The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Ozark:’ Where We Left Off

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Joanna and Van team up to recap how we got to this point in ‘Ozark.’ Plus, they explain what makes each character so compelling, compare the show to other great crime dramas, and look ahead to the fourth and final season. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Van Lathan Associate Producer: Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up everybody? I'm JJ John D. Stramski. And I'm Jason Gough, and if you haven't heard, the ringer has gone local. I'm bringing the fire. I'm bringing the rain from the Big Apple with my show, New York, New York. And I'm reping Shy Town with my new show The Full Go on All Things Chicago. We've got episodes three nights a week with all the reaction to the local teams and guests. Plus bonus episodes around all the big games and storylines.

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Expedia. The one place you go to go. places. Terms apply. This summer serve up the cookout classics, Heinz ketchup, and Kraft singles. Every good burger needs a layer of perfectly milty cheese and thick, rich ketchup. We all know it's not a cookout without Heinz and Kraft. Welcome into the Prestige TV podcast feed for a very special Ozark Season 4 preview episode. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me is a member of my Ringover's family. Van Latham. Hi, Van. How are you?

Hey, how are you, Joe? I'm doing great. There is no one else on earth I would rather talk to about a crime show than you based on everything I've ever heard you say about crime shows and your knowledge thereof. So we're going to talk about season four of Ozark is going to drop the first half of it. It's going to drop on Netflix this Friday for seven episodes. The back half is going to drop sometime later in the spring. We'll talk about that strategy.

in a little bit. And we just thought we'd get on a little Zoom call and talk to each other about where we left off. Because a lot of people don't even remember what happened at the end of season three. So we're just going to do like a little bit of a recap and sort of why we like this show, why we think it's worth talking about. Then we'll come back and check in with you guys midseason. So about, I don't know, episode three, episode four. We'll decide. And then I think episode four.

At the end of episode four, I think we should come back and check. And then we'll do one more episode about the last three. So that's three Ozark check-ins with Van and me. that you will have to enjoy. So, Van, let me just start with the biggest, most important question, which is, why are you a fan of Ozark? Because I like brilliance. Oh, okay.

What makes it brilliant? What makes it brilliant? Well, the show is about how brilliance battles dysfunction, you know? Wow. Okay. Coming in high, I love this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what I think about it. So you have somebody who is just unbelievably mentally resourceful in Marty Byrd.

Like from the jump, the jump you figured out that Marty Byrd has, not just a, because a lot of guys, a lot of people have it either way. They either have like the numbers and figures, brilliance, or they have the read people and know how to act brilliance. It's so IQ, EQ, whole thing. You realize very quickly that not only is Marty just one of the, in terms of numbers, best money launderers ever, but he's also got some slickness to him.

he then gets thrust into this situation that is crazy dysfunctional when he had his life in, albeit a clandestine functionality, but it was very functional. And he's thrown into this and can he take all of these different things, these different dysfunctional systems, and streamline them to where they work for him and to where he can get him and his family out of the situation that they're in. And every time he's faced with a problem, he has to dig it out and get up a new, a new solution. And it just keeps getting deeper. You find out that not only is Marty this way, but Wendy is this way too.

She's got the knack for it at the same time. And so I just love watching them fuck around and figure it out. So I should have premised, I mean, just in case you're listening to this podcast about Ozark and you've never watched any of Ozark, that's a choice. but I figure maybe I should tell you what the show is about, which is the Bird family, Marty Bird, played by Jason Bateman, Wendy Bird, played by Laura Linney, and they've got two kids, Charlotte, played by Sophia Hublitz, and Jonah played by Skyler Gartner. And they were based in Chicago, and Marty was a numbers guy, an accountant, and tangled up in a drug cartel. And as you mentioned, from the jump in episode one, we see him get himself out of a life or death situation.

by coming up with this Scatterbrain idea to go to the Ozarks and wash money for the drug cartel in the Ozarks in Missouri. And so the bulk of the show is set in the Ozarks in Missouri. And so we get to know a bunch of the people who live around this lake resort in the Ozarks. And that's, as you say, they keep every single episode, they find themselves deeper in trouble. And every single episode, they dig themselves out of it. the show has gotten a bunch of critical acclaim and a bunch of awards acclaim.

Jason Babin won a directing Emmy and Julia Garner, who plays Ruth Langmore, who's like a young local who gets mixed up in their business, won two consecutive Emmy Awards for her performance on the show. Well deserved, I think. You mentioned Marty Bird's resourcefulness. For me, I think what draws me back to Ozark again and again is the Wendy Bird. situation. Laura Linney, one of our greatest actresses, doing something really incredible here that I think, you know, the show gets compared a lot to, I think, especially Breaking Bad, but a number of those anti-hero, prestige drama shows.

