Juno's 15th Anniversary, Ozark: Fade to Black

It’s been 15 years since Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman graced our eyes and ears with the story of a 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Elliot/Ellen Page) who gets accidentally pregnant and gives her baby up for adoption. During these years we’ve discussed the soundtrack, the performances, and the dialogue that seems to have come from a mushroom trip. The film is even used in the Irish secondary school curriculum. However, an element of the film that hasn't been as easy to discuss but is now more relevant than ever is its portrayal of abortion. Within the first ten minutes of the film, we’ve established that Juno, much to her dismay, is pregnant and it's "one doodle that can’t be undid." She rings her best friend, Leah (Olivia Thirlby), to tell her she’s pregnant and Leah doesn't ask Juno if she’s going to get an abortion but rather which clinic she is going to go to. They discuss it as if Juno is simply going to get her nails done and the discussion of the issue seems to be pretty painless. In 2007, abortion had been around a long time and the future of its legality wasn’t in doubt like it is now in USA. Juno seems to be feeling pretty good about her decision until she meets classmate Su-Chin (Valerie Tian) who is protesting alone outside the clinic shouting “All babies want to get borned!” Diablo Cody seems to be purposely making anti-abortion protesters out to be somewhat stupid, not using the correct grammar in their preaching statements. 

"Juno" (2007), directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody, starts with Juno MacGuff, played by Ellen (Elliot) Page walking to a drugstore in a small suburb of Minnesota while drinking a gallon of Sunny Delight. She is a 16-year-old burn-out who was named Juno after Zeus’s wife: "She was supposed to be really beautiful but really mean. Like Diana Ross." Michael Cera's character Bleeker will appear intermittently throughout the film as a loyal—if at times paralyzed—lovable nerd who supports Juno unconditionally, despite of her defiant attitude. Juno decides not to interrupt her pregnancy and instead she begins to look for a suitable couple to raise her future child, reading the classified ads in the Penny Saver. Juno chooses a well-off couple, ex-rocker musician Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) and his straight-laced wife Vanessa (Jennifer Garner), who live in upper suburban St. Cloud.

Beyond their yuppie image and clean-cut marriage façade, Juno will discover the reverse side of conjugal happiness between Mark and Vanessa, differences that only intensify with Juno's arrival in their lives. Juno alternates her chats with Vanessa about maternity issues and jam sessions with Mark (while they make snobby references to horror cinema or discuss the peak of punk genre, indie music, commercial jingles, and Sonic Youth's noise). The film's soundtrack is mostly an off-beat collection of The Moldy Peaches (Anyone Else but You), The Velvet Underground (I'm Sticking with You), Sonic Youth (Superstar), and oldies from Buddy Holly (Dearest), The Kinks (A Well Respected Man), and Mott the Hoople (All the Young Dudes). 

Obviously impressed by Mark's knowledge about rock culture, Juno pushes Bleeker away from her adventures, encouraging him to go with another girl ("Soupy Sales") to prom dance. After her disappointment with Mark's immature behaviour, Juno remembers how much Bleeker likes orange tic-tacs and she'll come back to him because she realizes Bleeker is 'the coolest person ever'. Professor Nicholas Emler, author of "The Costs and Causes of Low Self-worth" (2001), quantifies in his essay the cost of low self-esteem: "relatively low self-esteem is a risk factor for suicide attempts, depression, teenage pregnancy and victimisation by bullies." Nicholas Emler (Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics) also notes: "Cultural stereotypes, cinema and advertising all play their part in shaping our opinion on beauty. While in one group the majority can agree on what they find attractive, it's difficult to say why one person stands out." 

Juno approaches Mark Loring (Jason Bateman) clumsily, not in a seductress way, but the intimacy shared during their simulated prom dance is designed to leave the viewers uncomfortable, disoriented, and even feeling a bit dirty. It's also the scene that turns the seduction game upside down and Mark Loring suddenly becomes an entirely different man, embodying an adult temptation for Juno. Although the director Jason Reitman explains that Mark develops romantic feelings for Juno, actually Mark represents a darker, threatening part of the male universe unknown to her. Given that their aborted relationship turns into a testing of the most basic principles of her personality, Juno is left deeply confused, crying inside her van, her nonchalant façade collapsing after confrontating Mark. Juno recognizes at that moment Mark's self-alienation as her own. She realizes Mark is exactly the person Juno imagined herself growing up to be like. 

