The Waterfront Recap: A Man With No Code

There’s nothing like getting a call letting you know your father was just tortured via aquatic animal tentacles to ruin the afterglow of a good lay, but that’s how Cane Buckley’s day begins in “Nice Try.” He doesn’t have time to chat with Jenna about how they’re feeling — although, for the first time this season, does Cane look kind of happy? — instead, he rushes to his parents’ house, where he and Harlan discover that, not satisfied with torturing Harlan, Grady’s sent one of his guys to surveil him at all times. When Grady calls to check in, Harlan answers with a “you stupid mother fucker” and informs him that they are done. Unfortunately, everyone involved knows it isn’t as easy as just saying it.

The Buckley boys put their heads together to hatch a plan. Harlan’s first idea: “Put a bullet in his head and take him to the swamp.” Although I love a good callback, Cane doesn’t love the idea of them attempting to murder a guy as their starting point. Now, getting someone else to murder a guy? That might be cool. Back at the office, they find Grady’s sent Harlan a nice bouquet of flowers, wishing him to get well soon. He signs it, “xoxo, Grady.” Harlan contemplates his original plan again. Cane stands his ground. There is one option they haven’t yet pursued, one that might solve all of their problems: They could call Emmett Parker.

In case you forgot, Emmett is the guy with the precise white beard who showed up at Clyde Porter’s funeral and made vague statements about Cane coming to work for him if he was ever interested. Harlan explains his deal: Emmett’s father, Jeb, is the one who ordered the hit on Harlan’s father, Beau. Beau used to work for the Parkers, who have a long and successful drug smuggling organization — “one of the biggest in the South,” according to Harlan — and when Beau betrayed Jeb, he had him killed. Harlan wants nothing to do with them; they are big time, much bigger than Grady, and they do not tolerate any type of insubordination. This is the point, says Cane, they could make a deal with the Parkers in which, not only do they get more money, but they could have them get rid of Grady. Harlan hates this — Cane’s already set up a meeting.

Cane’s dad might pull his regular “don’t talk, only I know what I’m doing here” ahead of the Parker meeting, but it turns out Cane is much more capable than Harlan gives him credit for. When Emmett and Jeb and a bunch of their henchmen arrive at the fish house, it’s Cane who cuts through the bullshit of the past and lays out a deal. The Buckleys will use their boats to run drugs for the Parkers for one year, two shipments a week. They’ll take any legal hits if something goes wrong. In return, the Parkers will pay them seven million upfront and another five million at the end of the contract. Oh, and they need to help them get rid of their current supplier before any of this can start. The Parkers seem eager to make a deal, but still would like to know why the Buckleys are ditching Grady. He is a man with no code and no honor, and Harlan just isn’t into that. Emmett agrees to send his men for Grady that night, and they shake hands on their new (old) partnership. Did they just make a deal with the devil? Maybe! But any deal sounds good if it means they’ll wake up tomorrow and their Grady problem is gone.

Grady is a cockroach, people! You thought he’d be taken down that easily? Grow up! The next morning, Cane waltzes into the office only to find the two men Parker sent to kill Grady dead sitting in front of his desk with a “nice try” sign on their laps. Grady did add a little smiley face, so at least it’s a friendly sign. Meanwhile, he has his guys ambush Harlan, who is driving into work and just happens to have Shawn in the car with him. The Grady goons toss both of them in their van and deliver him to their boss.

This seems bad, right? Harlan and Shawn are cuffed and on their knees, Grady is disappointed that Harlan delegated his murder to the Parkers, and he also is a little annoyed to learn that Harlan has another son and it isn’t him. Their only hope? Cane, Tim, and Reggie, who arrive to the farm, each armed with one gun. Against so many guys! And also remember that machine gun? Somehow, miraculously, they make it across the field and into the barn where most of Grady’s supply is sitting. Cane, always looking for a non-murder-y way to handle things (he really is a sweet boy), sees a ton of highly flammable liquid. Before Grady can do anything to his two Buckley hostages, the barn goes up in flames. Chaos ensues, and while it seems impossible, Cane gets Harlan and Shawn out unscathed. (RIP Tim, who takes one for the team.) In a moment that seems even more impossible, Harlan actually thanks his son for doing something. A true miracle. Harlan is proud of his son. And all he had to do was blow up a barn full of drugs. Who knew?

Of course, Grady still survives the melee, and that means all of the Buckleys are still in danger. Harlan tells Cane to get them home as fast as he can — Belle, Bree, Peyton, Diller, other people with extremely Southern names, all of them, could be used to even the score.

So where are Belle and Bree? Well, not surprisingly, the Buckley women have been left to clean up the mess. Literally. At the office. They’re taking care of those dead bodies. That’s right: Bree is now finally and fully let into what’s going on with her family. It’s kind of the last thing she needs at the moment since (1) she is only like a day sober, and (2) Rodney calls her over for a surprise drug test after seeing her strung out at the hospital. She refuses, and that could mean she loses visitation rights. Even if she retains visitation rights, seeing her son might get a whole lot harder — Rodney tells her that he got a job offer in Virginia Beach, and he’s going to take it and move Diller with him. It’s so distressing that Diller runs away from home for a hot second, but Bree finds him hiding out in a boat behind the fish house, and the mother and son wind up having a lovely little heart-to-heart about how Diller’s father is just protecting him and that she’ll love him and protect him always, no matter how far apart they are.

All of this means that just as Bree is turning things around with her son, she walks right into a scene in which her mother is cleaning up two very dead bodies. But while this is harrowing and will definitely add to Bree’s PTSD, there is a silver lining if you can believe it. Belle, being forced to spill everything to her daughter, then allows Bree to spill right back. She’s finally honest with her mother about what’s been going on both with Marcus and Diller, but also in regards to how she feels she’s had to carry this lie on her own about her grandfather for her whole life. Belle tells her the only reason she asked her daughter to lie about what she saw that night was to protect her (Bree would be a witness, the Parkers would come after her), but it was wrong to do what she did. And that is guilt Belle will carry. They have this entire emotional, deeply vulnerable conversation still covered in the blood and stench of those two dead bodies, which is wild, but what are you gonna do? You don’t know when heart-to-hearts are going to happen and you really need to just ride them out, corpse or no corpse.

It’s not like Belle showed up for dead-body removal duty in a clear headspace, either. Ever since she told Harlan about the botched land deal, things have been tense between them. He’s so angry with her for lying to him and for trying to get rid of his family’s land behind his back. In turn, she tells him that she also fucked Wes, if that helps at all. It doesn’t help. Harlan leaves feeling betrayed and Belle leaves feeling hurt that her husband can’t acknowledge everything she’s done to keep this family afloat. So, a lot is going through Belle’s head as she’s dragging dead men downstairs and burying them in the fish-house ice room.

Just as Bree and Belle finish up with the corpse-side chats, Bree gets another text from her ex: Diller still isn’t home. She goes back out behind the fish house to see if he came back to his hiding spot. She doesn’t find Diller. Instead, Grady’s men grab her, and we cut to black. Grady does work quickly, I’ll give him that.

Bait and Tackle

• “I think you put your worried little heads together and decided it’s not so fun working for a raging narcissistic sociopath. Yes, I have been formally diagnosed.” Topher Grace is having the best time.

• Sorry, but I cannot feel bad for Shawn anymore. He had so many signs to get out before things got even crazier than jujitsu in a hospital parking lot, and he sticks around for the promise of a getting-to-know-you fishing weekend with Harlan Buckley? You did this yourself, my guy.