And on so many of those shows, the wife character of the male anti-hero was often hated because, well, you could dissect all the reasons why, but a reason why is because, you she always got in the way of the fun by nagging at the anti-hero to be like, stop, hey, maybe stop cooking meth, Waltz, maybe think about that. And what I love about Wendy, or I feel like this is an answer. I never had an issue with Skylar White. But if you wanted to sort of take the dark side of the coin of Skylar White, you've got Wendy Bird, who I think as we discovered over the course of the season and the series is,

even darker than her husband. The Lady Macbeth thing gets thrown around a lot with Wendy, but I think Laura Lindy is doing something even more interesting with it. I don't know. What do you think of that at home? I don't know, the prestige TV crime wife and what they did with Wendy Bird instead.

So I think the idea of the prestige TV crime wife is really rooted in and I don't want to go social on you guys. I know you guys hated what I do this. But it's really rooted in what my mom calls soft misogyny. And my mother told me, she was growing up, my mother was like,

because you know my mom was a big hippie, she was into all kinds of different things and got it. I'm very full of life, sexual woman. She wrote a book called Hussey, go out and get it. She told me, she was like, your dad, my dad said, well, you know, when your mom does something wrong,

he actually told me this, rest and peace dad. He goes, when your mom does something wrong, it hurts me because I know that your mom is, like, better than me. Your mom is the nicest person I know. Your mom is the most moral person that I know. Your mom is the sweetest, most God-fearing woman I know. And then when she does something to me, she hurts me like that. It hurts worse because I know I'm just so fucked up man, whatever. My dad said that to him.

And I was like, yo, that's an amazing thing. And I remember running back and talking to my mom about that was maybe like 12 years old. It's like, dad says that like, because you're so much better than him, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's worse or he gets, he gets, you can hurt his feelings more is what I said. And she said, that's bullshit. She said, your mom is a human being. Uh-huh. She said, your mom's a human being. I smoke, I drink.

I do all of those things, but I'm not supposed to because I'm a woman. Right. Okay. So she was like, and she explained to me all that stuff, and I still didn't buy it. I was like, whatever, that's right. You don't know. But that's kind of in the back of men's minds, right? In the back of men's minds is that in that situation,

the woman's going to keep you on the straight and narrow. There's no possible way that she could be more gully than you because women just ain't got that in them, you know? And so to see Wendy, the only thing that Wendy was that, the only thing that Marty was that Wendy wasn't was culpable. he was knowledgeable. He knew what was going on. She really didn't.

So when she did, she started to see angles how she could advance her own career, how she can help keep her family together, how she could help keep her family safe. And in many ways, I mean, she's fiercer than him. Absolutely. So they broke the mold on that and saying, hey, well, you know, if a person, a human being looks at a situation to where they feel threatened and they have something to fight for and they also then have something to gain, it has nothing to do with,

like with gender or sex or the bits that you were born with, it has to do with how you see the angles and what you're potentially trying to do. So I'm glad she broke that mold because to be honest with you, Scholar White is annoying. I'm sorry. She was annoying.

It was like, she annoyed. I'm not with you on that. I'm not with you on that. I'm not with you on that. But I think it's really interesting because Marty Bird is genuine, like, Marty Bird is, think what Walter White thought he was, which is the guy who's genuinely trying to dig himself

out of a hole. And that's what Walter White would lie to himself and tell himself he was until the very end when finally Skyler got him to admit that he did it for himself. Wendy is the Walter White in that she's doing this because she gets off on the power and, you know, taking things off her to-do list, I think is something that Marty calls it. But like the way that Wendy becomes the closer, the enforcer. If you need someone to come in and close and to be really scary, you don't call Marty, you call Wendy in.

And she will rip you apart. And there's one more added thing. You brought up a social issue, so I'll bring up a social issue, which is this occurred to me sort of doing a season three rewatch. Oftentimes, Wendy comes in

with a charm offensive before she comes in with the like scary shit. Almost always. Yeah. And she'll dimple it up, right? And, like, Laura Linney has this sort of Midwestern charm, even though she, I think she's a New Englander, but, like, she's got this sort of, like, Midwestern mom's sweetheart. It's very, like, weaponized, white feminine. Like, it's, it's that sort of Karen shit that we've been talking about for a really long time, like, perfectly weaponized by Wendy Bird, the white female fragility, the white female, like, charm offensive, all of that sort of

of stuff. She is just pinpointed to get her way and she knows exactly when to flip from the dimples to the threats. And the way that Laura Linney, again, one of our finest actresses, like, runs the gamut and can flip so quickly. She can dimple it someone and then turn around and face the camera and her face drops and you're terrified. I just think it's an incredible performance in this show. I think it's one of the best, like, of all of prestige TV, of all prestige crime shows, I think this is one of the best anti-heroes we've ever had, honestly. And she's been doing it for a long time because I remember her back in the Truman Show days where she had to be where the reason why I love that movie and we, the reason why I love that movie is because

