The Waterfront Recap ‘Almost Okay’: The Patriarch Returns

The Waterfront Season 1 Episode 1 Recap and Review

All eight episodes of The Waterfront are currently airing on Netflix. Please watch them before reading these spoiler-filled recaps.

When I read the synopsis of The Waterfront a couple of weeks back, I thought it would be about a wealthy family hitting rough financial waves and turning to drugs to stay afloat. This is part of it. The other part was that they had been here before. What Cane Buckley (Jake Weary) did, his grandfather and his father Harlan (Holt McCallany) did in the past as well, and did better. The money the Buckleys had was already tainted, and when Harlan had to take control because his son made a mess of things, he did so with the cool confidence of a man who had seen what had shocked his son a thousand times before. Muscle memory unlocked. Summon the sharks. ‘Once more. For me.’

The Buckleys were a preeminent family at Havenport. They controlled a fishing empire that made their family a major employer in the area. But, with the business deep in debt, and the patriarch all but retired following heart troubles, Cane and his mother Belle (Maria Bello) decided to enter the drug running business. A hundred grand per trip, a few runs to catch their finances up, that was the plan. Then their boat Miss Glory carrying 10 million dollars worth of product was run aground and their men Curtis and Troy were killed. Suddenly, Cane was being accused by his supposed partner Hoyt Piper and his boss, the mysterious Owen, of taking the drugs, and the DEA was all up the Buckleys’ business. 

Cane was a former high school football star who did not go to college and did not even try to pursue his dream of going pro because his father told him so. He now ran the fish house and the family’s drug running side business – and he was not doing well with either. The moment he saw the Miss Glory on the beach, with the Sheriff and the DEA all over it, he sprung into action, and for 12 thousand dollars, got his cousin Lynette to backdate a fake sale of the boat to the then still missing Curtis. That created a thin separation between him and the ongoing investigation, but it was not enough. Daddy had to come fix things. 

The difference between the visibly stressed out Cane and the cool, collected, though hard drinking Harlan was stark. Ex-cons Tim and Reggie were hired by Belle, and they worked for Cane, but the moment Harlan came in and introduced himself to them, they knew who the boss was. Harlan suspected that Hoyt took the drugs himself, and told Cane to go get him. Aboard their boat Southern Belle, after dropping fish guts in the water to attract sharks, Tim and Reggie hung Hoyt off the side of the boat until he confessed where he took the drugs. I don’t usually watch nor do I usually cover non period family drama, but Harlan cooly telling his boys to dip Hoyt back into the water even after he has gotten what he wanted – ‘Once more. For me.’ – was enough to convince me to recap at least the first episode. I’ve missed watching Holt McCallany. Will we ever get more Mindhunter? 

Harlan, Cane, and Hoyt drove to the shed where Hoyt hid the drugs. Note how they did not take Tim and Reggie with them. Sheriff Clyde Porter soon joined them. After Hoyt told him he did not tell the Buckleys anything, Porter shot him in the head. The Sheriff himself was the mysterious Owen.

There was a lot of class envy coming from Porter that made Harlan’s appeal to his friendship and their shared history fall on deaf ears. Porter said they were partners, but it was clear he held the upper hand, at least for now. 

Harlan and Cane had to take a boat through a swamp to get rid of Hoyt’s body. Harlan was, per usual, belittling Cane, and to be fair, Cane was not great even with this body disposal job. When they had finally managed to push Hoyt’s body through some tree roots to keep it from floating up (that was mostly Harlan), and Harlan told Cane not to have a meltdown right there in the mud, Cane had finally had enough. The stress of the past couple of days, the stress of the past few months, the feel of his father’s fist on his face off a bruise that had not yet healed, the body of a man he knew just a few feet away waiting to be eaten by alligators, everything bubbled to the surface, and Cane punched his father.

Then, he apologised. Harlan snapped at him not to apologise. ‘You don’t hit a man, then apologise. You can’t even hit right.’ Harlan eventually remembered he was a father, and told Cane he did well. Of course, he had to add that he never thought Cane would touch a dead body. I am writing this without having seen the rest of the first season so I genuinely don’t know how this father-son relationship will evolve. So far, there is enough here to keep me interested.

What I am not loving is the Dawson’s Creek vibes from Cane and his high school girlfriend Jenna Tate. Jenna, a writer for an Atlanta paper, had moved back into town to look after her ailing father and help out at their store. She had been back a month, and Cane’s wife Peyton knew, but never told him. When Cane went to Jenna’s house after his day of sharks and murder and a corrupt Sheriff, I could buy the nostalgia and reconnecting of it all, and it was sweet how Jenna almost immediately sensed that something had happened. I also liked how she drew a clear line for Cane, that the both of them were married, that Jenna and Peyton got along and Cane might even like Jenna’s husband Scott if he gave him a chance. The episode title came from the merging of their preferred memoir titles, Almost for Cane and Okay for Jenna. There wasn’t really anything specific I disliked about their story. It just felt like Harlan and Belle were in a different, grown-up show, and Cane was about to gift Jenna a wall (obligatory Pacey reference). But hey, I’ve only seen one episode, perhaps this particular storyline would grow on me. 

Then of course there was Bree (an excellent Melissa Benoist), snarky and scarred and outside the family circle, at least for now. She worked at the family restaurant, but though she asked, her mother refused to allow her back in the office. Instead, she was tasked with decidedly non business owner work like training the new bartender Shawn. Based on Bree’s conversation with her estranged son Diller, it looked like she at one point burned down her ex husband’s house. I am definitely looking forward to seeing more of Bree, especially since she seemed to be a DEA informant, and had told DEA Agent Marcus Sanchez to check out Hoyt Piper, whom she again saw with her brother Cane. The same Hoyt whose body Harlan and Cane had so recently disposed of.

Family dramas are not usually my jam, but this first episode of The Waterfront has tempted me to watch the whole first season. There is an interesting story here, but it may take a bit of patience to see it through.

Rating: B

Strays

🛥️Curtis and Troy were boarded by men with guns. They were hit on the head with guns, tangled in a net, and thrown overboard whilst still alive, presumably an attempt to sell accidental drowning should they be discovered.  

🛥️Harlan had a mistress named Rhonda, and Belle was cool with that. His defibrillator malfunctioned, which landed him in the hospital. 

🛥️Bree needed court permission to see her son.

🛥️Diller: ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Bree: ‘I don’t know sweetheart. But I’m trying to fix it.’

You can access Recap Lab's full coverage of The Waterfront via this link.

Episode Title: Almost Okay

Episode Writer: Kevin Williamson

Episode Director: Marcus Siega

Original Air Date: June 19, 2025

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