Big6 Blog: Ozark: S2E10 “The Gold Coast” Review

By JASON MARTIN (@JMartZone – September 20, 2018)


Season 2 of Ozark has been far more interesting than its predecessor, but it follows the usual pattern of a new installment, because virtually everything has grown bigger, especially the body count. We lost Jacob Snell in the penultimate and Mason Young a few episodes ago, but in the season finale, we also end up seeing the deaths of both Roy Petty and Cade Langmore, the former due to the latter, and the latter due to being awful and getting in Wendy Byrde’s business.

Once Cade laid hands on Charlotte, his days were numbered, because as bad as he thought he was, the Navarro Cartel was far worse. He probably should have known, considering his daughter was waterboarded by these people, but maybe he didn’t fully understand how deep the Byrde ties to Helen Pierce and her fixers actually was. I’m sure he figured it out in the final few seconds of his life, as he was gunned down just after singing and on his way out of town with a duffel bag stuffed full of money.

It was a fitting end for him. He had tried to kill Ruth’s spirit by saying she couldn’t escape her last name. Well, he was OUT…but one SUV was enough to ensure he wouldn’t spend a time of that money past the tip to the waitress at the diner. Let’s just say I didn’t shed a tear. I’ll bet none of you did either.

Wendy did exactly what we all expected. She was never going to leave once she found out about the plan. She was disappointed in Marty. Listen to her words when he told her the details of his plan to get them all out safely. “So you were never really trying to make any of this work?” She’s upset, because she was, and because deep down, she wants to stay and make it work. She doesn’t want to run. She wants to “be the gunman.” Somehow, she and Helen Pierce have become FRIENDS. That morning coffee between the two of them was ridiculous.

Now that the casino is happening and the cartel is satisfied, Helen’s out here congratulating them, telling Wendy how impressed she and her client are, joking about being happy to head back to Chicago, talking about how great their lives are all about to be, and even saying they’d managed to do something Juarez and Medellin couldn’t even pull off. “This is where crime comes to organize.” She’s almost giddy, or as giddy as a cold hearted, evil, murderous attorney can be at least.

Once it’s time for the celebration at the “Lake of the Ozarks Casino,” I was just waiting for Wendy to tell Marty he wasn’t in charge anymore. It was set-up and teased by Darlene taking control and killing her own husband in the penultimate episode, and considering all the maneuvering Wendy has made, whether it’s lying to Charles Wilkes, vaguely threatening Charlotte’s emancipation attorney, buying off Cade Langmore, or befriending Helen Pierce, she’s the one that’s made this happen. Marty has spent most of the back-half of the season looking for the way out.

He became incredibly sympathetic, whereas he really wasn’t in Season 1 until its later stages, as he discovered how bad his mistakes were and how much he wanted to be someone else that had made different decisions. Wendy confesses her known infidelity to her children and explains it by saying she was wrong to have ever wanted to be someone else. “This is who I am and this is who I want to be.” She’s content in the maelstrom and the mess. Marty wants Australia and that dream of the Gold Coast, and she tells him the Gold Coast is right in front of them there, where they’ve put town roots.

Ruth finally has to tell Wyatt what she did on that dock, in order to remove Cade’s leverage over her, and it sends him away and into at least one more conversation with his dead father. I thought for a split second he might be on the verge of suicide once that talk ended, but from what we can tell, that’s not the case. Hopefully he’ll still go to Columbia and enroll at Mizzou, with or without Charlotte. His entire story this season has been defined by trying to get the answer to that question, and Ozark gives it to him in the finale. His future is very much up in the air at this stage, which is as it should be for the time being. That arc is over. We’ll see what’s next.

Marty gave her the hope she wanted when he told her he trusted her with an operation that could result in his entire family being killed. Cade never could say anything like that. Marty Byrde believed in her. While she was much more Wyatt’s mother than his cousin, Marty was much more her father than her own dad, which is why the breakfast scene brought a smile to my face. It felt like she belonged at that table with the rest of the Byrde family. It wasn’t out of place in any respect.

Darlene ends up with Zeke, which makes plenty of sense in this screwed up fictional hellscape, She doubled down on the maniacal behavior with that Jonah stunt. There’s also one person we haven’t seen since Roy Petty saw that video, and that’s Rachel. It’s possible she actually got out and we won’t see her again on the show. I hope for her sake that’s the case. If only Roy had decided not to come back. I felt sorry for his mother, because in the scene where he told her he was coming back to her, she seemed genuinely emotional. She missed him, she loved him, she needed him, and she knew any chance at getting better was gone without her son. It was a sad ending.

Roy popped off at the mouth to the wrong guy at the wrong time, and we spent so much time despising that character…but the very end, I did feel sorry for him. The Ozarks killed him just like it has so many others.

Marty tried to quell Cosgrove’s suspicions, but apparently it didn’t work, as we see Frank and his goons set fire to his office, which explodes as they drive away. That becomes the newest complication, which sets the stage for the expected third season Jason Bateman teased in August. At this point, unless the cast just didn’t want to do it, I’d be stunned if it didn’t return. I hope it does. This was a good season of drama. It was a little busy and could stand to breathe a little more than it does, but I had a good time watching this entertaining disaster (meaning the events of the story, not speaking derogatorily of the season) unfold.

Bateman was exceptional again this year, but Laura Linney may have owned the season alongside Lisa Emery and Julia Garner (Wendy, Darlene, and Ruth) and even Janet McTeer (Helen) all four crushed it. Bateman and Peter Mullan were terrific, as were many others. This story delivered on a more emotional level than its predecessor, and the season ends on a perfect cliffhanger, as there’s an ending, but not really. The casino now gets bulit, it opens, there’s Cosgrove, there’s a lot of money floating around, there’s Ruth Langmore without her father, there are the fishermen that discovered Roy’s car, and there’s Darlene Snell, who isn’t just going to live happily ever after with Zeke.

Plenty of storylines remain behind to follow, most of the new characters introduced this year clicked and enhanced the series, and my B- rating still seems apt as I’ve gone through and deep dived into the episodes again for these longer reviews. In fact, I’ll bump it up to a B. It was solid. It still isn’t Breaking Bad, but I’ve definitely turned a 180 on it in many respects, and I will await its return and be ready to write another 15,000 words on it for Season 3 just as I did this year.

Hopefully you’ll be ready to read those words when the time comes.

I’m @JMartZone. It’s always better to be the person holding the gun than the person running from the gunman.

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