Warning: this post contains spoilers for season three of Ozark. If you haven’t watched the series, you’ve been cautioned (and I highly recommend you check it out). 

.

.

.

Ozark is Breaking Bad in a different setting.

That’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a very good thing, because Breaking Bad was one of the best series ever made and continues to be a benchmark for every drug and crime-related drama released in a contemporary television and streaming world.

Maybe it’s slightly disingenuous to make the clone comparison when evaluating Ozark, but I’ve felt this way ever since binging the hell out of season one back in 2017. It’s really a fantastic series with themes and storylines that are pulled directly from the Breaking Bad playbook and airlifted from Albuquerque to Missouri. The location and the actors are different, but we’re similarly dealing with Mexican drug cartels and money laundering and murder and family drama that blurs the lines between good and evil, creating that vast gray area that allows you to essentially choose your own antagonist.

Season three was good, and sets up what looks to be an intriguing season four. Here are eight takeaways I had after tearing through all ten episodes in three days:

1. invested in Ben’s story?

Tom Pelphrey did a really nice job portraying Wendy’s brother Ben, who shows up out of the blue to crash with the family.

The problem with Ben’s story (and subsequent death) is that it’s hard to become invested in a nascent character. They spent a LOT of time in the later episodes trying to flesh out the Ben/Wendy/Ruth relationship, but when he was killed off, I didn’t have a reaction one way or another. They tried to stuff so much developmental Ben material into a few episodes that you knew his death was coming, and as such, it didn’t really resonate. It ended up simply serving as a mechanism to push Ruth away from the Byrdes and towards Darlene instead.

2. humanizing Helen

Helen Pierce had two of the better lines of the entire season when she said:

  1. “You’re mistaking this for a discussion.”
  2. “Are we good, or are we in our feelings?” (something like that)

Janet McTeer again showed the cold-hearted bitch side of Helen, but the introduction of her family, specifically her daughter, Erin, added that human side to really round out the character. You understood the struggles she has with keeping her cartel involvement a secret, which mirrors what Wendy and Marty were going through with their kids.

One of the best scenes of the season, I thought, was this one right here, with Ben, off his medication, going apeshit on Helen in front of Erin:

3. the redundancy of Marty vs. Wendy

The first few episodes felt a little iffy to me because of the Marty vs. Wendy angle. It reminded me too much of Jesse and Walt working against each other in Breaking Bad, which presented uncomfortable interpersonal drama in lieu of giving us a clear bad guy to focus on. The beginning of Ozark, season three, reminded me a bit of the beginning of Breaking Bad, season five, after Gus was killed off and the show didn’t seem to have a de facto antagonist.

This was such a common crutch in Breaking Bad’s writing that it seemed worn out in the end. There are only so many times that you can put Marty and Wendy at odds, to the point where you get diminishing returns on each of those particular situations. This series has enough strong baddies (Omar, Darlene, even Frank) that you don’t need to write in constant conflict between husband and wife.

4. we need more of Darlene Snell

She’s one of the strongest and most unique characters in this series, and what she brings is authentic to the story.

Whereas Omar Navarro and Marty and Wendy and other folks could be substituted for characters from other crime dramas, Darlene is specifically Missouri, a local woman with long-standing community ties. She’s a little crazy but conniving and intelligent, a heroin slinger who fucks younger redneck men at the same time. That sounds gross, and the Wyatt scenes were certainly gross, but every time Darlene popped up I kept thinking to myself that I wanted to see more of her and the continuation of the Snell storyline.

5. strong female characters

Wendy Byrde, Ruth Langmore, Helen Pierce, Darlene Snell, FBI agent Maya Miller (who worked in the field while pregnant).

All five are strong and compelling female leads. And they come across as authentic, too, it’s not some forced bullshit in an attempt to score woke points or meet a quota. They really let these actresses build intricate and interesting characters who add to the story in their own way.

Actually, if you go down the list of Ozark’s main players, you could argue that the likes of Wendy, Darlene, and Ruth have equal or more influence than male characters like Marty, Omar, and Frank. Some of the scenes with Ruth and Frank Jr. were a good example of that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmSoxLGsF5A

6. the kids have evolved

They did a nice job bringing along Charlotte and Jonah this season. Instead of innocent kids who play bit-part roles, they’ve been looped in on the cartel connection and are rounding into characters who can make meaningful contributions to the story.

7. nice houses

Am I the only one who loves the real estate being shown in this series? (it was filmed in Georgia, not in Missouri)

Big, open windows, high ceilings with wooden beams and sprawling back yards on the lake. It makes me feel like I’m up in the Poconos overlooking Lake Wallenpaupack. There really is a lot of aesthetically-pleasing imagery in Ozark, which is different from the typically bleak crime/drug drama you’d watch.

8. Rachel’s absence

I enjoyed her storyline in seasons one and two and was somewhat disappointed that she didn’t appear in season three.

I also thought Jacob Snell, Buddy, Cade Langmore, and Agent Petty were missed as unique characters who obviously couldn’t contribute this time around… since they were dead.