I like the cast interviews that they do when they were off Truman show set when Truman was doing and they would talk to these people as just people. Yeah. And you think about what a terrible thing she's doing. Like even then, you think about what a terrible thing it is that she's doing to Truman. But she's like an actress that has to be a charming actress person. But at the same time, she's talking to you and you're thinking, she's like, I'm a professional. Like, I work and it's this and it's that.

And it's just she was talking about having sex with this guy who thinks that they're in love, but they're not. And it's like this whole thing. You're like, wow. She is giving this in a very human sort of, I don't know, cutting way. just had a way of doing it. And every time I think of that, I think about that same performance, she's able to recreate that same cut you with the smile, but love you with the smile type of energy that she has, that she had then in this right here.

She does it perfectly. Let's talk about Julia Garner, who is the actress who has gotten all the awards for this. I think she deserves them. I just think Laura Lennie deserves one too before she goes. Ruth Langmore, this character, this actress's performance. What do you think of it? Why do you think it's the one that has, you know, gotten so much attention? Well, number one, she was the one we were at least familiar with.

And I think that's always something that, that, you know, you see somebody on screen and they're going toe to toe with Jason Bateman, who is fantastic in this. Just fantastic. I can't wait to talk about his performance in the upcoming season. Like, he's fantastic in this. And Laurelini and just, you know, other people, other people that were used to seeing around and to see somebody who we didn't know that much about, not only hold their water, but some of everybody else is in scenes,

she's going to be the one that pops. And also, it's hard to be mad, it's hard to be emotional, but it's definitely hard to be mad and mad emotional. It's hard to be both. It's hard to be the hard ass that keeps the family together.

And she plays it like with a, she plays it as a force of nature, but also with a sensitivity and a vulnerability that is very intoxicated when you watch her on camera. So she's, I mean, you know, she's doing her thing in all three seasons that, you know, people have seen, yeah, she's doing her thing. And I think they've given her more and more to do as they saw what she could do and how much attention she got for doing it. And I think that exactly what you're saying, I think there's a version of this character that's very one note. And she's like, no, I'm going to play all the keys on the piano for you.

And there is, like, there's an easy impression you could do of Ruth, but you couldn't necessarily capture. the nuance of like all the stuff that's bubbling under the surface when she does her stuff. She does this thing with her eye real quick. I want people to look out for the thing with the eye. She does like a when she, when she's like a flutter, right? Yeah, like a flutter with the eye. Like a tick. Yeah. And that's like whenever she glitches up emotionally, I love when actors have that. Like Brad Pitt has the thing with the hand that he does, you know what I mean?

I love when actors have actors have that little glitch. Brad Pitt does this. You know, Disney Washington does it. thing with the neck. You know, I love when they have that little thing when you know they're about to

kick it in a high gear and she does that. And that's like when she's almost, when either she's super pissed or when someone really has her on something emotional

and she didn't think they had her on it. She's like a, um, a Westworld robot. Exactly. Go into killer mode.

Yeah, exactly. Um, can I just shout out really quickly that poor, um, I think his name is, I think you pronounce it's Skyler Gartner,

who plays Jonah. So he was like, 13 when they started this show and not much time is supposed to have passed in the show. So my guy is 18 years old now playing 14 on the show. And I just want to

just want to look out for that maybe in season four. Yeah, the fact that he looks like he could play for the Lakers. Yeah, exactly. Like, he's a full grown. Like, I mean, like, it's like, but I always love that. I always love that. We're watching Game of Thrones

one time and then all of sudden we're watching it again and fucking everybody's grown up and all i love watching that love it especially a cobra kai cobra kai is supposed to happen cobra kai is supposed to happen this is not all completely cobra kai's supposed to happen in the space of a couple of months and they're just grown up adults now mcgiel was like yeah those kids yeah right kids are adult right um so the the there are two i i I think big plots in season three that we should remind people of.

The big bomb that they drop in the season is that Wendy's brother, Ben, who has bipolar disorder, comes to stay with them, falls in love with Ruth, goes off his meds so that he can, you know, have a sexual relationship with her. And in going off his meds and finding out about the, like, becomes a liability. and Wendy has to take him off the board. And this is like a big, I mean, Wendy was already on the dark side, but this is a big, big, big moment for Wendy, a crossing of a line for her in having to basically order the kill

on her beloved brother. And that drives a wedge between the birds and Ruth, who has been faithful to Marty as like a faithful lieutenant, and a really, really, you know, necessary member of his organization because she fell in love with Ben. And also for Jonah, their son, who really loved his uncle and is distressed that he's gone.

