The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Ozark' Series Finale Breakdown

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan return to 'Ozark' to discuss everything that went down in the final episodes of Netflix's Emmy-winning series. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna, do you ever wish you could definitively prove that you have the right opinions about movies? Uh, yeah, Neil, because I do have the right opinions about movies and television, right, Dave? No, because I'm more right about those things, and I demand trial by content. Oh boy, what is trial by content? Each week, we'll take on a huge question. Each of us will bring a choice and combine with listener submissions and your votes, we will come to a decision. It's trial by content every Tuesday on Spotify, the ringer.com, wherever you're listening right now. Don't let Neil win.

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It's Van Lee. Hello, Van. How are you? Hi, Joe. How are you? The Ringerverse continues to take over all other podcasts on the Ringar Network. If you want to hear the Midnight Boys, Pee, Pee, Pee, Van and Charles talk about Atlanta. Every week here on the Presti's TV podcast feed, you can.

I'm here. I'm around talking about, you know, Better Call Saul with Ben, with Ben Lindberg every week. Here on the feed. There's a lot going on on the Prestiase TV podcast feed, but we are here to talk about Ozark, the last run of episodes on Ozark.

I think it's really telling that for the first run we did three episodes. We're trying to figure out how we handle these binge drops. So like we did three episodes. For this last run of arguably Netflix's most prestige drama,

we're doing one episode. And you know why? Why? Because it is a crushingly busy time for television right now. Everyone's trying to get their episodes out in the Emmy qualification window. So it is jam-packed. And I actually kind of want to start there. We're not going to get into sort of spoilers of the plot yet, but I want to start you with this question about, does it feel like this was a big deal that Ozark ended its run?

Ozark, that has won multiple Emmys? Like, are you feeling any sense of occasion? Or did it just feel like it happened and we moved on? Ozark is suffering from the Atlanta disease. What does that mean? And there are a lot of people that are listening to this that live in Atlanta. They're thinking we have a lot of those. But these shows came out during not.

So Prestige TV obviously has been around since you would say the Sopranos, right? Yeah. And so then with Sopranos Madman, I'd say Sex and the City's Prestige TV. All the people argue that with me. You could. You're not sure to me. So when shows like Atlanta and Ozark came out, they were right at the point to where took a familiar face,

Jason Bateman, Laurelini, Donald Glover, the other two guys, the bride Tyree Henry, and Lakeith Stanfield, we didn't know as well. But throw them in something prestige and watch the magic happen. And they immediately had a huge following. and huge audiences. What happened was during the run of both shows, the content wars happened.

Right? The content wars happened, and everybody started getting, right now you're not a Hollywood somebody, really. Either you're an ultra-Urater, you're like, I would never do that,

or you haven't made it yet if you're not on prestige television somewhere right now. But even the ultra-ulta-lister's like Merrill Streep's doing big little lies, you know, like I don't think there's any level too high for Prestige TV at this point, you know? Very true. I was just driving down the street in LA and I saw Josh Brolin,

outer range. Everybody's getting this show. So with those two shows, they took breaks. Breaks that were a little long. And it used to be, the Sopranos took a break. People remember this. The Sopranos was gone for a whole season, came back. They almost in the same same thing.

They did half of the season took a break, came back with the second half of the season. People's brains are moving so fast. We talk about how much content that they're, that's out there. This week, I have podcasts due on Ozark, Atlanta, Moon Night, Dr. Strange, and the multiverse of madness. There's a lot of shit out there. And I think it doesn't matter how good your show is right now. You have to be like Drake. Drake released over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again every single year. I think both of these shows suffered from not being as Ballyhooed because they took little breaks. And when you take, when you

took that little break. We just filled it up with other stuff, man. We filled it up with other stuff. And I think Atlanta more so is probably suffering from it than Ozark. But Ozark, right now, as much as I love the show, it doesn't feel like if it's television right now. I think, and we are going to, I promise it into what actually happened here at the end of this series. But I want to talk about the Netflix problem a little bit quickly because we're in the midst of this moment. where Netflix is experiencing its first serious wobble, public-facing wobble, in terms of its stock

prices dropping and the layoffs happening and all this conversation about, you know, the content wars that you mention, all these other outlets, HBO, Apple, Disney, all we're like, oh, we see you Netflix, we're going to build our own streamers. Exactly. We're on our own musty TV, musty TV, and we're going to, and then people at home trying to balance their budget are like, I can't have it all. So I got to choose. And Netflix, for a while, their model was quantity over quality in terms of like, there's a lot of quality on there.

