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Ozark

In this episode, Ozark goes back to the future. “Coffee, Black” returns us from the fractured flashbacks of “Kaleidoscope” to the present day, although it borrows a tiny bit of timeline manipulation from its predecessor. We open on Tuck, the nice young dude with Down Syndrome, buying an automatic weapon from a clerk at a big box store who helpfully aids him in lying on the hilariously meager paperwork he has to fill out for the purchase. Tuck dutifully delivers the goods to his friend and ours, Jonah Byrde. It’s only later in the episode, when we witness Tuck checking out several aisles down from poor Russ Langmore, whose own purchases are no less ignoble, that we realize this is taking place relatively deep into the episode’s narrative. Yeah, I know, it’s Walt buying the machine gun in the premiere of of Breaking Bad‘s last season and using it in the finale all over again. But you still get that déjà vu frisson anyway. Hey, shows do this shit because it works.

This episode works on a much deeper level than chronological tomfoolery, however. Marty and Wendy’s half of the story shows their hard-fought victory at last — Marty talks his way back into the Blue Cat’s operations, Wendy parlays her boss’s mom hugely expensive funeral plans into the purchase of a struggling funeral home through which they can launder additional money, and voila, they’ve laundered the last of the $8 million. Of course, the genial goon Marty’s boss Del has sent to keep an eye on them shows up almost immediately with another $50 million to wash; storing it away is a family affair.

But the hour truly belongs to the Langmores. Unable to put it off any longer, Agent Petty cuts off Russ’s morning-after daydreaming about making a new life for themselves elsewhere by playing back his murder-conspiracy confession and revealing his status as FBI. Even buried under about two feet of wild red beard, actor Marc Menchaca has been so endearing in this role, and watching him learn that the man who helped him dream of success and freedom was using him is enough to make you look away in pain. At first he’s literally unable to comprehend what’s happening; by the end, he’s been tackled to the ground by Petty, and he’s so gutted he can barely pick his face up off the floor to sign the deal he’s been offered.

That deal involves extracting a similar confession from his niece Ruth, whom the feds can then flip against Marty, and so on and so on right up the food chain. When Ruth sees through Russ’s attempts and Petty insists he try again anyway, however, Russ decides to make a break for it. After gently but firmly telling his sons Wyatt and Three they’ll be relocating to pursue a business opportunity (one Wyatt can’t help but notice involves guns), Russ and his loyal brother Boyd set out to murder Marty, take the money, and run.

Unfortunately for them, Ruth would prefer that they didn’t.

There’s something truly…pathetic about how the Langmore brothers die. No blaze of glory, not even any recognition of why what’s happening to them is happening — just a broken man getting set on fire inside, and his brother’s instinct to reach out and help costing him his life as well. It’s a hands-to-your-face, oh-my-god moment.

Or it would have been, if it hadn’t been spoiled for me in advance. Yes, in an effort to properly credit actor Christopher James Baker for his nuanced work on the show an episode or two ago, I googled “Boyd Langmore Ozark”; the first hit wasn’t his name or IMDB page, but a YouTube video entitled “Russ and Boyd Langmore death scene.” (PS: Don’t do what I did and fuck it up any further for yourself by going back and watching the video to refresh your memory about the scene; you don’t wanna know what YouTube has cued up next.)

So I hope you’ll bear with me for a brief rant about Netflix and spoilers. I’ve never understood the contrarian contention that spoilers don’t matter at all. When I say spoilers matter, I’m not joining forces people who complain that the review they chose to read of a movie they haven’t watched yet contains some plot information. Nor am I basing the argument on stories that have nothing more going for them than some big twist, without which the drama is sucked out entirely. What I’m saying is that the rate and timing of plot information is an artistic decision, just like the casting or the editing or the soundtrack or the cinematography. Ideally, you’d learn what happens in the story when it happens in the story, as per the filmmakers’ design.

If you care about art in this way, Netflix’s “the whole season drops at once” model essentially mandates that you cram a show down your throat as fast as possible simply to avoid getting spoiled. As a business move, it’s very canny, since it creates the self-reinforcing impression that viewers can’t get enough of each show. And since most of their many, many, many original series arrive with no fanfare, by the time you hear enough about a new show to get interested, the people who happened to climb aboard right away are already talking about the finale. That video I mentioned above? It was uploaded just four days after the season debuted. Imagine watching a whole new season of Twin Peaks or Game of Thrones or The Leftovers that way. It’s insane!

Fortunately for me, there’s more to this episode than just the shock (no pun intended I swear to god) of the deaths itself. There’s the fact that they didn’t come from the barrel of Jonah’s Chekov Special; moreover, that particular weapon has been disarmed by the very concerned Buck, who saw the kid practicing with it, so who knows what will happen when it doesn’t work as planned. There’s Petty, devastated by the failure of his plan and the loss of a man he cared about despite himself, breaking a bottle over the head of a loudmouth in a bar and shooting its TV screen with his service weapon.

And most importantly, there’s the understanding reached by Marty and Ruth when the former realizes who was responsible for electrocuting Russ and Boyd and saving his life. He drives over to see her, partially to confirm it, partially to thank her for it, and partially to comfort her about it. “I couldn’t have them kill you,” she mutters, eyes like slits in her wide pale face, before she cracks and sobs in the arms of the man she tried to kill the exact same way a few weeks before. The meat of the episode may have been spoiled for me, but I’ll savor the rest for a long dark while.