Ozark

ffs Ruth is a yank from NY

It took me, at least, four bags of cool ranch Ds, and 2 bags of popcorn and one pint of mint chip to make it through season 2, are you serious there’s another season of this shit

This show is terrible but I can’t stop watching
Season 3 romantic hookups are so dumb
Laura linneys brother just stepped in from a season 3 perfect strangers episode

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

S4 of my junkiest favourite show is up on Netflix now...will have to rewatch that incredible ending to S3 first.

!

Forgot this was tonight!

Re-watched the final episode of S3, but I still had lots of trouble remembering connections in the opening episode of the new season. It's been two years at least--can't remember the significance of Wendy's brother, why he had to be killed, the arrangement between Marty and the FBI agent, why the daughter's so on board all of a sudden (as the son reminded me, she once sued to get out of the family), etc. Javi seems to have wandered over from Better Call Saul--he's so Lalo Salamanca.

Always intrigued the way series that start out with virtually no pop music often seem to give in at a certain point and go semi-Scorsese: Sam Cooke, A Tribe Called Quest, Sister Nancy's "Bam Bam" (which I feel like I know but can't really place how), and--mercifully brief, so I'll give it a pass--the Ides of March's "Vehicle."

Plastic Bertrand!

This season is really not great so far (I'm 3 episodes in). The private eye guy is the latest in the show's string of "how long will this annoying asshole be around before someone shoots him" characters. I do like the addition of Richard Thomas to the cast, as he's very good at playing scary guys who are underestimated until it's too late.

Is Thomas new? I couldn't remember him from previous seasons...such a good actor the past few years.

The thing I find so bizarre about the new season is the two kids. The daughter's about-face is practically Michael Corleone-level (not to mention the ongoing evolution of evil crime lord Laura Linney), while suddenly the son is a central character. And also...well, just about everything is absurd, including Jason Bateman's robotic detachment from it all. And, in spite of all that, or because of all that, I still find it compelling.

Yeah, this season is weird. The daughter's about-face is def odd, but she's also been pretty marginalized as a character at this point, she's not really bringing much beyond delivering messages for the Byrdes without any agency of her own. It also feels like the already not always subtle Breaking Bad comparisons are being made even more blindingly obvious, what with the larger presence of the cartel players, the Lydia cipher working for a huge corporation with shady connections and, not least, Wendy's Walter White moment when she (apparently, I've not yet seen episode 6) watches Darlene die without intervening).

Feel like Ruth Langmore could give Logan Roy a run for his money in artistry in swearing.

She says something like "What the actual fucking fuck, Marty?" in E4. One guy I like is Wendy's behind-the-scenes political operative; the same guy played a behind-the-scenes tech operative in House of Cards. Both characters are shadowy and reptilian and seem to just appear out of nowhere.

Yeah, he's good.

Ruth will never top "I don't know shit about fuck", but she's been good this season.

Yeah, he's good.

have always liked him popping up in things since his roles in a couple early hal hartley films. weird-good presence.

Interesting how the use of music has evolved in this show, from Bob Seger/REO SPeedwagon to Plastic Bertrand/Tribe Called Quest. With shows like this I find myself less interested in predicting the final scene than guessing what song will soundtrack it.

Anyone else watching with the captions on? At the start of every scene: "[insects chirring]." A lot of chirring going on in the Ozarks.

Finished up last night. I get the feeling they're out of ideas and just trying to get to the finish line. New plot twists pretty much amount to "kill someone" every time.

Kinda how I feel about Westworld. New plot twists = "was a robot all along."

I like how in the current season the various overlaps in the Byrde/Cartel/Snell/FBI circles are brought to the fore, family turning on family, etc. Very King Lear.

What the actual fucking fuck, Henry?

(Sorry, you're right--just wanted to say that to someone.)

Wish someone would say that to me from time to time - really wakes you up!

Yeah I don't know about this season - the shifting circumstances and alliances became so convoluted that often all sense of the stakes were lost. Also I absolutely loved Julia Garner previously, but she sometimes tipped over into overacting in this one, particularly in the final ep. I still smashed the whole thing in under a week, mind.

Forgot this still had a half-season to go--resumes Friday.

She’s back

I've only watched the first episode, so maybe your comment looks ahead; I kept waiting for Helen to show up, with an explanation that her entire death was staged.

One thing I liked in a typically meandering episode (another long testimonial to how awful the Byrdes are--there's one every episode) was the scene where Ruth talked about Nas with the hip-hop guy she spotted in the restaurant.

One thing I liked in a typically meandering episode (another long testimonial to how awful the Byrdes are--there's one every episode) was the scene where Ruth talked about Nas with the hip-hop guy she spotted in the restaurant.

That scene felt super cringey to me. (That was Killer Mike from Run The Jewels, btw.) I didn't really like the use of pretty much the entire Illmatic album in that episode either. Although it's rare that a character in any TV show is shown having specific taste in music.

Missed that that was Killer Mike. Anyway, I liked it--I thought the two questions Ruth asked were pretty interesting.

Still on the fence if s4 is worth my time

I'm not even sure if S1/2/3 were worth my time, but I'm still here.

Line I wish they'd included --

Killer Mike to Ruth: "You really have to cut down on the profanity."

Lol Clemenza.

Finished it, both definitely not worth anyones time but also I enjoyed watching this? Like eating KFC, I know its bad before/during/after eating, but damn I’d probably do it all again.

