Title: Ozark
Rating: 5 Stars
I don’t often write about television series, probably because I don’t watch that many of them. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, but the time commitment always seems oppressive. I guess that I just have a preference for a two hour film in comparison to a ten hour season. When you factor that in many cases the season is left somewhat open ended to prepare for future seasons, it just seems like a serious commitment. Even so, every now and then one catches my eye.
Ozark is ostensibly the story of Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman). A mild mannered financial advisor, he and his partner have been laundering a drug cartel’s money for some years. The cartel discovers that his partner has been embezzling from them. They execute him. As they’re preparing to execute Marty, he desperately pleads for his life by showing them a tour brochure of the Ozarks that he just happens to have in his pocket and claims that it’s an area perfect for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars. They let him live but keep him on a very tight leash. He moves his family and he tries to fulfill the rash promises that he made to the cartel. He encounters many obstacles and is always living on the edge of disaster.
Just from hearing about the plot so far, there are obvious parallels to Breaking Bad. In both cases you have a mild mannered milquetoast man that apparently is secretly harboring criminal mastermind ambitions. Instead of being a chemistry genius, Byrde is a master of financial chicanery. Like Walter White, when under pressure Marty has a remarkable ability to think his way out of any scrape. One difference is that when we meet Marty, he’s already broken bad. He’s already made the decision to work with the cartel. He is already corrupt.
I’ve seen some reviews that paint Marty somehow as a basically nice guy that just got himself into a scrape. I don’t agree. Byrde is amoral. He’s a calculating machine. He sees the world as a set of problems that need to be solving. Although the scrapes he gets into are dangerous, I get the feeling that he secretly enjoys them. He’s Houdini always looking for his next great escape.
As the seasons unfold, I think that it’s the women that have emerged as the most interesting characters. His wife Wendy (Laura Linney), his erstwhile protege Ruth (Julia Garner), and the local opium farmer Darlene (Lisa Emery) now drive the series.
Darlene is a salt of the earth farmer that just happens to have a homicidal temper. Several men, thinking that they’re talking to some weak housewife, make the mistake of insulting her. She responds by casually grabbing a nearby shotgun, shooting them dead with nary a thought, and then having them buried in one of her fields. She’s tough and smart but dangerously unstable.
Ruth would probably proudly call herself trailer trash. She literally does live in a trailer. She has an accent that you can cut glass with. Although not educated, she has a native intelligence that shines through. Bitterly familiar with the way of the world, she’ll do whatever necessary to succeed. Even so, as the series unfolds, nearly everyone she loves dies. In the second half of the last season, she’s destined to become an unstoppable revenge missile.
When we first meet Wendy, we’re not even sure if she’s aware of Marty’s laundering habits. It turns out that she’s been complicit from the first. Even so, in the beginning she seems to be an unfulfilled, unhappy spouse to an emotionally unavailable husband. On the verge of leaving him, their forced flight drives them back together, however unhappily. Over time, their relationship ebbs and flows accordingly. As the series goes on, we see Wendy’s true nature. She shows herself to be a cold blooded, cold hearted, pitiless woman. Her bipolar brother becomes a problem for her. She acquiesces in his murder. In an intense emotional argument with Darlene, Darlene collapses with a heart attack. As she lies there suffering, Wendy sits down and watches her writhe with what can only be described as an absolutely joyous look on her face. Wendy is now the engine that is pushing Marty into ever more ambitious plans and it is her remorseless drive that will overcome all obstacles to accomplish them.
In the scale of great, sweeping, crime dramas, Ozark is no Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, or The Wire. Even so, I think it’s a worthy entry that, unexpectedly for television series, has only gotten better in the later seasons.
dorkenstein 