The Waterfront Recap: The First Run
The second episode of The Waterfront makes explicitly clear what the two main Buckley men are battling this season. I mean, sure, sloppy drug running, but that’s a given. For Harlan, his need for control and power has begun to trump everything else in his life. For Cane, he is fighting hard against not turning into his father. In “Taking Control,” both men get called out for these nagging issues, but only one seems apt to change.
As we know, Sheriff Clyde Porter, also known as Owen, the secret drug smuggler, is getting off on the fact that he essentially owns Harlan Buckley at present. If Harlan and Cane don’t follow his orders regarding their nascent drug partnership, Clyde could make their lives miserable, alerting the DEA to the fact that the Buckleys are using their boats for drug deals, shooting them point blank in the face; you get it. There is some ancient grudge Clyde has held against Harlan for decades, which pretty much boils down to the Buckleys being rich and thinking they’re better than everyone else, and that makes him mad. As the famous meme goes, men would rather start an illegal drug smuggling ring to show their high school rival who the big man really is rather than go to therapy.
Clyde’s first big boss move is to force Cane and Harlan to finish the job that Hoyt messed up with his aspirations of a bigger payout. Clyde only wants Harlan and Cane to do it — he says it’s because he can’t trust anyone else, but Harlan knows this is all a power play. When he, Cane, and Belle meet to regroup and Harlan finally learns just how in debt they are — they need two million dollars in less than three months to keep up with what they owe the banks, but that is only a fraction of what they owe in full — he knows he doesn’t really have a choice but to see this through. Although, as Belle and Cane note, once Harlan leaves, he’s not exactly giving off “resignation” here. He plans to identify Clyde’s supplier and cut Clyde out of the deal, claiming it’s to make their money faster and get out. However, Belle reminds him that all of this is temporary; drugs are not becoming the family business again. Cane thinks his dad is acting “weird.” Belle thinks Harlan is acting like he’s “enjoying” all of this. He may give Cane shit for “getting them into this,” but Belle is really onto something here.
Father and Son Buckley set out early the next morning on their first drug run together after receiving the drug shipment from one of Clyde’s guys. So cute, right? Well, it could be cute but Harlan’s default with his son is annoyance and disappointment. Harlan wants his son strapped with an unloaded gun to at least look the part since most of this is “a pissing contest,” but when Cane swears he knows how to handle the gun and then fumbles around with it, although it is endearing to me that Harlan looks like he regrets everything. The two start to get into it about how much Harlan knows about this stuff, how this is his world and Cane goads him about his father. When Harlan reminds him that Cane’s grandfather “could handle himself in any situation,” Cane’s response is, “Well, except for that one time,” referring to Grandpa Buckley’s murder. It’s harsh but good to see Cane has a little fight in him when it comes to his dad.
Anyway, the whole thing turns out to be a setup by Clyde. When Harlan and Cane and Cane’s unloaded gun meet up with the buyers in the middle of the ocean (so much going down in the middle of the ocean on this show!) the buyers notice they are ten kilos short and quickly draw their guns lest these two goons are trying to cheat them. They have Harlan down on the ground and Cane is surrounded, but rather than listen to Harlan’s advice about keeping his mouth shut, Cane starts to babble on and on about how this was an innocent mistake. He’s an idiot, but he’s not stupid enough to die over 10 kilos. He’s new! And they should just check with Owen about this and see! And guess what? His babbling is effective. Even more so, it yields exactly what Harlan wants: Instead of calling Owen, these guys call Grady, who is clearly the supplier Harlan’s been looking for. That’s neat, even if these two almost died to get that information.
