At the end of “Ozark” Season 3, Marty and Wendy Byrde were splattered and soaked in blood and brains; just the cost of doing business with a ruthless drug cartel. As the psychically traumatized married couple picked the bones and brain tissue out of their hair—that of their rival Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer), the attorney that represented the Navarro drug cartel—the pair silently considered the long road of (semi) good intentions that got them to this hellish place.
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“Ozark” began three seasons ago with a desperate, life-saving maneuver of negotiation, the kind of jiu-jitsu tactic the canny and hyper-practical everyman economic advisor Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) would employ over and over again to save his and his family’s skin. When a money-laundering scheme with a cartel went wrong, thanks to Byrde’s greedy partner, Marty proposed making amends by offering to set up a bigger laundering operation in the Lake of the Ozarks region of central Missouri. The Byrde family relocated to the Ozarks to open casinos and start laundering money, the series was off and running, but the stage had been set: a series of sins, various attempted atonements for those trespasses, many complications, near-death experiences running afoul of their impatient, impetuous bosses, and Marty always cunningly crafting an exit strategy with some shrewd, last-minute arbitration. But the initial pact they made was a deal with the devil and he’s coming to collect.
By the end of Season 3 (and the beginning of Season 4, however, the price of staying alive was higher than ever and lady luck, not Marty’s five-dimensional strategy chess game had saved the Byrde’s skin this time. In last season’s finale, the aforementioned Helen Pierce placed a bad bet—assuming that drug cartel leader Omar Navarro (Felix Solis), would side with her, his trusted, loyal aide. What Navarro ruthlessly demonstrated, however, is that everyone is expendable, and no one is more important than the drug kingpin himself. The Byrdes had inadvertently contrived their way into another live-another-day scenario.
Now, the devil, Omar Navarro, wants “increased cooperation” between the Byrdes and himself, but landmines of complication lay under every potential step. The aptly behind “The Beginning Of The End” (this is the final “Ozark” season, albeit, part one of two), introduces a new thorn in everyone’s side: Javi Elizonndro (Alfonso Herrera), Navarro’s ambitious, astute, and unpredictable nephew, angling for power within the cartel, a family member so charming, but calculating that even Omar completely mistrusts him and his intentions.
The Byrde’s have always had to maneuver around their various rivals, enemies, and threats— Opium queen Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery), the Kansas City mob, the FBI (forensic accounting agent Marya Miller as played by Jessica Frances Dukes), their clever former employee gone rogue Ruth Langmore (a terrific Julia Garner) and more—but in Season 4, their biggest challenge to overcome is themselves, their choices and the mini deals with the devils they make to survive.
In Season 3, that huge cost was the death of Ben Davis (Tom Pelphrey), Wendy Byrde’s (Laura Linney) unstable, mentally ill brother. Last season, Ben threatened Navarro’s now-deceased lawyer, Helen. Ruthless in her disposition and the way Ben rattled her daughter, Helen demands Ben’s head on a stick, and feeling like she had no choice, Wendy offers it to her as a grand gesture of subservience (and again, saving their skins). But the aftermath, that ripples through Season 4, has major consequences.
For one, the Byrde family kids— Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) and Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) become aware of the horrendous arrangement that their mom made to have her brother killed to appease the cartel. This for one sets Jonah on a dangerous path outside the family working for Ruth in a new money-laundering scheme that just isn’t as savvy as Marty’s plots. Heartbroken, Ruth, having fallen in love with the damaged Ben last season, quits working for the Byrde and reluctantly starts working with Ozark heroin doyenne Darlene Snell (she was Marty’s right-hand-woman and now she knows all their trade secrets and how to use them against the Byrdes). After all, Ruth’s cousin, Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan), is now Snell’s lover and partner (sure, there’s some 30 years between them or so, but don’t be agist).
So, the ever-present noose around Marty and Wendy Byrde’s neck just tightens substantially in Season 4. Navarro’s cousin Javi is sticking his neck in the business, pissing off his Uncle with his impetuous insolence, and making the Byrde’s life increasingly difficult, especially when he brashly starts raising the local body count raising suspicion on everyone.
