‘Ozark’ and The Making of the Sausage
Sometimes knowing how stories get written is more of a curse than a superpower.
Ozark is the surprisingly successful knockoff Breaking Bad, the story of a mild-mannered finance guy named Marty Byrd (Jason Bateman) and his cheating wife Wendy (Laura Linney) who are forced to launder money for a Mexican drug lord but then slowly become ... ambitious1. When Ozark debuted in 2017 I didn’t have high hopes because competing with one of the greatest dramas of all time is a steep hill to climb, but the show surprised me. It’s not exactly brilliant, but it offers a lot of perverse pleasure in watching the Byrds continue to imagine they are good people trapped in a bad situation, instead of bad people who create the bad situation2.
Generally speaking I don’t have a ton to say about Ozark; it is a perfectly cromulent show that sometimes pokes its head up above the water line and sniffs the ass of greatness3, but I somehow doubt we’ll be writing essays about it 10 years from now4. But in watching the final run of episodes I was struck by one moment of obvious Writer Sausage Making5, a moment when I could absolutely see the thought process behind a specific scene because I’ve been in the same position.
Noticing stuff like that is a downside of being a professional writer. You spend so much time fitting plot points together and spackling over problems with extra words that you can spot someone else’s repair work from a mile away. On the one hand, it sometimes takes me out of my suspension of disbelief and detracts from my viewing or reading experience. On the other hand, it gives me something to write about in this newsletter! HUZZAH6!
NOTE: There will be spoilers for this show. Ye be warned.
As One Does
The scene in question occurs in episode eight of season 4, “The Cousin of Death.” To sum up a few salient points, Marty and Wendy have wound up partnered with the new cartel leader Javi. Ruth, Marty’s erstwhile protege7 and Professional Angry Person, has tracked Javi down to his meeting with the Byrds in Chicago in order to murder him to avenge her beloved cousin Wyatt, who Javi has recently killed.
Like most things on this show, Javi has been a minimally viable villain in most ways. He’s not exactly original—he’s the urbane/charming/sociopathic type of gangster in the classic Gus Fring/Stringer Bell template, the sort of guy who went to business school and thinks that makes him a genius, but also the sort of guy who will shoot you in the head if you look at him funny. Javi’s fun! But not exactly the sort of character who gets under your skin8.
The sausage-making scene I’m talking about comes right before Ruth murders him (whoops: spoilers). Javi has dinner with an old teacher from his business school days to discuss making a donation to the school. The teacher’s comments about the donation having to obviously be anonymous (because Javi is a mass murdering drug lord) irk Javi, so he follows the old man into the restaurant bathroom and beats him savagely9.
It’s a dumb scene. First, it’s not exactly an exciting, propulsive scene with sharp dialog—this scene screams first-draft sketching. Second, it adds nothing to the narrative and actively wastes two minutes of the audience’s time. We’ve seen Javi get violent before, so it tells us nothing new. Well—that’s not entirely true, but let’s come back to that.
The reason for the scene is pretty simple, actually: It’s designed to make us really, really hate Javi so that when Ruth kills him we’re okay with it. Because Ozark leans heavily on audience identification10.
Same
Everyone on Ozark is a terrible person. Everyone on the show, almost literally, has killed someone, allowed someone to be killed through inaction, beaten someone or allowed them to be beaten through inaction, defrauded someone, stolen from someone, lied openly and aggressively to someone—you get my drift. This goes quadruple for our three core characters: Marty, Wendy, and Ruth. Yet we’re supposed to root for these folks because they’re the protagonists. This works because we’re shown everything from some version of their POV—we understand their reasoning, their private anguish, they’re attempts to mitigate11.
But there are limits. Ruth has done some shady shit on the show, but it’s usually been justified as necessary for her survival or to protect those she loves. Murdering someone in cold blood is a new level of evil for her character. If the audience is going to accept Ruth as someone who executes another human being, the audience needs to buy two things: One, that Ruth’s motivation is pure—check, because it’s her love for her cousin and best friend—and two, that the person she kills deserves it.
Here we make the sausage: Javi, as a character, is a terrible person, yes. But most of what he’d done in the show was directly connected to his illegal activities, and it’s difficult to argue that the lives he ruined and the people he killed took that risk when they involved themselves with him12. Even Wyatt, who was something of an innocent, aligned himself with Darlene Snell—a murderous sociopath in her own right. So it’s hard to get too upset about his murder unless you’re Ruth.
If I’m the writer, I start to worry that I haven’t demonized Javi enough. I need the audience to be okay with him being shot to death without any chance at defending himself—not to mention ruining the plan Marty and Wendy have arranged with a lot of blood, sweat, and more blood, putting them and their kids in danger. So I start to think about hedging my bets: Adding a scene that demonstrates just how awful he is, how deserving he is of that execution13. And so we get a superfluous scene where Javi beats a pleasant old coot half to death in a bathroom just because he feels slighted14. So we’re given one tiny piece of new information about Javi: He’s not only a menace to people in the game. He’s not only dangerous to other criminals. He’s dangerous to everybody—he’s the type of bully who might beat us to death in a bathroom because we accidentally insulted him.
