It feels like an unnecessary risk to saddle the pilot episode of your series with the title “Almost Okay,” but what do I know? Sure, there is a pedigree behind The Waterfront: series creator Kevin Williamson (who also wrote this episode) is known to be a bit of an expert in water-based soapy drama (Dawson’s Creek) and gory thrills (the Scream franchise), both of which are on display in this new Netflix series about a powerful North Carolina family willing to get their hands dirty to keep that power. While the premise is a promising one — we’ve met a lot of fictional rich families doing bad things, but the Buckleys stand out thanks to their built-in desperation from the jump — the pilot does what pilots are going to do, and races around to introduce us to the Buckleys of Havenport, North Carolina and set up the stakes. This initial outing of The Waterfront is clunky, but the seeds being planted are intriguing enough to want to keep going, which means, yes, in the end, “Almost Okay” winds up being just that. Let’s dive a little deeper, shall we? (This show’s home base is a fishery and marina, so there will be maritime puns. Just deal with it.)
The Waterfront premiere makes two things abundantly clear: The Buckleys are in trouble and the Buckleys are trouble. There are some imminent issues this family, who are sort of royalty in the small coastal town of Havenport where Harlan and his wife Belle own a major fishery, the marina around it, and a fine dining restaurant, need to deal with ASAP. We come to learn that when Harlan basically went MIA after suffering a heart attack, he left Belle and his son Cane with a business that was, uh, not as lucrative as it seemed. As things got worse, Cane made the decision to link up with local drug runner Hoyt Piper and use the Buckleys’ boats and manpower to smuggle millions of dollars worth of drugs for a cash payout that would help with their debts; It was only supposed to be a few runs, enough to dig them out of the hole. Otherwise, they risk losing everything. Well, spoiler alert: Things do not go at all how Cane and Belle hoped.
The episode kicks off with one of those runs going awry. And by “awry,” I mean the two crew members are ambushed in the middle of the ocean, tossed in fishing nets, and thrown overboard. No one’s surviving that, my friends. When the boat washes ashore and not only the local sheriff Clyde is starting to ask questions, but the DEA is sniffing around, Harlan needs to be read into the situation.
So what’s Harlan’s deal? First of all, let’s all agree that Holt McCallany can get it. He can get it even when he’s waking up hungover slug-style and reaching for an early morning guzzle of vodka before having a concerning cardiac incident, which, coincidentally, is exactly how we meet the Buckley patriarch. According to Harlan’s wife, Belle, this is the status quo since a recent heart attack led to Harlan receiving an implanted defibrillator — a minor malfunction in this device is what led to the aforementioned incident — and, as she puts it, took “recovery” to mean getting “jacked up on viagra and bourbon.” But Belle doesn’t exactly seem angry when it’s Harlan’s latest hook-up, Rhonda, meeting her at the hospital; she’s mostly just exhausted by it all. Later, she tells him that from where she’s standing, it looks like the guy wants to die — could he just do it already?
Pairing up McCallany and Maria Bello as our main couple here is an excellent bit of casting. I 100 percent buy the two of them going toe-to-toe, as well as the fact that they are willing to stick together even though it’s highly toxic. The way that Harlan and Belle simultaneously love and hate each other should make them dysfunctional, but even through the lying and cheating, they actually seem highly functional. This should be studied.
It’s nice because every other relationship in the Buckley family is incredibly, reliably dysfunctional. Harlan and Belle’s daughter Bree seems to have burned down her ex’s home with him, his wife, and his and Bree’s teenage son Diller inside, although, as Bree puts it, “no one died.” We don’t get a ton of details about this situation, but she’s only allowed to see Diller with a court-appointed monitor present; Diller hates her guts, and as desperately as she wants to take on more responsibility with the family business, no one in her family trusts her all that much. Or, like, at all. And she and Cane definitely have a contentious sibling relationship currently hovering around the “eat shit” level.
Even worse is Cane’s relationship with his father, who, upon realizing what his son is up to, waits for Cane in his office and sucker-punches him the moment he steps through the door. It’s a weird Father’s Day tradition, but every family is different. Cane fills him in on the particulars, and Harlan seems more angry that Cane is working with a dipshit like Hoyt and has no idea who is actually in control of Hoyt’s operation than he is about the drugs of it all. He sends Cane off to get more deets from Hoyt.