There is a peculiar discussion between Mark and Juno. Mark suggests the best year of rock and roll was 1993, but Juno says it was 1977. In the essay "Funky days are back again: Reading seventies nostalgia in the late nineties rock music" (2004) by David Sigler, this issue is addressed: "Nostalgia for the Seventies in the late Nineties was especially the preoccupation of male artists. Janice Doane and Devon Hodges have argued that nostalgia is a predominantly male construct representing the pull of conservatism, an intrinsically 'antifeminist impulse'. Nineties nostalgia resists the logic of late capitalism and compensates for it: if American popular culture has become a common coin for the new globalization, then nostalgia counteracts this in that it 'demands a different currency'. It would be easy to attribute the phenomenon to the acceleration of economic and cultural globalization, the pressures of a music industry enduring major-label mergers, the NASDAQ boom, the ahistorical pastiche demanded by postmodernity, or the vacuum left by the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain. Gordon Downie describes the Seventies as a golden age of innocence, discovery and naïvete that, although it has since crumbled, left a message that reminds us of 'a timeless goal upon the world'." Source: english.ucalgary.ca

Juno's father, Mac MacGuff (J.K. Simmons) philosophically rebukes Juno's attraction for the mysterious and shady Mark Loring, and she'll forget her idealization of him, since Mark isn't "the kind of person that's worth sticking with." In some instances both (Juno and Mark) spoke similarly: "So that’s cool with you, then?" (Juno asks Bleeker about her first idea of nipping the baby.) "But I thought you’d be cool with this." (Mark tries to justify a separation from his wife Vanessa.) The depiction of Juno and Mark's attraction strips away the illusion of moral conventions, ignoring the trend of overstylized romances or cautionary lusty tales. It seemed very clear that the renewed prom-dance scene between Juno and Mark was not only affirming their mutual desire for each other, it set them apart from the conventions of "reel": the deteriorated innocence of two slackers is here shown bluntly, yet briefly romanticized. Quoting poet Robert Graves: "Love is a universal migraine / A bright stain on the vision / Blotting out reason.” After struggling with her demons and choosing love above herself, Juno still must sacrifice her son to the replicant mom, the woman who symbolizes the politically correct caregiver, the the grand-scale morality, Vanessa.  —"Juno and The Female Memes" (Weirdland) 

Months before Juno was shot in Vancouver, Canada, Jason Bateman and his wife had just welcomed their first child, Francesca Nora. Jason Bateman reflecting on his character Mark Loring: "Well, the idea of making sure that you are an adult before adult stuff comes into your life, that is optimum. And I did. I was pretty good about getting a lot of crap out of my life before I got married and had a kid. Things work out better that way. This guy, Mark, the character I play, did not get that memo so he’s still sort of stuck in arrested development and his life is not going so great as a result. He finds somebody that somewhat enables that in Juno and maybe that’s what that last scene is about. That he wants to continue being a much closer friend with her outside of the relationship with Vanessa. I don’t know if because he wants to date her or just simply hang out with her. I don’t know. I begged Jason Reitman to tell me which side is it. I’ll play it ambiguous if you want me to, but let me know and he never did." Source: collider.com

Jason Bateman hesitates to declare if the Byrdes are the real winners in Ozark. Rather, he claims that the show gives them a happy ending—one that comes with a caveat or curse. “In true Ozark fashion, there’s a scarlet letter attached to it,” Bateman says. “It wasn’t mapped out at all. One of the advantages of doing something without a predetermined ending is you can react to the actors and the characters and see what storylines and what characters are getting attention and which ones aren’t working. Then you adjust accordingly. In terms of how it all ended, Chris and I talked about whether we should have the Byrdes pay a bill or not? Do they get away with it or don’t they? 

We kicked around a bunch of different endings. Laura Linney chimed in with one, as well. Ultimately, we wanted Chris to make the decision and he was really excited about coming up with a happy ending, but adding some sort of smudge on it. There’s something sticky about it. Because once we fade to black, we see that they got away with it but at what cost? Mel Sattem, the investigator who has been tracking the Byrdes for most of the final season, has a great line at the end: “You don’t get to win.” Maybe Wendy’s plan to gather enough political capital so she can turn their money into something helpful, something altruistic, will work. Who knows? But that is a big question. The truth is that the Byrdes are arrogant enough to think they can maintain all of this a little bit longer than they actually can. So it’s good for them that the camera shut off right now.” Source: variety.com

Jason Bateman: the ending of Ozark is "opaque"

Believe it or not, Anna Gunn (Skyler White in Breaking Bad) won three Emmy Awards. Laura Linney (“Ozark”) has yet to win an Emmy for playing Wendy Byrde. A two-time Best Drama Actress nominee for the Netflix series (2019-20), she was the odds-on favorite to win for her banner third season in 2020, but was bested by “Euphoria” star Zendaya that year. Again, she is eligible for the show’s fourth and final season, and as of this writing, Linney is in second place in our Drama Actress odds, trailing only Zendaya. For starters, Zendaya is now a victor in a category that seems to no longer favor repeat winners. 

