The Waterfront Recap: The Fixer

Wow, this partnership between Harlan and Grady lasted zero days without some kind of issue. Harlan’s big rule about two runs a week immediately gets overruled, and Grady just keeps sending shipments for the Buckleys to move. Even more distressing, Grady makes a surprise visit to the fish house and the restaurant for what he refers to as “I showed you mine, you show me yours,” where not only does he get to know Diller but makes himself very comfortable at the restaurant antagonizing, well, mostly Cane. Not that I don’t love to watch Grady refer to Cane Buckley as “cheekbones” and “cupcake,” but this guy really knows how to make an already tense situation much, much worse.

It’s not like the Buckleys don’t already have enough to stress about before Grady shows up, practically advertising the fact they’ve gone into business together. Earlier that day, they had another surprise visitor: DEA agent Marcus Sanchez. Marcus refuses to give up on this case, and he follows his hunch that the Buckleys had something to do with Clyde Porter’s death all the way to a trail camera on Clyde’s property. Now, he has a video of Harlan and Belle at the scene. Marcus brings this information directly to Harlan, not to arrest him but to make a deal. He’ll get rid of the footage if Harlan gives him the name of his supplier. Marcus wants to get the big guy and leave Harlan out of it. Harlan’s not taking that deal — he doesn’t trust the DEA, and he certainly doesn’t trust Grady not to give him up either.

The walls seem to be closing in on the Buckleys, and Cane has more than one person he decides to put the blame on. First, of course, there’s Bree. He’s the only one at the moment who knows Bree is hooking up with Marcus and that Bree was feeding him information. She tries one more time to get Marcus to drop it; she even tosses a “this isn’t love” at him, which is, objectively, insane. They’re two addicts trying to stay sober by humping each other in a motel room. I just don’t think that’s love either, babe. Anyway, Cane screams at his sister about how she did this. She breaks everything. She burned it all down again. And instead of fighting back, this breaks Bree. She sobs. When her son finds her crying, she tells him that his mother “ruins everything she touches,” and she doesn’t even know why she tries. When we see her out on the dock contemplating her terrible life decisions, she is either hatching a plan to fix things or figuring out where she can get a drink.

But Bree isn’t the only Buckley woman Cane is blaming for how bad things have gotten. Cane learns that Wes has been over at the bank making plans to package the Buckleys’ loans so that he can pretty much take any of their assets, including that beachfront land. He’s so angry that Belle let that land deal crash and burn. I’m so angry that The Waterfront is forcing me to learn things about business loans. We all have things to be angry about, okay?! Cane reminds his mother that the land deal was the one thing — the only thing, really — that could’ve saved them from having to get into bed with Grady. He also makes a comment about his parents’ toxic marriage, and honestly, I did clap. Once again I remain amazed that Cane, CANE, a man named Cane, is The Waterfront’s vessel for truth-telling.

While Cane’s trying not to fully melt down (he’s looking quite red, no?), Grady has Harlan run an errand with him. Harlan’s cousin, Drew Jr., the newly installed sheriff, thanks to Harlan’s handy work, pulled over Grady’s guys delivering the latest shipment and has landed himself in some trouble. Here, trouble means “got his face kicked in.” It’s up to Harlan to smooth over the situation. Grady, not surprisingly, just wants to kill Drew to solve this problem. Harlan convinces him that Drew is family and he won’t be a problem going forward. Plus, it’ll be nice to have the sheriff on their side. It actually takes more work for Harlan to convince Drew to fall in line. We barely know this guy, but his “I didn’t get a choice!” was quite affecting — or, at the very least, a reminder that our protagonists here can be monstrous. Regardless, Drew knows his choice now is to fall in line or die, and he begrudgingly selects the former.

This incident does not end before Drew lets slip some details about the DEA agent, which is information Harlan really didn’t want to get around to Grady. Grady, who doesn’t seem to take anything seriously (he’s “pew-pewing” and “booping” Drew throughout this scene), suddenly gets deadly, scarily serious about a DEA agent sniffing around. Harlan assures him it won’t be a problem. But when it comes up a second time at the marina, Harlan knows that if Marcus and his video evidence don’t go away, Grady will start taking out Buckleys for sure.

In yet another instance of Cane trying to remain a good guy, when he sees his father grab his gun and make plans to go to the motel he heard Marcus is staying at, he begs him not to go. “We are not those people,” he yells. This isn’t what they do. But Harlan disagrees. This is exactly who they are. “You’re either all in or dead,” he tells his son. It’s very dramatic and also another example of Harlan’s terrible parenting skills. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this season doesn’t end with some major corruption of Cane. He’s a doofus, but he’s our doofus, you know?

And honestly, he really is a good boy. He follows Harlan to the motel, knowing Bree is mixed up in all of this. But the Buckley men find something surprising when they go into the motel room: Marcus is dead. He’s naked and has recently shot up; he’s overdosed. And we know that had everything to do with Bree. Her big plan to fix things? She sets Marcus up. She goes to the motel and gets piss-ass drunk and laments about how she is a “train wreck.” She comes from bad people and she is a bad person. She does all of this while flouting some of Marcus’s drugs of choice. She knows he’s so on the edge of relapsing. Bringing drugs to his motel room is cruel, and she knows it. When she tells him that she always knew she’d have to choose between him and her family, we know she’s already chosen her family. We don’t see what goes down, and it’s unclear if Bree went in with the intent to kill Marcus, but that man is dead.

Harlan is annoyed that they can’t find the video, but to him, Marcus being dead is one less thing for him to worry about. To Cane, it’s a sign that Bree must be in trouble somewhere. He goes driving around Havenport in the pouring rain looking for her and winds up spotting her passed out on the side of the road. She has the video. She wanted to fix the thing she broke. “I killed him,” she mumbles to her brother as he scoops her up and walks her to the car. Well, I guess Bree is about to get what she always wanted: She’s no longer on the fringe of the Buckley family; she’s right there in it with them.

Bait & Tackle

• Diller’s dad finds out about his son’s new job and forbids him to work at the fish house. He also informs him that the Buckleys are damaged people, which is a harsh but fair assessment. Bree’s ex sucks, but he is just trying to keep his son safe. Little does he know, now that Grady knows about Diller, I doubt that kid is out of harm’s way, regardless of where he works.

• Poor Shawn has no idea what he just stepped into here. He has a sit-down with the entire family, and it’s Cane who takes the news the hardest. Shawn keeps popping by to try to win Cane over and explain that after losing his mother, he’s just looking for family, for a place to belong and that is sweet, but now is not the time, Shawn!!

• Please no one tell Shawn’s boyfriend that he’s walking around telling people that he’s “lost everything.” That poor guy!

• When Grady meets Belle and pulls his little “I’m a hugger” shtick with her, her response is, “I’m not.” Not even Harlan could get out of a Grady hug. This is why Belle should be in charge.