But they're like, we're going to throw so much up there that you're just going to feel like there's endless things that you can watch on here. But I think what people are finding out is that HBO with HBO Max, you know, HBO has always said, you mentioned soprano sex in the city. Like HBO is the originator of prestige TV. Apple's been coming up with a lot of really good content. Disney has the families, you know, and Netflix is left holding the bag with like Ozark, which feels subpar despite it's like Emmy Shine. It doesn't feel like it's on the level with these other things despite being a very good show. And the binge drop, which I've always had a problem with because it's impossible to talk about a binge drop show.

binge drop really hurts it because for something like succession or euphoria or these other like big momentous shows that we've been seeing, you got to have that week by week momentum to like build the conversation. What's going to happen to Ruth? What's going to happen to the birds? We don't know. Are they going to make it? I'm really curious. What are the clues? Let's talk about it.

And with the binge drop, we're like, well, here it is. The end of the story. But that's another thing that changed. Another thing that changed was people's when the binge drop. When the binge drop first came out, people were like, oh, wow! Yeah, exactly. I can spend a whole weekend, and then there was a couple of shows that went, no, our show doesn't work like that.

Like, we have a cliffhangery show, and we want you guys to invest and sit your ass down somewhere and watch the show, right? That changed during the time that Ozark was that Netflix model. These other streamers came along and they didn't follow soon. You know what I mean? Like Amazon follows suit with their shows at first. Then they stopped. You know what I mean?

And then you saw Disney Plus and HBO Max and all of these shows. They didn't do it. So now Netflix seems like, whereas Netflix seemed like the new disruptive upstart thing. Now they seem like the old fogey that's trying to carve out their audience and figure out like how they stay relevant in this new era of content wars. So that's some big picture stuff. But I just thought it was really interesting that Ozark ended, and I feel like a lot of people just didn't even notice that it happened at all. So welcome to this podcast where that's what we're going to be talking about.

Yes. But we are talking about the last seven episodes of Ozark. This is your official spoiler warning. You're listening to a podcast, to quote Van, about Ozark. We're about to spoil the last seven episodes of Ozark. So if you don't want to know. And now's your time to go. In a big crime show like this one,

obviously a question of like, who's going to live, who's going to die is something that infects all of our brains as we watch the end run of a show. How do you feel about the calculus of all of that as it panned out with this series? This is the way I felt. And this is the thing about with these crime shows.

This is the thing that the sopranos avoided, breaking bad, and they did too. And these other shows have to like do. with is these people are our protagonists. See, when we see a criminal on the fucking TV, depending, because I always kind of root for the guys to get away from the cops. I don't know why. Like, when we see, I'm watching the car chase and I'm like,

hey, make a left dog! The helicopter's guy was a very good way. But when we see these people, we see fully formed criminals. And the only perspective we get on their lives are what they tell us. And we don't believe them because we think that they're full of shit. So, hey, I had to do this because of that. I got caught up into this world and this is why this happened. And it just kept building and building and snowballing and snowball.

For my family. For my family until I had no control over what it was that I was doing. And now I'm in over my head and I'm in this world and I can't escape. You go, oh, bullshit. You want a boat. You know what I mean? watching that happen to these families is both the compelling part of the show

and the maddening part because they almost always transform into megalomaniacal crazy killer kingpins. People that need to go. But you don't really want to see them go because you get that it's kind of not Marty's fault that they're in this situation. His partner got greedy.

His partner got greedy. He was laundering money. But if, but if, But had it been up to Marty, he would have been a criminal that laundered money, and it would have never happened. His partner got greedy and set off a chain of events that led him into all of this stuff. Joe disagrees. I want to hear it. I would just say that for a lot of these characters, there's usually an off ramp, or several off ramps that they just zoom past. And I think for Marty and for Wendy, and for Wendy especially, yeah, it's not Marty's fault that he started in this, but it's Marty's fault.

as enabled by and then eventually directed by Wendy that they didn't get out of it before it got as bad as it did. Even the outs though, it's always an out and then the end. There's always a new sort of, and so we watch these people and we're rooting for them every single show. We're rooting for them to figure it out. Ozark is just one endless string of problems. It's a show about problem solving.

It is. It's a show about problem solving. And then you get to the last season and you have like, what do I want to see? Do I want to see them get their comeuppance? Because they didn't turn into what Tony Soprano turned into, which was a living, breathing demon. Okay, they didn't turn into that.

