TV Review: Ozark - Season 2

Warning: The following will contain spoilers for season one and may contain spoilers for season two of Ozark.

I had some very good luck in August. I was talking up Ozark's first season with a friend and decided to rewatch it. When I was coming to the end of that I heard the news that season two was returning on the Friday before Labour Day. I'm not sure I could have been more perfectly prepared to enjoy Ozark's second season.

The second season begins with where the first season ends. There is no jump in time, the narrative just keeps rolling. At the end of the first season Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) manages to convince the Snells to work with the Mexican cartel to build a casino and go into business together. Things seem to be going well in general and the agreement will defuse many of the barriers that have impeded Marty, but then Del Rio makes a comment and Darlene Snell kills him.

Marty's beautifully constructed plan is left bleeding on the floor, except the Snells argue this changes nothing. Marty has to do his best to salvage this agreement and avoid consequences with the cartel. In some ways that could be the entire synopsis for the seasons. The Byrdes ended up in the Ozarks in a desperate attempt to escape execution in Chicago and Marty does the same by proposing the casino. Now he has to make it happen.

The Snells and the Cartel offer two contrasting forms of violence. The Navarro Cartel presents an ominous, looming sense of danger. They are ruthless and calculating and heartless. They don't let sentiment or emotion impede their business in anyway. The Snells are quite the opposite. They operate close to home and are a constant presence for the Byrdes. They act on passion and emotion to a great degree. Marty often has to act as the interpreter and middle man between these two factions.

Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) grows further into an active part of Byrde Enterprises. In the first season there was definitely an element of detachment and plausible deniability that Wendy relied upon. That is entirely gone in the second season. Wendy rarely hesitates to roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty. Wendy displays a certain ruthlessness that Marty doesn't have. Her checkered past is no doubt a part of that.

One of the major ways the season excels and Wendy plays a greater role is the part of politics. Very early on the focus shifts to the legal process of how to get the casino approved. The path is rife with a kind of corruption that seems all too believable in 'small government' states. The first state senator Marty meets with his hauling lumber because being a senator is only a part time job. It gives tremendous incentive for bribery and corruption. The Byrdes do not corrupt good people, instead they find a world already deeply rotten and try to manipulate it to their own ends. They do so partially with the help of a big-time financier that seems to control a significant part of the Missouri Republican Party.

An idea that was present early on in Ozark is the decay or consequences of the money laundering that Marty does for the cartel. There are some, I am sure, who could look at Marty's work and say that his crime is relatively minor. Washing the money and getting back to the cartel in a useable form may not in and of itself being 'bad' but the presence of the drug trade and the temptation the money creates contaminates all around them. In the second season we see these consequences impact a variety of characters, including the children of the Byrdes. Such vast sums of wealth inspire crime, fraud, bribery, and theft. In addition we see how drugs poison and hurt people in the story.

That said, as an audience member I could not help but watch the series with a perverse desire to see Marty, Wendy, Charlotte and Jonah pull it all off with the help of their allies and friends. I felt for the innocent people hurt along the way, but those are awfully few and far between. Ozark tends to paint with a dark or gray brush. That said, I do not find the show overly serious or depressing to consume, not does it seem to luxuriate in violence in horror. Violence seems to disgust and disturb the Byrdes. The show has a few delightful moments. Wendy and Marty will update someone on their recent activities and amusedly comment, "I just made a deal with the Kansas City mob." The characters laugh because it seems so surreal. In some ways the Byrdes have not shaken that suburban, upper-middle-class sensibility that makes them seem so out of place.

Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner) is once again a tremendous force in the show. Her character journey from the first season to the end of season two is a fascinating thing to watch. Ruth brings something to the show which I think is incredibly powerful. She had a variety of impulses and motivations that keep her going. She is the guardian to her cousins and must navigate dangerous domestic relationships. Season two explores her relationship with her father a great deal. There is different subtext about her trying to find her place and the idea of the stain her Langmore reputation gives her. It's hard to put clearly, but it is clear that the opportunities to be respected the Marty's criminal enterprises gives her by appearing legitimate on the surface is very tempting. She hungers to work in an office, to live in a house instead of a trailer and guide Wyatt on to college. Ruth is both a child and an adult and struggles to navigate both worlds, as well of the worlds of poverty, thuggery, and white-collar crime.

I also briefly wish to add that Jimmy "Buddy" Smalls Dieker (Harris Yulin) has a tremendous arc over the season. He definitely becomes a member of the Byrde family and a critical member of it. He does a great deal to bring levity and humour to the series. The cartel in season two is represented by a lawyer, Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer) who brings a cold, calculating menace to the scenes the appears in. Perhaps she offers a window on another direction for the Byrdes, a white-collar worker whose choices led her down a more vicious path.

Ozark is great television. It is about a desperate family doing their best to navigate a complicated web to save themselves. Constantly actions have unforeseen and perhaps unforeseeable consequences which require new interventions and responses, which in turn cause their own problems to solve. Unlike similar programs in the last few years I feel Ozark actually wrestles with the questions it poses and the characters carry the weight of their choices. More importantly, the characters, a huge swath of them, are fascinated to watch and as a viewer I pull for them to find their own successful resolution. I eagerly await a third season.