Coming off of her dynamite performance in the third season—especially in her highly acclaimed 2020 Emmy episode submission, “Fire Pink”—she once again has Emmy clip after Emmy clip in the show’s farewell installment. Plus, she could get extra points for making her directorial debut with the season’s 11th episode, “Pound of Flesh and Still Kickin’,” which should win her an Emmy for the road rage scene alone. Laura Linney has been on fire since the very beginning of Ozark and the way she embodies the character is just amazing. It also wouldn’t be the first time that Netflix carries someone across the finish for their final season of a show under the popular vote system. Although the show has so far nabbed only three wins—two for supporting actress Julia Garner (2019-20) and one for star Jason Bateman for directing (2019)—this savvy release strategy, coupled with Season 4 being the show’s last, could help yield more successful results, including a long-awaited victory for Laura Linney. Source: Goldderby.com

Jason Bateman’s goal to direct all of Season 1’s 10 episodes proved to be too ambitious due to time and budget, so he’d settle for the first and last two. While he says he’s now even more eager to eventually have that “full immersion” experience, his role as executive producer supplied enough daunting challenges to keep him busy, starting with winning over the only person he had in mind to be his on-screen partner in crime, Laura Linney (whom Bateman thought would fuel a dramatic counterpart to his character). Linney first met with Jason Bateman in New York, in 2016, to discuss what would arguably turn out to be the most fruitful onscreen partnership of their respective three-plus decades in the industry. Linney, already a three-time Oscar nominee, still can’t exactly pinpoint why she agreed to play Wendy, the wife of Bateman’s character, Marty—she just had a feeling that she should. Showrunner Chris Mundy credits Linney for that “huge leap of faith,” considering the focus of the first two scripts—penned by cocreators Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams—was primarily on Marty. “There wasn’t a big road map for Wendy’s character,” Mundy admits. 

“The day that Laura signed on, I really feel like me, Jason, and the writers were, like, ‘That’s a level that we’re all going to have to live up to.’ And she was pretty exhaustive in terms of building who this person is. It was the best partnership.” In a recent conversation, Bateman said, “You’re really being foolish if you don’t give Laura Linney as much work as possible inside of any show she’s a part of. To just delegate her to some cliché, traditional wife role would simply be bonkers.” “The central questions that Chris and I posed to each other as we were thinking about how to end Ozark were, ‘Should it be a cautionary tale? Should it be a victory? Should it be a failure? There’s an obvious way to state whether they got away with it or not, and then there’s a more of an opaque way to communicate whether they get away with it or not.” Bateman pauses, carefully considers his words, and continues. “I don’t think it’s any spoiler to say that we stayed consistent in keeping things a bit opaque in everybody’s mind. As far as whether this is a win or a loss, I’ll leave it up to you to decide.” Source: www.vanityfair.com

Jason Bateman has a firm and unflattering opinion about having been a celebrity kid, having been saddled with being a major breadwinner in his family. He called it an unhealthy situation, and he fired his father Kent Bateman from a managerial role as he neared adulthood. Bateman has said his relationship with his parents remains “off-and-on.” He recalls Dawn Garrett was his first girlfriend in highschool, but his busy schedule separated them. Bateman starred in his first feature film in 1987—a project he would quickly regret. The movie was Teen Wolf Too, a spin-off of the 1985 hit film Teen Wolf that had starred a very bankable Michael J. Fox. Bateman’s father produced the poorly received sequel that grossed less than $8 million in the box office. And dissolving the business relationship with his father led him to more personal and professional uncertainties. 

Bateman knew that, in a callous environment like Hollywood, playing hard to get and acting indifferent—like some cocky high school kid—went farther with industry people than being his authentic self. Bateman has offered some practical tips for a successful marriage. He believes that he got lucky because her wife is his best friend and he thinks it's important to maintain that kind of complicity; his wife Amanda Anka knows when to “bug” him. Bateman is hugely protective of his two daughters, Franny and Maple. For a man who was a successful child actor—but who really didn’t enjoy his childhood—it’s telling when Bateman says he’s “not a fan of kids acting.” 

Months before Juno was shot in Vancouver, Canada, Jason Bateman and his wife had just welcomed their first child, Francesca Nora. Jason Bateman reflecting on his character Mark Loring: "Well, the idea of making sure that you are an adult before adult stuff comes into your life, that is optimum. And I did. I was pretty good about getting a lot of crap out of my life before I got married and had a kid. Things work out better that way. This guy, Mark, the character I play, did not get that memo so he’s still sort of stuck in arrested development and his life is not going so great as a result. He finds somebody that somewhat enables that in Juno and maybe that’s what that last scene is about. That he wants to continue being a much closer friend with her outside of the relationship with Vanessa. I don’t know if because he wants to date her or just simply hang out with her. I don’t know. I begged Jason Reitman to tell me which side is it. I’ll play it ambiguous if you want me to, but let me know and he never did."

"With being an adult comes a more substantial relationship with a woman that might not be some incredible arm piece but somebody you can actually get along with longer than sleeping with her a few times. Then thinking about having a kid and maybe a better job. One you might not like as much but pays better and offers you a better future. There’s that moment when a guy's got to start becoming a man and it’s a little scary, especially if you don’t have a teacher or a father motivating you to do that. That’s a lot of self-motivation and this guy (Mark) doesn’t really have the work ethic to do that and he is somewhat a little pathetic. Mark was definitely into Juno and the way she made him feel. You can tell when he says "I'm leaving Vanessa, and getting a studio in the city. What do you think?" When Juno follows that calling him 'old' it is like he is forced to snap back into his age. When he replies "How do you see me?" it was just his way of saying "I thought you saw me as a man". I hope it’s somewhat interesting to watch as opposed to just being sort of one dimensionally just kind of a prick." Source: collider.com

Courtney Love offers her empathy to Amber Heard

Courtney Love regrets weighing in on Depp v. Heard on Instagram. At the center of the case is a defamation lawsuit Johnny Depp filed against his ex-wife Amber Heard for calling herself a survivor of sexual violence in a 2018 op-ed for The Washington Post. Heard, who is countersuing, claims Depp’s team ran a smear campaign against her after she came forward with abuse allegations against Depp in 2016. A number of public figures have jumped at the chance to discredit and publicly ridicule Heard—including Ireland Baldwin, Bill Burr, and Chris Rock. Courtney Love recalled that Johnny Depp had given her CPR after she’d overdosed at a club in 1995 and he'd supported her daughter, Frances Bean, while Love was struggling with addiction. 