This is essentially, they essentially gave Laura Linney kind of her Love Actually plot. Oh. Is something that I noticed in rewatching season three. It's essentially watching the end of Love Actually. but this is a big, big wrench and everything. How did that work for you? Like, how did the Ben plot work for you? I worked perfectly in a couple of different ways.

Number one, it's separated the humans from the robots. It was very important. Always important to separate the humans from the robots in a situation like this. Number one, it was a, the Ben plot was an origin story for Wendy. Tell me about that. Okay, so Michael Corleone isn't really Michael Corleone. until he asks for a no kill. Right.

All right. So he, you say, hey, he executes all the guys at the end of one. True. Very true. He figures out Hyman Roth, true, very true. But he doesn't really become Michael Corleone de godfather until he's had to make a decision about business ethics over his personal relationship with someone, you know, over that. That's what he's really a cold, hard.

killer. Everybody has that, right? The only guy who got it a million different times was Tony Soprano who basically killed everyone he ever shook hands with in the show. Chris died, Big Pussy died. You know, like, all of those people died. So that was Wendy's origin story. There's no turning back for Wendy.

You know, like Wendy, she's not quite a Michael Cullion level sociopath, but she realized in that situation that her brother had to go. and the decision was made. Now, for everyone else, it was exactly the opposite thing. You saw to me what they weren't capable of. For Ruth, for Ruth, it's not that she would have ever been down with that.

That's something she would have never done. But there's a dividing line between her and the birds. My family is so important to her. all of that stuff is so important to her. It's not something she could ever really see herself doing. She killed her uncles. She did kill her uncles, but it's different. They were enemies to her more like.

They weren't people who were put to you like this. Her uncles didn't come out against her. Like this guy was someone not that was an enemy, but who was just damaged. Yeah. And couldn't control himself. And more than anything, he didn't really need eliminate. he needed like love.

Yeah. He needed someone to be like, and he needed protection. By the time when she killed her uncles, her uncles were, they were trying to fuck over her. They were, and they had really been fucking over her her whole life.

So it was a little, it was a little bit different. That storyline was important to me because as far as I'm concerned, it's the storyline that like, to be a misogynist here that separated the men from the boys. Because they,

they, it put the birds in the situation. to where they did something that most of the audience couldn't relate to. And that's very, very important when you're doing a show like this. And it's interesting that, like, Marty, kind of has his cans clean because he isn't there for it. But the same time, he's supportive of the move. And he's very much like there's nothing else you could have done. In reality, they had no choice.

They had to do it. You know what I mean? But she tried, like, in that whole sequence at the end of season three, where she takes him on, you know, they're driving towards Knoxville. and they're trying to go in it every turn. I mean, like, honestly, I don't understand all the time she leaves him alone is a, is a, is, was sort of like a script thing where I'm like, if I, if I had an out of control bipolar brother and I was trying to smuggle him somewhere, I would not leave him alone as many times as when he leaves him alone.

Because like, whenever she leaves him alone, he fucks up and he does something that she's like, I can't control him. But I, uh, she tries. She kind of tries. And then she just gives up and feels like there. There's nothing else she can do. Does it also then, do you feel like this puts Charlotte and Jonah on two different sides? Because Charlotte is like, I can understand this.

And Jonah's like, I can't, I can't be here. Yep, it's the clear dividing line. Charlotte, like Jonah, Jonah was craving to be seen. Everyone saw Charlotte. Pretty girl, blonde girl, everywhere she goes. Everyone sees her. Jonah needed to be seen. He was a little bit different.

And his uncle saw him. And his uncle could have been Hannibal Lecter. It was going to be a different situation. His uncle saw him. And because he saw him, he didn't want to lose the only person that one of the only people that saw him that paid attention to him that he was cool with that he had a bond with. You know, Jonah was actually looking for that. And his dad can't really be that because his dad is too wrapped up in the world of cartel business and washing money. And so I think it was a clear divided line between them.

Even though I don't think their relationship is going to be as strained as brother and sister over it, but it just shows you who's willing to buy in and who wasn't. We've also got, okay, so I want to shout out one of my favorite characters and actors on the show, which is Lisa Emery plays Darlene Snell, who's a local heroin producer. I love this woman. I love this, I love this actress. I love this character. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I already said that about Wendy Bird. I mean, this show has, like, so many interesting roles for women.

