by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
When Ozark first arrived on Netflix back in 2017, the jokes flew fast and furious. It was easy to see the story of a financial advisor living a secret life as a money launderer for the cartel forced to drag his family to the titular Ozarks as the streaming service trying to take advantage of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul pop culture phenomenon.
After three seasons, the show has built its own solid reputation leading into the first half of a two-part fourth and final season. A significant portion of that credit must go to Jason Bateman (not Ted Lasso, the other one). In the lead character of Marty Byrde, Bateman somehow manages to exude a certain charm that not only performs a magic trick that allows you to root for a character who, at his core, is a terrible person, but also manages to convincingly talk himself out of countless situations he should not be able to escape from. (As a general warning, if you’re one of those people that finds it hard to connect to protagonists that are bad people, this show might not be for you.)
Though he’s done the odd bit of directing prior to Ozark, Bateman’s taken the helm for one quarter of the episodes of this show (including the season premiere). I’ve been really impressed both by him and the rest of the technical crew throughout the series, and this season is no exception. Episodes are always well-shot, and the way the show utilizes both the natural environment and color throughout is always a highlight. The dark, moody palette, when paired with the writing, provide a tense atmosphere that’s one of the true strengths of the series. There can be as much tension in a run-of-the-mill meeting in episode two as in the finale.
The tension is ratcheted up from the start of the season, given where we left Marty and his wife Wendy (Laura Linney) — covered in blood at the head of the Navarro cartel’s estate. As the show has progressed, the rest of the family has slowly gotten drawn into what’s now become a true family business for the Byrdes. The extent to which the Byrde children, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), are involved varies from season to season to a certain extent. For the first part of season four, Jonah’s story is explored to a greater extent than his older sisters. I thoroughly enjoyed Jonah’s storyline as he continued to explore his own talents in the laundering business and experiences his own growing pains in the business.
However, the character I’ve enjoyed seeing most grow into their own over the course of the series is Julia Garner’s Ruth Langmore. That doesn’t change in these seven episodes. Once a protégé of Marty’s, Ruth finds herself aligned with the mercurial Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery). Given the relationships built up over the course of three seasons, Ruth sort of gets to float between all of the various players over the course of the story. This makes her characters one of my favorites to watch. Particularly when you consider where the character started, seeing her navigate the intricacies of the world of the show continues to be one of the highlights of the show. This has been my only exposure to Garner and she’s doing some really good work, particularly with handling some of the season’s more emotional moments.
What I love about this show, I really love. However, every season it seems there’s a major aspect of the story that unfortunately drags it down a significant amount. Last season, it was Darlene’s storyline, and this season, I found myself really at odds with the stances Wendy was taking. Firstly, she’s taken to task by nearly everyone in the show (and rightly so) for how she’s handling her brother’s “disappearance.” Secondly, she and Marty have multiple disagreements on the parenting front. Setting aside the fact that they’ve let their children become involved to a certain extent in the illicit drug trade, so they’re probably not the best parents anyway, I found myself on team Marty every time. To be fair, though, I am neither a parent nor do I have to try to hold a family together while trying to navigate the ups and down of working for a drug cartel. I found myself rolling my eyes at Wendy multiple times throughout part one. Even when not causing me to eye roll, I just didn’t find myself as invested in her storyline.
The other annoyance was how the season starts. Once again, Hollywood leaned on their favorite crutch: thinking in order to get me invested, they had to cut to a crazy moment yet to come (minus the context) before flashing back and starting in earnest. The whole investment thing wAS WHAT THE FIRST THREE SEASONS WERE ABOUT. AND I SWEAR, IF I SEE ANOTHER MOVIE OR SHOW RESORT TO THIS, I WILL CHUCK MY REMOTE RIGHT THROU—anyway…um…so…yeah. That wasn’t my favorite.
Splitting final seasons into two parts has become a bit of a cliché at this point — and another similarity point between Ozark and Breaking Bad — but I was actually surprised at the amount of content we got in part one. Seven episodes dropped and we’re getting another seven when part two drops. That means we get an extra four episodes than we’ve gotten in the previous two seasons. In addition to getting extra episodes, nearly half of them boast an hour-plus runtime.
The end result? A fourth (or maybe third-and-a-half) solid season of television. As with the previous four episode drops, I’ll be more than happy to binge my way through the final seven episodes when they arrive.
Particularly given how they leave things.
Grade: B
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