In the 2015 thriller Blood Father, Mel Gibson can once again show his gritty, unpolished side in its entirety, and that also fits the dusty desert setting and the life story of Link, the ex-rocker gang member, ex-con and dry alcoholic he portrays. Alongside The Boys star Erin Moriarty, he also has to fend for himself as a protective father. All in all, this is a fairly entertaining genre feature that doesn't feature any lengths, thanks in part to its crisp runtime.

That goes for the original version. There is, however, also a TV version and that one is a bit schizophrenic. We have numerous examples in our archives of exclusive TV versions that usually have to cut back on violence and/or dialogue with more politically incorrect vocabulary, but make up for it with exclusive material that wasn't in the original version. This can be deleted scenes or completely new footage that was left over from the editing room. One can sometimes discover real added value in these, as in the case of The Naked Gun.

The case of Blood Father is more complicated, though, because nothing was censored here. The problem is rather its shortness, because TV stations also want to distribute their commercial breaks in a reasonably suitable way, and here they were faced with a problem. So they resorted to somewhat more bizarre means to stretch out the work more in terms of length. A frequently used method was the abrupt lengthening of environmental shots. Sun, moon, Gibson longer while walking wordlessly.... one could say that these inserted landscape "freeze frames" give the film an additional melancholic-dreamy heaviness, yes, something meditative. Or you could just call it strange and dragging that after a snappy dialogue you first stare into a sunrise for half a minute, feeling like you're in the middle of a sudden pause in conversation that feels more and more weird with each additional second of awkward silence, letting your nervous impatience grow. It takes away from the film's pace and momentum. On the other hand, there are a few extra character moments that can be called a win.

The extended TV version runs 586.4 sec. or about 9 minutes 47 seconds longer than the original version, with 21 extended scenes and one additional scene.

Extended scene.
0:03:53: Two boys playing football in the backyard behind the house.
10:88 sec.

Extended scene.
0:04:14: The boys provoke Lydia into shooting around with her gun. One boasts that his mother's boyfriend has four guns and that he himself has shot a coyote before. Lydia tries to get the boys under control and at one point, annoyed, tells them to sit down or she'll shoot them all. The original version (OV) is much more compact here, saving time.
The TV version runs 19.16 sec longer.

Extended scene.
0:09:52: The best proof that they wanted to stretch the film for the TV version more than anything else is this static shot of the car in front of the setting sun. No question it's beautiful.
18.64 sec.

Extended scene.
0:12:34: Link waiting in car, people standing on the sidewalk waiting to get into a club.
14.76 sec.

Extended scene.
0:14:31: The moon has risen.
11.2 sec.

Extended scene.
0:16:05: Here comes the sun.
28.84 Sec..

Extended scene.
0:20:02: Clouds moving in.
10.24 Sec..

Enhanced scene.
0:23:41: They are getting bigger.
14:36 sec.

Expanded scene.
0:33:48: Lydia makes off at night in the TV version. First she talks to her father again to see if he is asleep, then she gets out of bed to get dressed up a bit in the bathroom. After that, she leaves the apartment.
36.68 Sec.

Extended scene.
0:40:09: The prairie is simply shown for a quarter minute.
16.8 sec.

Extended scene.
0:41:22: Truck moves longer into frame and stays longer.
7:04 sec.

Extended scene.
0:44:32: When Link asks Lydia how she's going to earn anything, there's some more entertaining dialogue in the TV version. Lydia says she can teach English. Link asks if she wants to teach the students stupid sayings. Lydia counters that Link has never read a book. Link then asks how she is going to get people to pay her. She doesn't respond to that, but says that she's an artist with an eye for design. Link sarcastically says that the world is waiting for just such a person. Lydia insults him and says that she could also play the clarinet. Link counters that perhaps there is a place for her in the Tijuana Symphony. Then Lydia says with more and more exasperation that she is also very intelligent, but Link argues against her here as well, because something like that only drives other people up the wall. Lydia resigns, there must be something good about her.
27.08 Sec.

Extended scene.
0:46:18: Wonder if the cameraman responsible for this shot of the dusty desert landscape had any idea that the footage would actually be used someday? And what do you think he's thinking now?
15.04 Sec..

Extended Scene.
0:50:06: An old rocker friend of Link's shouts out to Lydia that her old man used to be able to drink for two weeks at a time. Lydia smiles, then he goes up to Link and tells him that he missed him. Link asks him who let him out and what he was drinking. However, he does not take him up on the offer of a drink.
29.52 Sec.

Extended scene.
0:50:40: Lydia feeds another white horse.
7.4 sec.

Extended scene.
0:54:25: Freeze frame of the rising sun.
17.2 sec.

Extended scene.
0:58:12: Slightly longer, as Lydia and Link ride the Harley.
10.72 sec.

Extended scene.
1:04:09: Link and the prison guard walk down the corridor for a whopping 13 seconds longer.
13 Sec.

Extended scene.
1:13:27: Heads up, here's where it gets interesting. When Link arrives at the mansion of his old companion Preacher, only in the TV version does he stop at a burned pyre where he finds two charred corpses. In the original version, he goes straight to the shed.
27.2 sec.

Extended scene.
1:14:43: Link rides the Harley through the desert for a longer time.
33.8 sec.

Extended scene.
1:23:18: In both versions, Jonah first sits alone at a dinner table in the prison and is then visited by Rios and his followers. While they just scowl at him in the original version, in the TV version they focus on his Lydia tattoo. Rios calls it beautiful and sarcastically says that must be true love. Jonah is getting visibly nervous.
31.4 sec.

Additional scene.
1:24:52: Here follows another closing scene, which IMDb says was removed in the final film version. That's true, and here it is again. Lydia meets her mother in a diner, to which she drives up on a Harley. She apologizes profusely to her mother for her escapades and the mother is speechless at first. Then she hands Lydia an envelope that was left for her. Inside is a Bible with a note explaining that this is supposed to be a memento of Link. Lydia flips through it and is somewhat startled to discover Jonah's tattoo cut off (which also fits the extended scene earlier in the prison). Lydia then says goodbye to her mother and says that she is on a quest. Her mother says that Lydia sounds like her father. Lydia gladly accepts this.
185.44 Sec.