“If you’ve never been to Durango, Colorado, you should go.  While you’re there, you really should take the train from Durango to Silverton.  It is a breathtaking train ride through the Colorado mountains on a small gauge rail.  You can even get a ticket in an open-air car!  It’s a great way to spend the day with your family.”

If someone tells you this, it means one of only a few things:

• They hate you and they want you to die a slow death of boredom
• They owe you one (i.e. You stole money from them, or you slept with their significant other, maybe even you were directly responsible for the death of a loved one)
• They are, “that kind” of friend–you know the kind who dares you to eat the hottest pepper on earth?
• They are simply sadistic and enjoy the suffering of others.

That’s it though.  Those are the only possible choices.  You see, no one, “enjoys” the train ride from Durango to Silverton.

I’m not sure I can paint an entirely accurate picture of it, but I’m going to try:  You board the train in Durango, Colorado.  It’s a really beautiful town and at the “base” of the town is the train station.  You have two options:  a covered car or an open air car.  With nice weather, the open air car seems like the natural choice.  What no one tells you is that it is a coal train, and selecting the open air car means that you’ll be covered in coal ash for the next three hours (one way).  By the grace of God, our tickets were in a closed compartment.  

The train moves slowly.  Very slowly.  It’s little more than a brisk walk.  The scenery for the first hour is really impressive, but you still have two more hours to go on this hellishly slow ride.  Delirium from boredom kicks in about an hour and one minute and when you arrive an hour and fifty nine minutes later it is surreal.  Truly.  When the train finally literally pulls to a screeching halt, people are already standing at the door to every car with a crazed look in their eyes.  When the conductor finally releases the throngs of people waiting (the people in the know that is), it is an all out sprint to a line of charter buses.  Why?  Because you can trade your return ticket on the train for a return ride on the charter bus (again, your friend that told you about this train ride certainly didn’t include this detail).  

Now, you’re not only stuck in a town that is quite literally a, “tourist trap” but you also have the train ride home to look forward to.  The folks left in Silverton aimlessly shop through a town that now exists for this purpose only.  We were all zombies–purchasing handfuls of worthless trinkets in the blind hopes that it would be a distraction on the three hour ride  back to Durango.

That’s the perfect analogy to Netflix’s series:  Bloodline.  As I type this, it’s on my television in the background.  I’m in the 8th hour of this colossal time suck.  The train to Silverton moved far more quickly than this show.  **Spoiler alert (but not really)** in the opening stages of this show, you learn that the family has killed the oldest brother and this is the backdrop for presumably every episode to come.  

At its core, the show is about a family that resides in the Florida Keys.  They own a hotel on the water, the hotel has a restaruant, scuba tours, fishing trips, and booze cruises.  

Everyone in this series except the mom appears to be an asshole.  Everyone.  Everyone is a snake in one way or another.  For some reason (yet to be determined), the three youngest children kill their older brother. After eight grueling hours, there is still no specific reason (although at this point, I could personally point to about 20 reasons they may ultimately decide to off the character), and they don’t truly seem to be moving towards any specific reason.  

That’s been the crux of this whole show so far though:  no real specific reason for anything.  It’s just interactions.   It just happens.  It’s like just watching the extended scenes from Lord of the Rings–you know. . .the scenes where they are just riding through the countryside?  Yeah, it’s like that…hours of just walking through the wilderness aimlessly.  

I really feel like this series was suggested to me by people who had also mistakenly endured it (on a recommendation) and now wanted to inflict the same punishment on my eyes and soul that had already been inflicted on them.  I get it.  I do.  You took the train, and now you want me to to take the train.  The cycle ends here.  I can’t under any circumstances recommend this to anyone else.