While Love said she had “empathy” for Amber Heard, she suggested Heard was taking advantage of the Me Too movement. It seems Love has since thought better of sharing her opinion. She quickly addressed it in a post on her Instagram account. “I engaged in expressing thoughts online. The platform accidentally posted a story I didn’t want public,” she wrote. “Is it any of my fucking business? No. What about the times I’ve been publicly defamed? My true friends have done so much to help me during these public ritual systemic humiliations? I think of my mentors in morality, whose high opinion of my actions are important to me. While I recover, I borrow the values, moral compasses of those I look up to who do the right thing. I certainly don’t always do the right thing. In my program of recovery, ‘when we were wrong, we promptly admitted it.’ I was wrong. The only important takeaway, of what was posted, is that I expressed that we should all stop having ‘fun with schadenfraude’ (look it up: ‘Delight in another’s down fall’) and show sincere empathy for both parties. If I hurt anyone, please accept my amends.” Source: www.thecut.com

Ozark finale review: A Story of Self-Preservation amidst Late-Stage Capitalist Chaos (Spoilers)

The Season 4 (the last season of TV drama Ozark) is officially finished. And it seems there are quite a few things some fans would have wanted to change about its heartbreaking conclusion. The most important, probably, Ruth Langmore's death at the hands of Camila Navarro (the ruthless sister of Omar Navarro, boss of a Mexican drug cartel). Sadly I think it felt inevitable, due to Ruth's self-destructive bent during her last days, shown very effectively by Julia Garner. Ruth Langmore's affective bond with Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman), her renewed friendship with Rachel Garrison (Jordana Spiro), and her longing to escape the Langmore curse made her demise even sadder to accept. Many fans of Ozark probably looked forward to a final comeuppance for Marty and his wife Wendy (Laura Linney). But Ruth's actual death wasn't directly related to the Byrdes. Ruth had killed Camila's son Javi, and the Byrdes tried to placate Ruth's wrath, but the young Byrdes' mentee had lost her sanity after learning her vulnerable cousin Wyatt had been killed by the cartel. The Byrdes knew they couldn't save Ruth or they all would have gotten killed by Camila's henchmen.

At the beginning of Ozark Martin "Marty" talked to the viewers about economics: "Money as a measuring device. That which separates the haves from the have-nots. You see, the hard reality is how much money we accumulate in life is not a function of who's president or the economy or bubbles bursting or bad breaks or bosses. It's about the American work ethic. The one that made us the greatest country on Earth. Patience. Frugality. Sacrifice. What do those three things have in common? Those are choices. Money is, at its essence, that measure of a man's choices. Half of all American adults have more credit card debt than savings. 25% have no savings at all. And only 15% of the population is on track to fund even one year of retirement. Suggesting what? The middle class is evaporating? Or the American Dream is dead? You wouldn't be sitting there listening to me if the latter were true. I think most people just have a fundamentally flawed view of money. Is it an intangible? Security or happiness, peace of mind." 

Stanislaw Ulam had been a member of the Manhattan Project (that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War II), and once challenged Paul Samuelson (the first American economist to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) to name one theory in all of the social sciences that was both true and nontrivial. Samuelson responded with David Ricardo's theory of Comparative Advantage: "That it is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them."

Marty Byrde started laundering money for a drug cartel because he saw it all as a mere business of supply and demand, which operated in his view not very different from Purdue Pharma's shady practices. Marty had suggested this idea of cooperating with a Mexican drug cartel to his seemingly bipolar wife Wendy, thinking only about the potential benefits and taking for granted his low-profile behind these illicit enterprises. Although Jason Bateman was formidable and dryly funny as Marty, for me, it's Laura Linney as Wendy who made this show worthwhile. Her astoundingly vivid and unforgettable performance is truly deserving of an Emmy at the next celebration of the 74th Emmy Awards (September 12, 2022). 

Wendy Byrde is the dark soul of Ozark, my favorite character of the show. Laura Linney is capable of etching on our memory each moment of doubt, mental anguish, courage, and manipulative decisions that passed across Wendy's disturbing mind in impeccable dramatic fashion. Linney embodies Wendy Byrde's psyche through memorable thespian work, making Wendy into the most theatrically developed character in Ozark. At the end of Season 2, we witness how fast Wendy evolves from bored housewife into an egotistical, unpredictable, power-thirsty anti-heroine. In a recent interview with Harper's Bazaar, Linney explained: "She's a wildly complex character that you can't quite figure her out. Is she sociopathic or just emotionally immature? The authentic part of her is hard to pin down."

