The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Ozark’ Season 4 Part 1, Episodes 1-4

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

Joanna and Van give their thoughts on the first four episodes of this fourth and final season of ‘Ozark.’ Tune in next Tuesday for their reactions to episodes five through seven. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, I'm Juliet Litman. And I am Joe House. Welcome to Ringer Food, the ringer's new hub for all your food-related content. You may have known this feed as House of Carbs, and don't worry, that's not totally going away. We will be launching two new shows on the feed, and the first is Food News with me and David Chacobi. You may remember us from our days at Grantland while Jacoby and I are back to go over the news, sample snacks, share some personal tales of food news, some global tales of food news. Who knows what else is to come? And House, what are you going to be doing?

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Crack a Cayman Jack Margarita and taste your escape. It's America's number one for a reason. Kamen Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Kaman Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. Good sleep is everything. That's why Ali's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-thianine for both kiddos and grown-ups.

So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. You're racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie's sleep solutions for the whole family at ollie.com. That's OLLL-L-Y.com. into the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson with me again. Van Lathen. Hi, Van.

How are you? Hello, Joe. How are you? Great. This is the second in our three Ozark podcast that we're doing. If you haven't watched a single episode of season four yet, you're going to go, you're in the wrong podcast. You want to listen to the preview podcast. We already did that one.

This is I'm midway through. I'm four episodes in. I want to take a break, listen to Joan Van talk about it, and then go back in for the finale. So we will be back on Tuesday, I think, with our final wrap-up of the season covering the last three episodes. But right now, Van and I are going to talk about episodes one through four, which is the beginning of the end. Let the Great World Spin, City on the Make, and Ace Duce, those four episodes, and nothing about the final three. We're not spoiling. We're going to do our best to not spoil anything that happens at the end of the season.

Can't do it. We'll do it. We love you too much. And so, yeah, so that's the lay of the land here. I just want to note, fun fact about the final two episodes of the season, directed by Robin Wright. I saw that. When it came up and said directed by Robin Wright and both me and Kulik at the same time went, oh. Yeah, same.

Oh. I was like, oh. And Robin Wright, who's had one of the most successful careers you can have, we're like, good for you. Yeah, exactly. What can you go, Robin? Did you have to train yourself out of calling her Robin Wright pen, which we did for like a really long time? Yeah, because like it's hard. What I've discovered is the only thing that's harder than going to the extra name is coming back from the extra name, you know?

Courtney Cox-Arquette. But see, I never bought it. Okay. Never bought it. See, I rejected Courtney Cox, Arquette, and I rejected Kim Kardashian-West. You're Courtney Cox from Friends. All right. I'm sorry. I know you've met him on screen. You guys hit it off, but I don't care. You're Gordon-Cox from Friends. That's who you are. But Robin Wright-Pin, for some reason, the right pin stuck. It did. Yeah. Yeah.

So before we get into what happened here in these first four episodes, just like a little bit more information that I got about season, the back half of the season, the next seven episodes. Sure. Jason Bate was on Jimmy Kimmel last night, and he was like, we split the season. He said the reason they split the season is that Netflix didn't want to pay them season five rates. So they basically gave them a long season four and split it, but didn't have to pay them. in their contract for whatever jump they would do to season five rates. That's either true or he was joking, but I think it's probably true. And then I think that's kind of what they did with Thrones, too.

And then he said it would be coming out and he said sort of like a kind of soon is what he said, which makes me think really soon. We'll get the conclusion of this season of Ozark. So not long to wait. We'll get into why we are anxious to see those seven episodes and what happens next when we cover the back off the episode of the season. I can't fucking wait. I know.

It's a lot. I can't wait. I can't wait. It's a lot. You'll be with us when you finish the season two. But let's start about the first four. And it starts with its own like cliffhanger thing that's hanging over this final season, which is we start with a flash forward.

This is something at Breaking Bad used to do and lost it and stuff like that. Where we see the whole fam. They're together. Are they all happy? Unclear. But Jonah's in the van. and they're all going somewhere, San Cook on the radio,

the FBI, they seem on good terms, the movers are coming, maybe they're moving back to Chicago, we don't know, there's some event at the casino seems like it's going well, and then, bam, there's a car crash that seems unrelated.

It's like a, you know, a truck swerves and they swerve. It doesn't seem to be like a hit or anything like that. Unrelated, van flips. We don't know if everyone's alive or dead. Van, what do you think about that as a starter to a final season of television.

I think that I forgot that it happened to you just mentioned it. Okay. I'm being for real. Yeah, it wasn't hanging over your head this season. No, because it so much happens in such a short amount of time. Literally, I'm thinking to myself, the question that I'm asking during that scene is, okay, what happened with Helen and Omar and everything that was going on in Mexico, like what's going on?