Cane and Harlan react differently to the close call. Once again, Cane finds himself rattled now that he is truly in the game, and the first person he finds to talk to is Jenna. She’s at the bar ahead of the big double date Peyton planned for her and Cane and Jenna and her husband, Scott. Cane doesn’t get into what happened to him that day, but he does quickly take Jenna up on her offer of an edible and some shots. They’re both nervous about this date. They both definitely want to make out with each other. And while they both hope being high and drunk will mask any weird feelings that might come across during the date, it actually does the opposite. Even people across the room can tell these giggly people reliving their high school days would very much like to put their mouth on the other person’s mouth. It doesn’t go well, is what I’m saying, and when Peyton and Cane get to her car, she rips into him for humiliating her. “You were so obvious!” she yells at him before letting him know that he’s already becoming exactly like his father. The only difference, she explains, is that while Belle tolerates Harlan’s cheating, Peyton will not. “I will only take so much,” she informs him before taking off. Cane goes to the empty bar behind the restaurant to feel sorry for himself and finds Harlan there, perhaps doing the same thing.
Harlan has just returned from an interesting little chat with Clyde. He calls Clyde out for the setup by punching him right in the face, and the two guys once again get into their little drug-smuggling power struggle. Clyde’s decades-long grudge against Harlan is not to be dismissed. This guy is angry. He hates Harlan Buckley. He revels in the struggles the Buckleys are obviously having. That’s when Harlan reveals that he knows about Grady and demands to meet him. No more runs until he gets an introduction. Clyde knows exactly what that means — Harlan is trying to cut him out.
This is what Harlan’s going over as Cane arrives. Harlan is plotting moves to make this drug business really work, and Cane is angsting that Peyton may be right — he may be turning into his father. The two men pick at each other again. Cane wants a little recognition that he did things his way this morning, and that is what saved their asses. Harlan tells him he was lucky. If he tries that again, he’ll get killed. Cane is tired of Harlan’s incessant condemnation for every choice he makes. Harlan says he’s only trying to protect his son, but Cane calls him out: He’s trying to control him. “You’re a fool,” Harlan tells him. “Well, at least I’m not you.” And there it is. Cane’s greatest fear is to turn out as callous as his father, and this new joint venture, as much as it was Cane’s choice to start, signals to him a step in the wrong direction. He refuses to let this happen to him, regardless of the trouble they’re currently in. There has to be another way out.
Unfortunately, Cane might get a much better idea as to why his father is so calloused once he learns that someone — it must be Clyde, right? — sends two men to attack Peyton when she arrives home. They douse her with gasoline and light a match before the credits cut. If Cane was holding out any hope that he could still remain only halfway into this new branch of the Buckley business, that notion will surely be erased once he discovers what’s happened to his wife.
Bait & Tackle
• Belle is trying to get her husband to see a different path out of their money problems by way of developing a bunch of beachfront property Harlan’s father gave his mother, but his mother never wanted to build on that land and neither does Harlan. Little does he know that she’s already brokered a deal with a developer behind his back.
• Will Harlan be angrier about the land deal or about Belle partaking in a sloppy parking lot makeout session with this developer? Probably the land, but you know what? Either way, Belle should get hers. Harlan attempts an apology for running around on her all this time, but it is very lackluster, and this developer calls her sexy and talented. It’s only fair!
• Bree is also enjoying some forbidden romance: She’s having break-a-motel-dresser levels of sex with the DEA agent Marcus Sanchez. (They met in rehab!) She also sneaks around Cane’s office to find some incriminating evidence against him to hand over to Marcus, who is days away from having his investigation shut down. She won’t reveal why she has it out for her brother, but it must be a real doozy.
• Okay, wait, I love that Diller’s main reason for taking the job at the fishery is because “grandpa is a badass.” (Surely, he also took it to be around his mother, even if he won’t admit it. And yes, he probably also did it in part to piss his mother off by pushing the boundaries of the court order keeping her 300 feet away from him without supervision. Teens are weird and complicated!)
• Told ya there was something going on with Shawn: He confesses to Belle that, surprise, his mother told him on her deathbed that Harlan is his father.
• Kudos to Peyton, ninth place in Miss Carolina, for being able to conjure up the word “metamorphosis” in the middle of a heated argument.