What do you want to see from them? And you never know what the writer is going to do, but you just know that you don't want them to wuss out. But we don't even know what wussing out is. So I don't know. It's hard. It's tough because, like, the question, the question you have here is, like,

What story are we seeing? Are we seeing a story where the white middle upper class people who have come to an impoverished area and destroyed countless lives? Do they make it out unscathed because that's honestly the way the power structures in our world work? Or are we seeing a different story where there will be some sort of retribution for them? And what complicates the narrative you're talking about is that there's his other character, Ruth. Ruth and Jesse Pickman, Pinkman, I think, are like sort of similar in that, in that it complicates us rooting for a Walter White or a Marty Bird when like the life of someone like Ruth or Jesse Pinkman's on the line. Do you know what I mean? But they did the same thing that Marty did.

They made choices. They made choices too. Jesse certainly made choices and Ruth certainly made choices. Like Ruth had a million chances to get out. Ruth had chances to get out in this situation. The last seven episodes of this situation, the fact that Ruth didn't take her, she didn't get the fuck out,

it was driving the shit out of me. I'm not going to lie. It was, it was, it was bothering me. I understood it, but I foresaw what was going to happen. So, okay, so let's go back to the beginning of this final chunk. Episode eight is called The Cousin of Death. Terrible episode, by the way.

It's a high concept episode. right? They decided to mark Ruth's journey to make this decision like using Illmatic as her That's over a right. That's a bunch of dudes in the room in pieces like that fucking Nas crazy man, we're gonna flip them now. Now

Ruth, who is 26 is listening to Pete Rock and Seals moves and the last they were missing. It's like weird. It's like As much as I love Mike, Mike is like a friend of mine. That's the was crazy too. That scene was wild, a bizarre moment in TV history when Killer Mike shows up.

Like, bizarre, bizarre. But Ruth makes this decision. And I mean, I honestly wasn't sure which way she was going to go. And then when it happened, bam, it happens. She kills Hobby. She kills Hobby in the first episode of the season. And something that Julia Garner said, she's talking to my friend Julie Miller over at Vanity Farran.

She's like, Ruth's already dead. When Wyatt dies, Ruth dies, and everything after that does not touch her. She's already dead. So every decision she makes, everything she does, she's just, like, running towards the bullet from that point on. And I think that, you know, Julia Garner is really good. I think that really works. But I like that it was like a swing in an episode. I just didn't think it worked at all that first episode, you know?

No, it did work. And it was coming off of what we came off of, which was. the most shocking scene, the red wedding episode of the show, if you will. Coming off that, I thought they need to come back a little, a little stronger. Javi,

Javi is maybe the worst villain that the show's ever had. He, like, no, I mean, when I say worse, I mean like he's a bad character. I mean, like,

he's just a damage from the assholes. Yeah, oh, okay, yeah. Right, right. So, scary, yeah. Yeah, scary, unhinged, a weirdo.

Are you a better call Saul, watcher? Yes. So Tony Dalton doing, it's like Tony Dalton doing Lalo Salamanca. Same thing. It's the same thing. It's a smiling, charismatic sociopath. Same thing.

Terrifying. To me, and I guess maybe this is what they wanted, these last seven episodes became about Ruth. To me, like, Marty became feckless at a point to where it was like so difficult for me to like, You know, you know what I mean?

And then Wendy, Wendy's heel turn was, they really went forward with Wendy. The character that seemed like the stakes were highest for them emotionally and in their lives was Ruth. And that's why it was so hard for me because I knew it wasn't going to work out for her. I think part of that also is a responsiveness to like, you know, Julia Garner is won, I think, what, two Emmys for the. It's like one of those things where like a supporting character starts to swallow the show that they're in. Because the character is so popular and the performance is so big and well regarded and it starts to swallow everything else around it to a certain degree. And I think that's what happened here. There's something that happened in the next episode.

We're not going to dig deep into every single episode. But there's this really interesting exchange in episode 9 where Wendy says, why do you choose everyone over your family? And then Marty says we can still get out of this with our lives. And that's just like that's what it comes down to. Marty has been trying to have it all different kinds of ways. And at the end, when it really mattered, he chose his family over Ruth. And at the end, when it really, really mattered, even Jonah comes back into the fold. I want to ask you about that final moment.