And then they get right back to that. So literally, until you just mentioned that, I forgot that that scene existed. So, I mean, obviously, having seen the entire first seven episodes, like, I am now wondering how that plays in part with the narrative that's going to come out. We're not going to do anything to spoil that for everybody. But, but no, I actually had totally forgot it. It was a thrilling way to start the season for sure, and it was an unexpected way to start the season. And just always, I remember, ever said singles?

Do you remember that? We're in singles where he's looking at the light. He goes, that light's been green for a long time. And then they get hit and she loses the baby. Ever since singles, I've always been obsessed with a good car crash scene. It's like so horrific and scary to me out of nowhere. But yeah, at this point, it's just something that happened. And obviously a thread that they'll kind of clean up once they round out the season.

You could have paid me so much money to try to guess what you would reference in talking about the season of his arc. And Cameron Crow's singles would have never come up for me. Great movie. Great movie. All right. So let's talk about this in these first four episodes. I mean, I think the big thing, as we come out of these four episodes at least, the big question is like, Jonah's in the car. So like there's a big split in the family this season.

Jonah goes off to work for Ruth. Something that becomes really clear because of that split is the way that Ozark has always wrapped up this idea of bossing a crime family and running your regular family. You know, because like Charlotte and Jonah have been in the mix of the crime since pretty early on. And so I think the way in which Marty and Wendy are split into this like good cop, bad cop almost dynamic where Marty Marnie is like classic dad, good cop where he's like, nice to Jonah, nice to Ruth. Like, he's just sort of out there,

Jason Batemaning, all over everyone. And Wendy is hard bad cop in all of this, taking this really hard with Jonah. Kind of a classic parenting breakdown dynamic, but it has to do with running a crime family. Obviously, this stuff goes all the way back to the godfather and beyond and stuff in terms of putting family dynamics into crime family dynamics.

But what do you think of like the nuclear family being a part of this show and that dynamic? First of all, I think that's realistic. I remember that happened with my actual family. Did it? Remember. Yeah. One time I brought the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Oh my God.

Todry. Who was on the cover? I brought that to school. I can't remember. But she had a silver bikini. It was back when a man. America was a real country, you know. She had a silver,

she had a silver bathing suit on. And really, I'll be honest with you, it was a swimsuit issue. It wasn't like a nudie mac. I didn't think that there was anything wrong with that, right? I really didn't. Let's just say it was Kathy Ireland. Let's just go ahead and say,

it was the Kathy Ireland era. It was definitely. So I bring it to school and a teacher takes it. And I'm like, you know, my magazine back. And he was like, Van, you can't have that at school. Look at that one girl. Like, you can see her whole. I'm like, give my magazine back.

And I took it off the, because there was no nudity in it. And I took it off of the thing. And then, oh, Van took something off the teacher's desk. So they called my dad. They called my dad. My mother was furious. Yeah. But my father was like, huh?

It's my boy. Boys will be boys. Boys will be boys. And I think that's a, I think, you know, that's a long-winded way of me saying that there gets to be a point of raising the sons sometimes when the mom and the dad are both present. that the dad encourages a little rebellion because there's this cliche that rebellion somehow signals leadership, right? Captain America's rebellious. Can't tell him what to do. He knows what to do. Iron Man is rebellious. A great leader strikes out on his own. When moms, sometimes, and my mom did,

take it as a rebellion against their love. They're telling you this because they love you. Yeah. So my mom, she would be like she would ask me to do something and I wouldn't do it. And emotionally, it would be like, I'm losing my son. My dad would be like, hey, just let him go. I'm telling you. It would be fine. And so I see that coming out. That's not to say that Jonah's not getting on my fucking nerves.

But at the same time, that dynamic, although cliche and done before, to me, is a realistic one. Well, and I just don't think it's quite been done in this dynamic, the way that, like, Wendy is acting out that exactly what you're talking about, that. I think that moms, I mean, all of this stuff is gender normed and you can ignore it if you want to. Sure, of course, yeah. That moms do tend to take rebellion as like a personal separation from you. And there tends to be like anger and frustration that comes with that, at least in my family dynamic as well, my experience. They exploit this in the Sopranos as well. Yeah, yeah.

You're right. You're right. And so I think I think this idea of Jonah, quote unquote, betraying the family, the crime family. And Wendy taking that the way that she does, and Marty taking the approach of like, if you hold something, if you let something go, it'll come back to you. If you hold it loosely, it'll come back to you. So he's like telling Ruth, I would have helped you with the software if you'd ask me. And I actually believe him. Or he's like proud of Jonah for his money laundering. Or he's good cop with Maya as well. And if you need to bring in the closer, the enforcer, you call Wendy. Like, these are the dynamics. It's a dynamic that I think a lot of women resent because I think they feel like the guy, the, you know, the male parent gets to get away with being the nice guy and the woman is like asked to be the enforcer. But personality-wise, it aligns perfectly with who Wendy and Marty are in general in all of this. I think it's really interesting. But the way in which Ozark has family stuff everywhere, everywhere you look, Casey Mafia,

