"The Waterfront": "Succession" in North Carolina, with fishing, drug deals, homophobia, Weary backside and Daedalus d*ck

Link to the n*de dudes

I thought The Waterfront, on Netflix, would be a film noir homage, like On the Waterfront, but it's actually about about a family that  runs a North Carolina fishing empire. But it stars Jake Weary, who played a gay guy on Animal Kingdom, so I'll give it a try, starting with Episode 1.1, "Almost Ok."

Scene 1: A boat at night in dark, choppy water.  The Captain tells his crew, Troy and Curtis (Matt Davis), to open the hatch and prepare to transfer the shipment.  

Uh-oh, men with guns approach, knock them out, wrap them in fishing nets, and dump them into the ocean.  I'm guessing that these guys are not focus characters.

Scene 2: Establishing shot of an elegant North Carolina coastal community.  Cane Buckley (Jake Weary), son of fishing magnate Harlan Buckley, is in the bathroom keeps texting Troy and Curtis, the guys who were murdered last night, but they don't answer.  He becomes more and more upset.

He goes downstairs to kiss his bikini-clad wife, greet his preteen daughter, grab coffee, and leave.  Heterosexual identity established at Minute 4.

He drives to the beach and stares in shock at his boat, floundered, with the sheriff and DEA officers investigating.

DEA Agent Sanchez (Gerardo Celasco) tells a Background Player Cop that the boat has been cleared out -- no contraband. The crew is missing, presumed drowned. 

Scene 3:  The Big City.  Cane's Dad Harlan (Holt McCallaney, top photo) grunts, climbs out of bed, groans, and falls to the floor.  He calls to his Side Piece that he's having heart attack: "Call an ambulance and my wife."

Side Piece meets the Wife and the hospital and apologizes for almost killing him.  "It's ok, I got this.  You go home and put on a bra."

Turns out that it was a malfunction in his electronic defibrillator; he'll be fine.   They discuss the floundered boat, and wonder where their son Cane is.

Scene 4: He's at the Carter County Courthouse (no such place, but there's a Carteret County on the coast, near Wilmington), asking the clerk to make Curtis, the drowned guy, the owner of the boat -- "And predate it!" She agrees to help because they're cousins, and family help each other.  Also he promises to fix her $12,000 in credit card debt. 

Next stop: The restaurant where Mom works. Wait -- Dad is a seafood magnate, and she works in a restaurant?  They discuss Dad's emergency and the cargo that was stolen from the boat.  

Cane: "This is the end of our seafood empire!"

Mom: "Don't be so dramatic!  And don't tell your sister.  She can't know!"

Cane: "No problem.  I hate her anyway."

Scene 5: Cane's Sister, cheering on the Havenport High School 2023 Swim Team championships, swimming in the ocean, not a pool. Her Ex-Husband  (Joshua Mikel, Daedalus on The Righteous Gemstones) appears and  yells that she can't visit her son without court permission.   She grumbles but leaves. 

The son, Diller (Diller?) is played by Brady Hepner, who may be gay in real life: he says that the universe is conspiring to make him happy -- while hugging a guy.

Scene 6: On the docks, Cane and his Sister are interviewed by DEA Agent Sanchez.  "Not my boat, I sold it to Drowned Guy Curtis three months ago."

"Ok, then. Bye."  That was easy.

Sister wants to know he didn't tell her about Drowned Guy Curtis buying his boat.

"Because I hate you.  I don't tell you anything. Bye."

At the fish factory, the foreman wants to discuss the drop in orders, but Kane ignores him and rushes into his office -- where Dad decks him!  "What the hell have you done? Don't get up -- I'll just hit you again."

"It was just one drug run, Dad. No big deal. t $10 million in cocaine and opiates. We had to pay off our debts!  We're a second away from losing this place!"

Dad orders him to go to Hoyt, the Bad Dude he hired to handle the drug run, and tell him it's over. 

More after the break

 

Scene 7: Sister, who apparently works in Mom's restaurant, is showing the new bartender, Shawn (Rafael L. Silva), around.  They have 32 types of booze, which I guess is a lot.  He gets fourth billing in the cast list, so he's important.

"So, are you married?  Got a girlfriend?" Unaware that gay people exist, heteronormative jerk?

Before he can answer, Mom comes in.  They discuss the DEA's interest in the boat, "And by the way, could I get my job back? I should be running the office.  My Brother Kane is completely incompetent."

"Nope, you're a screw-up.  Now go wait on some tables."

Scene 8: Cane visits Bad Dude Hoyt, the guy he hired to take care of the drug runs (Scott Deckert, left).  Hoyt who thinks he's wired and forces him to strip -- whoops, he's not wearing underwear!  He averts his eyes in disgust.  You're straight, I get it.

After he is allowed to put his clothes back on, Cane asks what happened.  Bad Dude doesn't know: the boat is clean, and the crew is missing. 