But, like, this character, Darlene, and even the actress Lisa Emery, who's like a veteran stage actress, she's not really done a lot that you might know of in film and television, but she is long history on the stage. And she's even said that every time she gets a script, she's like, I have no idea what Darlene is going to do. I have no idea. It's exciting for me every time she's so unpredictable and a joy to play. And that's the thing is like any scene, you don't know which way Darlene's going to go. You cannot predict her behavior. She's terrifying. And just even the look of the character.

It's just like, you know, that's not what that actress looks like in real life. They put something in her eyeballs before every scene or something like that. That they're like constantly glassy. She's constantly terrifying. Where do you stand with Darlene? She's like brutal humanity. It's like she's not trying to be anything other than the person in front of you. And she doesn't fucking, she's not conniving at all.

it's right on top of the surface. You know who she reminds me of? Who's that? She reminds me of the female version. Tell you what this, you're not going to agree, but she reminds me of the female version of Albert Brooks and Drive.

And let me tell you why. I'm not disagreeing. I'm just delighted by this unexpected comparison. Hit me. So, like, in Drive, it was Ron Perlman and Albert Brooks. You thought Ron Perlman was the one that you really had to fucking be worried about.

You thought he was the hot, hard ass, really, it turned out that it was Albert Brooks the whole time. He was the fucking guy that would do anything, kill anyone. Poor Brian Cranston got his fucking got killed him away. I've never actually seen done on screen before. Like, don't worry, there's got to be no pain. It's over now. It's done.

It's very, very scary. And so when it became obvious that as far as heroin, poppy growing Ozarks people, it went that she was the fucking scary one. To me, that's when the show really took on its, the show took its next step. When she and her husband became the fucking figurehead and the leader of that whole organization, because I get tense when I see her.

Yeah, and her husband was played by Peter Mullen, who is one of the scariest people ever, like fantastic scary actor. He was great. He's so good and so scary, and she's like, he's nothing. Yeah. Like, you, like, it,

and when people see the new season, they'll see it too. Like, everybody's on screen. You never know what's going to happen. You never know what she's going to do. You never know when she's going to show when she's going to use sugar. You never know when she's going to fucking turn around and use gasoline. She's just,

and she's still, like, viscerally emotional as well. Like, she's, she, and she's not all, she's not all,

she's not pure. right? Because like the way in which she takes care of Zeke, the baby, and the way in which she takes care of Wyatt, you know, Ruth's cousin, who she, you know, gets into this relationship with. But, you know, she gives him shelter. Like when she first, when she first sort of encounter him in season three, you think she's just using him as sort of like a long wedge for the birds.

And like maybe that's part of the game there, you know, as a way to get to Ruth, she's going through wide, something like that. But eventually, you're like, no, there is a real tenderness and connection here. And this is the most surprising romance in a prestige crime show I've ever seen. Let's live in this. Let's live in this space for a little while. All right. Let's talk about

the way the season three ends on a massive moment when the birds and Helen Pierce play by Fantastic and the fantastically tall, Janet McTeer. get off the plane in Mexico to meet with Omanivaro, the head of the cartel.

And you think the birds are in danger, but it's Helen Pierce who gets her brains blown out physically all over the birds. They are just covered in her brain matter. That's how the season ends. A very, that felt like a very breaking bad moment to me. Will you miss Helen? or do you feel like it was a good time for her to go?

She got on my nerves. Yeah. I mean, she was great. She was great, but I felt like the character was almost redundant in a way. Like she, it wasn't, you know, unless they were, unless they were going to give her whole, her whole thing. I, like, I, don't get me wrong. I was, I was shocked when they got her just because of what that means for. the show. Like, who saw that coming? Do you know what I mean? Like, she seemed like the last person

that was going to get it. But now, I won't be particularly missing. A great character, but she looks like a one season or two season or, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think she was, I think she would have been really good as a one season and they sort of stretched her over two seasons. And I think, you know, there was a little bit of like wheel spinning around that. I want to ask you generally, like, we made a couple breaking bad comps and a couple other things in Godfather, et cetera. Like, When you think about a crime narrative, like, I know you did this great rewatch of The Wire. I've heard you talk about The Godfather with, like, forensic level of knowledge. There's the FX era that I really loved, like, Sons of Anarchy, justified, the Shield, obviously.

Like, what are these crime shows? Like, what do you love most about them? Like, why do you get really into them? Rebellion. Tell me about that. The same reason why people get involved, love the American Mafia, right? Look at me. I've never been,

I've never done anything bad. I've never been arrested. No. I'm, like, what, I'm what, I'm what, they would call a hump,

you know? It's, it's a hump. You know, they say, oh, look at this hump. They call God,

the Italian guys and the, the, the, you know, you see watching movies, Goodfellas. Yeah, a Bronx tale.