that's like a father-son dynamic. Even with the Navarro crime family, you've got Javi the nephew comes in this season. It's Javi and Omar. You've got Darlene and Wyatt and Ruth. with like Darlene and Wyatt are sort of their own little family nucleus, but then you've got Wyatt and Ruth as like cousins connected and the push and pull of him in the middle between those two women. Like the way in which they brought all this family stuff in,

even the Shaw family, the pharmaceutical company that comes in this season, they brought all this family shit into the mix. And that's what the show has always been, but it's just times 10 in these final episodes. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's, and whenever you have family stuff that's in the mix like that, it makes for better drama because then it fucks up the business, right?

Family stuff fucks up the business. Like, it's obvious that Ben had to go, but what if he's your brother? Yeah. You know, it's one thing if Omar Navarro is challenged, but it's a little bit more dangerous and evil when it's coming from his nephew because you start to think, Havi, who is one of the most sinister and well, written and acted new characters in a show I can remember in recent times, you think that's his

nephew that's coming at him like that. That's how serious it is in that situation. So the family dynamic, it makes everything, it ratches it up to 10, and it makes the emotions a lot more sort of visceral in a show like this. So let's talk about a hobby. Havi's played by Alfonso Arrera this season, joining the cast, right from the jump, right from the jump, right from the jump. Right from the jump, scary. Yeah, that's all. I hate them. Scary.

A foodie. The cosmopolitan member of the, you know, he went to college in Chicago. That guy's always dangerous. Yeah. Tell me about that. So think about that. That guy who is from there, because I always think of this guy real quick, Joe. I think of that guy like Javi, right?

Havi went to school in Chicago and was just wondering. of the guys. He was hanging out. They were going to bars. You know what I mean? He was doing this thing. He might have caught a Cubs game. He was going to the whole. He was just one of the dudes. Little do they know that this motherfucker is being groomed to be the head of a Mexican drug cartel. So the whole time he's hanging out with you, there's this huge, huge, huge dangerous past. Anytime you have a guy like that, they always use that as a as a feather in a hat to make you understand just how dangerous he is because he knows your ways. Like he knows your ways.

And that's why they send him up there. So the minute I saw that, I was like, uh-oh, he's trouble. He's not someone like Omar who is like so, Omar is so foreign in a way that he seems like this entity that's like very far away where Javi seems very intimate. He's in America all the time. He understands it there. He gets it there.

And it seems like he's right around the corner. And that's what makes him super scary in the show. Right. And he pops up in your casino and he's just sitting on your boat waiting for you and he's like, let's go get pastries. And it's just, it's terrifying. His friendly charm, I mean, I think he's he's fantastic on the show. But he does remind me a little bit of Tony Dalton's character Lalo on Better Call Saul, like a little bit of that. Like, he comes in super charming and smiling, but terrifying. And he establishes the danger right away, right, by killing the sheriff that we've seen for several seasons. The sheriff was never a major player, but he was, you know, it's law and order. It's like, this is someone that we've been negotiating with all season, and then he's just bam, gone without a second thought. I have a really, really important question for you, Van.

I'm ready. We know that the birds have a crematorium that is very useful to them. They're forever incinerating bodies. Here's my big question. What do they do with the goddamn cars? Like, what did they do with that cop car? Did Hobby just drive it out of town? Like, what do we, they are constantly burning bodies and no one ever bothers to like dispatch

with the car. So this is what I was thinking because like, I thought about this when Harvey was driving around in the cop car. It's a, it's a small town, right? Ridiculous. Nobody passed by him and it was like, huh. Yeah. Hmm.

I don't know. We have anybody that. looking on the force. You know what I'm saying? Like nobody said that. But I did think about something about it because this actually brought up in the living room. It's like, what are they going to do at the car?

I think about the end of Pulp Fiction. Remember in Pulp Fiction where after Jules and Vincent went through this whole thing with Winston and then the lady from Saturday Night Live randomly pops up? Remember that? Yep, I do. And what was her name again? Sweeney?

Julia Sweeney. Julia Sweeney. They pop up. at the end, and they have this like one place that they go to crush up all the cars, the cars that they need to get rid of. I'm wondering, and we haven't met this character, but if there's like a car crusher person somewhere that the birds work with, are they sinking cars into the water, the body of water there?

What, is that the Mississippi River? You drain, I don't know, you drain that water and it's just cars. Cars under there. on the lake, just all of these cars, like all of these cars that they have because of the people that are getting killed on the Ozart. So I have no clue, but I thought about that whole thing. I'm like, yo, man,

he drove the sheriff's car over there and he doesn't give a fuck. And they don't talk about it. I mean, like, there's whole plots of movies, I swear, or TV shows where they're trying to figure out how to get rid of the car. And this one, they're just like, yeah, and it's a cop car. Right. And the same for,

you know, Darlene just kills that drive and, you know, poor Ruth and White have to bury the body. And I'm like, and did you bury the car too? What happened to the limo that he was driving the guy around in? What happened to the limo? So this is my car question for Ozark.

