One Of The (Many) Reasons Why Ozark Is So Good
It's been a while since I've written an actual blog post over here.
Thankfully, I have the notes feed to keep the site active in some capacity, but once the college baseball season gets going, my time gets limited. Recently I've had a lot of writing to get done, and in between those writing sessions I've been rewatching Ozark.
This is one of my favorite shows of all time.
I love the tension in the story, I love the performances from basically the entire cast and I love the lighting and cinematography of the Ozark setting throughout. It's also nice to follow a protagonist as competent and active as Marty Byrd.
But through my rewatch of the first season I was reminded of one of my favorite parts about this show: it avoids the characters just don't communicate trope—to an extreme degree.
I find it annoying in any sort of story when a plot device is used and issues are created simply because characters aren't communicating. It's often done to create tension in a subplot in a way that feels artificial or unearned. There's no real reason why one character wouldn't provide some obvious information to another, it's just convenient to keep the plot moving.
That's never the case for Ozark, and it's refreshing.
Marty borders on being too loose-lipped to pretty much everyone he interacts with. We find out quickly that his wife, Wendy, has known all along about his money laundering for the cartel. I think it's episode two where Wendy drops that same information on both of their middle and high school kids. Marty routinely tries to defuse situations by telling people who are trying to hold him up that they probably shouldn't because he's working for the cartel.
We spend zero screen time with Marty doing some drawn out dance maintaining his money laundering scheme while simultaneously trying to keep that part of his life a secret from everyone else—because everyone else already knows what's going on.
It's great. I'm having a blast with the rewatch. Hopefully I can get a bit more active on the blog too.