So we cut to dark, cut to black, we hear the shotgun blast. You can assume that Mel is dead and Jonah's pulled the trigger. He's killed someone for his family. becoming the thing that he was resisting, becoming folding into the family. I had a read on that moment. Now that I've read interviews with the actors and the creators, my read I think was wrong,

but I want to know what your read was on that moment. Like, what does it mean for Jonah to be the one to pull the trigger there? I didn't like it, Joe. Tell me why. Because something needed to happen. Jonah was just about to leave and go away with his grandfather. Was it the wreck that made

Jonah just flip and come back to the... Jonah was A.J. Soprano for a lot of his season. Just a competent one. He was A.J. Soprano who was good at math. You know, I'm serious. Like, he was, he was

a constant thorn in his parents' side, doing weird things, reacting emotionally, not seeing the bigger picture. And then all of a sudden, by the end, he's a Mexican cartel hitman, blowing somebody's head off to save, to protect the family's secrets. It's, he killed a police officer. You know what I mean?

Or a guy who, I guess, was a police officer as he goes back. So I'm like, I didn't see the turn coming. It would have made sense that at some point Charlotte and Jonah bought into what was happening with their family. They really already had, to be honest with them. Charlotte definitely had. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, Jonah was laundering money as well. So, like, it made sense that they were,

that they had bought into a lifestyle. But they had never, throughout this entire season, bought into the family. They never had, not even Charlotte. Jonah was rebelling against that. They were rebelling against it to the point to where, for some reason, they were going to go live with their grandfather, and they were going to go live with their grandfather.

They, there's a situation happens. And not only do they turn back and begrudgingly come back with their family, they then become soldiers in a whole new way. I guess you understand that 15, 16 year old kids are hormonal and their their fucking opinions change at the drop of a hat. But I didn't get that. I understood Marty choose in his family because the thing with Marty is this. Marty's in that situation to where he really starts to at some point,

tries to get out of the life while doing as little damage as possible. That was at cross-purposes with Wendy, who was trying to get out of the life while building something as big as as big as possible. Marty was trying to sneak out. She was trying to go out with a bang. So that push-pull was always pretty good. So Marty choosing to become Wendy at the end of it kind of makes sense.

The family was going to have to go in one decision in one way. He threatened to kill a guy over a road rage incident. He was unraveling, you know? The Jonathan just didn't make any sense to me. I mean, I don't have a good answer for you, but I hope it's the accident because otherwise I don't know why that accident is there at all, other than to be like a weird tease at the beginning of the season, right? Because they showed it to us at the beginning, the very beginning of the season, which we watched months ago whenever we watched it, right? and then the car flipping. Everyone emerges without a scratch.

Not even a fucking hangnail, Joe. It's a bizarre. The car flips three times. What kind of ride is that? I'm going to buy something so we can travel around us. Ring your pal so we'll be safe. I asked Twitter for some questions that they had about the episode before we recorded. And someone wrote in,

How much should Honda pay the writers to stage a car crash that everyone survives and reinforces what Marty told the cartel when he tried to sell it to them in season one, best safety rating. Like, Honda minivan got the endorsement, the Ozark endorsement. But so my read on this finale,

I read it wrong, then I will explain how the creators see it. I thought Jonah pulling the trigger there was a way that the birds were losing in terms of like, they thought they got out, they thought they could get out without any repercussions.

And the repercussion is they've turned their, son into a killer and that that is maybe worse than death. That's what I thought the show was trying to tell us. Okay, like Ruth dies. Those are the consequences of her own acts and actions. The birds have been saying this whole time, we're doing this for our family. And then it ends with Jonah pulling the trigger. So it's like, okay, well, fuck. Like, you know, we fucked up our children just as badly as Wendy's father fucked up his children, right? The cycle continues. That's not apparently the read of the creators who have said that basically the story they're trying to tell is the story of the

Kennedys. What do you know about the way that Joseph Kennedy made his money? Rum Runner. Rum Runner. One of the biggest prohibition era bootleggers to live. Irish mob master connected with all the guys. He knew them all. He knew Luciano.

He knew Capone. He knew all of them. It all came from him being a run-runner. Joe Kennedy, an American story. I wish you could all live to experience a Zoom call with Van leaning towards the camera and just going, Ron Runner. Joe Kennedy. Okay, so what they've said is that they were trying to, quote-unquote, with the birds.

quote unquote, building a myth and creating a curse. And so this idea of like the birds make their fortune in the Ozarks here, and then they go back to Chicago clean. They make their fortune with drug cartel money and all that sort of stuff. And they come back. Wendy's got political aspirations. They're going to be big political movers and shakers. They have the ability to impact voting around the country.

All of that is something that they clearly have their eyes on. You know, Mel invokes it right before he dies. He's like, you don't get to be the coax. you don't get to be the Kennedys. And Wendy's like, since one. Of course we do. Right. So that's the myth making.