Not stoked on the ending. Maybe I was too inattentive but I didn’t see the show pushing the “power wins everything” card harder than the “power will destroy you” card. To have the former be the key message in the last scene felt like an about face. Also, any illusion of Marty possessing humanity is destroyed, and that illusion was still very much real until that last scene. Disappointing, depressing, and (hopefully) distant from the truth of things.

Obviously the truth of things involves the Byrde story as presented to this point (power does cover a multitude of sins), but my understanding is that Byrde-like power always ends in immense failure/pain/loss (death comes for all, humbling the powerful more). Would have liked the show to acknowledge this rather than give the Byrde’s a victory lap and pat on the back.

The Killer Mike scene was Ruth daydreaming, right? Like (VERY MINOR SPOILER) the two coyotes she saw in the rv mirror right after, which then disappeared when she got out?

Interesting, hadn't even considered that. They did make it clear that the coyotes were fantasized, but I guess it's possible.

they draw the line at election fraud! lol

I was thinking today that the only time I've seen a TV show use a single artist the way Nas was used in E8 is a great Freaks and Geeks episode that had three or four different Who songs.

I don't mind what they were going for with the ending from a character perspective honestly, but I felt that the events themselves were a bit anticlimactic. As did many I guess. Something even old fashioned about Ruth's final scene in particular, with Camila walking out from behind a random tree and Ruth being all "whelp the jigs up, ya caught me fair and square, just answer me this see, how did you find out whodunit?". I feel like if they had a draft of the script where Ruth gets into something more intense regarding Camilla... a chase or a fight or something etc. that would trigger shit hitting the fan this would have been a better payoff. As the party was getting into full swing and everything was going well and they were all talking optimistically about the future, it felt as if they were setting things up, overtly telegraphing even, an inevitable shit-fan-hitting. The fact that everything held together (aside from the Langmore curse delivering its ultimate punishment) seemed like the writer's way of "subverting expectations" or something?

Finally finished. A lot of the time, as often happens with me in S4s and beyond lately, I'd lost the plot. Things like the Foundation, or the urgency near the end of laundering money through--and only through--the casino, these things had long since lost meaning.

One good thing: in the final episode, I actually cared about the fate of Ruth. In this big convoluted mess, there was a character I cared about. And I liked "They Reminisce Over You" in the car just before she got to where she was going. How I thought that'd end: Camila admires that Ruth did the right thing by her family, and lets her go, maybe even enlists her for the cartel. I was looking for a storybook cartel ending--that's how I think.

As for the actual ending, standard Godfather stuff. It was okay

Wendy got off one great line to that guy Sam (the purpose of whom I never quite figured out): "I'm sure she'll be willing to teach you a lot of things."

The ending was, fine, whatever. I've spent time with worse shows and Ruth was a joy to watch to the end.

I only have really two complaints about it:
1. The Camila/Ruth resolution was fine but way, way, way too rushed. Oh look, here's Clare Shaw to conveniently spill the beans at the most opportune moment!

2. Worse for me was the whole framing of the Byrde's car wreck. I get that they were going for a Gilligan-verse style flash forward thing, but holy shit was that pointless. Build up to a car crash that everyone walks away from without a scratch and is never referenced again, not even by the next scene, and had absolutely zero narrative implications. Just terrible and really soured me on the finale.

Shit! Why did that not work? Mods?

You need individual spoiler tags for each paragraph.

I watched s3 and the first half of this season + the finale and my primary takeaway from the show is that everyone is awful, everyone is bad and not part of your team

Glad you mentioned the car wreck--yes, totally pointless. (Had actually forgotten all about it by the time it happened.)

Everyone's behavior is so arbitrary and in service of generating more misery, it's a somewhat fascinating exercise in how much contempt you are willing to endure from your entertainment

And--basically the same point--too cynical by half: make sure that the two characters who seemed decent, Ruth and the detective, get punished, and use all the bad people in service of the Godfather ending (Wendy's last line + Jonah = Michael Corleone).

lol this last season (and especially the last half of it) was such a slog, I had to force myself to watch an episode every couple of days just to get it over with. clemenza OTM that all of the big plot points lost all meaning and it just felt like an arbitrary series of events that I could not invest anything in no matter how hard I tried. I could be mistaken but I feel like Wendy actually started out as a pretty smart and crafty Claire Underwood type in the first season or 2 but imo her feud w Jonah was a real shark-jumping moment for me, she made soooo many stupid rash impulse decisions at odds w like any sort of long-term goal achievement. also watching her turn on her like stammery charismatic manipulator voice with ppl grew v v tiresome. the final scene was incredibly disappointing, I truly wished the Byrdes had just fuckin died tbh, or at least some of them. For a second I actually thought they'd be daring enough to go there, shame on me.

I thought Wendy early on was a lot like Skyler in the first two or three seasons of Breaking Bad: she seemed to be rational and moral, trying to hold the family together in the face of stuff she was trying to figure out. Skyler wavered some for the rest of the show's run; Wendy just got silly.

Rewatching--insane comfort viewing...Missed this the first time around; S2, E6, played by Rachel off a jukebox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj71uB2j9gE

Can't seem to pin down the date--sometime between '66 to '73 is the best I can do (Bear Family compilation).

I'm generally hyper-attentive to how pop music is used in movies and on TV, but for some reason I didn't make mention of this above--ending of season 2, fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZGfbmHapLw

epic show

Laura Linney