Wendy teaches her son Jonah a hard-won lesson: “You need to grow up. This is America. People don’t care where your fortune came from.” And when trying to persuade Clare Shaw (CEO of Shaw Medical Solutions) to associate with the illicit Navarro cartel, Wendy affirms: “It’s the only way to make the bad mean something: Bury it. Pile good on top of good.” This scene is key to understand Wendy's unstable personality. Wendy had suffered as a kid from abusive treatment by her alcoholic father Nathan, which provoked in her a deep distrust towards the society; she thought the system had failed her when she most needed it. So now she is on a mission to prove that this system had always been broken, and in a twisted way to self-justify and compensate for her personal unhappiness.

As the Byrdes become a political power couple, many viewers might think their win-at-all-costs ethos, their lack of moral scruples and metastasized hubris, would inevitably lead them to a terrible comeuppance for their amoral actions. The Byrde clan, according to some analytical critics, certainly seems to represent the complicity of a corrupt family with the systemic corruption rooted within the USA's capitalist system. But why then the Byrdes win in the end? The answer is a heightened sense of perseverance. The answer might be "Comparative Advantage." Or the answer might be reformulated as a question: are they really the bad guys? The FBI have made tricksy deals with Omar and Camila Navarro. The politicians voted by the average Joe are mostly corrupt. The reality is the Byrdes win because they are the smartest players in the capitalist game. They are soberer than their rivals and know exactly when the light fades down the tunnel. In fact, they have distinguished from other TV criminal characters by manipulating people who are often much worse than them. Article published previously as The Master Manipulators: "Ozark" Season 4 (Finale/Spoilers) on Blogcritics.

Laura Linney and Jason Bateman analyze their Ozark characters Wendy and Marty Byrde

Laura Linney gets some of her juiciest material in her run on the moody drama Ozark as the ruthless matriarch Wendy Byrde, and has a nasty-good time with it. The good reviews are there, the attention is there, and the overdue factor may be too—this show has been a hit since its inception. Tellingly, the Emmys have warmed toward final-season embraces of late: think Jon Hamm of Mad Men, or Claire Foy of The Crown, both winning the first lead-acting trophies on their last try. Linney could easily fit among that company. Wendy’s transformation has been the most radical throughout the course of Ozark. Where once she was simply Marty’s disillusioned wife, she became the icy, unpredictable villain of the show. Look beyond that spoonful-of-sugar smile and she is evil, a modern-day Lady Macbeth capable of sacrificing her own brother Ben. Marty suggests the cartel option to Wendy before accepting Del's offer. They had lost a child recently and Wendy had been told she was basically too old for working as a PR in political campaigns. Marty was looking to cheer up his wife and she needed a distraction. They got straightforward into a nightmare after Marty's partner Bruce started to skim money from the cartel. Many fans really loved Laura Linney for the portrayal of a very complex character and for doing it with such brilliance. 

“There’s a lot that I love about this character,” says Linney. “She is constantly changing, going deeper and deeper into a vulnerable place where a survival instinct hijacked her entire being. Which I think fuelled her intellectual decisions, her emotional outbursts, her strategy. She is very shrewd but makes terrible decisions. She’s wildly immature; she’s not wise. And then, as the series goes on, you learn about her mental illnesses and her family: that allowed me a wider berth in which to veer out into more impulsive behaviours.” When Linney first saw the script, however, she thought Wendy needed more depth. The role felt “typical of a female character in a male-driven show”. So she asked that the part be rewritten. “I had no problem being a sideline to Jason Bateman under any circumstances,” she explains. “I just wanted to make if I was going to commit to a multi-year endeavour, I would need to be able to bring something to it that would keep me engaged. If you have just one character that never changes, you can become subconsciously disinterested and start to detach.”

About the current political atmosphere, Linney says: “The Americans are just passing all of these laws that I find really offensive, and for some reason, the swirl of distrust just keeps going around and around. It’s just wrong, deeply wrong.” She takes a breath. “It’s just awful and it’s ignorant; there’s nothing more dangerous to me than ignorance and arrogance. Those two things coupled together are a nasty engine.” Laura Linney talks about how Ozark is a survival story, and “Wendy is just trying to survive“. However, it is not just about surviving for her. Wendy wants to come out with some kind of payoff from the situation. “It’s a real drive that she inflicts upon everyone, and it’s not mentally sound,” she adds. However, Linney denies any comparisons that are being made between Wendy and Lady Macbeth, the conniving queen of the Shakespearean tragedy Othello. Linney says: “She’s not really a villain. But if Wendy showed up in my room, I’d just slide out the door. She scares me.”  Source: www.independent.co.uk

In the early days of “Ozark,” Marty Byrde couldn’t be seen screaming or losing his temper. Bateman showed Marty's methodical nature and his reflexive calm even as he watched his business partner get shot in the head and his wife have sex on camera with another man. "In fact the satisfying sound of your lover smacking the pavement is the only thing that gets me to sleep at night," are the calm yet chilling words that Marty uses to reproach Wendy's infidelity. Dan Jackson wrote in a recap of Ozark pilot episode: "As Jason Bateman's Marty Byrde angrily approaches a Chicago office building, fuming about his wife's affair with the smarmy businessman Gary Silverberg, he sees a body smack right against the pavement, hitting the ground so hard a shoe flies off. Some shows might have waited to kill off the character, letting Gary's conflict with Marty stretch out for a whole season, but, as we quickly learned, that's not the Ozark way. Either you're completely disgusted and want to turn the TV off—a totally reasonable reaction—or you're sucked in and can't wait to find out what happens next."