It's terrifying. All right. Let us talk about the Shaw family. So we get, this is a great new element. So as part of Wendy's bid to become a political mover and shaker in the Midwest, right? She's creating the Bird Foundation,

the board, and she needs an influxial cash, and she needs influential people. So she's going to Shaw Pharmaceutical. We get the introduction of Claire Shaw, played by Katrina Link, who is this, you know, daughter of a disgraced pharmaceutical family who's taken over the business, trying to make it clean. This is the introduction of like the pharmaceutical opioid crisis into our drug dealing show. And I think it's really interesting to like draw that line so clearly between pharmaceuticals and like a Mexican drug cartel to the point where we. have a drug cartel

furnishing the drugs for this pharmaceutical company. What do you think of shot pharmaceutical? At first I was annoyed. Tell me. Well, because, you know, I'm in the show

and I'm doing the whole thing. And what I really want is answers to the things that are happening that are right in front of me and they're on my plate, right? This is how I do TV sometimes show. Sometimes I see the stuff and it's on my plate.

And sometimes tell us, television shows seem like half-eaten meals. Like, imagine you go to your favorite restaurant, right? Uh-huh. And there's a big dinner there. A lot of people say I'm basic because I like a steak at Ruth's Chris. And I don't care what you guys say. The steak tastes good there.

So, like, you go wherever you want, but I like it there. And imagine you've eaten half the steak and then somebody brings you something else. Sometimes you want to finish the steak before you get to that. So there are a lot of questions that I needed to be answered. You're like, get this cream spinach out of here. Get the cream spinach out of here. baked potato fucking out of here. I don't want it. Peace out.

Filet only. Right. Before we jump into the opioid crisis, the Shaw Farmersoul, who's and all that stuff, then very quickly, it was made into one of the more important plot points in the entire show. Because it tied into how Wendy, and also it became,

it became, Wendy gets very specifically dirty in this. One thing that has, to happen when you're watching a show about people who are doing criminal stuff is you have to be able to, there's a suspicion of disbelief that these people are still good people. So they're still, they're just in situations where they have to make, like, decisions that you don't have to make. Right. So Wendy Bird and Marty Bird, they're not bad people.

They're just in a bad situation. They're trying to make the best of it. Then something else starts to happen and shows where people start to make decisions that affect people way. down the line from them. I think that's very interesting what they're doing with Wendy Bird. And I think it's interesting in bringing the Shaw Corporation in there

because they represent someone who's trying to actually do the opposite, who's trying to undo a lot of harm that her family has caused, while meeting her with someone who is now about to cause a lot of harm

outside of her world for really the very first time. And it's almost meeting those characters like on the way up and on the way down because when we started talking about some of the stuff that Wendy is, you know, the thing about doing later on and some of the stuff that she's getting into by sort of giving the Shaw Corporation a nice, fancy new name, of new face, when they're part of the opioid crisis. Now the ball is rolling in two different ways and who's going to win that little battle.

So I thought bringing someone who wanted retribution into the show was very interesting and something I didn't think that I needed, but I did. I think the really key part of that is this speech that Wendy gives to Claire, when Claire is stressed out about the drug deal and she's stressed out because Javi comes in, he crashes the handing off of the drugs at one point. And Javi is just like, Javvy's all over the thing and spooks Claire because she was used to dealing with the birds who knew how to put a nice face on it. And then Javi comes in and she's like, what, oh, what am I actually? Oh, I'm actually doing a drug deal. What the fuck? And Wendy says this thing to her about keeping enough good on top of the bad.

Barry the bad with all the good. Like, think about all the heroin you're keeping off the streets by taking the heroin from a drug cartel and making it into opiates. Or, you know, this is what Wendy is pretending that she's doing. Again, I think it's very self-delusional the way that Walter White was self-delusional. But she's pretending to herself that this big political machine that she wants to build for herself. where she will institute liberal progressive policies and do good in the country. That is the story that she's telling herself to justify. They all tell themselves that story.

Yeah. Let me litter my political campaign with, like, dead people, backhanded courtroom deals. Let me cover up DUIs and all that stuff because I'm going to be different when I get all the power in the world. That's been telling themselves that same lie since back in the fucking day. Stupid. I hate it. And mix into all of that is Wendy

having to justify the choice she made at the end of season three to sacrifice her brother. And she's like, it has to be worth something. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like this, I have forever tainted my soul by doing this. Kill your own brother.

