‘Bloodline’ Recap, Season 2 Episode 4: Carry The Lie

The Roman Catholic tradition of confession holds that the forgiveness one receives from confessing one’s sins isn’t “deserved” in the strictest sense. It is a gift, or a mercy. On one level, this can be an immense relief to imperfect creatures such as we: there’s no depth to which we can descend that God won’t take us back, if we ask. On another, more skeptical level, it feels like a con, a cheat code in the game of life. Really?, we ask. It doesn’t matter how bad we screw up?

This is worth considering, because “Part 17” — the fourth episode of the second season of Bloodline— features some major screw-ups.

Let’s start with the grandfather and progenitor: Kevin deciding he could return most of Wayne Lowry’s stolen cocaine and square things. He gets several opportunities to reconsider this gambit: his long, solitary drive to Lowry’s place; his confrontation with a gun-toting bodyguard; the look of impassive disbelief that Lowry gives him when he proffers a bag of dope. But Kevin sticks to his guns. He seems truly shocked when he spots a pair of headlights tailing him.

Granting for the moment that Kevin has always been given to impulse and intensity, and full of the grandiosity that ripping rails will do to a man, how in the blue blazes could he think that a murdering drug dealer would take back half his stolen coke with no more than a stoic nod? Why would he think he wasn’t about to get seized or shot? Why leave the motel room against John’s strict orders? Why do any of it?

If this works at all with Kevin’s established character – and I’m not conceding it does – it’s because Kevin can’t be one to let the tide carry him. Ever since Danny came back and his father fell ill in S1, Kevin’s been pushed farther and farther outside his comfort zone in the drive to take charge of things. From buying the marina to his new life as a drug dealer, Kevin has always preferred action over contemplation, motion over inertia. Screw this sitting around – Kevin Rayburn’s doing something!

That works about as well as it should. When we catch up with Kevin later, it’s when Meg is visiting him pre-arraignment. She listens to him whine and tells him she’ll be acting as his lawyer. When Kevin asks whether she can afford to take that much time off her New York City job, she brushes it off. They’ll spare her a few more days.

When Meg calls Susannah later that afternoon, Susannah is a model of professionalism and restraint. She lays out most of the ways that Meg has failed recently, not even including her drunkenness in the season premiere. Meg protests that she had a family emergency – and that’s no exaggeration – but Susannah’s not interested. The call ends with Meg getting fired, to no one’s surprise but Meg’s.

Again, if this works at all, it’s because we know Meg’s past. As Chelsea explained to Danny in S1, Meg was a man-eater in high school. She bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend as soon as she could find an upgrade. She’s used to sweet-talking her way out of trouble. So for her charm to fail – as it does with Susannah, and as it does with Marco when she drunkenly interrupts his date – must be inconceivable.

John grapples with undeserved mercy head-on. In several daydream conversations with Danny, John considers the bind Lowry has him in. The plea deal that he dangled before Lowry has been yanked away by Kevin’s generosity, which leaves him with few options. “What would you do?” he asks Danny in a half-awake murmur. “Doesn’t matter,” his dead brother replies. “You’re not me, right?”

John’s solution is to come clean. He gathers intel from the task force, scopes out a few potential landing spots, and taps his friend Hank as a source. When Lowry puts the question to him direct, John tells him his preferred beach is safe to offload. Elena Cortez picks up a shipment, only to be arrested minutes later. John sits alone, waiting for Lowry to unleash his “mutually assured destruction” and ruin his life … only the moment never comes.

Of all the mercies shown in this episode, this one bothered me the most. I pegged Vicente, the mourning father of S1’s boat fire victim, as Lowry’s murderer halfway through the episode. The ubiquitous shot of a weeping Latino father praying the rosary meant a murderous vengeance was coming. But my mistake was assuming John was engineering it. Why go out of his way to tell Vicente the deal with Lowry was off unless to nudge the man into doing what the law couldn’t?

Bloodline is at its best, as I’ve mentioned before, when the plausible decisions of disparate characters drive them to an inescapable conflict. If John had somehow manipulated Vicente into murdering Lowry for him, it would be a remarkable character turn and a bold dramatic choice. Instead, John sat on his hands, waiting for punishment, and then that punishment was abandoned. He was saved through no real effort on his own part. It’s forgiveness without confession, mercy without sacrament.

Of course, nothing’s stopping John from confessing everything anyway. But it’s John’s desire to be seen as good, not to do good, that defines him. Note his question to Marco before the Lowry raid: “You think I’m a good person, right?” And in service of keeping up appearances, John will lie to the end of the road.

Miscellanea

• Favorite scene of the episode: the cheerily domestic conversation John overhears between Ben, Jane, and Diana – and the moment we realize it’s a waking nightmare. I felt that one right in the solar plexus. “Didn’t you, Dad?”
• Evangelina shows up! Sally seems to vaguely remember her from sixteen years ago, though she struggles to place her last name when discussing her with Meg. Eva hits up Sally for college money for Nolan, but Sally isn’t interested in financing someone who wasn’t a “good mother.” “Like you were?” Eva fires back. In one of my favorite beats from Sissy Spacek this season, Sally shakes her head and chuckles: “No.”
• Still not clear what Eva, Nolan, and Ozzy’s big play is, or if they even have one! Maybe they’re just vultures circling the corpse of Robert Rayburn, looking for pickings. Eva’s certainly an opportunist, exploiting an overheard comment at the inn to scam some guests out of their credit card. Never give credit card info over the phone! An important safety tip from the Islamorada Chamber of Commerce.

John Perich (@perich) lives and writes in the Boston area. When he’s not scrutinizing pop culture at Overthinking It, he blogs at his own site, Periscope Depth. His latest crime thriller, Too Late to Run, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.
[Watch Bloodline on Netflix]

John Perich (@perich) lives and writes in the Boston area. When he’s not scrutinizing pop culture at Overthinking It, he blogs at his own site, Periscope Depth. His latest crime thriller, Too Late to Run, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.