All About Ozark: The Final Season and the Series Finale (Grades)
I recently finished watching the final season of Netflix’s Ozark. It’s always nice to have a show that’s totally wrapped up to watch, and since Ozark ended this past April and received pretty good reviews (from both TV critics and normal folks), Natalie (AKA the girlfriend) and I decided to check out the show’s 44 episode run.
I have some pretty strong thoughts about the show’s finale, but having just watched the entire run within the past couple of months, I thought I’d break Ozark down by first discussing my thoughts on the series as a whole, then this final season, and finally taking a look at the show’s last episode. I’ll keep this first section spoiler free, but beware sections two and three if you haven’t seen Ozark and it seems like something you might want to check out.
How I Look at TV Shows in General & Do I Recommend Ozark?
I think TV shows can be placed into one of three different levels or categories when it comes to quality and how “good” a show is overall. First, you’ve got your “A” Shows. These are the “best” shows in terms of production, acting, and everything else. Shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Americans, and Succession are all A Shows. I might not enjoy every A Show that comes out, but you know these shows are at least trying to create a form of real quality television.
Next you’ve got your “B” Shows. These are shows that aren’t usually trying to be the prestige TV that falls into the “A” category (or maybe they are trying, but aren’t really succeeding). Still, that doesn’t mean they can’t be extremely enjoyable or good shows in their own right. I’d argue that shows like Bosch, Reacher, The Expanse, and even The Boys are all B Shows, though I personally like each of these shows to drastically different degrees.
Finally, you’ve got “C” Shows. This category of shows includes all of the superhero shows on the CW and shows that are just generally not trying to produce the same level of television as the other levels. One C Show that I did enjoy was 12 Monkeys. No one’s going to argue 12 Monkeys is a great show, but it knows what it is and it’s usually an alright way to spend an episodes worth of time. That’s really all you’re looking for with this category of show.
12 Monkeys: A more fun show than you’d expect!
So what level of show is Ozark? Some of the acting on Ozark, particularly that of Laura Linney as Wendy Byrde and Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore, is as good as you’ll find on most television shows. However, as a whole, I’d say that Ozark is firmly a B Show. At times, it definitely feels like Ozark wants to be a sort of Breaking Bad-type show, but it doesn’t really come too close to succeeding. The writing is usually just okay, and some major plotlines don’t really work, though it never gets bad to an extent that has you totally checking out of the show.
So knowing that Ozark is in this sort of second tier of shows, do I enjoy it as a B Show? Well, I think it’s fine—usually good, but never great. There wasn’t a single episode of Ozark that we finished where I sat back and said, “Wow, that was fantastic!” On the flip side though, I was never too bored. The show was always watchable, even if I was watching it sometimes while I ate dinner since it wasn’t good enough to merit 100% of my attention.
I think if you had asked me after watching the first three seasons of the show, I would have recommended Ozark. It’s definitely a bingeable show, and if you like the sound of a crime/thriller show that centers on a family unit with two kids and parents who almost never see eye to eye, you could give it a watch. If you’re on the fence though, I might skip Ozark, largely because of its uninspiring final season.
**Major Spoilers for Ozark Below**
Thoughts on Season 4
Season 4 is by far the weakest season of Ozark, and not a good way for the show to go out. Part of the problem with Season 4 is that two of the show’s more interesting characters, Wendy’s brother, Ben, and cartel lawyer, Helen, were killed off at the end of the third season. New characters include Omar Navarro’s insane nephew, Javi, Camila (Javi’s mother), a private investigator, and Wendy’s father. None of these four characters are particularly interesting, and all are pretty two dimensional (Javi, Camila, Wendy’s father= Bad; Private Investigator= Good).
Javi is bad news!
As is often the case with lots of crime/thriller shows, a need to raise the stakes with each new season results in increasing ridiculousness in terms of plot and a rising body count. In the first episode of the season, Javi kills the sheriff. We see some billboards saying the sheriff is missing in later episodes, but that’s about it. Apparently a sheriff can go missing and no one really cares too much in the Ozark universe. In another scene, Darlene kills a driver with no consequences. No one even comes looking for him or asks about him, they just bury him in the yard and that’s it.
There’s a lot this season about who’s going to be running the cartel and the FBI being in on the plan so that they can seize truckloads of money, so they’re allowing the cartel to operate. First the FBI wants to work with Omar Navarro, then later with his nephew, then Marty goes to Mexico and he runs things (and it’s suggested maybe he’ll run the cartel), then Omar’s sister, Camila, is going to run the cartel and work with the FBI. There’s a lot of deal making and talking about plans, which has always been the case with Ozark, but it’s really ramped up this season. It’s all pretty ludicrous and not super interesting.
Like Javi, Camila also has a cell phone. She’s also bad news!
A couple other gripes with this season that are worth calling out include how Wendy can check herself out of a mental hospital just super easily, Wendy’s father getting a custody hearing for the children set up that magically will just take place later that week, Ruth/Darlene’s farm having an amount of heroin to supply a pharmaceutical manufacturer that is equal to the amount produced by a massive Mexican drug cartel, and a car crash that we’re shown in the season’s first episode that we don’t get back to until the finale that ultimately doesn’t serve any real purpose.
I know it seems like I have a lot of problems with this season (I do), but it’s not egregiously bad— it’s still watchable. The finale definitely makes a statement though that I didn’t expect...
The Finale
The finale of Ozark is making about as pessimistic a statement, and presenting about as pessimistic an outlook, as any show I’ve seen before. I think it’s fair to say that most of Hollywood is pretty liberal and I have no doubt that the show’s writers had Donald Trump, and even how bad things got in the country with coronavirus, on their minds when they came up with this bummer of an ending.
Basically, Wendy (who at this point has become super, super evil) and the rest of the Byrde family don’t face the ultimate punishment (death) for the awful things they’ve done, or any sort of legal punishment either. Sure, they’ll have to keep laundering money at the casino since Ruth is killed (we’ll get to that shortly), but they’re more powerful than ever with the new fund they’ve established. Basically, evil prevails. And Jonah, who kills the private investigator/cop in the show’s final moments, has now fully crossed over into evil territory as well.
Wendy: Not a very nice lady.
In the show’s final scene, the investigator says, “You don’t get to win... The world doesn’t work like that.” Wendy simply responds, “Since when?” (the show’s final line of dialogue) and Jonah shoots the man. The message here is pretty clear: Bad guys win. Other TV shows with morally corrupt protagonists, like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire, had their main characters face the music when all was said and done. But not here.
The idea of evil prevailing and how bad the world is in general is further amplified by the decision to kill Ruth. Ruth, who has come from nothing and is finally advancing passed her criminal past to make something great out of her life, is murdered by Camila. Had the show’s writers allowed her character to live, there would have at least been some hope in Ozark’s ultimate message.
Sure, I think the world can be a nasty place at times, but this is a really pessimistic outlook for a TV show to present. Reflecting back on this final season, a lot of it had to do with corruption. The FBI is corrupt. The pharmaceutical industry is corrupt. Everyone is corrupt and everything is about money. This might be true to some extent, but it’s definitely not true as an absolute. If it were Jeffrey Epstein would be alive and well on an island somewhere, Harvey Weinstein would be making movies instead of rotting away inside a prison cell, and Trump would still be president.
I can understand why the creators of Ozark feel the way they do, but I think that they’re not only wrong with this entirely bleak outlook, I think it doesn’t make for very fulfilling television either.
Finale Grade: 4/10
Season 4 Overall Grade: 4.5/10
Overall Series Grade (Seasons 1 through 4): 6/10