Bloodline

Chandler's performance has gotten darker and deeper alongside an intimidating turn from (Owen) Teague.... When the plot focuses on John's unraveling, it's a taught work of suspense. [27 May 2016, p.53]

The final episode contains clues and answers to mysteries that, when the season ends and you think about it, could easily have been introduced in the first or second episode without any diminishment of suspense--indeed, would probably have resulted in a pleasing increase in suspense. As a languid mood piece, Bloodline is one pleasantly decadent binge. And as I said, Chandler and Cardellini are particularly effective.

Despite even their most reckless actions, the remaining Rayburn family struggles and strives to keep up appearances alongside [Kyle Chandler's John], and Bloodline similarly feels the need to stress the maturity of its characters and the seriousness of their situation. In doing this, the creators fail to fully survey the storm of feral impulses hiding beneath the postcard image of both the Florida Keys and one of its supposedly most celebrated families.

Though the plotting lets them down, the series’ actors continue to give the scenes everything they have.

The season feels like a dull, overlong epilogue, creeping along where it needs to be sprinting. If you think a slow-motion car crash is hard to watch, try watching the slow-motion clean-up.

It's so relentlessly self-serious that it becomes increasingly tough to sit through. There's no levity or break from the insistence that what we're watching is a very important story about a family falling apart. If the characters were more active, or even just funnier, that might make them more palatable to hang out with. As it is, they're all mostly there to glower and worry about what they stand to lose.

Bloodline might not be the deeply meaningful prestige drama it wants to be, but watching the Rayburn family attempt to keep hidden all the secrets and lies constantly threatening to rise from beneath the surface, as they attempt to protect their business and reputation (and even, in John’s case, rise yet further up the social ladder), still makes for a diverting binge-watch.