This guy's a fucking hump. I use a hump. He's like a dude who doesn't, who doesn't take any, chances, doesn't live outside of the norm, doesn't go with the family or whatever, it just goes to work. Like, really a responsible good work, good hard work in American is basically a hump. A real hump. A real hump. This guy's a fucking hump. Do you even have like parking tickets?

Like where is your level of rebellion? No parking tickets? Here's my thing. Here's my thing. Yeah. I grew up around, see, this is my thing, Joe. I grew up around too many real hardcore criminals. And my brain process that it just didn't I never knew any one of them that was like 65 grilling out with his kids and his grandkids going, I was a hellraiser back in the day. I'm sure there's some, but I never knew them. Right. The guys I knew were on dope.

They had been back and forth to jail. My uncles would come out of jail and they would be like, yo, if I ever hear you even getting nearly in any trouble, you have no idea. It's like, you don't want this. And they were going to graphic detail about things that happened to you. if you end up in a wrong place. Scared straight, the family. I never, it was never a thing for me. Plus, I was, I had both parents in the home.

I was loved. I was nurtured. And I was rewarded for doing the right thing. But still, though, there is something, and as Americans, we have to be honest with this, that's intoxicated about watching people that are in high-stakes situations all the time, that adhere to a different set of rules, a different set of values, and seeing how those people, like how they sort of intersect with us. And I think that was the thing that the Sopranos did, right?

And like the godfather and Goodfellows and all of that other stuff, these guys would talk about family, but it meant something different. And there was no, they didn't show the other part of it. Sopranos, Tony is dealing with not just what's going on, but the fact that AJ is a little weirdo. Meadows got to get into a good school. and all of those things. So I think one of the things

that keeps bringing me back is like to see how, to see the fact that we're just people capable of doing really, really shitty things to one another if the motivations are there.

And you always want to see what the motivations are for these characters to do the things that they're doing. Or the justifications. Right? Like the motivations are one thing but there's also just sort of

like the lies we tell ourselves about why we do what we do. I think that's always really interesting to watch. And I think what's interesting is that Ozark, there's an interesting essay up on GQ right now about how Ozark has always been considered a Breaking Bad rip off and that it doesn't deserve that, that it like deserves its own legacy. But what I do think is interesting is that, is that Ozark comes at the tail end of this anti-hero era that was really kicked off by the shield and sopranos, right? And we had this like anti-hero, prestige drama crime show,

I think the telegraph review of season four of Ozark says, the headline is, the last great amoral anti-hero. So when you think of some other shows that we like to watch, like huge shows, like Game of Thrones or Succession, like there are people behaving badly. But at the center of it, like we're talking about kings and knights

and we're talking about business people who are absolutely criminals in their own right, you know, but we're not talking about like, how is the drug cartel going to be evaded this week, which was very much a kind of, kind of narrative that we followed for like almost a decade, right? Decade plus. Why do you think that era of TV ended?

Like, why are we no longer as interested in those shows? Social media. Tell me about that. So let's say what social media does? Social media, it puts us in the, so social media puts us in the the Examine Everything era, which I love, because I love to examine everything. I'm up early in the morning watching fucking videos on YouTube

about how planes fly and stuff. I love the Examine Everything era. Yeah. But examining everything just naturally leads you to examining how trash things are. Tony can exist in this era because he's just too much of a fucked up guy. We made so many excuses to like Tony's like the worst, right?

And so I think now that these anti-heroes that we're talking about, when we look at them, they all have to do tremendously bad things, which actually is kind of what separates Marty Burr from the rest of them. He's almost exclusively reactionary. You know what I mean?

He's almost exclusively reactionary. He's not very power-hungary that Marty Burr. Wendy, a little different. Marty, not so much. Yeah. I think that we might have really lost our stomach for characters like this.

I think, number one, these used to also be the types of people that we glamorized and worship in real life. There was real life worship with America over John Gotti and

big time mafia bosses. Because remember, this didn't just happen on TV. This is at the tail end of a bunch of guys getting movies. This is a tail end of American gangster. and Payton Full and all of those movies kind of coming. And there's the BMF show right now and there's still power.

