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Netflix’s Ozark: A combination of Breaking Bad and Justified

By Jason Hall

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Ozark Season 1, Episode 1

Jason Bateman Photo: Jackson Davis/Netflix via Netflix Press Media Center

Netflix’s new drama Ozark is all about an ordinary man pushed into an extraordinary situation of southern crime and violence. If they play their cards right, it could become the next Breaking Bad or Justified.

Ozark is the story of a mild-mannered financial planner named Marty Byrde, played by Jason Bateman. He and his family have their lives turned upside one day when a Mexican cartel forces Marty to either find a way to launder millions of dollars in the Ozarks for them or die trying.

It feels like someone watched Breaking Bad and Justified and found a way to combine the best parts of both. It comes close to achieving the same heights of those series in just the first season. Marty Byrde is Walter White with a calculator and the Ozarks of Missouri are shown to be just as crime-ridden and bleak as the backwater parts of Kentucky.

Southern Charm

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One of the best parts of the FX series Justified was the setting. The backwoods of Kentucky proved to be a place of long-standing criminal families with men and women willing to kill to keep what was theirs. The people of the Missouri communities in Ozark are cut from the same cloth and prove to be Marty Byrde’s greatest challenge in his mission to protect his family. The Langmore and Snell famillies of Ozark have quite a bit in common with the Crowder family of Justified. Ruth Langmore, played brilliantly by Julia Garner, is an interesting mix of Walter Goggin’s Boyd Crowder and Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman. Bringing this drama to the backwoods and murky waters of Southern Missouri gives the whole series a feeling of dark mystery and time-worn crime that has been there long before the Byrdes moved in.

A Brilliant Man

Marty Byrde is undoubtedly a genius when it comes to cleaning dirty money and finding new sources of revenue. He wields cash and a checkbook the same way Walter White cooked meth. Some of the most intriguing parts of Ozark are when Marty is faced with seemingly insurmountable odds against ruthless men and women, but he finds a way to survive through his quick mouth and even quicker mind.

For Breaking Bad fans, that kind of survivalist quick-thinking should sound pretty familiar. Marty may not be a chemistry genius but he makes financial planning sound like a battle strategy. Another nice thing is that they do not dumb down all of his antagonists. We might look down on some of these people from trailer parks and farm lands, but they proved to be dangerously intelligent in the ways of crime and creative violence.

The Differences

One thing lacking from Ozark is a sense of humor. There is a dark laugh here and there, but Breaking Bad had a sense of humor with itself that this series lacks. It takes itself very seriously which makes the tense moments very strong, but the overall experience somewhat bleak. A nice difference between this series and its predecessors is that it jumps over a lot of the story hurdles that took shows like Breaking Bad whole seasons to get to.

It seems like they took a lesson from the shows that came before. Marty’s family is not another obstacle for him to hide from; this crisis actually brings them closer together in some ways. The children are not written as blind fools to the criminal goings-on, you actually get to see how smart this whole family is.

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This could be a big show for Jason Bateman and everyone involved. Ozark still has a way to go before it can be placed on the shelf along side the likes of Breaking Bad and Justified, but it is one of the most interesting shows of the Summer. If it stays on track then it is set to become a television drama classic.

Ozark is available for streaming now on Netflix, be sure to check it out!

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