Netflix’s Ozark opens with Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) discovering that his business partner has been skimming from a Mexican drug cartel. The scheme goes wrong. Marty talks his way out by proposing a bigger laundering operation in the Lake of the Ozarks region of central Missouri, then moves his family from the Chicago suburb of Naperville to the resort community of Osage Beach. His job: launder $500 million in five years to appease a drug boss.
That premise carries four seasons and 44 episodes, from July 21, 2017 to April 29, 2022. Created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams for Netflix, Ozark earned 45 Primetime Emmy nominations and three Outstanding Drama Series nods.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Marty and Wendy Byrde
Bateman plays Marty as a man whose only real skill is talking fast enough to survive the next minute. Laura Linney’s Wendy is the more interesting creation: a public relations operative for political campaigns who becomes a stager for a local realtor, then a lobbyist pushing Marty’s casino proposal. When the show lets Linney work, it works.
The marriage is the engine. Marty and Wendy lie to each other and to the cartel, and the series treats those lies as the cost of staying alive. That is the strongest material in Ozark, and it is why the Emmy voters kept coming back.
Ruth Langmore and the Lake
Julia Garner’s Ruth Langmore is the breakout. A young woman from a local family of petty criminals, Ruth starts as a threat and becomes something closer to the show’s conscience. Garner won three Emmys for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series — 2019, 2020, and 2022. Bateman won Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series in 2019.
The supporting cast gives the Lake of the Ozarks its texture:
- Peter Mullan as Jacob Snell, a local heroin producer and the area’s crime boss
- Lisa Emery as Darlene Snell, Jacob’s wife and partner in the heroin business
- Esai Morales as Camino “Del” Del Rio, a lieutenant for the Navarro cartel
- Janet McTeer as Helen Pierce, a Chicago attorney who represents the cartel
- Tom Pelphrey as Ben Davis, Wendy’s brother, who has bipolar disorder
- Jessica Frances Dukes as Maya Miller, an FBI forensic accountant
The show’s best trick is that the Byrdes never fight the cartel head-on. They fight the Langmores, the Snells, and later the Kansas City mafia, and each win costs them a piece of themselves.
The Fourth Season
Netflix renewed Ozark in June 2020 for a fourth and final season of 14 episodes, split into two parts. Part one arrived January 21, 2022. Part two arrived April 29, 2022.
The first three seasons ran 10 episodes each, in this order:
- Season 1 — released July 21, 2017
- Season 2 — released August 31, 2018
- Season 3 — released March 27, 2020
The final season is the one worth arguing about. Splitting a last run across two release dates turns a story into a waiting game, and this paper counts that choice as the weakest decision Netflix made with the show. Whether it helped or hurt the finished season is a judgment the source material does not settle.
What Ozark Gets Right
Ozark is a good show that was treated as a great one. Its tone, directing, and production values drew particular praise, and Bateman, Linney, and Garner are the reason it holds together. Bateman also directed and executive produced, and he has received two Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor – Television Series Drama.
The 6.6 out of 10 is fair. Ozark is worth watching for Garner alone, and the Marty-Wendy marriage is one of the better portraits of a partnership built on mutual survival that television has produced.
The show is not the definitive crime drama of its era, and this paper would not rank it as one. It is a strong one, and the strongest case for it is the cast.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.