Review of Netflix' Ozark (2017-22)
Stamped from a Breaking Bad cookie-cutter.
Netflix’ Ozark (2017-22) uses the 2007 series Breaking Bad as a template from which the creators hoped to fashion a similar masterpiece. They failed objectively, but Ozark has generated significant accolades and awards and such, so a lot of people were fooled at least. Let’s begin by examining the similarities:
Ozark’s protagonist Marty Walsh (Jason Bateman) is an over-educated, uptight, humorless, ostensible family man, just as was Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in Breaking Bad. More: the arc of these characters is similar: both struggle to maintain control over budding criminal empires while trying to maintain their identities as middle-class fathers and husbands.
Ozark’s Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner in the show’s best performance) and Breaking Bad’s Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) both provide inverse contrast to their respective protagonists: Ruth (Jesse) is outwardly trashy and criminal, but with an innate goodness which makes her balk at what Marty (Walter) is becoming. These characters become the soul of the show as the hollowness of the anti-hero is revealed over time.
The relationship between Jesse and Walter is painstakingly recreated in Ozark with Marty and Ruth, and in both shows it’s the glue that keeps our eyeballs stuck to the screen for season after season. Our hero, now a criminal, can no longer relate with his own family. He bonds with a criminal apprentice who could, age-wise, be his own child, and who is psychologically desperate for a father. They share secrets, they work together, they rely on each other - they love each other. We know consciously that Marty/Walter won’t actually adopt Ruth/Jesse and live happily ever after, but we long for this impossibility nonetheless. I suppose it’s a platonic twist on the “will they or won’t they” premise of most romance novels, freshened up and cliche-free (for now).
Less importantly, Ozark is stylistically imitative of Breaking Bad - as is most everything these days. Long, well-composed shots define a slow-moving pace which mirrors the slow burn of the protagonist. Jarring, ironic music was cliched already in 2007, but more of that. Weird symbology that doesn’t supply any additional meaning, just pretension. These sorts of touches will eventually form a basis of nostalgic period pieces set in the early 2000’s, just as vibrant colors and uplifting music do for 80’s period pieces today. It’s past time, in 2022, for modern producers to cultivate new stylistic tropes.
So, with the template mapped, it’s time to discuss where Ozark goes wrong and why it is not on a level with Breaking Bad.
Primarily, there is a laziness in the writing of Ozark which manifests in too much death. Early on, seemingly every conflict is resolved by murder. By the end of the show the bulk of the characters are dead. Marty has to buy a funeral home just to cremate all the bodies being stacked up. It becomes cartoonish to watch Marty haul another corpse to the crematorium and then go hob-knob with the hoi polloi after washing his hands (mumbling “mmm-kay” to all he meets in his zombie-like manner).
Worse, it seems the writers of Ozark became at least subconsciously aware of their laziness and decided to branch out with a series of kidnapping plots that rival the series 24 for suspension of disbelief. Realistic motivations vanish as the series progresses in this fashion. For example, in the final season we have Marty (on a barely explicable pretext) forcing Ruth to hold Wendy’s father hostage at gunpoint to prevent him taking Marty’s kids. Huh? Don’t get me started on the various negotiations with the FBI which result in ever more fabulous deals for Marty and Wendy. This is degeneration to soap opera drama - common in series that have run too long.
Yet even post-degeneration, in the last season, there are standout moments, like a heart-pounding scene in which Ruth walks her friend Rachel through a confrontation with a cartel hitman over the phone. And the final resolution of the Marty/Ruth relationship, while depressing, seems more logical than the fate of Jesse in Breaking Bad.
Ozark’s cynical politics, personified in the character of Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney), have garnered some praise from critics on the right. Wendy is a “Chicago-style” politician who worked with Obama (in the backstory), so one might find it refreshing to witness her arc of descent into pitiless murder and madness as the show progresses. But this is really just cutting edge nihilism - a sort of naval gazing by leftist writers who are a bit aghast at the consequences of their worldview. There’s no alternative, really. Business, politics, drug cartels, are all Murder Inc. according to these people, and that’s all they can write. They have no understanding or knowledge of actual business other than as a host for a parasite politician to feed from, a ruthless enforcer of monopoly power, or a front for criminal enterprises. So it’s a mistake to praise Ozark as “not woke”; better to say it’s “post-woke” wallowing in the hopelessness of life. In this too, Ozark apes Breaking Bad.
So why watch Ozark at all? Because in comparison to the vast bulk of Netflix garbage, it’s actually watchable. You can do a lot worse than modeling your show on Breaking Bad.