and maybe we will discover more in later seasons.
it’s less about outcome, and more about character portraits and character interaction
The twist at the end of the first season doesn’t do the rest of the show justice, but leaves the door seriously wide open for a second season. Like many, I’m less concerned about the development of the twist but rather knowing more about the characters and how they are going to deal with what they did. This is telling of the first season, it’s less about outcome, and more about character portraits and character interaction. Whether they will carry on with flash-forwards is yet to be seen, but after the hook of the first show, it doesn’t feel entirely necessary. Bloodline is worth the investment for many reasons, worth sticking with when it wavers slightly back and forth in the middle, and is a benchmark for Netflix when making their future content.