But those are more like BMF is really good. But that's like something that actually happened. So you know how that story ends. And then with power, that's almost like a dramatization or like a soap opera of these types of things, right? It's not as brutal as some of the other shows that we've seen. So for me personally, I personally wonder if audiences, if the era that we're in now

has made it less palatable for us to really dive into characters like this. Yeah, I mean, there was a time when you wouldn't think twice about a guy having a scarface poster on his wall and now it's a red flag. Like if someone is glamorizing scarface

you're kind of like, he killed his boy. You know, he killed his boy. Okay, do you need a poster on your wall about it? I don't know. Like, I have some questions about that. But I think also the,

it's the white male anti-hero is like a big, part of that like you know it was like it's don draper it's walter white it's tony soprano like these were the guys that we were sort of invested in in like insorseled by and all the sort of stuff like that and then and then we start to interrogate that and i think especially not to make it too political but i think especially after four years of trump we're like we're we're done yeah you know what i mean like we're we're done with that and i think that's why i think a reason why why Ozark still has juice in the tank is because exactly what you said,

that Marty Bird is not really that guy that Wendy is. And that's at least still a little interesting to watch a woman swim in that stream in the stream that we've seen like white men do for so long. That's why, Joe, I've been talking to people all around the town. I know what the next wave is. Tell me. Bad ladies. Okay.

Women villains. We're in it. Marvel's in it, you know what I mean? Marvel's in it, but I mean like, I want to like Queen of the South. You ever watch that show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like, you know, good show.

But like, I'm talking about like, because- About Claws. Did you ever watch that show? I'm TV. Love it. Love it. Love Clause. Yeah.

I'm telling you, there has to be, and by the way, next, the next phase of bad ladies is not bad lady that was married to a bad guy now she has to be bad. I want bad to the bone. I want raised,

raised poorly, has made the decision on her own that she's, you know what I mean? Bad ladies is what's next. I'm telling you. All right. So we know this is the final season of Ozark.

It's split into two seven episode chunks. This is what they did with the end of Breaking Bad. This is what they did with, you know, Lupin, like Netflix is done, a couple other shows. I think it's an awards play, honestly.

I think they're debuting the first seven episodes and they're going to drop the next seven closer to the awards deadline because Ozark has been a contender at the Emmys, but I think it's always been a little far away from Emmy voting to recency bias is a huge thing when it comes to the Emmys. So if, like, Laura Linney gets to do something amazing

in the finale, which I'm sure she'll get to, like maybe Emmy voters will remember her a little bit more and, you know, maybe she has an edge over Sarah Snookin's succession or something like that. But this is the end of this story of the birds. And we'll talk about how it's handled in the first seven episodes itself when we get to that. But just thinking about the larger picture of like how these other crime stories end, like how it ends for Michael Corleone and how it ends for Walter White and how it ends for Tony Soprano. Like, what kind of ending do you feel like the birds deserve or that you want to see for them, you know? This is going to sound crazy, but I need the burst to win.

Okay. Tell me why. Because, man. Like, all of them? All of them? I need the burst to win. Okay. I need the burst to win.

Because we get it. TV doesn't want to reinforce that the bad guys win. Okay. I grew up in an area where the bad guys or the guys that you would say were bad, my uncles weren't bad. They taught me how to play basketball. Y'all might think they're bad. I think they were great guys.

But what we do know is in the world that we live in, the Marty Birds, they win sometimes. They win a lot of the time. These guys are kind of the guys that weas a lot of it. And for whatever reason, I think it's cliche at this point for there to be some major, major tragedy that befalls them and they have to pay a price for whatever it is that they did. Right. Now, their lives will never be the same no matter what. They've already had to pay an immense price for what they've gotten themselves into.

And they'll probably keep, like, continue to pay that price. But if this ends with one of the kids dying or we lose Marty or we lose Wendy Remember how they they, what they did in three? Fucking Michael did all of this shit And then he had to lose his daughter Who was in a relationship with her cousin? Dyes all alone, Godfather.

Yeah. I just watched that for the first time A couple weeks ago. What did you think? Three, the first time I had seen one and two, obviously, a bunch of times. I was like, well, Shirley can't be as bad as they say. And then I was like, you know,

when like you've had like so many years of people telling you a movie's horrible, you're going to go in with like rock bottom expectations and be like, this is not that bad. And I was like, so many baffling choices went into this. Like Sophia Copeland, you're like, surely she's not that bad. And you're like, no, she is that bad. But even if they had a better actress in there,

that plot line is still terrible part. Terrible part and confusing. And Andy Garcia is giving it his, his all, but I'm like, but for what? Like, for, to what end, Andy Garcia? But that ending for Michael is perfect, right? He dies alone and old.

He doesn't die young. He dies old and alone. And it's perfect. So erase everything else that happens to that movie and just give me that ending. It's pretty good. And I think Walter White dying the way that he does is kind of perfect. And I think the ambiguity of the end of Sopranos is kind of perfect. And I think what happens to most of the characters

the wire is kind of perfect. So I think for me, I don't necessarily need the birds to wind. Though you're right, you're absolutely right that that is the way things go. Like, I will be not surprised if that's how succession ends. Everyone's fine in succession because nothing bad ever happens to these people, you know? But I don't know. I think often when a character has the opportunity to get out and they don't fully take it, which is something I can see Wendy doing of like, I just need one more job, right?

