Dave Nemetz Reviews The Waterfront: Netflix’s Soggy Soap Drowns in Dumb Clichés — Now, YOU Grade It!

As a TV critic, it is my duty to watch as many episodes of a show as I can before reviewing it. In the case of Netflix’s new drama The Waterfront (now streaming), I watched three… but if I weren’t reviewing it, I don’t think I would’ve made it through a single one. I watched them, dear readers, so that you don’t have to.A Southern-fried family crime drama with unforgivably dumb dialogue, The Waterfront — which hails from Dawson’s Creek creator Kevin Williamson — seems to be aiming for something like Yellowstone meets Dallas. But it’s too tepid and by-the-numbers to ever grab our attention: a lazy mishmash of a dozen primetime soap clichés, with a bit of over-the-top absurdity sprinkled on top. It’s as ridiculous as a telenovela… but not nearly as fun.

Set on the North Carolina coast in huge mansions overlooking the water, The Waterfront centers on the wealthy Buckley family, who run a local fishing empire. They’re a big family in town — and we know this because we’re told “they’re a big family in town” several times an episode. But they’re not exactly one big happy family: The patriarch Harlan (played by Mindhunter’s Holt McCallany) has a heart attack while in bed with his mistress. And when one of their fishing boats is used for drug smuggling and targeted for a violent hijacking, the ensuing fallout exposes some very tangled family dynamics.

Williamson tries to follow in the footsteps of juicy primetime soaps like Empire and Dynasty here, but he turns up the heat too high, leaving us with overheated melodrama that verges on unintentional comedy with lines like “It’s all Key lime pie until you come home to find your wife and kid dead.” The scripts serve up lots of secrets and lies and capital-T twists, along with bland romantic complications to help pad out the running time. But we don’t really care about any of it, because it’s all been recycled from other shows. (The violence is at least creative, with one guy dangled headfirst into shark-infested waters and another stabbed in the throat with a screwdriver.)

The overly dramatic music cues are corny, and the cast’s accents are all over the place. McCallany has a certain tough-guy menace as Harlan, but Jake Weary’s mopey son Cane isn’t a compelling enough character to lead a show. As recovering addict daughter Bree, Supergirl alum Melissa Benoist is somehow old enough to be the mother of a full-grown teen (!). And apparently, Topher Grace shows up at some point as a drug kingpin? I couldn’t tell you; I didn’t last long enough to find out.

I don’t want to trash anyone’s sincere artistic effort, but nothing about this is sincere. It all feels half-hearted and calculated, like Netflix is trying to pander to red state viewers with something mindless they can watch while scrolling on their phones. Or — here’s an idea — they could just not watch at all