“Ozark” (2017) Series Review

I remember when Robin Williams died I started to reminisce about his career and I realized that I’ve always known of Robin Williams cause he had been famous for such a long time, he was one of those stars 1 grows up watching and eventually 1 becomes an adult with. There are plenty of those in our lives but right now from the top of my head I can name Sylvester Stallone , John Travolta & Clint Eastwood as examples of movie stars I’ve known of my entire life. There is one guy that has been around show business for very long fucking time & one that I’ve seen in a bunch of stuff since I was a little kid and the last few years he has had a career resurgence and in my opinion well deserved cause he’s actually a pretty good talent and that guy is Jason Bateman.

For fans of 80s TV, Jason Bateman was Ricky Schroder’s horny friend Derek in the 80s classic TV show “Silver Spoons”. The way that kid would hit on his friend’s hot stepmother was funny as fuck and today he will be thrown in jail for displaying too much heterosexuality and labeled a sex offender by feminazis.

Then Bateman became one of the stars of another hit 80’s show “Valerie’s Family” which eventually became “The Hogan Family” after it’s main star left the show after a contract dispute if memory serves me correctly but it didn’t matter much to me cause I still liked the show throughout it’s entire run.

 

Good memories

In other words “Homeboys” turn down your fucking rap!😎

Jason Bateman was also the star of “Teen Wolf Too”. You know in the 80s and early 90s they had these pseudo sequels/ reboots, where they did not have the original stars of the successful previous films but by adding a previous supporting player or players from a previous movie and a new lead star, they got to tell the exact same story over again in a different new shittier way, like “Mannequin 2: On the Move” for example. I do have to say obviously it’s not as good as the original Michael J. Fox 1985 classic but it’s still a good 80s cheesy flick which I’m a sucker for.

Bateman has had a lot of success these past few years in mostly comedies but may I also recommend this movie from 2015 titled “The Gift” in which he appeared in which was very good.

 

Which brings me to this review. I had not known of this series up until maybe a couple of weeks before it was released on Netflix. The premise of the show caught my attention and it sounded manly so I gave it a go & and I’m glad I did because it’s a pretty good show.

 

On the show Jason Bateman plays Marty Byrde who is a chicago-based financial advisor who is is married to Wendy Byrde played by Laura Linney and the couple have two children. On the surface everything seems fine but in reality that is not the case. Marty Byrde happens to launder money for the second largest drug cartel in Mexico. One day shit hits the fan when Del played by Esai Morales shows up unannounced and accuses those involved in the operation of stealing from him. Del is one of the top members of the cartel and the liaison between the parties. The part of Del could have been played in an “over the top” way by another actor but Morales plays Del with a serious business like menace and very effectively in the first episode lets you know that you don’t fuck with him nor the cartel’s money.

Morales is also one of those actors that has been around for a very long time. He has been in a few things that I have liked over the years. He was in the 90s sci-fi manly classic “FreeJack” with Emilio Estevez and Anthony Hopkins, he co-starred with Malibu Communist Sean Penn & Clancy Brown in the 1983 movie “Bad Boys” and he was also great as the fucked-up alcoholic jealous brother of Ritchie Valens played by Lou Diamond Phillips in the 1987 movie “La Bamba”.

Marty convinces Del to let his ass live but in return Marty has to relocate his business and his family from Chicago to a summer resort community in the Ozarks ( The Ozark Mountain and the Plateau, is a physiographic and geologic highland region of the central United States, primarily in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma.) After the immediate move with his family to this region, Marty has to pay off a debt to the Mexican Cartel that’s in the millions, if he doesn’t, they’re all fucked.

I don’t want to give too much away but I binge watch this show and I was entertained from start to finish. It’s been compared to “Breaking Bad” for example and I can see why even though I didn’t get to finish the “Breaking Bad” series.

The family on this show was fucked up before the incident with the cartel & after that, it just brought those issues to the forefront and it forced the family to deal with those issues. Episode after episode you see this family fucking up and getting in over their heads and you just wonder how the hell they are going to fix their lives.

The Ozark setting is a character on the show and the characters that are in this region play a big part in the development of the story. One of these characters is Jacob played by Peter Mullan a local heroin dealer who can be creepy as fuck.

This is one of those shows that really does not seem to have a likeable character and that might be a turn-off to some critics & some may find some of the episodes a little bit dark or repetitive. Also Marty’s been followed by a self-loathing perverted gay FBI agent & a couple of times us manly men have to look away not to be subjected to that unnecessary shit… Damn you 2017!

The series consists of 10 episodes, each of the first nine episodes have a running time of 50+ minutes and the last episode clocks in at an hour and 20 minutes.

This is not a show that breaks new ground but I found it to be an entertaining watch. It was at times dramatic & tense & the actors delivered some good solid performances. Jason Bateman is not only the star of the show but the executive producer and he directed some of the episodes. If they make a season 2, I would definitely watch it and that is the best compliment one can give a new TV series. Derek did well for himself.

8/10