Bloodline

Well guys, Bloodline is done.  Fin.  No mas.  This is incredibly disappointing because I loved this show.  The first two seasons blew me away with their quiet intensity.  I fell in love in the first five minutes of the first episode and it was one of the most authentically Florida shows I've ever seen.  So many people see Florida through a haze of sunny days on the water or trips to Disney World.  Bloodline showed you what the seedy side actually looked like.  And not that glitzy Dexter version either.  I've never seen a more accurate Florida Dive Bar than I've seen on this show.

That's all the dressing of course.  The real meat was in the acting.  Aside from a few well-known actors, the majority of the cast was relatively unknown to the US.  Or at least to me anyway.  By the time Danny dies at the end of season one, I was wanting to kill him myself.  The bastard!  This was his family for crying out loud.  This isn't about the first two seasons though…

Season three premiered months ago and I jumped right away to start watching.  I made it through the first five episodes in a blink.  It was like I was chasing a resolution.  Then, I stopped.  I quit for a while because, first and foremost, I needed a break.  Something as intense as this show really should be spread out and not binged.  Also because it was announced that it would be ending after this season and I wanted to prolong it.  I wasn't ready to say goodbye.

Pause for spoilers….and go!

Season Three picks up right where the prior season ends.  Kevin has bludgeoned Marco to death and is trying to figure out what to do.  John is in the wind and Meg is trying not to lose her mind.  This season packed so much into such a short amount of time that I don't even know where to start.  I loved that they focused more on being honest with each other this season.  Mom is now in on everything as are the spouses.  Despite the fact that they kept trying to leave each other, they kept being there for each other as best they could.  The cracks were beginning to show towards the end and everyone started to literally lose their minds. 

There were some pitfalls as well.  The dynamics with the kids were lost to the main storyline with all of them more or less forgotten for the entire season.  John Leguizamo's character while delightfully bad in season two, suddenly began stalking Mom for no discernible reason only to kill himself towards the end of the season.  There was a weird thing where they introduced a priest that may or may not have actually existed.  You could also see where they were trying to set up for next season in attempting a back story for Gilbert and Mom, but it felt forced.  Belle tells Kevin she's leaving him and then is suddenly staying, which…maybe I missed something, but this made no sense.

Mom is hallucinating and talking to her dead mother which was made even more odd by her moments of clarity and decisiveness.  Her testimony at O'Bannon's trial had me in buckets of tears.  Cissy Spacek is still one of the greatest actresses of her generation. 

They played a bit with reality in episode nine with infuriating results.  John nearly drowned and ended up having groundhog day-esque hallucinations that were played so real that it was hard as a viewer to understand what was happening.  It had me to the point where I started questioning things all the way back to the first episode.  Was Danny ever really even dead?  Has everything up to this point been a lie?  Are you going with some Mr. Robot-level mind-fuckery? 

The ending left me wanting more even though it wasn't as dynamic as the first two seasons.  It didn't make sense to me to have Franco, the guy who was trying to nail John for Danny's murder, suddenly just let it all go.   Kevin's escape to Bimini was well done, I genuinely believed that he was going to get away from the DEA.  Though, why he ran instead of cooperating, I don't know.  I wish there was more to the saga of the Rayburns.  I am glad that they saw the end coming to the point where they could resolve things somewhat instead of leaving us with a major cliffhanger.  There was still a lot of uncertainty, but nothing so critical that I'll be too upset without 100% resolution.

I'll probably go back to it in a few years, but for now I'll let it digest.  I can't wait to see what Kyle Chandler does next.

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