It has to be worth something. But what's also telling is at one point, point, Wendy says to Marty, I'm not fucking losing. And I think that's the real, the real core of Wendy right there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, she's so in now that it's not about that stuff anymore. That's like when we talk about all of these people like, you know, I remember back when they were breaking up Microsoft and people didn't understand like, why was Bill Gates going so hard? He already has all of these billions, billions of dollars. He don't want to lose. at the end of the day, you win so much and you figure out enough problems, you don't think

that there's a problem too big for you. And Wendy definitely doesn't think that. Wendy doesn't, the altruism is gone. It's all gone. Yeah. It's all gone. What she's doing now, she is a reactionary competitor. She's just reacting to shit and beating it back.

And she's not going to face something that she can't beat at this point. I love that line, by the way. She delivered that line. She's killing it. Oh, Laurelini. So good. One small thing I want to put in here with the introduction. of like Shaw Pharmaceutical and some of the other things that they're doing here.

I don't know how you feel about distances on shows, but I definitely put into my map app, Ozark, Missouri to Chicago. How long do you think it takes to drive from the Ozarks to Chicago? Based on the show? Yeah. So we're going to Missouri, Chicago. So Chicago is in Illinois.

Missouri is in Missouri. It's two hours, three hours, three hours. Three hours. You say three hours. Our producer, Sasha, just chimed in with six hours. It is eight hours. Oh, fuck that. And they are constantly zipping back and forth to Chicago.

Let me say something. So I grew up in Baton Rouge. Houston is four hours away, right? Yeah, yeah. New Orleans is less than an hour away. It's like 45 minutes, right? So whatever we're going to have a good time, we go to Houston. One day we decided we were going to drive to Memphis.

Uh-huh. and we thought at Memphis, you know, you just drive through Mississippi in Tennessee today. Memphis was about seven hours away and by the end we fucking hated each other. Of course. I'm like, yo, what the hell, bro?

All of y'all, get away from me, bro. Like, seven hours was so much longer of a haul than we thought there was. Definitely not going up to for no business meetings. That's a flight. No. Exactly. I mean, it's longer than it takes to get

from the barrier where I am to L.A. where you are, right? That takes less than eight hours. And I would make that a flight anyway. Like, I drive it plenty, but I would make it a flight if I had a lot of business in L.A. So there you go. Okay, so let's talk about, to go back to Wendy and her lust for power, something that I don't think we talked enough about out of season three and into season four is the relationship between Omar and Wendy, where, like, Omar has this communication with Marty,

but then he starts talking to Wendy, and it becomes this really into, it's not like, it's not a love affair, but it's this like dark connection between the two of them that I think is really interesting. What do you think about that? Shadow meets shadow. He sees the shadow inside. Yeah. Marty's a numbers guy, a fucking geek, you know, the Marty birds come and go. But Wendy, she's fierce.

She's independent. She seems for all of the reasons that like, you know, if we're dealing in stereotypes and a guy like Omar Navarro wants to be who he is, he'd see himself more in Wendy than he does in Marty. Marty is, and Jason Bateman plays Marty, I think this is his best act in season. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. There are a couple of scenes in this season to where I'm just like, Jesus Christ, this guy is so great. Anything in these first four episodes specifically?

Nah, we'll talk about it. Okay, we'll talk about it later. We'll talk about it. Oh, actually, no, there is. There is something in his first four episodes. The scene where, this is, Jason Bateman is managing to be funny. And I love that. The scene where Marty and Wendy are talking to Darlene and Ruth and Wyatt.

And Wyatt says, you know, all of this was happening before you got there, and Marty goes, before you came down there, Marty goes, okay, but we did come. We're here now. And he gives him a wink. Like, he gives him a week. Like, okay, we did come, champ. And that's what we're talking about. And the wink is so condescending.

Like, it's so condescending. Like, yo, I think you know and I know. And I'm not talking to you. But he didn't have to get stern in any way. He was completely, like, he completely kicked him out of the scene by one little head gesture. I'm like, so funny to me. For me, it was, yeah, when Hobby takes Marty to go clean up the crime scene, Helen's house. And then the new sheriff shows up.

And so Marty is trying to get the new sheriff through the house and not have Javi kill her. And like the stakes are huge. Like, Javi would definitely do that. Right. But Baman's playing just like slapstick comedy. You know what I mean? Of like just doors and sardines. It's really funny. Right.

