**Warning: Lots of season one spoilers**
“What is it with you people? You guys think you can fucking lie, you think that you can cheat, you think that you can fuck people over and get away with it?”
What happens when a family sacrifices one of its own for the “greater good,” cleaving a cancerous member like a diseased limb in order for the body to survive? This concept was framed from the jump as the central moral question of Netflix’s original series “Bloodline” in season one, with the show then working its way backwards to depict just how a beloved and respected family dynasty reached this amoral nadir. Immediately revealing the shocking act of kindred betrayal, the show opened with the refrain, “We’re not bad people, but we did a bad thing.” That’s an understatement. Detective John Rayburn (Kyle Chandler) murdered his wayward brother Danny (a terrific Ben Mendelsohn, who outshone most of the cast), with his siblings collaborating in the cover-up. Like a rabid dog out of control, they had to put Danny down, as he threatened the sanctity of the family’s dynasty in the Florida Keys. This would be the lie they would tell themselves in order to rationalize their actions: Danny was getting too dangerous.
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A rather Shakespearean and tragic examination of heredity, betrayal and desperation, “Bloodline,” like its namesake suggests, was built on the weight of family legacy, their dysfunctions, and specifically the notion of the black sheep. The eldest sibling, Danny, was the bad apple of the tribe and his lowlife mien — growing up bitter, believing he was scapegoated by their father because of a family accident that took the life of his younger sister — informed the entire narrative. With Danny finally killed at the end of season one, just like the premiere episode promised, the show’s main character, antagonist, and narrative focal point was gone.
Mendelsohn and Danny were ostensibly the best, most complex actor/character combination of “Bloodline” season one, so logic would follow that the second season would suffer from his absence. But in season two, actors like Kyle Chandler and Linda Cardellini really step up their game, and in fact, the show grinds to a halt every time Mendelsohn shows up in strained flashback cameos (those bad and inconsistent wigs trying to capture his originally shaggy hair never helping).
So the ghost of Danny still haunts the Rayburn family — primarily John, a whispering conscience on the cop’s shoulder, continuing to taunt, play mind games and second-guess his brother. All of this is, of course, just John’s inner dialogue with himself, but it illustrates that whether in life or death, there is no escaping the shadowy disease of Danny Rayburn.
What cuts closest in “Bloodline” beyond familial rot as a slow cancer killing everyone is the notion that being trapped within a tight-knit but irreparably broken tribe is its own kind of hell. The show also evinced great instincts by setting the narrative in a veritable paradise as a veneer for the rotten core that lies beneath. But forget the slow-burn pace: The chief complaint of season one — the manipulative push and pull of the narrative — is often the central maddening element that drains the show of its cogent insights into family dynamics about resentment, bitterness and the like.
Living with shame in the wake of Danny’s death, with John using his police skills to cover their tracks, “Bloodline” season two finds the rest of the Rayburn siblings, Meg (Linda Cardellini) and Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz), terrified of being caught and grappling with the sins of their unconscionable actions. And just when the worst seems to have blown over, more complications gust into town.
Season two turns on roughly three further points of conflict: the return of Danny prodigal son’s Nolan (Owen Teague) — the revelation of his existence only exposed to the family at the end of last season; John continuing to run for sheriff despite his siblings protesting that a public campaign will bring undue attention to the family that needs to lay low; and John’s partner, detective Marco Diaz (Enrique Murciano), becoming increasingly suspicious of the Rayburn family and their culpability in their brother’s murder. Plus two more ghosts from Danny’s past arrive: Eve (Andrea Riseborough), his ex-girlfriend and Nolan’s mother; and an old convict friend, Ozzy Delvecchio (John Leguizamo), now shacked up with the aforementioned lady friend.
The untrustworthy Nolan, all emo-y angst, is the spitting image of his father Danny in the sense that his behavior is just as conniving. Like Danny, Nolan has a gigantic chip on his shoulder, is envious of the Rayburns’ wealth, and behaves like the world owes him something. Ungrateful (and insufferable), he still manages to find a place to stay with John’s family (which includes his less-tolerant-of-the-Rayburn-family-bullshit wife Diana, played by Jacinda Barrett). Over the course of the season, it’s revealed that Eve is trying to get money from the family, and another secret is uncovered: Patriarch Robert Rayburn (Sam Shepard) was secretly funding Nolan’s upbringing to protect Danny’s shame of a child out of wedlock. But the money was cut off once Robert died, which is why Eve has suddenly come out of the woodwork to stake her dubious claim on the money she is “owed.”
Meanwhile, Nolan is reporting to Eric O’Bannon (Jamie McShane), Danny’s best friend who’s now gone AWOL because the drug dealers that Danny was double-crossing last season are out for blood. Ozzy has his own plans separate from Eve to extort the Rayburn family for cash. All three of them are different shades of bad news, but the worst is Nolan, who is unbearably petulant with nearly no redeeming qualities despite all the Rayburn family assistance he receives, which makes it hard to empathize with a teenager who is justifiably angry about his lame lot in life.
