‘Ozark’ Season 2 Finale Recap: Family Portrait

Smile for the camera, Marty Byrde.

C’mon, man, get into it!

Seriously, you’ve got a lot to be happy about! The casino you’ve been working to build is open for business. Your cartel employers, represented by the imperious but oddly maternal attorney Helen Pierce, are thrilled with your hard work and success. Your frienemies the Snells have been neutralized: Jacob is dead at Darlene’s hands, and Darlene has been placated with the baby whose parents both families played a part in killing. Your nemesis Agent Petty is dead too, killed by your enemy Cade Langmore, whose own execution Wendy and Helen just pulled off a few minutes earlier. Your political backer Charles Wilkes seems satisfied with the conclusion of your partnership. Rachel, the woman whose life you ruined by turning her family business into a money laundering operation, is off in rehab at your expense, grateful for the way you freed her from Petty’s clutches. Your lieutenant Ruth Langmore is almost part of the family at this point, and while it’s possible she’ll balk if she finds out you killed her dad, she seemed to imply that this was the only way he could be stopped and she might be okay with it. After all, she killed his brothers herself, as she’s now admitted to her cousin Wyatt, who’s headed off to college. Your daughter Charlotte may be emancipated, but you’re in her good graces again, and if she joins Wyatt on campus, your link with the surviving Langmores will be more solid than ever. And your son Jonah emerged from this traumatic season with some treasured memories of his late friend Buddy, increased money-laundering know-how, and no more lasting damage than a shaved head. Sure, the Kansas City mob whose union gig you shut down just blew up your office, but it could have been a lot worse. Everything’s coming up Marty!

So why is he still so miserable?

“The Gold Coast,” ironically titled after the Australian destination Marty planned to take his family before Wendy took the reins and talked him out of it, wraps up Ozark‘s strong second season with understated skill. It reminds me a lot of another Season Two finale, The Sopranos‘: a concluding montage that served as a status update on all the corners of the criminal empire in question, and a sense that a status quo has been solidified without resolving any of the underlying emotional turmoil that drove the chaos that preceded the newfound peace.

In terms of performances, this is one of the show’s finest hours. When Marty reveals his secret scheme to flee the country to Wendy, he cracks: “Nothing’s working,” he says, choking back tears. It’s a moment to make you think Jason Bateman really did earn his Emmy nomination, at least if it were awarded retroactively. Ditto the way he gets out of a frightening visit from mob boss Frank Cosgrove and a goon by erupting with anger rather than cowering: “Is this fun for you? Are you having a fucking good time?” These scenes show how Marty processes his calamitous personal life: He powers through until danger or sadness cause him to vibrate at a higher emotional level, however briefly, until the moment passes.

Needless to say at this point, Julia Garner is pure fucking gold as Ruth Langmore. Her confrontations with her increasingly desperate father, who at one point assaults Charlotte in an attempt to extract money from Marty, are full of a lifetime of shame, anger, a desire to live up to what the man wants from her, and a wish that he was truly the kind of person who deserved living up to. She’s all jutted jaw and evil eye in these scenes, and it’s stunning to watch. It’s a mirror image of how she interacts with Marty, her surrogate father, too: She’s afraid to screw up, and both angry at and grateful to him for expecting so much of her.

And my god, the scene where she bypasses Cade’s blackmail attempt and reveals the truth about her murder of Russ to Wyatt herself? “I need you to know,” she cries after knowingly telling him something she has every reason to believe will destroy their relationship forever, “that you’re the only thing in this world that I’ll ever fuckin’ love!” Watching her here is like watching Sheryl Lee or Laura Dern in Twin Peaks or Wild at Heart; I hope like hell David Lynch makes another movie or show, if only to see her in it. (Charlie Tahan more than holds his own against her as Wyatt, too.)

I was happy to see Sofia Hublitz get something meaty to do as Charlotte as well. She seems to have found some kind of inner steel since her emancipation went through, even when she’s frightened or exhausted by events. The shot of her and Garner as Charlotte and Ruth drive away from an enraged Cade is worth the price of admission alone. (And man, do she and Skylar Gaertner’s Jonah look alike now or what? That’s great sibling casting right there.)

Then there’s Laura Linney as Wendy. If you’ll permit some wrestling terminology, normally I recoil when characters on an anti-hero or crime prestige drama have that big moment when they go from tweener to heel. In this case, though, Linney makes it work. I understand why she reacted to Ruth’s plight regarding Cade by permanently solving it, why she wants to truly put down roots in the area, why she eventually comes to terms with Marty giving Mason’s son Zeke to his mother’s killer, why she reacts with pride to compliments on her efficiency from Ruth, why she considers Marty’s plan escapism that’s doomed to fail while hers is a way to make things solid right there and right now. Linney manages to avoid the usual “A decision had to be made…” flat-affect cliches, too. She seems deeply invested in her new identity as, well, a druglord. I’m reminded of the phrase that haunted the first few seasons of Boardwalk Empire: You can’t be half a gangster. Wendy is just the first Byrde to take that to heart.

Even the real heels get moments of pathos. I loved the sudden killing of Petty by Cade: He lashes out and hits him on the head with a metal tackle box, then there’s a pause where the two of them stare at each other in disbelief, then Cade realizes what he’s done and says “Oh, fuck!” and has to finish the job. There’s something ritualistic about how Petty’s body is disposed of, too: laden with rocks, stabbed so his corpse will take on water, dragged out into the river to disappear.

As Cade, Trevor Long is memorable throughout. He never amounted to the supreme badass patriarch he was portrayed as while imprisoned during Season 1, but that’s okay — I like that he was revealed to be mostly abusive bluster and impetuous recklessness. Long gave him a marbles-in-the-mouth way of speaking that sounded like articulating his thoughts was a struggle. This made his death scene, in which he unwittingly drives into an ambush with a $500K payoff while singing along enthusiastically to “Brandy” on the radio, so powerful: It’s the first time he’s done anything that makes him seem truly free and happy. Oh well.

I’ve never been quite sure if Ozark is about anything. Its criminal parable is so broadly drawn, and the plot is so oddly specific (all those timed ultimatums), that it’s hard to read it as anything but the crudest allegory for the corrupting effect of money and secrets. But it uses its gorgeous watery and woodsy locations as well as any show this side of Game of Thrones, it gives interesting actors a chance to dig deep, and it seems comfortably settled into a slow-and-steady pace. Breaking Bad comparisons are well and good, but I wonder if The Americans isn’t a better point of reference. Like Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, Marty and Wendy Byrde are living the nightmare side of the American dream, trying to pretend to the world, and their children, that there are no monsters under the bed at all when they are those monsters themselves. It’s a show I’ll be thinking about for quite a while.

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.

Watch Ozark Season 2 Episode 10 ("The Gold Coast") on Netflix