But yeah. So I forgot the original question now. Oh, Marty Burr's come and go. Wendy Burrs are for life or Wendy Burr's are rare. And Omar and Wendy's connection. That is the thing to me. So I think that he didn't see as much rarity in Marty, but in Wendy,

he saw something, he's seeing something in her that, like, gives him life. Like, he's inspired, almost to me. It's not a love affair,

but they are playing it a little bit, like, especially in season three when she was taking calls from him without Marty knowing. You know, she's talking directly at Omar without Marty knowing. And so it's like, it felt very,

like, furtive and like an affair. But the, so the plot for Omar, the season is that Omar wants out he wants to he wants the FBI to help him he wants the birds to get the FBI to help him

so we're looping in Argo Maya FBI agent new mom Maya getting her in the mix putting her in danger putting her on a plane with him for a meeting and then that loops back into the hobby stuff because basically Marty starts to use

the hobby intel because Maya needs Omar to give her something to get him out and so they start blowing up some of Javvy's deals in order to further Omar's deal with the FBI. It's all complicated and related. But I'm scared for Maya and I don't like her in any of this. How do you feel? I'm scared for her too.

But Maya is also very important in this. Something you're going to learn later. Maya represents what kind of danger a true believer can be. There's, my dad used to say, God rest dad, I'll quote him on every podcast. I'm sure he's laughing. My dad used to say there's nothing more dangerous to somebody who believes what they say. Like really believes it.

Like super believes it. Maya is out to make a difference. You know, she's gotten into the wheeze with Marty a little bit. But she's like Captain American, Civil War. He's willing to fuck over everybody because your friend had a bad couple of decades killing people up. Let him go. He deserves it, Cap. No.

Caps, I'm with you to the end of the line. All right. So the reality of somebody like her character is she seems still uncorrupted. She seems like the most level-headed and forth-thinking person, but she really believes. And she's got all of this stuff that's really with her, that's newly with her, with the baby, with even her mom coming. I'm assuming that's her mother? Yeah, yeah. That's with her mother coming to stay with her.

And she's trying to build a family in a world where she's seeing all of these families fall apart before her eyes because of decisions that they've made. And the question becomes, after a while to me, will decisions that she's made then ruin her family? Is she to suffer the same fate as all of these people, but just for different reasons? And I think that's something that's really, really intensely locking me into her character this season, like it has to be. hasn't been before. I think my favorite scene from this four episodes, these four episodes with her, is not anything with the birds,

though there's some really good stuff with her and Wendy. But it's when that other agent confronts her, sort of in the parking garage. Yeah, when she's walking up, she sees this guy. Yeah. And he's like, she's like, let me stop you right there. Right. I know that you're about to call me a hypocrite,

but here's why your argument's bullshit. Don't, like, and she just completely washes him in that scene. He's like, he kind of has the moral high ground a little bit there, but she's just like, no, absolutely not. You're going to call me hypocrite? Don't worry about it. I don't, I don't care. I know I'm doing it right. And it gives him advice at the end of the scene.

Yeah. Like, she says, when he's suspended, she's like, like, I think she tells him, like, enjoy your suspense. You should really go lawyer up and think about what you're going to. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you're suspended. I can't talk. Then, like, but doesn't tell him to go fuck himself, tells him to go fix himself, which is a whole different type of sentiment.

She's like, think about yourself. Yeah. carry yourself right now. Don't worry about me. Don't worry about me at all. All right, let's talk about my girl Ruth, who's going through it in a big way of this season, right? So she gets, her big thing that she gets looped into, she joins the Darlene family, she's trying to hold on to her relationship with Wyatt, something she worked really hard to win back in season three. And it's complicated because she does, she has great ideas. Darling's a freaking wild card. You never know what she's going to do. Darlene is jealous of the connection,

between Wyatt and Ruth. And Ruth has this idea to loop in some high rollers. She takes the quick eight-hour drive up to Chicago to loop in this celebrity chef, Carrie. Go get Bobby Flea. Go get Bobby Flea and then she does some heroin with him, which is my least favorite thing that happens in these seven episodes, honestly. And then he ODs and he's like, I'm out. Also, she buys the Lazio, which is where we first met her.

She's kind of like full circling on her own story. But Carrie, Bobby Flay on his way out of town, is like, listen, I came from here. I worked so hard to get out of here. Why would I end up ODing in the place where I worked so hard to get out of? And he serves as a cautionary tale for her of kinds to be like, you're smart. Work your way out of here. Don't wind up here. Don't wind up dying here when you're smart enough to get yourself out of here.

Let me tell you why. Ruth trying heroin, something that she says she doesn't do, but she does with him to make the sale. Why that upset me so much is, you know, risk going through it. We get long protracted scenes of her staring at the goat urn that has Ben's ashes in it.

She is crying. She is extremely vulnerable. This is not the time I need drugs anywhere near her. How do you feel about it? I didn't, I think the whole Kerry thing was stupid. Okay. I really do.

I'll be honest with you. I think that whole thing was stupid. All right. So look, this guy's famous enough to where he walks around and people know him by face. So let's think of the celebrity chefs that have that type of fame.

With Guy Fierry, what is it called Food Town? What is he? What is he? Flavortown. Flavent. So you got Guy Fierry. Yeah.

