Ozark (Season 4: Part Two)

Creators: Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams
Starring: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner, Julia Garner, Jordana Spiro, Felix Solis, Jessica Frances Dukes, Damian Young, Alfonso Herrera, Adam Rothenberg, Verónica Falcón, Katrina Lenk, Charlie Tahan, Tom Pelphrey, Bruno Bichir, Bruce Davison, Richard Thomas, Joseph Sikora, Kevin L. Johnson, Jane McNeill, Brad Carter
Original Airdate: 2022

**The following review contains major spoilers from the fourth season of 'Ozark'**

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

For all the justified criticisms that can be made lately of Netflix, Ozark has remained one of their true creative bright spots since its 2017 premiere. And with each subsequent year it continuously silenced skeptics who initially dismissed the series about a a family relocating to the Missouri Ozarks to launder money for a Mexican drug cartel as a Breaking Bad knock-off. Since then, the writing, performances and direction have revealed it to be more than anyone could have reasonably expected and the streamer made the right call in deciding this season would be its last, quelling fears this would overstay its welcome. 

Even if splitting the remaining 14 episodes into two halves was a questionable call that's increasingly become commonplace, this is exactly the kind of series that needs a specific end date. Stretching it over five or six seasons could inevitably lead to diminishing returns considering there are only so many fires Marty and Wendy Byrde can believably put out or catastrophes they can manipulate their way out of. And there seems to be a never ending amount of them in this last act, hinting perhaps it really was time, even with a finale heavily implying these characters could still have more story left.

These final episodes do bring it, culminating in a supposedly controversial ending that actually makes perfect sense when you check emotions at the door and examine the show's overall arc. This was always where we were headed, and viewers who didn't think the series would go there might need to give it a second look. It's reasonable to hem and haw about certain plot points, but "they killed my favorite character" just doesn't hold as valid criticism unless that death undermines what the show's building toward. If TV finales have taught us anything, it's that most are never going to be happy, and fans whose overall satisfaction hinged on the survival of Ruth Langmore were always setting themselves up for disappointment.

Showrunners need the creative freedom to off a major character so long as it facilitates the story being told and this is clearly one of those cases. If anything, it's a credit to Julia Garner's incredible series-long performance that everyone's up in arms, but Ruth signed her own death warrant at the start of the season. There was no chance she wouldn't try to extract revenge on behalf of her family and display the inner strength we've grown to respect most about her. We also knew the odds were extremely high she'd eventually have to face the consequences. Going ahead with it, she exits on her terms as the badass she's always been. 

After murdering Darlene (Lisa Emery) and Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) due to her continuing their heroine business, the ruthless Javi Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera) has now taken control of the cartel from his imprisoned uncle Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) and getting in on Marty (Jason Batman) and Wendy's (Laura Linney) FBI deal. Their reluctant donor, Chicago-based pharmaceutical CEO Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk) is caught in the middle, as a raging Ruth (Garner) plots to take out Javi for killing cousin Wyatt, potentially blowing up everyone's plans and sending the Byrdes scrambling to salvage the deal meant to free them for good. To do it they'll need to contend with Javi's mother and Omar's sister, Camila (Verónica Falcón) and work to get her dangerous, unpredictable brother off the SDN List and extradited to Mexico to resume control of the cartel. 

The return of Wendy's father, Nathan (Richard Thomas), along with private investigator Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg) has turned attention from cartel attorney Helen Pearce's (Janet McTeer) disappearance to that of Wendy's brother, Ben (Tom Pelphrey) and the Byrdes' likely involvement in both. Still damaged from an abusive childhood at the hands of her estranged father, Wendy attempts to prevent him from growing closer with grandkids Jonah (Skylar Gaetner) and Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz), while she and Marty struggle to make their clean break from the cartel with the deck stacked against them. With Wendy's ambitions still growing, some serious political strings must be pulled to keep this family together and alive.

When Marty and Wendy first arrived in the Ozarks their marriage was essentially in shambles so it's the cruelest of ironies that this criminal enterprise is what ultimately saves the relationship, despite the unimaginable suffering it's caused everyone else. Of course, the biggest victims have been their own kids and Ruth, whose up and down relationship with the Byrdes was always going to be rigged against her. That's largely been due to their wealth and social standing, but also has as much to do with the FBI connection and cartel ties, slippery as both have been for them over the past four seasons. 

Ruth knows Marty and Wendy have often needed her to stay alive, and by making shrewd power plays that utilized her street smarts and fearlessness, she's frequently come out on top. But killing Javi changes all that because it's an emotional act of vengeance that can't be undone, no matter how justified it felt. Her and Wyatt going into business with Darlene may have been their biggest mistake, but dragging a willing Jonah into it was another one, even if you need a scorecard to keep track of all the betrayals in this series. To call Ruth's hotheadedness a flaw is almost unfair given her hopeless upbringing, but the possibility that she's finally overcome it to start a new life makes her eventual end all the more tragic. 