And so, when Ruth murders him five minutes later, any slight sympathy we might have had for Javi has been burned away, and we’re free as an audience to give Ruth a pass—to maybe even celebrate his death. Writers have to do this sort of back-fill writing a lot—lord knows I’ve done it. But it can be subtle, or it can be clumsy. This was pretty clumsy, albeit effective enough. The end result is exactly what the writers wanted: Ruth murders Javi, but the audience still feels okay rooting for Ruth because Javi was recently promoted to the status of monster.
Of course, I watch shows like Ozark and wonder why people aren’t happy with the first ten million dollars they make and just ... retire15, because crime is exhausting. Which is probably why I’ll never amount to anything16.
Next week: We go Full Julia Garner.
I’m convinced my generally happy mood is due to the distinct and near-total lack of ambition I have always exhibited. As a child my parents worried I would forget to eat or breathe.
Jason Bateman deserves credit for refining Marty Byrd’s repression into what feels like a ticking time bomb of explosive age. Every time he makes one of those hunched-over, half-whispered phone calls begging someone not to blow his plans to shit, I start sweating.
Watch for my memoir, Sniffing the Ass of Greatness, coming soon.
Unless you offer me a small amount of money to do so, in which case I will be your Ozark-writing huckleberry. I have no pride and a lot of hungry cats.
Writing is messier and a lot more disgusting than you think. For example, you might think it involves zero fluids. You would be wrong.
As with all my writing projects, this newsletter has taken over my life in ways I’m ashamed to admit. Feeling a compulsion to finish projects is a superpower when writing novels or freelance articles, but it’s a problem with things like newsletters that … never end. you know you’re in trouble when Bizarro Great Gazoo appears on your shoulder and whispers you only have seven weeks of issues ready to go you’re gonna run out and you wake up in a sweat and immediately start writing a desperate article about Mad Men.
It’s understandable why shows avoid overt religious or political signals unless they’re baked into the storyline, but sometimes it’s a noticeable omission. For example, there is no way in hell that a real-life Ruth Langmore doesn’t have a Confederate Flag hanging in her trailer and at least one Toby Keith CD.
One problem I have with characters like Javi is how their violence and cruelty is presented as a superpower instead of a quick ticket to an early death. I mean, if you’re a dude named Javi who casually murders someone every time you’re mildly offended, people will start referring to the Javi Problem.
I’m increasingly intolerant of the “badass who beats up and murders people with total impunity because he’s disdainful of our petty rules” trope. For example, as Javi was beating up this poor schmuck in the restroom of a busy restaurant, I wondered that no one walked in and intervened, or called the police. I mean, if I put my trash out on the wrong night someone drops a dime on me and I get a ticket.
Also, Jason Bateman’s immovable face. You could be cutting that man’s arm off with a butter knife and he would just stare at you impassively.
Admittedly, these mitigation attempts often boil down to ‘let’s try to murder them in a slightly less gruesome manner.’ But you gotta respect the effort.
Many TV shows still like to present a fictional criminal world where the concept of “civilians” who can’t be routinely murdered because they’re not “in the game” is proffered. It’s useful for moments like this when you need to show that a murderous criminal has somehow broken even more bad.
This could be accomplished just by depicting Javi leaving one of those fake $20 bills with bible quotes on them as a tip someplace.
We Somerses have a natural defense against being beaten nearly to death: We’re impossible to kill. Easy to beat up, mind you, but impossible to kill. It’s the whiskey.
Then again, I fall into the category of “$20 would really change the tone of my week” so maybe I’m missing the big picture.
To be fair, my haircuts are also probably holding me back.
‘Ozark’ and The Making of the Sausage
I didn't want to watch “Breaking Bad” because we're conditioned to bond with the protagonist, and I did not want to bond with someone who purposely chose evil. I didn't want to root for the dealer of death to avoid detection. I feared it might poison my soul. But my friend Aaron sent me the first season on DVD, so I watched it. I was kinda committed at that point, so I binge-watched the entire series in a couple of weeks.
The most memorable scene for me in the whole series featured "Crystal Blue Persuasion," the 1969 psychedelic drug-era song with Biblical origins. As Walt and Todd are efficiently cooking up big batches of blue death in the shiny new lab, and amassing mountains of money in the process, Tommy James and the Shondells are singing this gentle, upbeat song about "peace and good and brotherhood." Cooking meth is just a job to them. They suit up and work a full day then go home and relax, only to repeat the process the next day. The feel-good melody renders an almost dream-like quality in stark contrast to the boring yet evil process. Rather like watching WWII Nazis preparing a gas to the accompaniment of "The Blue Danube." Normalizing the unthinkable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0v66A_H4ig
When “Ozark” was advertised I instinctively knew everyone on the show was a terrible person, and I had had my fill of terrible people. Watching/reading crime is exhausting.