Bloodline - S1E3 - Part Three

Previously on Bloodline, ‘Part Two’

Guess what? It’s raining its ass off again in the Keys. Our episode opens with another flash forward to that fateful rainy evening, only this time we are with Meg. It seems the format we’re experiencing is an episode for each family member’s character development and in Part Three, Meg is our winner. I like how on the surface the Rayburns appear to be a fairly normal family, but once we delve a little deeper into our characters’ backgrounds and secrets, we learn they are all just a little fucked up.

Meg arrives home in the pouring rain with another dulcetly toned voiceover from John explaining that Meg is a good person and she only wants everyone to be happy. He alludes that wasn’t possible once Danny came home. She looks shaken and (obviously) soaked. Her phone rings and the display says Danny. Meg yells, “Shit!” and drops it like it’s hot.

Meg is Having an Affair

We kind of already knew this from Part One, but we get further confirmation that Meg is sleeping with someone other than her beloved Marco when, after a discussion about their relationship and how it’s stalled out, she texts a mystery person saying, “I want to see you.” We eventually find out Meg is sleeping with her client, Alec Wolos. For all intents and purposes, Alec seems like a decent guy if you excuse the fact he’s sleeping with someone who he knows is in a long-term relationship.

After some pillow talk revealing Meg’s father is in the hospital, Alec shows concern the next day when she is working with his company instead of being at the hospital with her family. He invites her to New York for a break if she needs one and they make plans for later that night because he will be leaving the following morning.

Danny Won’t You Stay?

John finally asks Danny to stay at home permanently and help Sally at the inn. Danny correctly guesses this was Sally’s idea, and knowing it was actually his sibling’s idea for him to leave, he asks what Dad will say when he regains consciousness. John says he’ll talk to Dad, unaware Danny knows the truth.

Danny staying and being a working member of the family comes with a caveat. Danny can no longer hang around with Eric O’Bannon. After some initial reluctance from Danny, John tells him he needs to have more responsibility for the family name. Danny tells John he’ll think about staying.

The following morning, Danny gets his cut from Eric for the fuel canister delivery in Part Two. Eric asks Danny to help him the following week with another delivery and Danny tells him no, presumably at John’s advice. As he’s leaving, Chelsea tells Danny that John stopped by the day before asking questions about Eric and him, but tells him she revealed nothing to John. Danny takes his envelope of cash to the post office where he takes out a little for himself and then mails the rest to someone.

John tells Meg and Kevin that he asked Danny to stay and they are not happy. Meg claims John makes these decisions without consulting, and then expects them to just go along. John argues she was okay with Danny coming back when they discussed it previously. She says that was before. I guess before Robert had a stroke?

Danny Makes a Comeback

After deciding to stay and become a worthwhile member of the Rayburn legacy, Danny goes by the hospital and convinces Sally to come home for dinner and sleep in her own bed. Back at the inn, Danny puts his surprising chef skills to work and makes a large meal for the whole family while smoking. This scene made me anxious that there was going to be ash in the food.

As they sit down to dinner, the family discusses the inn and how it will be run in Robert’s absence. Sally tells Danny will be helping out and taking on some of Robert’s duties like the snorkeling charters, and that he will also be staying in a guest room for now. Kevin is not pleased and leaves the table.

After dinner, Meg and Kevin discuss the turn of events in the driveway before Kevin asks her to come for a beer so he can talk to her about his impending divorce. She reluctantly agrees and calls to cancel her plans with Alec on his last night in town. Danny overhears the end of this conversation and startles her, causing her to drop her purse on the ground and its contents, including a hotel key card, fall out.

We get another flash forward to Meg on the rainy night with Danny calling her phone. She looks outside at her car in the driveway with a scared look on her face.

Danny GTFO of The Will

We learn the reason Meg is upset about Robert’s will is because he asked her to remove Danny from the will and she never did. She says she was hoping he would change his mind, and it wouldn’t matter, but now that Dad is potentially on death’s door, this could present a real problem. After Robert regains consciousness in the hospital, she makes the changes Robert asked for, effectively removing Danny from inheriting any of the business in the event that Robert passes. She attempts to get him to sign the papers, but it’s obvious he is not of sound mind, so she decides to save it for later.

She discusses this dilemma with Kevin, who tells her to get Dad to sign it now and just back-date it since he was of sound mind when he requested she make the changes. She proves she is not completely awful when she says this wouldn’t be ethical and she can’t. Kevin asks her if she really thinks Danny deserves a part of that business. Meg responds he’s their brother

Danny Boy Helps Out

The morning Papa Rayburn wakes up in the hospital, Danny gives his first snorkeling charter to guests of the hotel. Sally comes to check if he needs anything and he assures her that he will be fine. He mentions to Sally that he needs to be added to the payroll, and she agrees, but also kind of brushes him off. I feel like Danny would reek of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke, so it’s lucky they are going to end up in the water where maybe some of his stank will wash off.