And then the curse that comes with it, the curse of the Kennedys, right, is that like Joe, Joe Kennedy makes his money this way, right? And then for generations thereafter, like all of his descendants. Weird shit. Just weird bad shit. Ted Kennedy, after Chappaquiddick said, some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys. Curse of the Kennedys is a thing. So Chris Mundy who created Ozark says the birds are dragging around a curse with them.

I've seen that play out in the show. Something I told you I was going to say when we started recording is I have this cast list up at the top of my notes here. And I just started highlighting in red all the people who are dead. And the cast list is like in order of like importance on the show. And it's like the top four are the birds still clear, clean as a whistle. and then it's just an ocean of red underneath them. Everyone's dead. Except for Maya, thank God Maya didn't die.

But like everyone else... Everyone else is dead. And that's the curse of the birds is there. Everything they touch dies and they're going to drag it with him. Rick and the crew from the walking dead. If I'm at some town, you know what I mean? If I'm in some town and Rick and them come through and they're like, hey, we need shelter. We can help you with the town.

Hey, we're going to build. No, get the fuck. around here. Because when you guys come around, everybody, all the bad things happen. It's like, whatever Rick and them went, something bad happened. Hey, it's this new settlement. They know how to

grow collard greens and apples. Not for long. They've got Montessori education going on. They've built a whole society. They've survived. They are thriving. They're doing live action plays on Saturday nights. They got entertainment. Not for long.

Rick Grimes and they're about to come in there and there's going to be a war. Everybody's getting fucked up. So, so like that, think about it. Ruth's entire bloodline is dead. Only three survived. Someone wrote it and asked, is three now the biggest landowner in Missouri? He is. He is.

Yeah. Like, he is. Three is the man. Three, get out, bro. Three, seriously. And Rachel. Yeah. Three.

Until back to Florida or whatever. Three, go to Miami, bro. I'm serious. This money will go so far there. Three, become a content creator, build like a content house. Leave, dog. It's not going to work out. I can't wait for three's hype house.

It's a dead man buried under your pool. I get out. The fuck from around there, three, please. So overall, I mean, overall, it sounds like you're down on this last stretch of the show. I wouldn't say down. I would say that I'd just, I wouldn't say down. I would be lying if I said I did run out of gas. I ran out of emotional gas, man.

It was so much. Navarro's sister. How many people they're going to bring to the FBI to try to get the FBI to get the people to deal? Navarro is going to be the deal. Javier's going back to Navarro for the deal. We don't need Navarro for the deal. Let's give fucking Camilla the deal. At some point, the fucking dad was going to be.

get the deal and become the like the like the grandfather should have ran the cartel like everything they sent marty down there to run the cartel he did a terrible job like you know it was just that was a one episode stint yeah there was just a lot going on and i think i think i ran out of gas with the show to be honest with you they should have dropped these all together so we could just finish. It should have been, and I think it should have been 10 episodes instead of 14. I don't think they had 14 episodes stories of them. And like, to be really honest with you, so Jen Cheney wrote a really good review of the finale that I suggest folks read over at Vulture, but she was like the peak of the show was season three, like the Ben season, right? Because

Ben comes in and he like actively shakes everything up in a really meaningful way. And we learn a lot about Wendy because of Ben and all sort of like that. And then last season is the fallout from Ben and then this is more fallout from Ben, I suppose, a hobby coming to town, et cetera. But I think that I feel like the show was leaning too heavily on Bateman, Linney, and Garner, who are all tremendously good at their jobs. And that's not enough. Like, each of them get a huge Emmy bid moment in this episode. Bateman gets the road rage scene, right?

Laura Linney smacks her head against a car window and blood just trickles down her face. Like, they're just putting their Emmy reels out there. They're all trying to do that. But that's not enough for a show when a plot is just spinning its wheels around three really good performers. You know what I mean? The old manager of the Blue Bar or whatever kills a cartel hitman. And they bury him under the pool. It's like, at this point, I'm like, all right.

She's like, it's like, she just, she kills a man. It's just, I know that shit is wacky. I guess, I don't know. It just kept going to Claire. There was one fantastic moment. It would have been completely unrealistic from Claire from the Shaw group or whatever she's from. Yeah, yeah.

To be to like, keep that shit. She goes, hey, Ruth killed her. I'm like, oh shit. Now I'm back. And so there are moments where you're like, oh, my God, the shit is on. What happens now? But far too few of them for them to ride on that type of kinetic energy. I mean, that's the finale.