Despite animosity between them reaching a fever pitch, the Byrdes do have a begrudging respect for Ruth, knowing full well what's she's capable of when motivated. Or at least Wendy does, even as the dynamic between Ruth and Marty remains one of the series' most compelling, with both demonstrating a kind of twisted loyalty to the other borne out of necessity. But much like everything with the Byrdes, it's all about them, with Ruth used as only the means to their end. Once she outstays her usefulness or becomes a liability, all bets are off, and that's a cycle we've seen repeat itself over the course of the series.

The hope that Ruth may have finally gotten the drop on Marty and Wendy with her plan to gain control of the Missouri Belle casino with a returning Rachel (Jordana Spiro), makes the result sting even worse. And that they pull it off adds only another layer of devastation on top of Ruth doing the right thing by getting her record cleaned and going straight. Overcoming nearly every urge we've known her to have, she acts with a foresight and practicality we've haven't seen up to this point. It's just unfortunate that it comes too late, with one last receipt that needs paying back. 

 

Brilliantly played by Laura Linney, Wendy continues to double and triple down on unnecessary risks the more dangerous their situation gets, with Marty not only going along with whatever she wants, but now outright admitting as much. Basically his wife's puppet, he weakly attempts to convince her that the FBI's offer of a new life under witness protection is the best, safest option for them to get out unscathed. But Wendy was always more interested in becoming a political kingmaker, dragging personal attorney Jim Rattelsdorf (Damian Young) back into the fold to help her make this Navarro deal happen. 

Marty's sole moment of perceived power is short-lived, temporarily going to down to Mexico to take control for the injured, imprisoned Omar. Heisenberg he isn't, but the act's good enough to keep them in the game, even as it comes as a pathetically desperate attempt to again placate his wife. His memorable road rage breakdown, along with that key scene opposite daughter Charlotte in which he cries over Wendy's endless manipulations feels like the culmination of Bateman's terrific work throughout. Faced with all his faults, Marty has an image of himself wanting to do what's right, but he's unable to ever follow through, settling instead on defending the most immoral of actions. And yet Bateman's so earnest in the role that he becomes a character the actor won't allow you to completely despise, leaving us hoping for a redemption that won't come. 

The Byrdes are faced with a pivotal choice, as the challenges of getting Omar Navarro out of prison are weighed against aligning with his sister, Camila, who's secretly plotting to take him out. But the most psychologically rattling disturbance for Wendy is her own father, Nathan, who with hired P.I. Mel comes dangerously close to discovering their involvement in Ben's death. Nathan and Wendy's toxic father-daughter relationship almost totally reframes the latter's behavior over the course of the series, providing less an excuse than a full explanation. Wendy's past was no picnic and it turns out she shares far more in common with Ruth than suspected, at least as far as nightmarish childhoods go. 

Richard Thomas' performance as Nathan sneaks up on you, coming off at first as this laid back God-fearing Christian who's turned his life around, until gradually revealing his true deficiencies. Because Linney's made it so easy for viewers to resent Wendy, the possibility of anyone usurping her as the family's worst has escaped us. 

Nathan's arrival explains a lot about Wendy, as does his interest in taking Charlotte and Jonah away from their parents reveal all too much about him. For a while it looks like his plan will work, especially considering Wendy and Marty's diminishing ability to keep their kids safe. Wendy may be a monster, but now it's clearer why, and it's all too fitting that a blackmailed Ruth comes to the Byrdes' rescue again, reuniting them with their kids once and for all.

A plausible scenario wherein Ruth survives would have needed to be set in motion at least a season earlier, but that risks complicating the remaining plot even more than it already is, all for the sake of sending everyone home happy. The Byrdes 'car crash fast-forward at the start of Season 4 was a big teaser, but it functions less as a turning point in the plot than as a foreshadowing of the family's growing sense of invincibility. That they all walked away from the accident without so much as a few scratches only bolsters Wendy's confidence that they're untouchable. Sadly, she ends up being right. 

Ruth takes the bullet from Camila and goes out defiantly, expressing no regrets for killing Javi, while again remaining loyal to the Byrdes by not ratting them out. It's a devotion that's never been reciprocated, especially when a terrified Clare Shaw ends up being the one who gives her up after being threatened by Camila. As the weakest, least built for crime character in the series, it's appropriate that the buttoned-up CEO would crack. She never really signed up for this, much like so many others the Byrdes burned while building their empire. 

