Kevin Williamson, whose earlier display creations embody teen romantic drama (“Dawson’s Creek”), meta slasher horror (“Scream”) and teenage supernatural gothic (“The Vampire Diaries”), has thrown his hat into the favored dysfunctional-family-doing-crimes ring with “The Waterfront,” premiering Thursday on Netflix. Set in North Carolina, like “Dawson’s Creek,” it’s a cleaning soap opera with drug smuggling.
Welcome to Havenport. As crime households go, the Buckleys usually are not the Corleones, though their involvement with the darker aspect of life is generational. (Legitimately they run fishing boats and a elaborate restaurant and are sitting on a prize piece of undeveloped seafront property.) Grandpa (deceased) was some type of troublemaker; father Harlan (Holt McCallany), who fondly remembers the cocaine commerce of his youthful days, when individuals dressed properly and had been well mannered, has checked out of all household affairs after a coronary heart assault or two in favor of ingesting and dishonest on his unusually understanding spouse, Belle (Maria Bello).
In the meantime, with out telling Harlan, Belle and son Cane (Jake Weary), a disenchanted former highschool hero, have been offering boats to fool drug smugglers so as to repay mortgages and loans which may trigger them to lose their aboveboard companies and cherished id because the Buckleys of Havenport. When issues go south, they get drawn in deeper — Cane, reluctantly, and Harlan, virtually enthusiastically. It makes him really feel like his outdated self once more and provides him a motive to bully Cane — so as, he imagines, to toughen him up. However he’s principally a bully — imposing but in some way bland.
Cane had an opportunity to play school soccer in Miami, however his father undercut his confidence; he’s nonetheless ready for it to return.
“I’m really good at almost,” he tells highschool girlfriend Jenna (Humberly González), whose sudden return to city has him emotionally unsettled, despite having a superbly pretty spouse, Peyton (Danielle Campbell), and a younger daughter. “Almost good enough. Almost a good guy. I’m almost a good husband, father, son. Just not quite, you know.” (Jenna is nominally a journalist, working in Atlanta. “I read some of your articles online,” says Cade. “You’re a good writer!”)
Maria Bello stars as Belle Buckley in “The Waterfront.” (Dana Hawley/Netflix)
Holt McCallany performs patriarch Harlan Buckley. (Dana Hawley/Netflix)
The remaining Buckley, youthful sister Bree (Melissa Benoist), shouldn’t be at the moment doing any crimes, although she earlier burned her household’s home down and is now permitted to see her sulky teenage son, Diller (Brady Hepner), solely within the presence of a court-appointed chaperon. Not that Diller desires to see her in any respect; she did burn his home down. (“No one was hurt,” Bree factors out. “Physically,” Diller replies.) However manners are manners, no matter your mom’s carried out, and she or he was an addict, in any case. Now she’s out of rehab, going to conferences and dealing within the household restaurant, although asking to get again into the entrance workplace. Maybe she has an ulterior motive; so many of those characters do.
Additionally within the intertwined combine: Gerardo Celasco as too-buff-by-half Drug Enforcement Administration agent Marcus Sanchez; Michael Gaston as harmful Sheriff Clyde Porter, an outdated frenemy of Harlan, seething with class resentment; and Rafael L. Silva as Shawn, the brand new bartender on the Buckleys’ restaurant, whose poor information of mixology raises alarms. Topher Grace is on the solid listing for a future look.
On condition that Williamson grew up the place the sequence is ready and is the son of a fisherman, one may need hoped for extra native coloration and just a little perception into the fishing enterprise, quite than concentrating on the felony shenanigans and attractive stuff that would occur anyplace and does. (Sure, I’ve odd hopes.)
As a substitute, the whole lot’s just a little fuzzy, missing intimately. Characters placed on attitudes and get out and in of hassle — there are shootings and scrapes, shocking reveals and surprising occasions — however few are, or appear about to turn into, fascinating individuals. (Solely three episodes of eight had been out for evaluate, so one thing may properly pop; nonetheless, that’s three hours of tv down.) They’re just a little bland, even, and what occurs to any of them, although of idle curiosity, is rarely actually a compelling query. Belle stands out by advantage of being performed by Bello and given no less than one scene wherein she looks like a daily, empathetic particular person, and Bree may be sympathetic, given how a lot her son hates her. I might counsel Peyton, one of many few with out an agenda — to this point, anyway — to take her daughter and depart city, however I’m guessing that received’t occur.
If in some methods “The Waterfront” feels assembled off the shelf, there’s sufficient exercise that some viewers, probably a number of them, will dig in simply to see how this factor caroms into that. That’s the engine that runs no small quantity of tv. It’s simple sufficient to look at. And generally “just OK” equals “good enough.”