The finale, I think, is pretty strong for that. You know, it's like party on the boat. Ruth dies confrontation with the birds at their house. And Navarro dies. Like, you know, a lot happens in the finale. but there's just a lot of wheel spinning. We got a bunch of questions about it. But it feels like there's a lot of wheel spinning up to that point.

But the grandfather, the grandfather character sucked. Just another roadblock for no reason. It didn't really work other than to, like, bring out this performance from Laura Linney as she's like, as Wendy's begging on her knees to not have her kids taken from her. But like, no offense to Richard Thomas, who's playing her dad. But like, I think they were trying to do like Ben again. because Ben was so successful. They're like, let's bring in another member of Wendy's family to unhinge Wendy.

And like, you can't really play the same card twice, you know? And who's mad at her for decades and decades because she got busy in high school. It's like, I get it. It's just, I don't know. There was just so much going on. Males on the trail. The grandfather's still in kids.

We got, we're trying to launder money. Then on top of that, I was actually glad when they talked about laundering some money. I'm like, yo, we've got to launder some money at some point. Anyway, go ahead. Bring the grift back. No, and I mean, I liked that Mel shows up at the end. I think it's really in keeping with his character.

There was that see, like the flashback to his time as a cop in the first chunk of episodes. And you and I talked at the time about like his addictive behavior, his addictive behavior to the job, how he just can't let anything lie. and so him coming back, I think, really worked for me. I want to ask you, for me, part of the thing that takes the knees out of the back off the show, I think actually is why it's death, because White's death was shocking and upsetting, but then I just missed him being there, being this, like, innocent heart at the center of the show because no one else has an innocent heart on the show. And so they brought him back.

for some, like, you know, ghostly hang time with Ruth. Did that work for you, like, Ghost Wyatt stuff? I always like ghostly hang time because, like, you know, it's always cool. Like, they brought back Adriano LaServe and she's just hanging out. She's, like, haunting Carmel's mama. I always liked ghostly hang time, but the thing was they took Wyatt and they didn't replace it with anything. You know what I mean?

They, like, we didn't, they didn't replace it with anything. So it was, I especially liked the scene when all of the lame moors were back. And the reason why I liked that scene was because Ruth looks at her family as a curse and largely they are, not just to her, but to the town at large, right? But there were good times. And she's lost a lot. And she hasn't just lost her cousin. She's lost an uncle and a dad and family. And, you know, there was, there was at some point, she was remembering a good time, at some point, the just overwhelming mountain of loss that was inside of her had to present itself.

So I enjoyed seeing that. But Wyatt couldn't come back in any meaningful way because his influence over this plane that we're on was gone. Like he, you know, he was doing his best to figure out the world and didn't get a chance to because circumstances. is bigger than him took his life. So they just didn't replace that energy with anything. And Ruth went, and if Ruth searched for Hobby had lasted three, four episodes, I don't know if it could have, then maybe.

But she aced them out pretty quick. She got the drop on them. The kids told accessories to murder, once again, the kids told she killed Javi. That ends that. And so once again, not fulfilling. The moment of Wyatt dying

was fulfilling in that way that really great television is because you just have no idea what's next. Because the way she's going, she could have been streaming. She could have easily walked in there and killed everybody.

So you have no idea what's going to happen next. And then the show just became, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, like if that happens in episode seven, if that happens in episode seven and we've got three more episodes to go. You and I are on like gripping the edge of our seats for the rest of the ride.

Instead, they gave us seven more episodes to go. And it's just like, that's a problem all over the place as far as I'm concerned. That like usually eight episodes seasons should be six and ten episodes season should be eight. Like that's kind of how I feel about everything. And six episodes season should sometimes be eight or ten. Or a movie. Or a movie. Maybe you just have a movie instead of a TV show.

Remember movies? Okay. The other flashbacker reappearance I want to ask about is Ben. We're talking about how much we liked Ben. In season three, we get this, like, final, his final moments in this episode where we find out that he is, like, forgiven Wendy for what she did. Something that she'll never know about, right? How did that work for you? So it was an incredibly effective scene.

It's just terrifically well-acted. Just, what's the guy's name? Tom Pelfrey. That's the role he was built to play. He's fantastic. I'm sure he'll end up in the MCU or playing a Jedi at some point. But that's like the role he was, it's just fantastic. It was so gut-wrenching, I wonder why they thought they had to show it to us.