 Problem: Owen, the Baddest Dude, thinks that Cane is side-dealing, stealing the cargo to sell to someone else.  "Ok, let me talk to Baddest Dude Owen.  I'll tell him I would never do anything like that."

"Nope, you can't talk to him."  No Owen appears in the cast list.

Scene 9: Dad comes to the restaurant and tries to order whiskey from Bartender Shawn. "Sorry, your Wife and Daughter told me not to serve you before 5:00 pm."

"But I'm big and important, growl growl."  

Shawn serves him.

Next the Sheriff asks if he knows anything about Cane's drug running?  "Nope."

"Well, just be careful.  The Feds have informants and undercover agents everywhere."

New Bartender Shawn looks guilty as he pretends to be concentrating on wiping down the counterar.

Scene 10: On the docks, DEA Agent Sanchez waves at Cane.  I'm watching you, har har.

Cane pauses to chat with an indecently dressed girl who is back in town after working for a newspaper in Atlanta, because her Dad is dying, so she needs to look after the store while taking care of him. 

Miss Piggy: "Why are you telling me this?"

Diana Rigg: "It's plot exposition.  It has to come somewhere."

Scene 11: Night.  Mom and Dad discuss the situation.  I understand that in a soap opera, the plot can't move forward until every conceivable pair of characters discuss it, but this becoming tedious.  Let's have something happen other than endless explications of everyone's back stories.

Scene 12:  Bikini Lady is applying makeup to Cane to hide the black eye his dad gave him.  They discuss having dinner with the Indecently Dressed Girl and her husband.

"But she's the Girl of My Dreams, and you're the woman I settled for.  I'd drop you in an instant if she asked.  You don't mind having dinner with her."

"No, not at all.  Her husband is superior to you in every way, so I don't feel threatened."

Cut to Cane stopping by the shop to flirt with Love Interest.  Well, his wife said he could.

Scene 13: At the Factory, Cane and Mom discuss the situation.  Then Dad drops by, and all three discuss the situation. Yawn.

Cut to the docks, where Dad and Cane trick Bad Dude Hoyt onto their boat, and scares him by saying that the two crewmen, Tim and Reggie (Brian Ashton Smith), are ex-convicts (so they're automatically violent?  Most people are in prison for nonviolent offenses).

"We know you took the drugs, and killed the two crewmen.  They were good men.  They had wives and kids."  That annoying Family Man myth: Demonstrating that you are heterosexual by having a wife and kids makes you infinitely valuable.  

They dump some chum in the water to draw sharks, and hold Hoyt underwater until he tells them that some guys from New Jersey offered him a better cut, so he stole the drugs.

Scene 14: Sister has dinner with her son at a restaurant, while the court-mandated  watches.  He wanted to go to the mall to get new sneakers but she didn't get the paperwork in on time.

"So, how's school?"  He responds by accusing the school of being gay.

"Dating any girls?" When he hesitates, Sister adds "Boys?", but her intonation makes it clear that she's joking.  A guy dating guys?  Ridiculous!

Scene 15: Hoyt takes Cane and Dad to the storage shed to retrieve the drugs.   Uh-oh, the Sheriff!  "I haven't told them anything!" Hoyt says.  And the Sheriff shoots him!

Turns out that he is the Biggest Bad Owen, the head drug lord of the region.  "And now you guys work for me!  Your first job: dispose of the body."

Dad and Cane bundle it up and dump it in the ocean.  Right next to the shore?  And they don't bundle it properly, so the body comes right out?   Amateurs!

They bicker; Cane punches Dad, then apologizes.  Dad criticizes him for it.

Scene 16: Cane drops in at Indecently Dressed Girl's house to discuss the situation.  Then she takes a walk in the dark, and meets with DEA  Agent Sanchez.  "You should investigate Hoyt," she says.   She's the undercover agent!  The end.

Beefcake: Cane and his Dad take off their shirts.

Gay Characters:  In Episode 1.6, Bartender Shawn mentions that he's gay, and has a boyfriend back home in Texas, in an off-hand comment.  Otherwise you would never know. This is a super-closeted 1980s show.

Heterosexism/Casual Homophobia: Constant, with some of the most hackneyed tropes you can imagine.  The Nuclear Family Myth, the Family Man Myth, Every Man's Fantasy, "Sucking Dick."  Ugh...

My Grade:  I was surprised by the Sheriff being the Biggest Bad, and Indecently Dressed Girl being an undercover agent, but that came after endless -- endless -- talking heads delivering heavy-handed plot exposition or talking about the same thing over and over and over. Plus heterosexism and casual homophobia...ugh. D.

Bonus: Jake Weary's backside and Daedalus d*ck are on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.

See also: The Twelve Bare Backsides of "Animal Kingdom." With some faces

Joshua Mikel: Pirate, Satanist, zombie chow, boyfriend. With two important questions answered, and maybe a d*ck

Gavin Munn goes fishing. With Michael Rooker, Kelton Dumont, a gator, a cobb, and n*de fishermen.  He went fishing in North Carolina.