The only lingering loose end standing in the way of Wendy and Marty's freedom is P.I. Mel Sattem, who made his choice to take the bribe and soon regretted it. By pulling their usual strings, the Byrdes silenced him with a reinstatement to active police duty in Chicago, but his conscience grabbed hold. Stopping people like them is what Mel lives for and now literally holding the cookie jar capable of putting them behind bars for Ben's murder, he becomes the last piece of business they need to take care of. He makes it easy for them by hanging around to gloat, something we believe the tormented Mel just couldn't resist doing.

This isn't an ambiguous, open-ended conclusion comparable to The Sopranos finale. The screen fades to black and we hear the gunshot, but we don't need to see it to know that Jonah takes out Mel, as there are simply no other alternatives. The shy, quiet kid who could barely hold a gun in the first season has now delivered the final fatal blow to close the series' circle. Traumatized, but now indoctrinated into a life of crime with sister Charlotte, Jonah's gone through too much for his parents to pay now. And like them, he must be thinking that at this point, what's one more? After this, the Byrdes get a reset in Chicago running their foundation, finally freed from cartel shackles. They win. 

We've been painfully prepared for the possibility that the Byrdes could escape with little to no repercussions for their heinous actions. Whether they'd all get out alive and manage to avoid prison was the question this entire show was built on, and while it could have gone a number of ways, it went this one. And with that, Ozark provides a harsh reminder that a finale's job isn't to give fans what they think they want, but a closing chapter the story and its characters need. A reformed Ruth riding into the sunset to bask in her newfound wealth as Marty and Wendy face karmic retribution may have given us a fleeting high, but it would also ring false, going against what the writers have already long established this series actually is.  

Ozark: Season 4 (Part One)

Creators: Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams
Starring: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Julia Garner, Lisa Emery, Charlie Tahan, Felix Solis, Damian Young, Alfonso Herrera, Adam Rothenberg, John Bedford Lloyd, Joseph Sikora, Katrina Lenk, Bruce Davison, Richard Thomas
Original Airdate: 2022

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★) 

After delivering its biggest shocker and best season last year, anticipation has built as to whether Ozark's final one could not only follow it, but capitalize on that momentum to finish strong. Broken into two parts, the first seven episodes of season 4 is all about complications, setting the table for sure the Byrde family, who are sinking even deeper into the control of the Navarro drug cartel. 

With Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) destroying everyone and everything around them just to stay afloat, whatever moral ambiguity existed when the series began has long passed, as are their promises to "get out" and start fresh. Too much blood has been shed and innocent lives lost to argue otherwise, even as they continue to. And while they might resent being used as puppets by the cartel and are justifiably terrified, the lore of money and public respectability proves too alluring for the insecure Marty and completely corrupted Wendy, whose insatiable appetite for power has believably transformed her into the show's Lady Macbeth. 

With the Missouri Belle casino now thriving and the possibility of them starting their own foundation, Wendy's flexing her political muscles, taking full advantage of opportunities not possible in Chicago before Marty made his pact with the devil. After watching Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) have cartel attorney Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer) shot and killed right in front of them, the fallout's immense, with him seemingly now entrusting the Byrdes as his right-hand couple. 

It's iffy how much longer Marty can keep playing both sides of the fence while Wendy still reconciles ordering the murder of her bipolar brother Ben (Tom Pelphrey), now considered a "missing person." What does Navarro want? Surprisingly, to get out, using Marty's FBI connection and Wendy's respectable reputation to cut a deal and make a clean break. But Navarro's volatile, hot-headed nephew Javi Elizondro (Alfonso Herrera) has other plans, angling to take over the cartel from his uncle and is more than willing to kill them both if need be.  

The big hook heading into the end game is a flashforward car crash that raises even more questions as to whether to Byrdes will ever truly be able to escape, with or without FBI assistance. Marty and Wendy have made their bed and all the scrambling and double talking he does or power plays she makes may not be enough. Their elevation into the cartel's inner circle following  is both good and bad in the sense that if Navarro does intend to go straight and Marty can get a deal done with FBI agent Maya Miller (Jessica Frances Dukes), freedom is in sight. But if any of it goes sideways, literal hell will rain down.

The biggest obstacle is Javi, whose trigger short temper and insistence in having his hands in everything threatens the Byrdes' very existence. Whether it's his sloppy methods of covering up Helen's "disappearance," nearly sabotaging Wendy's deal with a Chicago-based pharmaceutical company CEO (Katrina Lenk) or poisoning Marty's arrangement with Agent Miller, he's this series' answer to Better Call Saul's Lalo Salamanca, only lacking the intelligence. Smoothly played by Herrera, Javi does have some of that character's charisma, making it that much more terrifying when he doesn't get his way. Guided entirely by money and greed, with no forethought or planning whatsoever, his unpredictability establishes him as the season's most dangerous character. 