Once New York Times film critic Mike Hale wrote a negative review right after the first season premiered, calling Marty “boring” and “a guy you see at the airport when you buy a ticket.” This review didn’t discourage Jason or made him change how he portrayed Marty. Instead, season after season, we peeled layers of Marty, until one day his cool demeanor is no longer. Speaking about Marty’s character, Jason said, “There’s a reason Marty is not hysterical because he’s the center of all the madness. I knew why I was playing it like that and where I was going with it and how that, hopefully, is going to be satisfying by the time we get to the end of the series.”

Naturally, when you have been part of a show for almost six years, it gets hard to say goodbye. So when Jason Bateman was asked how it felt the last scene he shot with his on-screen wife Laura Linney, he said “there were definitely tears”. About the possible future of the Byrdes, Bateman speculated: “I would bet you that they’ll go up to Chicago and they’ll test this theory of Wendy’s”. While talking about whether the ends will have justified the means for the Byrdes, Bateman said, “My assumption is that, while they’re smarter now than when we first met them, I still feel like their hubris and arrogance will continue to trip them up. I think a sense of humility might guide them towards better decisions, but unfortunately, they are just not there yet.” Lately, Bateman has been re-watching “Ozark” with his wife, but he says his own viewing habits are more limited. He assures he’s seen quite a few episodes of “Friends,” but he never caught the fever of “Breaking Bad,” only the pilot. Bateman started watching HBO’s “The Sopranos,” but stopped after six episodes because he found it hard to get into.

“I watch MSNBC news, until the Dodgers game starts,” Bateman explains. “And then I watch that until I pass out and then finish the last few innings first thing in the morning, rolling into ‘Morning Joe.’ That’s it.” “Delightfully boring” is how Jimmy Kimmel describes Jason Bateman in a phone call. “We’ll go on trips together sometimes, and he’s really good at putting the kids to bed because it means he gets to go to sleep at 9 o’clock.” “He likes to talk but there’s a limited window,” says Jennifer Aniston—another close friend who has been his co-star in “Horrible Bosses” and “The Switch”—“When you’re gathering in a group, Jason gives you maybe an hour. All of a sudden you can see that imaginary window shade sort of pull down. He’s like, ‘Okay, that’s it. I’ve got my time in.” "Jason is perhaps the most adorable human being on the planet. I'm so glad he's having a resurgence," Jennifer Aniston said of Jason Bateman in Harper's Bazaar in 2010.  

Bateman describes himself as an introvert. He listens mainly to classical music and does tend to prefer staying at home. Part of this is rooted in his decision to quit partying in 2001, but it also speaks to a lack of pretension, and a perspective of life he formed time ago. When he talks about directing, he gets excited, talking about the challenges, and the problem-solving. He takes particular pride in an early scene in “Ozark” that featured Laura Linney behind the wheel of a boat. He sketched out the single shot on a napkin for the camera operator. Linney says Bateman’s enthusiasm for directing extended to his pushing her to do it, too, even though she had no interest. Her first directing gig was the 11th episode of the final season. When Bateman was directing, she says, his experience and temperament allowed everyone to “take a deep breath, a deep sigh.” Source: vanityfair.com

Ozark surpassing Breaking Bad (Spoilers)

When it premiered, Ozark was met with a certain degree of skepticism and even suspicion. Though it garnered positive reviews, many TV critics had mixed emotions about the latest sleek Netflix drama. In Vox magazine, Emily St. James argued she found the white guy antihero trope somewhat clichéd. Not helping matters was the fact that a critical darling loomed large over the show, inviting some comparisons with Ozark. That show, of course, is Breaking Bad, the crown jewel of the good-guy-turned-drug-kingpin genre. It was inevitable to put them side by side given some of their similarities. After all, in Ozark’s earlier episodes, it did seem like Marty (Jason Bateman) was going to be the heart of the show. It’s his voice we first hear, waxing poetic about how “money is, at its essence, that measure of a man’s choices.” In both Ozark and Breaking Bad, we had two middle class men trying to provide for their families, while complicated circumstances drive them to the underworld of drug trafficking. 

These comparisons did not stop it from becoming a Netflix hit. When the fourth season debuted, it hit a historic high of 4 billion minutes of viewing, per Nielsen ratings. What made it so irresistible? Five years later, the Byrdes are still at it. Its reputation had steadily but stealthily grown – a rarity in our short span times. The first episode of Season 4 starts with a flurry of activity: the Byrdes are now prosperous casino owners, but somehow their list of antagonists is longer than ever. In the first season, The Byrdes had landed in Missouri. There, financial adviser Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) and his wife Wendy (Laura Linney) had to somehow find a way to launder $500m for a criminal cartel. The word “Ozark” had a certain obscure mystery, at least to non-American viewers. Ozark sounds like dark: spiky z’s and k’s.  