He had Bobby Flay. I think Bobby Flay got canceled. I'm not sure if he did it. If he did. Gordon Ramsey. All right, Warren Rams is one. Think about all of these guys. From my neck of the woods, Emerald-Lagasy, for a while I was America's chef.

All of these guys. Now, which one of these motherfuckers are you going to convince to start dealing dope with you? Like, which one of these guys are you going to convince that are doing food, which they love to do? Which one of these guys are you going to come to them with a drug dealing scheme? And they're going to be like, okay, cool, I have all of this stuff. but let me start dealing some dope. Well, he's a user anyway. And like drug culture in the kitchens is, is a thing.

Yeah, true. And he's not, I mean, he's, I like how she sold him on and being an influencer. Not a dealer, but an influencer. And she doesn't need him to, like, deal to his friends. She needs him to just, like, bring his friends and she'll sell to his friends sort of thing. It's still too wrapped up in it to me. And to me, it didn't make sense that, how about this, man? I just like to get high.

Just give me the drugs, man. Give me the drugs so I can think about all kinds of crazy new things in here to cook, cooking all kinds of crazy shit when I'm high, you know? I just didn't like the fact that he, and then the explanation that he used when he talked to her about the fact that he was getting out was exactly what was going through my mind when he got in. I was like, so you mean to tell me you're going to leave Chicago. and you're going to go back to Missouri.

Remember, he'd already put himself in some dangerous situations. He's fucking around with Darlene. Remember, he was annoying, he was annoying Darlene when they were at the farm. So he's already putting himself for no reason. And I hate characters like that when you see people that look like they're taking chances that don't make any fucking sense to me at all. And when he got out of the thing, he basically said everything that I was thinking in my mind. Yeah, I was like, I started clapping.

I wish Kleeka was here. she would tell you. I'm like, yeah, that's right. Go back to your restaurant and make ratatouille or whatever so that we can enjoy it when we're in town. Don't get caught up in the dope game, Carrie. I don't give a shit about Carrie. I give a shit about Ruth.

Right. And like a person who's an extreme amount of pain who has been so responsible, who's like, I don't do that shit, I don't do drugs. She also turns down alcohol. She's seen the ravages, like, the effects that it's had in her own family. Yeah.

in her family. And she's like, no. But I'm like, if there's a time for this to go badly for Ruth, it's right now when she's really hurting. So that's just something. She didn't like her hitting the heroin. And by the way, like, when I saw a train spotting at a young age and I knew I was out of that game.

Yeah, me too. Jesus fucking Christ. Rest of peace to the baby. What about the toilet that he crawls out of? Oh, my God. Yeah. Scared straight train spot. Show your kids train spotting is our point.

Oh, that's good parenting. All right. So let's talk about this last thing I want to talk about, which is I'm calling Ghost from the Past. It's like a bunch of stuff that's sort of haunting around this season, the repercussions of what happened in season three, represented probably most overtly by this new character, Mel, the PI, who's just sniffing around, he's going to show up.

Oh, my dude. I just need a signature. You texted me. I texted Joe. randomly. I just need to, hey look, I just need the signature.

This fucking guy, man. And I hadn't watched the episodes yet, so I'm like, what are we talking about? Anyway, I love him. I love that he's just like, he's got that excuse,

he's like, oh, I'm not sure your doorbell's working. So I decided to like snooper on your backyard. He's just going around. He's leaving people business cards with like, do your fucking job on the back of it. He finds Wendy's dad,

fun, fun fact. That felt like a little a fun bit of casting to me, Richard Thomas, who played John Boy on the Waltons as Wendy's dad. Yeah, John Boy from the Waltons.

Good night, John Boy? Mm-hmm. Wow! Yeah. The Walton's, Peak White. That's what I'm saying. Peak White, peak like, peak like good, goody, goody family.

You know what I mean? White. Because we had the Walton's, we had Little House on the Prairie. You know what I'm saying? Just no motherfucking mention of how we were doing that. at that time.

Back in the time when things were simpler. But you motherfuckers, maybe. For us, it was very complicated during that time. Kind of still is. But yeah, I used to love to watch Walters with my family, man. But also I'm saying you take an actor from a show like the Walton's was just about like the most saccharin sort of like family. And also like, yeah, like Mountain back home family stuff.

and you make him seemingly a shitty dad, because I don't know, Ben and Wendy aren't doing that great. Wendy rips the phone out of the wall when he calls. All he has to do is call her, and she rips the phone out of the wall. He used to, he called her by her first and he hit her with the middle name, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Wendy Marie. So John, John Boy's here.

We'll see where that, you know, more family stuff goes from the past. But the most chilling, sad, scary stuff is that Wendy is going around and just inventing all these stories about her brother. Right. Oh, my brother, he was an addict. If only we had been able to help, we would know where he is now. She's weaving the stories. Marty's like, this is a bad idea. Ruth is like, what the fuck is this that you're going around telling?