Ruth, working for Snell, but only as an uneasy alliance for now to help her cousin, tries to become a partner in Snell’s heroin trade (oh yes, and the Byrdes have been instructed to threaten the Snell operation with brutal retribution if they continue in the heroin trade, but Snells don’t blink). But the paranoid older woman isn’t really having much of it. Scheming as she is, Ruth uses Jonah’s anger against his parents against the Byrde’s, manipulating him into starting a money-laundering scheme for her, all the while butting heads with Snell with all the side deals she tries to make.
If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. “Ozark” can feel exhausting, but it’s never overwrought, and it can’t be more strenuous than to Marty and Wendy Byrde who are barely keeping their heads above water, always trying to put out fire after fire. As complicated and strained as the “Ozark” plot can sound, with all its precarious threads, it never feels contrived, and the showrunner/writer Chris Mundy and writing staff does an amazing job of never breaking suspension of disbelief.
In fact, “Ozark” is the rare crime show that keeps getting better and better, tauter, and more furiously captivating. The cast plays their characters like first-chair musicians in a symphony, and it’s become impossible to not empathize and be engrossed in their plight, no matter how often it becomes a mess of their own making. “Ozark” didn’t quite convince audiences in Season 1, many thinking the show was derivative of “Breaking Bad.” But “Ozark” has become just as compelling and has never stopped to silly moments like a villain character having his face blown off and still walking around. Mundy also wrote for “Bloodline,” and while that show went off the rails, and was forced to wrap up quickly, the idea of singular family sins that impact, affect and infect the greater whole is an idea that’s definitely carried over.
Another aftermath to deal with is Helen’s death. A loud, powerful, high-priced lawyer, she’s not the kind of woman that goes missing without people noticing. Her daughter, Erin (Madison Thompson), starts frantically calling the Byrdes and her BFF confidante Charlotte asking if they know of her whereabouts. Eventually, Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg), a tenacious private investigator from Chicago is hired, and he becomes another thorn agitating the Byrde’s and the plot as he comes closer and closer to discovering what really happened to Helen.
Without too many spoilers (though it’s already revealed in the trailers) the biggest endgame of the season is Omar Navarro trying to find an out for himself. Thinking Javi is circling his carcass and having already exposed his family to violent threats that touched too close. Navarro proposes handing himself over to the FBI and giving them all the intel he has on his rival cartel, in exchange for total immunity. It’s the one impossible deal that Marty thinks he can’t broker—it’s just a bridge too far for the FBI—but if Marty and the Byrde’s are ever going to get out of this self-crafted nightmare that has spiraled out of control over four seasons, granting Navarro his dream, get-out-jail-scott-free card fantasy will be Marty’s only option.
These various plot threads chafe against the Byrdes, threaten to asphyxiate them all, and certainly cause extreme nervy anxiety for them and the viewer. “Ozark” season four is just riddled with tension and corners that seem impossible to steer free from, but the Byrde’s manage to mostly do it over and over again without straining the incredulity of the viewer and that’s a serious high wire act of writing, craft and direction (did we mention that Jason Bateman also directs episodes of this show and has been won an Emmys for it?).
But again, there’s a price to be paid for it all. Suffering that charge the most—though arguably dividing it amongst the family the most with acute anger and bitterness—is Wendy, who nearly becomes the villain of this first half of Season 4, alienating Jonah, being ruthless about it all and seemingly having gone over to the dark side for the great sin she committed in Season 3.
“Ozark” Season 4— which is 14 episodes long, but has been split in two this year— begins with an unresolved scene the series hasn’t yet caught up with chronologically. The Byrde family, seemingly on their way to freedom and 48 hours until a final meeting with the FBI, get into a deadly car crash. It’s u clear if they survive and how they got to this point, but either way, all signs point to a season finale collision that will likely have few, if any survivors. [B+]
“Ozark” Season 4 (Part 1) debuts on Netflix on January 21.