The Problem with Netflix’s Ozark

I love Jason Bateman. It’s a pretty blasé opinion, I totally understand that. When he’s in comedies, he’s the sane one that goofballs play off. As Michael Bluth, his soft-spoken performance was the often forgettable glue for the first couple seasons, a lot like Landry Fields on the 2012–13 New York Knicks. And yes, stop overrating Arrested Development, it’s essentially the 54–28 New York Knicks of comedy shows. When Bateman’s in thrillers, he’s the unlikeable protagonist. As Simon in The Gift, he played the asshole with such ease that you can generally assume that’s his actual personality.

I love Laura Linney. That’s also a blasé opinion. What’s not to love about a woman who may just be the most underrated American actress. Four Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and three Oscar nominations — there aren’t too many better resumes better than hers in the market. Her performance as Charlotte on Frasier may have been one of the only likable aspects of that show, and that’s really saying something.

Together, Bateman and Linney transform Ozark’s pretty unoriginal plot into one of the better seasons of television I’ve seen in a couple years. But there’s a problem with the show: there’s going to be another season.

The tropes in Ozark are as old as Green Acres. After Marty Byrde’s (Bateman) drug dealer of a boss, Del (Esai Morales), realizes that Marty’s partner is embezzling from their money-laundering operation, Marty talks his way out of death by selling Del on a new, unencumbered operation from the shores of the Lake of the Ozarks. On the same day, Marty gets confirmation for a private investigator that his wife, Wendy (Linney), is having an affair with a wealthy lawyer. Even so, Marty and Wendy uproot their two kids from their cushy life in Chicago and move to some shitty rural lake town in Missouri and take over a bunch of local businesses to launder Del’s money and pay off an $8 million debt.

There’s spoilers below, so proceed with caution.

The kids start to make inroads with the kids in the area, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) becomes friends with the Langhornes, the local hillbilly gang, and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) starts studying vultures by playing with dead animal guts and learns how to shoot heavy artillery. Meanwhile, the gay FBI Agent Roy Petty (Jason Butler Harner), hot on the pursuit of Del and his operation, keys in on Marty’s position on the lake.

There’s a priest with a pregnant wife who became a born-again Christian after surviving a shooting in St. Louis and conducts his Sunday sermons via boat to all his parishioners watching on their own boats. There’s a heroin kingpin family that distributes its product to their buyers in hollowed out hymnals during this priest’s services. Marty gets tied up in all this nonsense, while having to fend off Del after failing to come up with his $8 million.

Ozark has poignant characters, real characters with real flaws. Marty is reserved and detached from his wife, vindictive when he finds out about his wife’s affair, obsessive, specifically with the imagery of said affair. Bateman’s performance is effortless, turning his impeccable comedic timing into a fast-talking, self-pitying, dark-minded manipulator of people. He’s aloof and, even though his dialogue sometimes comes off affected, coming out of his mouth it becomes believable. Linney plays Wendy as the cold soldier of a wife, damaged by her past and her relationship with her husband. Her character, though very attuned to tropes prevalent in the genre, isn’t heartless. Linney and Bateman were able to create a marriage that may have been completely broken but didn’t lack in love. Gaertner’s performance as the Byrdes’ weird kid needs to be mentioned, especially because children in the genre are often joke performances.

So that’s the good — an unoriginal but captivating plot, interesting characters and locales, great performances all around: I just don’t want to see another season.

In the eighth episode of the series, we’re taken down memory lane in a non-sequential flashback. We learn about how Wendy suffers a miscarriage in an entirely unpredictable pregnancy and spirals into a long struggle with depression. Marty gets seduced by the spoils of getting into business with Del, and we get a glimpse of the honest and genuinely ideal marriage Marty and Wendy had pre-money laundering.

That episode was both beautiful and aggravating. Again, interesting way to tell a backstory, gives us great insight into how Marty and Wendy became Marty and Wendy, and was compelling to watch. On the flip side though, it opens up the door to character development that’ll carry over into another season.

I don’t want another season. I really enjoyed this one, bingeing it in a couple of days. Ozark and Breaking Bad is separated by the demeanor of their most important characters, and that’s basically it. The plots are eerily similar, tangling everyday smart men with lethal drug dealers with side characters that have their own plot arcs. After a couple more seasons, Ozark is going to become less Breaking Bad and more Bloodline, compelling but predictable first season, followed by seasons that prove the Law of Diminishing returns.

There’s beauty in ends. It allows us to appreciate what we have. Stories need an ending, and sometimes ending something before it can be ended is the exact ribbon. That’s why Danny Glover retiring Childish Gambino makes his music that much sweeter. That’s why Parks and Recreation, Mad Men, Six Feet Under, and The Wire ending in only 7, 7, 5, and 5 seasons makes them that much more appreciable. We get to miss it, and nothing spoils it.

If Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams can do anything to sustain Ozark’s success, it’s to let this one season stand alone as a 10-hour movie, and let it fade out of pop culture’s memory. Besides, it’s always going to be on Netflix for the binge-watching zombies to come across once they’ve burned through Friends for the eighth time.