What do you think about this, like Wendy, Wendy Delusion stuff? You ever heard of something called Mythomania? I don't think so. Tell me. So there was this guy back in the day, and he had this show. Look this story up, guys. He had this show. There was a show on HBO called Rome. And then there was this guy who convinced people that he was doing a reality show called The Real Roan to the point that he had convinced him the HBO show had, the HBO had given him this whole budget to produce this show.

And he had sucked all of these people in and basically started a production of people that wanted to work on this show. but with one day and it was like one day it was a huge huge big deal everyone looked this up you'll be able to find it it was a big deal he had told all of these people

all of this stuff and then obviously it never happened a friend of mine named John Vaughn that I met on a movie that I was working on when I was in Baton Rouge

he had actually gone down to work with this guy thinking that it was real and that got me into learning about mythomania mythomania

can sometimes be a coping mechanism. I'm not sure if Wendy truly understands the stories that she's saying are lies.

I know she knows intellectually that they're lies. Right, right, right. She knows intellectually that they're lies. But she's, in my opinion,

inventing this sort of backstory about her brother in order to cope with it, in order to cope with what she

had to do. There's a version of this story where Wendy actually feels like, hey, my brother was a wayward soul. It wasn't drugs that killed him, but it was something that he couldn't control. It wasn't an addiction. But it was, she thinks that it's his mental illness that got him killed. She doesn't really take full responsibility for having to kill him. Every time someone asks her about why he's not around, she goes, he was sick. And she puts the on his back on him. Like, your uncle was sick, he was sick, he was sick. That still doesn't explain why you had to do it. You're involved in some fucked up shit,

and that's really what got him killed. But her explanation for it is he was sick. So I think the addiction part of it is something that she was using for cope. To cope, I bring up that story because that guy was having all kinds of personal problems. And this whole thing, this mythomani, this whole thing was something that was keeping him going straight.

So she knows that it's a lie, but I bet it feels true to her is what I'm saying. And it's also a way for her to connect, like more directly connect what she's doing with these rehab clinics. By the way, shady. The bird stole Darlene's idea right out from under her, right? To do these rehab centers. That's what we do, baby. Business babes.

But to directly connect these rehab centers she's building to, like, keeping the good on top of the bad, right? It's disturbing. I think it's really disturbing. I think Laura Linney, as you mentioned, an incredible job. this season. She's always been great. This is just like one step above. Let me close out with the last thing.

This is why I decided to cut it here at episode four instead of episode three. Because episode four ends on a really exciting note, which is Marty coming to Ruth and being like, hey, I got a drug supply problem. Heard you had some drugs because, you know, Javi's holding the drugs back. You know, because he's playing his own game, right? He's holding the drug back. They need the drugs for the Shaw deal. Omar won't help them. So Marty goes to Ruth.

And the way in which he has been treating her doing the good cop, you know, I actually believe Marty cares a lot about Ruth. The way in which he's been good copping her all season pays off for him here because when he needs drugs, he's going to go to Ruth. And Ruth and Ruth and Marty are back together and back in business. And that's a place I love to see for them. How do you feel? Loved it.

Love the fact that they could still be useful to one another. Yeah. It was some stability at that point that Ruth really needed because I think we're watching her fumble around and fuck shit up a little bit. She's learning on the job. You know, she got very good at the whole money laundering part of it. She got very good at that. She got very adept at the managerial part of her job. But now she's actually jumping into a different arena, you know, and there are a lot.

lot of things that have to happen there. There's a lot of connections you have to have, and she's green. So she's not really used to working with personalities like Darlene. She's used to working with personalities like Marty, who are a little bit more reasonable, who are a little bit more by the book, stable. So it's like once again, it was kind of reminiscent of some of the earlier seasons. When she needed someone to actually be there for her and show her how things go, Marty was there for her again. And I I think that that, to me, you know, he was in a pinch too, but at the same time, he does love her. Yeah.

Like, yeah, he definitely loves her. Much easier to work with Ruth than with Wendy, unfortunately. All right. So that's, that's, I mean, that brings us up to the end of episode four. We're going to talk about the back three. There's more stuff I want to say. I want to say more stuff about Jonah, about Charlotte. Oh, I want, look, the next one's going to be long.

I got a 30 minutes worth of Jonah stuff for you. Okay. I can't wait. I can't wait. I'm team Jonah. We can fight it out next time. So we'll be back. What?

Yeah. Yeah. On that teaser, we'll be back next week with more stuff with the great Jonah debate and the end of this season. And you don't want to miss it because Van didn't just text me about the end of the season. He called me. In the year of our Lord, 2022, Van picked up the phone to call me to talk to me about the end of the season. Didn't take his call, but we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it next time.

This episode was produced by Sasha Ashall, and thank you all so much for listening. We'll see you next week. Bye. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items. Then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes. so you can feel confident it's what you ordered.

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