Even for Bloodline, “Part 3” was a pretty slow episode. It turned the show’s attention to Meg Rayburn, who we know the least about, and who has her own particular relationship with Danny. Actually, every Rayburn seems to have a similar relationship with Danny – loving, but weirdly adversarial. (The exception being Kevin, who meets Bloodline‘s “character washing their hands of Danny” quota this episode by saying he doesn’t care about him anymore.) Linda Cardellini does fine work as Meg, but “Part 3” was still woefully short on the intrigue and suspense we’ve come to expect from this show.
Since every Rayburn seemingly has skeletons in their closets (can’t wait to see what John’s are!), we find out pretty early on that Meg is having an affair with Morris, a developer trying to open a new resort in the Keys. (Oh, Meg is a lawyer, by the way.) As Chelsea O’Bannon details in a conversation with Danny, no one is ever good enough for Meg – why has she been with Marco for five years and not married him? It’s a fair point. Meg is as complex as the rest of the Rayburns (except, again, for Kevin, who at the moment seems to be a walking angry sunburn). As her father’s lawyer, or at least the lawyer in charge of his estate planning, Meg harbors a lot of family secrets. For instance, that Bob once wanted to disown Danny, or that in the current version of his will, Danny has been omitted.
John was pretty much in his own episode. He’s investigating the dead girl, the significance of whom is still kind of lost on me. Unless one of the Rayburns killed her, how does she factor in to the story? We see the other Rayburns doing their jobs, but they’re narratively significant – Meg is in a meeting with Morris, her lover; Danny assumes some of Bob’s responsibilities at the hotel, and takes guests out on a charter boat (and does a damn good job too). But where this dead girl comes into play is anyone’s guess at this point.
For all its faults, though, “Part 3” does the best job at explaining why Danny is the way he is, or why he can always be counted on to leave – his siblings and parents don’t exactly treat him like family. He’s treated like an outlier, and like I said in my review of “Part 2,” the more you call someone the bad guy, the more they’ll start believing it’s true. Danny is trying to go straight, though; he turns down Eric’s offer for more work, and demurs at buying Chelsea another drink, saying he has work in the morning. Of course, he relents on this point once she starts dishing about Meg, and honestly, who could resist Chloe Sevigny in short shorts?
In voiceover, John intimates that it was Meg’s “decision” that leads to everything we’ve seen in flash forwards. What exactly this decision is, we haven’t found out yet. But we do know that Meg has a body in her trunk and she’s getting phone calls from Danny. The beauty of Bloodline is that it’s able to make the present-day narrative equally as compelling as the pulpy, noirish flash-forwards – most of the time. “Part 3” wasn’t exactly a step back – the show looks great as always, and the performances are solid across the board – but it did give in to some of the show’s more lethargic impulses, as if, like Kevin (I assume), it had one too many cervezas and fell asleep in the sun.
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