Meanwhile, Harlan has Clyde the Sheriff all over him about what the DEA thinks is going on and how the Buckleys better be careful because there are informants and agents all over the place. All over the place. This, of course, is Chekov’s informant; keep your eyes peeled because you know someone is going to be outed for working with the feds at some point in the future. On top of this external threat, Harlan’s grappling with an internal one, as well: Harlan is no stranger to the drug running game. He grew up in it. As he reminds Belle when he confronts her for backing up Cane’s decision to work with Hoyt, this kind of life got his father killed and “destroyed” his mother. He did everything he could to get out of it and into an honest business, and yet here he is again. To be honest, he doesn’t seem that torn up to be doing illegal shit again, but rather incensed that his son is so bad at it. To be fair to Cane, who does give off strong dipshit vibes, if Harlan didn’t want his family to be in the drug business, why would Cane know anything about it? He should honestly be proud that his son seems to have absolutely zero intuition when it comes to committing and covering up illegal acts. Decide what you want, Dad, geez!!
When Cane returns, both he and Harlan are convinced that Hoyt ambushed the Buckley boat to cut a bigger deal with someone, and they know he’s going to try to blame it on Cane when Hoyt’s mysterious boss man, someone named Owen, comes looking for answers. Harlan is appalled that his son would let someone else have this much control over this operation, and his first step in repairing the damage Cane has caused is to regain that control. He and Cane invite Hoyt on a little boat trip to discuss the situation, and Hoyt says yes because he’s an idiot.
Harlan uses the age-old trick of dumping blood into the ocean to attract sharks and then sticking a guy’s head into that bloody shark-infested ocean to get him to talk. Hoyt does not have enough core strength to save himself, and rather than getting eaten, he admits to stealing the drugs in order to sell them to a higher bidder and to his plans to blame it all on Cane. He also agrees to take Father and Son Buckley to where he’s keeping the stash — getting kissed by a shark will make a person quite amenable, Harlan is right about that.
Once again, Harlan seems more annoyed at the incompetence around him — all the drugs are just shoved into a shed on the side of the road — but before he can dress Hoyt down too much for being terrible at drugs, Clyde, the Sheriff, appears. This could be bad for everyone. But actually it turns out only to be really bad for Hoyt because Clyde assesses the situation and then shoots Hoyt in the head without any hesitation. Surprise! Clyde is Owen. Owen is Clyde. And now Harlan and Cane are working for him, and as it turns out, Clyde has a decades-long grudge against Harlan Buckley mainly because his family was rich and got away with, well, everything. (Although I’d argue Harlan’s dad being killed means he didn’t exactly get away with everything, but Clyde just shot a guy point blank, so I’ll let him pop off for a while.) He’s beyond thrilled that “the mighty Buckleys of Havenport” now owe him.
The first job Clyde forces the Buckleys into is disposing of Hoyt’s body, which turns out to be a very productive father-son bonding moment in which Cane has to physically push Hoyt’s body into the swamp and then he punches his dad in the face and then apologizes for punching his dad in the face and then his dad makes fun of him for apologizing for punching him in the face. It doesn’t sound like it, but it is actually kind of sweet.
And thus, the mighty Buckleys of Havenport are once again entrenched in some illegal drug smuggling. When Harlan finds Belle waiting for him at the fishery to make sure everything is okay, he confesses that he “took a step backward” into his old life, and it was unbelievably easy to do so. Let’s all be honest here, though; it’s not like Harlan even attempted to put up a fight. He likes it! Just admit that you like it, dude.
While it was easy for Harlan to get back in the drug game, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be easy for him to remain in control the way he likes — and not just because of Clyde. Remember Chekov’s informant? Well, it doesn’t take too long to learn the identity of the person working with the DEA, someone who could make things very, very difficult for Harlan: It’s his daughter Bree.
Bait & Tackle
• Cane has an entitled wife and daughter at home, but you know he’s going to blow all that up once he comes across his high school sweetheart, Jenna, who is back in town to take care of her dying father. Cane and his wife Peyton have zero chemistry, and Cane and Jenna have all the chemistry, so I welcome this man making his life messier than it already is.
• Cane admits to Jenna that he didn’t pursue college football even though he was recruited to play for Florida because his dad told him that he would never make it professionally. He told him “the disappointment would break [him], but [he] could live with the never knowing,” which might actually be worse than anything else Harlan has done to his son. Cane is a dipshit, but I’m endeared to him now; good job, writers!!
• Something’s up with the new bartender, Shawn, right? He’s been giving too many shifty looks from behind that bar.
Related
The Buckleys are in trouble and the Buckleys are trouble.