After doing what appears to be a great job at the charter and showing the guests a good time. These scenes are montaged with Meg at work updating Robert’s will to cut him out of any inheritance. The snorkeling scenes end on a beautiful shot of a statue of Jesus, hands raised, under the water in the reef. Not yet sure of the significance, if any, but it was a pretty shot.

Who Is Sarah?

Amid all of the developments of this episode, we learn there was once a girl named Sarah, and apparently she passed away sometime around 1984. John and his son go looking for home movies in a storage unit to put together and jog Robert’s memory. While looking, his son finds a photo of the three brothers on a boat named “Angelfish” and John says they did a lot of fishing on that boat.

Back at John’s house, his son is going through the videos and reveals John told him to only use videos dated after 1984. He stumbles upon one he says must have been misdated. It’s Meg’s birthday party (she conveniently wore glasses to make it easier to distinguish her in these old videos), and while the majority of video is of Meg blowing out her candles, we also get a glimpse of Sarah, the same girl we’ve seen in flashbacks running up the beach. John instructs his son not to use this video in the montage for Robert.

We also get a memory of Sarah from Meg’s point of view. Meg sits on a beach chair at the inn looking at the dock and has a memory of her father walking around on the dock. She throws her arm up to block the sun and it looks like her memory of her father waves at her. She turns and looks down the beach and sees Sarah running up the beach toward their father who scoops her up in a hug. It seems fairly obvious that Sarah was the fifth Rayburn sibling and that something tragic happened to her.

Marco and Meg Not Sitting in a Tree

As this episode wraps up, we see Meg and Marco revisiting their earlier conversation about their relationship. She says she has been holding back from him and that she is sorry she has been unfair. Marco has more of a spine than I thought and suggests maybe they should just stop. When Meg asks why, he points out it’s been five years and they are having this conversation, so maybe there is a reason she’s been holding back and they’ve ended up here. The conclusion of this is interrupted by Danny coming over for a visit.

Danny is angry because his first paycheck from the inn was pitifully small in his opinion. He already addressed this with John who told him he needed to take it up with Sally before telling him that Danny needs to work for it, and once he’s earned it, they’ll revisit his wages. This isn’t good enough for Danny so he decides to come and blackmail Meg regarding her affair with Alec. We saw him take the hotel key card from her purse at the hospital after unsuccessfully trying to open her passcoded phone. He pulls out the card as proof, which she tries to deny, but he’s having none of her bullshit.

He tells her he knows he was written out of the will, which she denies because technically as it stands right now, he is still in the will since Robert has yet to sign off on the changes she made. He says he knows that he is going to be shut out, but she has a say in it. She asks if he is threatening her and he says no, but that he has her back and he hopes that she has his. He then adds that he sees her trying to please their dad, but she will never be able to because she’s not Sarah.

Who Is In the Trunk?

The episode ends with Meg standing at her car staring at the trunk as her phone continues to ring with Danny calling. John’s voiceover says, “Whatever mistakes she made, her heart was in the right place.” Her phone rings again and Danny’s face appears on the screen, she opens the trunk as she answers. A voice says, “What did you do?” as we see a body in her trunk.

At this point, my theory is that Danny was dead as John carried his body to the boat in the first episode, and he was just destroying trace evidence by blowing him up in the boat. The question is, who killed him and if that is his body, how did he end up in Meg’s trunk?

We got a very brief glimpse of John actually doing his job and wondering about the floating corpse, but really only enough so that we don’t forget about it, no revelations of any sort. I am starting to wonder how this dude is the sheriff, because it seems like he really only walks around wondering and worrying about his family and spending zero time on actual crimes.

As this story seems to be weaving more and more questions into the fold as time goes on, I received an answer to only one of my questions from last week, which was regarding Meg becoming interesting. Yes, but only in the way that we realize she’s kind of awful. So here’s a new list of questions I have for Part Four:

• Seriously showrunners, what is up with the floating corpse?
• Are all of the Rayburns twisted individuals?
• Is Robert honestly going to sign Danny completely out of his will?
• Is Robert a good guy?
• Is Danny going to work with Eric again since his family is obviously not paying him well?
• Who guesses that someone’s iPhone password is 4444? Alternately, who has that as a password? Amateurs, that’s who.

Join me on Thursday as I recap the next installment in this twisted and slightly fucked family and continue to try and figure out if it always rains that hard in the Florida Keys.