Netflix's Tidelands season 1, episode 5 recap: The Calling

Episode 5 of Netflix series Tidelands sees more secrets and blood spilled, and Adrielle may be close to summoning a goddess or two.

As a series, Tidelands hasn’t shied away from good old sex, violence and fishy intrigue. This episode is no exception. After learning she is half-siren, Calliope “Cal” McTeer (Charlotte Best) is in L’Attente, potentially to stay. L’Attente is where a colony of people like Cal live — and they tend to live dangerously. However, Cal strolls confidently into their midst, ready to fight. “The Calling” begins with her interrupting a Tidelander orgy to fight Leandra (Jet Tranter). When she reveals her true motive of meeting their matriarch, Adrielle (Elsa Pataky), she is told to wait by the ever-shifty Lamar (Dalip Sondhi).

Where is their ruthless queen? She’s meeting with Professor Lonstrom (Bryan Probets) about artifact pieces she’s been collecting (and spending Tidelander money on). Lonstrom helps verify a message in Sumerian text, apparently about how to summon a goddess from the water. However, when he says he’ll publicize these findings, Adrielle leaves him dead in his office, leaving casually and elegantly afterwards — like it was just another day! She isn’t just an ice princess, ladies and gentlemen. This is an ice queen.

Death dealers, love triangles and a falsified autopsy

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In the previous Tidelands episode, Cal’s brother Augie (Aaron Jakubenko) killed a man named Jared Butner (Hunter Page-Lochard), who had tried to drown him in a drug dealer betrayal. For whatever reason, such events have drawn her deeper into L’Attente and the family business. In L’Attente, Cal finds one of her many love interests, Dylan (Marco Pigossi), to discuss this and other dramatic events. Asking him for answers, all he has to say is “Your father [blankety-blanked] a siren and died.”

Though he’s trying to leave the place for good, she throws his boat key in the water. Cal asks Dylan about the time he tore out a kid’s eye for Adrielle. She literally words it like that: “What kind of person pulls out a child’s eye?” However, Cal and Dylan get it on anyway, which leads to the question: “What kind of person sleeps with someone knowing they recently tore out a child’s eye, especially just after discussing it?” (It’s one of those questions we’ve all asked at some point in our lives.)

Meanwhile, we learn that Violca (Madeleine Madden) is pregnant with Colton’s (Richard Davies) baby. The problem is, this defies Adrielle, who won’t won’t let her stay pregnant. However, Violca wants to stay in L’Attente and get rid of Adrielle instead. Also, as if it’s a two-for-one special, she thinks Audie will have to go, too. If the web isn’t tangled enough, Augie himself is plotting against the new drug gangster in town Gregori Stolin (Jacek Koman). Of course, Stolin is planning to kill Augie. In addition, Officer Corey Welch (Mattias Inwood) arrests Edwin Welch (Damien Garvey) for peeing on the McTeer family fence (I guess this Welch prefers making “lemonade” more than grape juice). From Edwin, Corey loosely gets the idea that Sergeant Durborrow’s autopsy was falsified. He secretly prints off the file and confronts Dr. Keeble (Barbara Lowing) about it.

More sacrifices and schemes

Because Tidelands is a magical show, Adrielle offers an animal blood sacrifice to the water, using a piece of the broken artifact for the cutting. She seems to dig the results. Soon after that scene, Bill Sentelle (Peter O’Brien) and Lamar discuss these broken artifact pieces she’s been accumulating. Knowing he’s dead meat if he doesn’t do so, Lamar returns the stolen piece. When asked about his being in her home, he tells her about Colton and Violca’s baby. On that note, Violca is also plotting against Adrielle, planting seeds of doubt about her leadership (although, honestly, it seems anyone might reach that conclusion on their own!).

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Similarly, Stolin sand Colton plot against Augie in a graveyard. Stolin tells him, “We just need to say goodbye to Augie.” However, when the time arrives, Colton tips Augie off about his impending assassination, and Augie successfully flees the scene. Unfortunately, Colton and Violca are not so lucky regarding Adrielle. As Tidelanders congregate by the beach, Adrielle slashes Colton’s throat, for her amusement, to establish her dominance, and also to slake the blood-thirst of water goddesses. Sure enough, one of them pops her head up from the water, then dips back down again. Do the goddesses require more blood sacrifice? Maybe more side boob? With Tidelands we get a fair amount of both.

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