Ozark - Season 1

O

OldCorpse

Rockin the Boat
I haven't seen a thread on Netflix "Ozark". I have not seen everything Netflix has done (TV wise), but I've seen a fair amount. The way others are super pleased with series like "Godless", I am over the moon happy with "Ozark" - this is approaching "Breaking Bad" territory (also a bit "fish out of water, needs to deal with an alien world of super dangerous criminals"). The acting is uniformly excellent. The dialogue is some of the very best I've seen the last few years. Excellent pacing and nice raising of stakes throughout, the tension doesn't slack (with one major exception). All in all, I give it 5 stars out of 5 or 9 out of 10. The 9 out of 10 is literal - there is one episode, episode 8 that's like a bowel movement in the punch, a horrible pointless episode that consists of the entire "backstory" - not only is it the worst paced and draggy and boring, but it's completely unnecessary - if it didn't exist, the series would never miss it. I'd go further - if anything, the episode 8 made the series slightly worse, because we DID NOT want to know the grubby little details of the backstory, worse than unnecessary (we fully accepted not having to know each and every detail), it's actually a kind of a let-down, as our imagination would come up with something stronger and stranger than the lamo stuff the writer came up with. It was a dead loss, 100%. So 10 episodes, with one a complete failure, makes it 9 out of 10 stars :)

Some of the best TV I've seen in a long while.
 
+1 on Ozark.

I also felt it was a cross on B'Bad and True Detective. Really enjoyed it! Jason Bateman, the lead, also directed a few of them and did a pretty mean job of it. Latest I heard is that season 2 is coming in 2018. Good one I say!

Chris Young
 
Ozark was just okay. The story was intriguing, but the character development was extremely lacking, particularly in comparison to other great crime shows like Breaking Bad, etc. The characters rarely felt like real people to me, with the odd exceptions of the Preacher and Russ Langmore. Everyone else (including the Byrde family and Ruth) just felt like pawns being moved around at the service of the plot, without natural motivations.
 
agcohn said:
Ozark was just okay. The story was intriguing, but the character development was extremely lacking, particularly in comparison to other great crime shows like Breaking Bad, etc. The characters rarely felt like real people to me, with the odd exceptions of the Preacher and Russ Langmore. Everyone else (including the Byrde family and Ruth) just felt like pawns being moved around at the service of the plot, without natural motivations.
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I'm not sure that character development was lacking. You mentioned Ruth as not developing, but that's clearly not true - she went from being willing to kill on her daddy's orders and contempt for Marty, to beginning to understand, and tragically, painfully pulling away from her father's entire ethos - ultimately, when Wendy showed her kindness in dressing her wounds (after being hit by her uncle), she started to cotton onto what a normal family looks like and not wanting to kill Marty (in fact, they hug when she's crying after having to kill her uncles to protect him). She was always tough as nails, but she started evolving and changing her worldview - ultimately deciding to become a guardian and taking responsibility for the two teenagers, barely being older herself (last image - hugging the older teenager, "I love you" - those were not words we ever heard from Ruth before). And quite frankly, yes, there is development in Marty and his wife and the evolution of their marriage and understanding of parenting and family - you mention "in comparison with BB" - but I think you're misremembering things just a bit... I'm a huge BB fan, but if you go back to Season 1 of BB, there isn't as yet as much of character development in Walter White - and *certainly* not in Skyler or *any* of the other characters in Season 1, it was a slow burn over more seasons (and that was good!)... Ozark has only been 10 episodes of Season 1, just how much character development were you hoping for, and still keeping it *realistic* and not soap opera, and yes, compared to BB too, no different.

And yes, the characters felt real (to me) - although I'd say Jacob, the Sneed family patriarch was a bit over the top in the hillbilly act - in fact they were all pretty terrific characters. Marty and Wendy are complicated characters, and Marty is on a journey of self-discovery that's quite realistic, as very much like most real life people who are never forced into big ethical choices and self-examination, and how they'd react when life puts a gun to their heads.

Plus honestly, I like the way it's presented - it's a different model of family dynamics that's far more realistic in my book, how quickly Marty reveals everything to Wendy and Wendy to the kids, instead of doing the usual TV thing of dragging things out "when will they find out", it passes on that trope of "discovery", and goes straight into a much more realistic situation, where OF COURSE you're going to spill the beans under such pressure to your closest family members, and kids these days are not all satisfied with BS explanations and "Yeah? OK, dad!". I like how they cut past all the BS TV tropes that way and plunge into more real family dynamics and confronting the horrors of life without trying to juice it for fake drama.

But of course, horses for courses, to each his/her own - clearly I am a fan of Ozark (and I'm a huge fan of BB!). And not a fan of any number of other shows which are super unrealistic and soap opera (in my book), like the seemingly universally praised House of Cards, which to me was utterly unrealistic psychologically and just a cheap soap opera of endless psychologically implausible events (really, the ultra bad future president kills the fellow in his car?!)... talk about unreal characters. Clearly, tastes and perceptions differ, which is why every show must find its audience. SO FAR with one exception (episode 8), I think Ozark is absolutely terrific and the best TV I've seen this year. YMMV :)
 
agcohn said:
Ozark was just okay. The story was intriguing, but the character development was extremely lacking, particularly in comparison to other great crime shows like Breaking Bad, etc. The characters rarely felt like real people to me, with the odd exceptions of the Preacher and Russ Langmore. Everyone else (including the Byrde family and Ruth) just felt like pawns being moved around at the service of the plot, without natural motivations.
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Yes. This show very much wanted to be Breaking Bad, but doesn't have BB's style, and most of the characters weren't particularly interesting/memorable. Motivations were also dubious ("wanna get involved with the mob?" "Sure, why not?"). That said, of course I will be there for season 2, because it is a thing to watch.
 
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