One last job. of, you know, chasing that high. Then I'm like, well, the kids absolutely don't deserve it. The kids need to be fine. My poor sweet, extremely tall Jonah, especially, needs to be fine. I need him to live. I would like Ruth to also be fine. That is something I would like.

I don't know about Ruth, man. You think she's headed towards disaster? Ruth is the one I'm most concerned about. Okay. I don't know about Ruth. Ruth is the one that I'm most concerned about. Ruth is going to lose something. Either Ruth is going to lose herself or she might end up losing Wyatt,

which would be worse than her losing herself. So I don't know about Ruth, man. The one that I'm really worried about actually is Maya Miller. We haven't talked about her, but she's the FBI forensic accountant who comes in in season three and she's pregnant for like all of season three. And Marty really likes her. That's the thing about Marty is that he like, you know, he really likes Ruth. Like he genuinely likes Ruth.

And he genuinely likes Maya. There's this mutual respect between the two of them. And she likes him. But I'm worried. I am really worried about Maya. And I'm like, they wouldn't do that, right? You let them kill that sister on TV. Netflix would be posting Black Squares on Instagram.

Like, they better not kill that sister. Like, we'll be there was Martin Luther King Day. It was yesterday. We'll show up there about, like, we'll be. we get fucking two black people on the whole show. Maybe more. No, it was her. Let's count the black people that have been on the Ozark.

There's the other FBI guy. The other FBI guy who's great actor. The other FBI guy, Maya, which, by the way, I don't really need that many black people for something set in the Ozarks. I never heard nobody being like, yo, man, it's lit. We're going to the Ozarks. I'm sure they do. But I never heard it. So I don't need it, but I'm just thinking, come on, man.

Plus, pregnant lady, she's about to have a baby. Baby on the way. Yeah. Baby on the way. Yeah. Absolutely. Who knows? All right.

Well, I think that's a good, it's good, do we miss anything from season three that people need to be reminded of before we head into season four? And I mean, you know, the cartel is wrapping the birds in tighter. You know, that's always something we need to be worried about. The machinations of Ozark politics, the politics. the political angle is something that's kind of interesting about this show. Wendy's whole aspirational, you know, being a political mover and shaker of the Midwest, something we don't pay enough attention to probably, especially those purple states.

They keep mentioning that Missouri is a purple state, which I think is interesting. Anything else you have in our eye on before we go down? I was going to say one thing about season three. Ben was fucking fantastic. Yeah. Tom Pelfrey is the guy's name? Yeah, Tom Felfer. I watched that again.

to like, he's fucking amazing. You know, one episode, I think it's episode eight, I want to say, where it's the cold open is just him, like, having a full break in, like, the cab that he's in. And it's just the camera on him as he's having a mental episode. The cold opens of Ozark are always incredible. Also, always love trying to figure out what the various pictures are going to mean in the episode. But that cold open, I agree with you.

It's fantastic performance. That's really, really good one-season character. He redeemed himself for his participation in the worst television show of all time. Oh, it was Tom Felfrey-in? Netflix is Iron Fist. I didn't remember him from that show. Oh, yeah. All right, let's not leave on that downer note.

Anything else? What are, what are you? You can't leave him on Iron Fist, right? Like, that's not where we're going to leave off. We've got a couple new people joining the Fold in season four. Alfonso Herrera is here as Omar's nephew, Javi. There's a PI. There's just like a couple new elements sprinkled in.

A couple people sort of peek in their head in to see what's going on in the Ozarks. So we'll talk about all of them in our next episode. I really think so we're going to check it after episode four. So watch their episode four. Take a break. Stretch your legs. Go for a walk. Listen to us.

talk about it and then finish up the final three episodes and we'll be there for you after the finale. Until then, Van, where can folks find you? How are learning with Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay and of course The Ring of Verses The Midnight Boys, A Poo Poo-Pew!

You guys can see us there. Yeah, if you want to hear Van talk about Godfather with like precision. Listen to him talk about the book of Boba Fett. You'll be surprised. Be surprised. You can also find out me on the Ring of Verse. You can find me here on the Prestige TV podcast feed talking about,

oh, I don't know, yellow jackets with Mallory and Bill or Euphoria with Nora Prince Yaddy. There's a lot going on in this feed. You're going to want to check back in here almost every day. There's something new for you. And yeah, we'll be back after episode four. This episode was produced by Mike Morgan. And thank you all so much. We'll see you next time. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Springs Calling. Ross, work your magic.