Ozark is like an emotional roller coaster. Right. Every single is just tense, it's maybe the most depressing. show ever. It's so gut-wrenching. I kept want, I kept, I kept, I kept asking myself why they're showing us this. My best thought about why they would show us that is that like, Wendy can't forgive herself and she's out here punishing herself for probably the rest of her life, um, not knowing that her brother forgave her. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, I, I get it. I thought, and I would never, I wouldn't want to take the scene back the scene. Just was really great. But it was just, you know, it's hard to watch. And it being that hard. You know, it's a television show. That's tough to watch. I get it, guys. But like, when I get, when I get kicked in my nuts like that, I want some ice after.

You know, I want to, and the ice is normally the explanation of why we had to see that. Yeah. You know. Instead, it just like cut to the. It's just a thing. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

We're almost done here. But I have a really important question to ask you. Sure. If you're in your car, you're stuck in traffic, and Jason Bateman starts punching the blood out of some guy's face and it's spattering your driver's side window. What are you doing, Van, in that scenario? Number one, I'm going to, I'm going to, if it's actually Jason Bateman in real life,

if it's Jason Bateman, I'm like, oh, shit. Get him, Jason. I'm like, yo, Jason, fuck him up. Jason, I've been fucking with you sister Hogan. family. You know what I mean? Like I've been fucking with you. Was it Valerie?

Did it turn it to the whole family or whatever? Like I've been fucking with you since the 80s. I remember... Man, you're my favorite. I remember when you were the biggest thing on Tiger Beat. And then I literally remember when people were like,

what happened to Jason Bateman? People don't remember this. People were like, where the fuck did Jason Bateman go? You know what's true about Jason Bateman is he was kind of the Julia Garner of Hogan's family because it was supposed to be about the mom. and then Jason Baman just took over that show. That's so funny.

Took over the show. The dad was a pilot. So he was only on a couple of episodes. He wasn't on every episode. It's just the Jason B. Man show. Jason B. Damon was the hugest thing.

The same as Alex B. Keaton did to Family Tice, too. Same deal. So I'm looking at him. I've been fucking with you since I was a kid. If you need some help, I'm on this motherfucker's head. What you need, Jason? But, you know, I'm not going to jail for this, baby. But, no, I've been like, Jason, baby.

love Jason, baby. So I would be delighted to see him doing that. I would try to stop him. And if it's Marty Bird, what are you doing? Oh, if it's Marty Bird, y'all got to get the fuck off my car. I ain't got nothing to do. That's what I'm saying. That person just stood there while the blood painted their window.

I am crawling over to the passenger side and leaving. Yeah, y'all can get to fuck off my car. Bye. Yeah, I might hear what all that foolishness, man. Like, if y'all go fight, fight right there. Get out of my face with all. I'm not trying to eat it. I'm trying to get to the career, man.

You got out of my face with all of that. All right. Here's my last question for you. Sure. What, if anything, will be the legacy of Ozark? It feels to me, I ask you a question now I'm going to answer it. It feels to me like this is the end of an era for Netflix. Because I know, like, the era that started with like, Netflix starts with House of Cards and Origin of New Black.

That's how Netflix builds its prestige, like, mountain, right? And it still has huge, you know, it won the drama Emmy, right? last year with Queen's Gambit. You know, it's got Squid Game, it's got Bridgeton, like, it's got big hits. But like... But this whole, like, we're going to give you what HBO is giving you. Seems like a game that they gave up when they changed leadership a couple years ago, right?

They need to find another one. They're like, we're not developing these shows anymore. We're going to give you... Like, Bridgeton and Squid Game are big hits, but they're big, like, poppy hits. Queens Gambit was the last show developed by the show. the old person in charge of programming. And now it's just they're pursuing foreign markets

and reality TV is their main goal. And maybe that will be a successful, but it doesn't seem to be a successful gamut. So if you're not going to have IP, I mean, reality can obviously get Netflix, right?

But if you're not going to have IP and Netflix is not going to have IP, it doesn't seem like Netflix is going to have IP. You know what I mean? So if you're not going to have strong IP. You need big gaudy shows. The reality

is that people's allegiance to brands is so strong. I watch shit on Disney Plus. I have no business watching. What do you watch on Disney Plus? Like the making of weird shit.