Ozark’s unexpected triumph is partly down to those old-fashioned qualities of writing, acting and directing. Classic. Ozark’s violent twists and dark mood are leavened with intelligent humour. In the face of all this misery, what is there to do but wisecrack? It has a distinctive gloomy aesthetic all of its own, which makes oppressive use of the landscape, all looming forests and brackish water, lit in milky sunshine. In Laura Linney’s brilliant hands, Wendy has evolved from something like a stock wife into an unpredictable, power-thirsty anti-heroine all of her own. Although Jason Bateman was best known for holding the erratic Bluth family together in Arrested Development, he had shown in Juno that he could be a really creepy nice guy. 

His shifty smile told you that for all his outward respectability, in another world he could do shady things. In Ozark, he has been able to show just how immoral, sleazy, and tricksy anti-hero Marty has become. Ironically, Ozark has superseded the original potential Breaking Bad had once long time ago. Especially if you think Breaking Bad might have been a bit overrated. Of all the great TV dramas since The Sopranos, it is only Mad Men that portrayed a rather optimistic view of America, and that was set in the postwar glow of the Fifties and Sixties. It certainly says something that so many of the country’s great dramas are about drugs. Breaking Bad dealt with meth, Better Call Saul deals with meth, too. Dopesick was a devastating portrayal of the opioid crisis caused by the Sackler family. 

Ozark also plays out against the legacy of the opioid epidemic, with its lingering boost for the heroin market. Baltimore, Albuquerque, or the Lake of the Ozarks: these are the left-behind places of America, far away from technology gold-rush or clean-living finance executives. Drugs turn the individual against themselves, and the drug trade turns Americans against each other. In a subtly different scenario, Marty, a drab financial adviser, would never have been obligated to operate in this shadow world. It’s not just these individuals that have broken, but the system has, too. Linney’s and Bateman’s outstanding performances are the reason this despicable pair can be so enjoyable to watch while they go wallowing into their moral misery. During its four seasons, the Byrdes become less sympathetic, less relatable. 

Specially, Wendy leaves behind our initial sympathy we had for her as a mom screwed out of the labor force after a depressive episode following her miscarriage. Marty might have made the deal with the devil, but only with her blessing. And once Wendy realizes that her strategic power can surpass that of her husband, she appears chilling, insane, and using up every benefit of the doubt afforded to educated white women. Wendy becomes a more formidable presence with every passing episode. She has her reasons for her behaviour, though. Camila Navarro was relentless in her vengeance, and even Clare Shaw did not hesitate to put her self-preservation first. Paradoxically, the Byrdes have distinguished from other criminal characters being unusually effective by manipulating people who are often worse than them. It’s like the show finally found its footing by being its unabashed self: hyperbolic, dizzying, and unwilling to give real redemption to Wendy and Marty. While previous seasons had relished in plenty of deaths, those killed were by no means innocent bystanders. 

They all had blood in their hands, and the world was probably better off without them. With the exception of Ben. As it's made apparent in the series conclusion, Ben's ashes will follow the seemingly indestructible Byrde family forever. Unlike Breaking Bad, Ozark wasn’t really a story about a family’s fall from grace. It was a story about how a system built up around the American middle class family is already rotten. Shaw Medical is going nowhere. The Navarro cartel will continue to thrive, thanks, in no small part, to the FBI’s dependence on the cash seizures it can get from them. The Byrdes will get to play do-gooders thanks to their foundation. It is a tale as old as America, but television has not always had such a pessimistic outlook. In this sense, the show was unflinching in its critique of the American Dream. Source: www.independent.co.uk

“The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice.” —American political columnist for The Washington Post -and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1987- Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018)

"A Hard Way to Go": the bleak ending of Ozark

Wendy Byrde (the exquisite Laura Linney), has checked herself into a mental hospital in an attempt to prevent her father, Nathan (Richard Thomas), from taking their kids back with him to North Carolina. Wendy might be a terrible parent, but she refuses to let her children suffer at the hands of Nathan, an alcoholic who was sometimes abusive to her as a kid. Marty has finally reached a breaking point as he attempts to simultaneously assuage the cartel, the FBI, and his family, so if Ruth doesn’t help him win back his kids, he might tell the cartel that she killed Javi. Marty meets with Camila, Omar’s sister and the Byrde family’s ally as they attempt to a) kill Omar and b) fulfill their deal with the FBI. They sketch out their plan, which involves a cell transfer in which Omar will “escape” only to get gunned down, and Camila will take over the cartel, so long as she continues making regular payments to America's finest law enforcement agency. But Camila wants to meet with the FBI first to soothe any doubts, and Marty agrees. Meanwhile, Ruth confronts Wendy at the mental hospital, where she tells her she’ll try to get the kids back on her side. 

