On January 21, Ozark released the first seven episodes of its 14-part farewell to its loyal audience base.
The multi-Emmy winning series has seen its screen couple, comedian-turned-dramatist Jason Bateman and three-time Academy Award nominee Laura Linney, power-seize on par with the Underwoods (House of Cards) and fail to keep their family sheltered from harm’s way like Walter White (Breaking Bad) did before them. Season 4: Part I’s furthered misadventures of the Chicago-flown Byrds, their employees, and the cartel druglords employing them, follows the fallout of bipolar brother Ben’s heartbreaking, but necessary demise.
Unlike Season 3, new players introduced to the casino table in the first half of season 4 do not inspire viewer indictment of a writers room transparently perplexed before a godsend fell into their otherwise creative block-stricken laps. Remove the conveniently never-before-mentioned Ben’s Billy from Six Feet Under-reminiscent pathos and you have a show that is more what society has forced it to become, and less what it was at the beginning.
Now, feast your eyes on the new private eye on the block: Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg). Subtly out of the gate, he pried and pestered until he won hearts as the morally charged, drawn-flawed but with a redemptive canvas foil to his Byrds of prey. Competent police work and overall aptness go a long way when entering a genre often hinging on shady protagonists catching one break after the next due to constant confrontations with cops off the ball like a train off its rails.
Sattem’s arrival also satisfies the subsection of the fandom still chapped at Ozark for killing off its best character too soon. In fact, it’s surprising FBI Agent Roy Petty (Jason Butler Harner) – one of this fictional universe’s many strangers in a strange land, and ironically the wildest, most well-written of all of them – has yet to gain an origin story spinoff as compensation.
Consider Sattem the tamer, more tempered but nevertheless obsessive reincarnation of Petty. We’ve seen the face of the operation, the demonstration of his craft, in the first act; by year’s end, will the Byrds have finally met their match operating on the right side of the law, or is he just one more adversary to send free-fallin’ into the purgatorial terrains of the missing persons database?
Another notable addition to the ‘O’-line, but behind the camera – and whom you may not even realize was involved, lest you are a staunch credits observer: Robin Wright. The veteran actress directed both Episodes 6 and 7, bringing an eye for the directorial and performative crossover between her former House of Cards abode and the latest tenured Netflix staple.
Ozark has long been commended for its portrayal of strong women capable of scaring the men they share screen time with, sometimes fully to death. At the conclusion of Season 4’s initial rollout, this includes one who is now dead herself, another who just may have her own meeting with fate in the forecast, and a fan-favorite who’s grief-overwhelmed enough to let her badass guard down at the worst possible moment – if she hasn’t already.
Ideally, she and some others will survive past the end of a series unafraid to kill anybody, and perhaps even everybody, in ways not seen during the Golden Age of the prestige hour-drama since “Red Wedding”-era Game of Thrones.