I don't have time to be watching some of this shit. Like the making of some animated movie about a dog. It just pops up and I'm like, oh, okay. I'll check that out. Or all of that Gio stuff. I love that Gio stuff, but I watch that Gio stuff about,

this is just weird stuff I watch on Disney Plus because for some reason in my brain, that thing that says Disney, it goes, oh, my God, you know them. A little serotonin hit for you. Yeah. You know them. Watch everything they say. And Netflix wasn't around long enough to get that. The thing that made me come to Netflix.

was the content. They had the goods. And they're going to have to keep having the goods. I like squeak games. Squeak game or games? Game? Squeak game. I like squeak game.

I like all of that stuff. But I'm not one of those people that just watches what everybody else is talking about. I'm one of those people that watches things because I have a genuine vested interest in them. And so it's tough, you know? I don't know what they do. They need another Ozark, though.

When you talk about brand, loyalty. I think there's brand loyalty. There's also just like a clear brand. And like HBO has a clear brand. Apple has is curating itself a really solid brand with its programming. You're right. FX has a brand. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Like real like these are names of networks where we know that someone is like running that ship in a really competent way. And with Netflix, I'm not saying they're incompetent. Obviously, they're still very top of the pile. They're doing great, yeah. But

they don't have an identity. If you tell me I'm watching a Netflix show, I don't know what that means. If you tell me you're watching an HBO show, you know, is it a comedy or is it a drama? Then I kind of understand what you're watching. You know what I mean? That used to be the strength of Netflix. You don't think so, Joe? That it didn't. I think

when you're talking about yes, I think that that was their initial approach, which is just like, we have everything. Yeah. What are you in the mood for? Right. Taylor your homepage to whatever you're in the mood for, we have everything.

But I think that in the end, now that there's all these heavy hitters coming for their seat, that's not going to be enough to earn them lasting loyalty. Probably right. So Ozark, rest in peace, Ruth Langmore, possibly also Netflix? I don't think we're ready to bury Netflix. I've been cool yet. but they'll be fine. But it is in the end of a certain era for Netflix with the end of Ozark.

If I'm Netflix, I'm getting on the phone with Brooker, and I'm saying I need Black Mirror back. I need to get people talking. Black Mirror, perfect for the times right now. Like, I, we need a new season, Black Mirror. Now, put some kind of microchip of somebody's brain, make a movie, make a show about it, like, figure something out. To make us really sad about a breakup we had 10 years ago.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Put us in the post-apocalyptic world and let a, what of Boston Dynamics. Are the people from Boston Dynamics paying attention? To their robots? The fucking very, it's, I'm being honest with you. And I want to go to Boston Dynamics. Just real quick before we go. I think you should.

It's almost as if the people from Boston Dynamics said, that's scary. Let's try that. Like, they saw the metal head thing from. for a black mirror and they're like, let's build one. We didn't think of that. I'm like, why? It's the same fucking thing. Okay, I support you.

You take your field trip to Boston Dynamics, but what you have to do when you get there is let's have a screening of Terminator. And then we'll end the screening. Then we'll be like, okay, Boston Dynamics, what did you learn? What did you learn? What did you learn? The Matrix, they always, the machines know that we fucked up. They know they can do it better.

Bossa Dynamics get on your shit. But no, there's a lot of stuff out there. Before I leave up, before I have one question for you. Yeah. What are your top three most few streamers? HBO is number one. Hulu might be number two because I can get the FX stuff on there. Yeah.

There's a bunch of other stuff on there. So I watch a lot of Hulu. And then I would think tied for third is Disney and Apple right now. Apple might be ahead except for like I watch a lot of Disney for work, right? But yeah, how about you? Where are you? It's HBO Macs. I don't know how they got up there so quick, but it's HBO Max.

It's Disney Plus and then it's Apple. And people thought Apple was going to have all of this trouble. Nah, man, Apple's doing fine. They started slow, but they're there. You know what I mean? What's interesting about Apple, I know this is the Nozark show and not the State of the Strievers show, but what's interesting about Apple? is that when they did their launch

and I was there when they did their launch and when they did their launch they brought out, you know, they brought out Steven Spielberg and they brought out Rees Sutherstoon and Jennifer Asden and they brought out Oprah and they're like,

we got it all. We got all the shiniest stars in the galaxy. And then actually what won the day is like solid shows with actually not huge stars in them. Ted Lassow was not on the shiny docket when they first rolled it all out. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Make good shows. All right, well, Van and I will be back around talking about, you know, Moon Night and Dr. Strange and all that other stuff that we usually talk about. Atlanta for Van. Better call Saul for me. We'll be in your ears talking about the things you watch. Bye. Oh, and guess who produced this episode? Oh. Steve Allman. Aw, true.

Aw, our fave. Thanks, Steve. Bye.