There’s a point early on in Ozark Season 4 Episode 3 where FBI Agent Maya Miller notes that cartel boss Omar Navarro, with whom she has been dragged to a meeting, has a two-month-old son who was nearly killed at his own baptism. It’s a time frame worth remembering: Everything we’ve seen on this show since that baptism massacre—all the ups and downs, the betrayals and backstabbing, the schemes and plans, the life-changing upheavals—have taken place in a matter of just a few weeks. Ozark storytelling is a bit like the omicron variant: In just a little time, it’s fucking everywhere, man.
Titled “City on the Make” after writer Nelson Algren’s seminal book about Chicago, this ep draws attention to some of the show’s go-to storytelling quirks. Take Ruth Langmore, for example. She spends the hour alternately helping Jonah Byrde get their money-laundering operation up and running again after Wendy cut off the power to his basement office—retaliation for his failure to appreciate the memorial she constructed to his uncle Ben—and forging ahead with the hipster-heroin deal she’d planned to help move Darlene Snell’s product, against Darlene’s wishes.
Don’t worry, Darlene warms up to the idea in due time, mostly because of how defiantly Ruth pursues it, although the fact that Kansas City crime boss Frank Cosgrove was stonewalling her probably helped her accept Ruth’s alternative, too. (Seriously, Darlene telling Ruth she now knows she made the right call by bringing her aboard the Snell family operation is the closest this show comes to a feel-good moment.)
But along the way, her cousin Wyatt points out something obvious: Every business deal Ruth makes ends in a relationship-ending fight. It’s true of her uncles (whom she murdered), the Byrdes (whom she can no longer stand, Jonah excepted), and, until Darlene dropped her objections, the Snell outfit. Ruth is the sharpest member of the Langmore family by a country mile, but her cousin’s assessment of her character is accurate.
In essence, the show hung a lampshade on one of its most obvious fallback positions: Ruth detonating one partnership after another. It got me to thinking, is there another, similar dynamic at work with the Byrdes?
To all appearances, things actually go pretty well for Marty and Wendy in this episode. They successfully broker a massive heroin deal with Shaw Medical Solutions, courtesy of the company’s relatively new CEO, Clare Shaw (Katrina Lenk). Clare is dealing with her family’s fall from grace after it was blamed for the opioid epidemic; Wendy sells her on the deal with the Navarros by claiming it’ll take drugs off the street and bankroll a series of rehab centers in the process.
Marty, meanwhile, overhears the over-ambitious Navarro newphew Javi setting up a gun shipment, and surreptitiously tells Javi’s uncle Omar to rat the shipment out to Maya and the feds as proof of his sincere intention to come in from the cold. In one fell swoop, he helps fulfill one of his obligations to Omar—“You don’t win until I win,” Omar repeatedly tells him—and undermines the increasingly meddlesome Javi. (Though not before he flirtatiously teaches Charlotte how to eat oysters.)
But the moment I keep coming back to is Charlotte telling Erin Pierce (Madison Thompson) that her missing mother Helen is dead. She tells the truth, as far as it goes, that the Byrdes had nothing to do with the murder, true insofar as they were merely witnesses, not architects of the crime. But she also tells Erin that the fact that they didn’t do it “doesn’t mean we’re not capable in the future if we don’t have any other choice.”
Which got me to thinking. If Ruth has a track record of falling out with people who get into business with her, what kind of track record do the Byrdes have with nearly everyone who comes into contact with them? Rachel Garrison, owner of the Blue Cat Lodge, is dead. So is Agent Petty, who flipped her. So is Cade Langmore, who killed Agent Petty. So is Del, the Navarro captain who was killed by Darlene Snell, who also killed her husband Jacob over business disputes instigated by the Byrdes. Preacher Mason Young died at Marty’s hands, while Wendy’s brother Ben died after she ratted out his location to the Navarros.
Precious few are the people who go into business with the Byrdes and survive the ordeal. I wonder how many figures from this fourth and final season will live to see the final credits roll?
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.
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