‘Ozark’ Recap, Episode 7: Family Affairs

I keep thinking about the Langmores’ bobcats. In “Nest Box” (Ozark Episode 7), we discover that the two female ‘cats Boyd and Russ blew their money on under the mistaken impression that they were a potentially lucrative breeding pair are alive and well and being fed by Russ’s sons Wyatt and Three. If this family were as fucked up as they seemed at first glance, they’d have let the animals loose to fend for themselves, or simply shot them out of spite. But here they are — not exactly happy in their increasingly cramped pen, but not dead, and not neglected either.

There’s a lot we’re learning about the Langmores, who with any luck will take on the same “secondary group of protagonists” role that the Lannisters did in Game of Thrones if and when Ozark continues into future seasons, that help us understand why they might have made this humane decision. You can sense it when Russ…well, he doesn’t quite apologize to Ruth for hitting her in a drunken rage after her failed hit on Marty, but he’s put some thought into his inexcusable behavior. “I reacted fast,” he tells her, “without thinking.” Ruth may be right, and he may simply be scared that her murderous father Cade will notice the shiner he gave her and ask questions, but I sense shame and regret that’s real.

Even more surprising this time around is Boyd (Christopher James Baker, whom you may recall as Vince Vaughn’s lanky right-hand man in True Detective Season Two). After Ruth departs, he and his brother go out trawling for garbage discarded by the rich summer people who’ve left the lake behind for the season. Russ starts waxing about potentially starting a business of his own — the bait and tackle shop he and his undercover FBI agent boyfriend “Robert” have been discussing — instead of simply picking through other people’s trash. Then Boyd lets loose with a kind of astonishing monologue. “I know people think I’m stupid. It’s okay, I know what they say. But I see things, perception-wise. Well, what I’m sayin’ is, we’re all different than what people think in some ways. Nothin’ wrong with it…well, I’m sayin’, you wanna do somethin’ else? Be somethin’ else? I got your back, that’s all.” If this isn’t Boyd telling Russ it’s okay to come out of the closet, I don’t know what it is. Russ blows the whole thing off, unable to openly receive this generosity of spirit, but still, what a welcome surprise that it was offered at all.

But while Russ may not be able to accept his brother’s acceptance in return, he is able to win over Agent Petty. So thoroughly, in fact, that the fed halts his plan to flip Russ against his niece Ruth and her boss Marty Byrde by recording his confession of the murder attempt. (Kind of a gutpunch that this was what he was after, not simply access to Marty’s circle of associates.) How does he do it? By presenting Petty with a protoype brochure for “Fly Life,” the bait and tackle shop they’ve talked about. As best we can tell, it’s not even some half-assed “aww, look, he tried” kind of deal, but a well-written, well-designed piece of advertising. The reprieve that the awestruck Petty gives Russ probably can’t last, not with his ex-boyfriend Agent Evans ready to assist on the case. But seeing that this guy he cares about despite himself is willing to pursue this dream together with him (“Co-founders Robert Powell and Russ Langmore”) is enough for now.

Finally there’s Ruth, whose storyline enables Julia Garner to deliver another knockout performance. Her interrogation by her incarcerated father is awful to watch: He’ll sandwich a bad joke between calling her a whore and calling her stupid, and she’ll laugh like his emotional abuse never even happened — like the joke is a life raft. Adding to the turmoil is the fact that she got a lift to the prison from Wendy, with whom she’d traveled to St. Louis to hunt for a runaway Charlotte. (Ruth’s cousin Wyatt skipped school, too, and her anger at him for potentially fucking up his life is red hot.) Watching her sit in the back of that car, first prepping to impress this man by doing her makeup in the rearview mirror, then choking back tears after the visit as the family of the man she’s been ordered to murder respects her enough to keep their concern about her to themselves…man, that’s a tough psychological knot to unravel.

The Byrdes are all tangled up, too. Plotwise, their half of the episode is driven by two parallel schemes. The first is Marty’s attempt to get Pastor Mason Young to stop working on the land-based church and keep on preaching on the water; anything else is unacceptable to the quite unhinged Snell family, who use the services for heroin distribution where it’s unlikely their mules will get stopped by the cops. Meanwhile, after a frightening brush with one of the cartel’s enforcers, Wendy hooks her nebbishy boss Sam’s asshole mother Eugenia up with Marty so he can raid her savings under the guise of financial planning, with the intention of putting the cash back into her account when he’s finally back in the black. These plans, uh, well…

Yeah. But this is all prelude to the final sequence, which crosscuts between Marty and Wendy having a knock-down drag-out fight about their life together and Charlotte, exhausted after a long and arduous day during which she attempted to flee “home” to Chicago, nearly drowns in the dark lake. Marty is incensed to discover that Wendy has been making plans to return the kids to their hometown officially, which he reads as a run-up to her departure as well. In response, he blasts her with both barrels about her affair, rattling off all the moments she could have said “no” to her lover in a truly painful litany. Wendy tearfully responds that without any intimacy or affection from Marty, all of which dried up the moment they decided to launder drug money, there was no reason for her to say no. When he says that he’s only keeping her around out of “necessity, not desire,” she asks him why he didn’t simply let Del kill her when he had the chance, and Marty doesn’t even have an answer. All the while, Charlotte is struggling for air, and seemingly succumbs, only to regain her strength and launch herself back above the surface, the smile on her face indicating some sort of perverse exhilaration in this brush with death.

The sequence brings out the best in all three actors: Jason Bateman pushes his odd Type A energy into the red, Laura Linney gets to work with real desperation and trauma, and Sofia Hublitz continues to plumb the umpteenth sullen-teen-daughter character you’ve seen on prestige TV for new depths. No pun intended, honest — the fine work being done here is no joke.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, the Observer, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Ozark Episode 7 ("Nest Box") on Netflix