The Waterfront Review: Southern Family Drama Served With a Side of Smuggling

Let me start by saying this — I didn’t mean to binge The Waterfront in one weekend. I figured I’d watch an episode or two, get a sense of the vibe, and move on. But somehow, there I was on a Sunday night, bleary-eyed and emotionally waterlogged, wondering how a show about seafood and smuggling had me so locked in.

Is The Waterfront great TV? Not exactly.Is it addictive in the way a bag of discount kettle chips is addictive? Absolutely.

Here’s my take — messy, personal, but spoiler-conscious (mostly) — on the new Southern noir drama that just washed up on Netflix.

The Premise: Fishing Boats, Family Secrets, and a Whole Lot of Guilt

The Waterfront is set in the fictional town of Havenport, North Carolina — think charming fishing village meets swampy criminal underbelly. The Buckley family runs the town’s most successful seafood business and restaurant empire, but everything starts falling apart when the family patriarch Harlan (played by the eternally intense Holt McCallany) suffers not one but two heart attacks in the first episode.

With Harlan out of commission, the family business — already on the brink — begins to spiral. His wife Belle (Maria Bello, giving off “Southern steel magnolia with a grudge” energy) and their son Cane (Jake Weary, aka the walking definition of “bad decisions in a hoodie”) decide to keep things running… by smuggling drugs using the company’s fishing boats.

If you’re thinking Ozark but with shrimp nets, you’re not far off.

What Kept Me Watching: The Characters Are a Hot Mess (In a Good Way)

For me, the thing that kept pulling me through each episode wasn’t the drug angle — honestly, the whole smuggling plot isn’t particularly original — it was the characters.

Bree Buckley, played by Melissa Benoist (yep, Supergirl herself), is the family’s estranged daughter and a recovering addict trying to stay clean and regain custody of her son. She returns to Havenport just in time to find out her family is up to their eyeballs in shady dealings. Bree’s story hit me hardest. She’s not just the moral center of the show — she’s the emotional anchor. Watching her try to rebuild her life while navigating a toxic, manipulative family was heartbreaking and real in a way that caught me off guard.

Cane, on the other hand, is a character I loved to hate. He’s the classic “golden son gone wrong,” reckless and paranoid and far too comfortable dragging everyone into the mud with him. Every time I thought he couldn’t get worse, he somehow did — and I couldn’t look away.

Belle is probably my favorite performance overall. Maria Bello does this fantastic balancing act — you never quite know if she’s acting out of love or survival. Maybe both? She feels like the kind of mom who would hug you, then blackmail your parole officer without blinking.

Pacing Problems and Southern Melodrama

Let’s talk about the pacing. This show crawls for the first three episodes. It’s all whispers and meaningful glances and long shots of docks in the fog. Honestly, I almost bailed halfway through episode two. But then something shifted — not a big plot twist, just a creeping sense that something really bad was going to happen. That’s what this show does well. It builds dread like a slow tide rolling in. You don’t notice it until your shoes are soaked and it’s too late to move.

Now, the melodrama? Oh, it’s thick. People yell things like “We’re family — we don’t walk away!” and “You think I wanted this life?” with total sincerity. There’s a near-death experience, a mysterious package, secret recordings, and one scene involving a church confession that was so over-the-top I laughed out loud.

But I also didn’t stop watching. That’s the trick — The Waterfront knows exactly what it is. It leans into the drama. It doesn’t pretend to be prestige television. It’s soapy, sweaty, and deeply earnest.

The Real Story Behind the Fiction

One of the cooler things I learned while watching is that the show was inspired by creator Kevin Williamson’s real life. His father actually smuggled marijuana using the family’s fishing business in the 1980s. That personal connection is part of what gives The Waterfront some emotional heft, even when it’s going full melodrama mode.

It makes you wonder how many of the show's twists come from reality — and how much darker the real story might have been.

Will I Watch Season 2? Probably. Will I Regret It? Also Probably.

The Waterfront isn’t the smartest or sleekest crime drama on Netflix. It’s not as sharp as Ozark, or as brutal as Breaking Bad. But it’s got something. Maybe it’s the setting, maybe it’s the characters, maybe it’s just the guilty pleasure of watching a family slowly implode while pretending everything’s fine.

Would I recommend it? If you like character-driven crime stories with a Southern flavor and a whole mess of family dysfunction — yes. But be warned: the show takes its sweet time getting where it’s going. Pack snacks. And maybe a drink.

So yeah, I watched The Waterfront. I kind of loved it. I kind of hate that I loved it. And I’ll definitely be there when season two washes ashore.

Have you seen The Waterfront yet? Let me know if you’re Team Bree or Team Burn-It-All-Down.

What did you think?

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• Loved it
• Hated it
• So/So