Ruth finally admits she’s sorry for letting Ben (Tom Pelphrey), Wendy’s brother, out of the same exact mental hospital last season. If she’d have left him alone, despite his suffering, he’d still be alive. Ruth withdraws a gun from her safe and visits Nathan in his motel room at the Lazy O, with the premise of toasting Ben's life and death. For the first few minutes of their conversation, Ruth and Nathan discuss Wendy’s “reputation” for promiscuity, a trait Nathan clearly resented. “Well, you beat her,” Ruth says, with a sweet smile. After Nathan’s face falls—“How's that?”—her eyelashes flutter. “You won! You got Jonah and Charlotte!” But we know the act won’t last long, and within minutes, Ruth’s switched off the doe-eyes. “You don't even fucking want them, do you?” she asks. Increasingly agitated as the conversation grows frosty, Nathan admits his real intentions: He only wants custody over Charlotte and Jonah to punish his daughter. “She was a slut and an embarrassment,” he says. As he turns to place the whiskey bottle on ice, Ruth pulls out her gun and shoots a glass on the counter, exploding it into pieces. Charlotte and Jonah come running, and Ruth demands Nathan tell them the truth behind his custody battle—or she’ll shoot him in the dick. (This show has a thing for dick-shooting.)

Showrunner Chris Mundy says: “Marty and Wendy love each other, but they’re also the only two people who have lived through this. How can they have a normal relationship with anybody else or in any other situation?” After leaving the mental hospital as a family, Wendy has accomplished her task of getting the gang back together. As she climbs into the passenger seat, she shoots Marty a sweet, almost bashful smile. “You really didn't have to threaten Ruth,” she says, as if it’s the most romantic gesture her husband has ever attempted. In the Byrdes’s love language, it probably is. Season 4 has spent many of its best Marty-Wendy scenes emphasizing the dynamics of their marriage: Wendy pushes for control, and Marty acquiesces, in part because she's erratic, but also because he loves her. (Keep in mind that, in Ozark’s pilot episode, Marty spent the first half obsessed with the fact that his wife was cheating on him, and the second half desperately trying to protect her.) Whether or not it’s true, he feels, by now, that everything he’s done this season—going to Mexico, cooperating with the FBI, distancing from Ruth—is for his wife. Marty visits Ruth to confirm Nelson’s at the bottom of her pool. Marty offers to give her a new identity after Omar's assassination, but Ruth refuses: “I like my name.” So Marty invites her, as the casino's new ownership, to meet with the cartel and FBI, where they’ll hammer down the details of their laundering arrangement. Source: elle.com

Showrunner Chris Mundy tells Vanity Fair that the writers room argued spiritedly about which of the show’s still-standing characters, Byrdes included, would survive the finale—considering that so many people who crossed Marty and Wendy during their criminal descent wound up dead. Ultimately, the room wrote the finale in accordance with its season-four credo: “Building a myth. Creating a curse.” But in plotting out the death of Ruth, it was important to Mundy that her fate be self-propelled. So Ruth’s death is a direct result of her decision to avenge Wyatt’s death by killing Javi. “I wanted everybody to have active choices in the last seven episodes,” says Mundy, pointing out that Ruth had a decision to make after Javi killed her cousin Wyatt. “Ruth could go for revenge or not, and she knows if she did, it is going to unleash things that might end up with her getting harmed. People keep saying Ruth got caught in the crossfire of the Byrdes, but Ruth's actual death had nothing to do with the Byrdes. Ruth killed Javi, and the Byrdes tried to help her stop it but Ruth held them at gunpoint. Wyatt's death happened because of his association with Darlene, not the Byrdes. Darlene even had positioned against the Byrdes and had crossed the cartel. The Byrdes couldn't save Ruth or they all would've gotten killed. They actually showed remorse and were trying to think of anything they could do to stop it, including calling a hitman, but everything was in play already...” 

The show winds down after Ruth’s death with a coda scene in which the Byrde family returns home to find Mel (Adam Rothenberg), the private investigator who had been looking into Ben’s death. Mel’s holding the cookie jar containing Ben’s ashes, and reveals that he has discovered that Wendy offered up her brother like the ultimate sacrificial lamb in her quest for power. “You don’t get it, do you?” Mel tells Wendy and Marty, in their backyard. “You don’t get to win. You don’t get to be the Kochs or the Kennedys or whatever fucking royalty you people think you are. The world doesn’t work like that.” At that moment, Jonah appears with a shotgun—a callback to the season-one finale, in which Jonah pulls a gun on Garcia only to find out it is unloaded. (Buddy, played by Harris Yulin, saved the day.) This time, though, the gun is loaded. Jonah pulls the trigger, the screen cuts to black, and a gunshot is heard—meaning that the Byrdes have miraculously survived Ozark’s deadly fate. In a way, Mundy says, Jonah killing Mel signifies “the family being brought back together through this act of violence.” The showrunner wanted to end the series on a note so unexpected that it took viewers a beat to process whether Jonah killing Mel is “a thing to cheer for or not.” He adds, “We wanted people to think about the reality of what happened, not just in the context of watching a TV show, but also in whatever reality these characters are going to keep living in.” Source: www.vanityfair.com