Completely defiant of this threat is the monstrous Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery) who with boyfriend Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) continues to grow her heroin business, which she cut the K.C. mob in on last season as make good for blowing off Frank Jr.'s (Joseph Sikora) genitals with a shotgun. Darlene powers on despite Marty's dire warnings of Navarro cartel retaliation, having recruited a still enraged Ruth (Julia Garner) to join her cousin Wyatt in moving the product. 

Jumping at whatever opportunity still exists to screw over the Byrdes for their role in boyfriend Ben's death, Ruth's tenuous arrangement with Darlene is destined for failure, if not far worse. Just the thought of these two toxic personalities attempting to co-exist without killing each other provides the exact brand of tension the series thrives on. Emery again impresses as the slimy, manipulative Darlene, but she's met her match in the cunning Ruth, who unsurprisingly wants to run this entire thing, even purchasing a sleazy motel as a front to do it.

If Ruth's still devastated by what happened to boyfriend Ben, Marty and Wendy's previously meek and mild mannered teen son Jonah's (Skyler Gaetner) pain far transcends it, made far worse by his mother's expectations that he simply forget that she killed his uncle and fall back in line. His decision to go against his parents and start laundering money for Ruth and Darlene feels less like a betrayal than justice to him, despite the increased danger he's put his family in. Out for vengeance in a way older sister Charlotte (Sophia Hublitz) never was when she had her own teen rebellion phase earlier in the show's run, he's all done covering for them.

We saw glimpses of this new Jonah last season when he threatened Helen, but Ben's death pushed him off the deep end, hardly giving a care whether anyone discovers his parents' misdeeds. This includes private investigator Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg), a disgraced former cop who's arrived in the Ozarks to look into Helen's disappearance and knows something's up. Wendy's excuses and desire to maintain the upper hand only pushes Jonah further away, with Marty flailing in his attempts to play referee. 

As an occasional voice of reason, Jonah now sees his parents as viewers do, knowing that no matter how much Marty and Wendy talk about wanting out, it's hollow. Ironically enough, a now more complicit, Wendy-like Charlotte has drawn the line, insisting he ride this out without putting them in worse jeopardy. But to Jonah, his sister's just the latest victim of Byrde Stockholm Syndrome, despite the fact that his illegal money laundering  makes him more like Marty than he'd ever care to admit. Just because it's for the other side doesn't make it right.

If it wasn't clear before, there are few situations Marty isn't capable of dancing around or talking his way out of, kicking these skills into overdrive when faced with the challenge of cutting a deal for Navarro with Javi breathing down his neck. With a relaxed, deadpan delivery and demeanor, Bateman remains the beating heart of the show and straight man to all the chaos erupting around him, maneuvering his way out of the dark corners the writers frequently paint the character into.

Linney's again terrifying as Wendy, who becomes more drunk on power with each new move she makes, strategically planning her next play while stepping over whomever or whatever it takes to get there. Now utilizing trusted ally Jim Rattelsdorf (Damian Young) as her personal attorney to facilitate this political ascent, the Byrdes still can't get out unless Navarro does, as complicated as that's become due to Javi's interference. 

You know it's bleak when even the supposed "good guys" who could actually help the Byrdes navigate their way out of this mess are severely compromised. Agent Miller is taken advantage of by Marty when Navarro won't play ball and the FBI have their own agenda, which doesn't include giving a free ride to a cartel kingpin. All this while Javi plots his takeover, increasingly viewing Marty and Wendy as liabilities rather than assets.    

One of the show's most explosive moments comes in the Robin Wright-directed mid-season finale (Sanctified"), when Emmy-award winning Julia Garner proves not only how masterfully she inhabits Ruth, but what a great screamer she is, practically summoning up everything available in her soul to convey an unimaginable inner pain in a wildly emotional final scene. It's an inevitable accumulation of poor decisions made by these characters and the likely headline when anyone talks about the first half of this season. 

Simultaneously needing her former employer Marty's resources while still harboring a bitter grudge for everything the Byrdes have done to her family, tragedy strikes and Ruth snaps, setting the stage for what could be Marty and Wendy's last stand. Suddenly, the probability of them crawling out from under the cartel's thumb with their lives couldn't look bleaker. And as these episodes prove, nothing is off the table in terms of who can or can't survive heading into the home stretch.

While the decision to split its final season supposedly resulted from a compromise between Netflix and showrunner Chris Mundy, we'll have to hope this isn't another case of viewers having to wait an inordinate amount of time for what's left. This streaming model of fewer episodes and tighter, shorter seasons have unquestionably led to higher quality storytelling, if you're willing to sacrifice some of the instant gratification. But given all the intriguing events that unfolded to set it up, Ozark's final half can't possibly arrive soon enough.