When Dark, Unlikeable, Villainous Characters are Mothers on Netflix’s Ozark
ABOUT THE EPISODE
It's been a while since I've done a solo episode, so I'm looking forward to chatting with you today about the Netflix original series, Ozark, created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams (2017). I’ve casually shared about Ozark a few times on social media and every time, I get a response from many of you, so I'm excited because I think there are a number of fans of the show who might be listening. Ozark is very different from any other show that I tend to watch, and yet, I have so much I have to say about it. I’m sharing why I believe the women of the show are the driving forces of its success and the unique portrayal of – and at times mysterious emphasis on – motherhood throughout each season.
TOPICS DISCUSSED
The guilt that can come with being an introverted mother
Similarities between Ozark and Breaking Bad and why people have such loaded reactions to their wife/mother characters
Learning to love a show with an anti-hero as the protagonist (Jason Bateman as Marty Byrde) and why Jackie thinks the women characters (still) steal the show on Ozark
Wendy Byrde’s comparisons to Lady Macbeth and a deep dive into her unraveling as seasons progress
Why the villainous character of Darlene Snell is an example that props up the misogynist narrative that women shouldn’t hold powerful roles
The motherhood motifs seen throughout Ozark, specifically surrounding the pregnancy of Special Agent Maya Miller, and whether they are intentional or not
Why Jackie confidently gives Ozark the “Guilty Pleasure” rating
RESOURCES MENTIONED
WRITING PROMPT
Think back to a character on a TV show or movie you watched recently, who was a wife or mother you did not like. Reflect on what you didn't like about this character. What does that reveal about your own perceptions of women, wives and mothers?
-
Jackie Leonard 00:00
It's been a while since I've done a solo episode. So I'm looking forward to it. And I had to do it on the show Ozark, which is a Netflix Original. I have shared about Ozark a few times on social media. And every time I get a number of people responding how much they love the show, so I'm especially looking forward to it. Because I think there are a number of fans of the show who might be listening. And for anybody who isn't listening, I hope to convert you or excite you to check it out. It is way different than any other show that I tend to watch. And yet, I have so much I have to say about it. So I'm looking forward to doing that in just a minute. Before that, I do want to shed some mom guilt and share what I feel guilty of this week. More specifically, today, because it's something that just happened this morning when I was dropping off my son. I've always identified with being an introvert. And more recently, in the past few years, I've I've kind of warmed up to this idea that I'm more of an extroverted introvert, I do enjoy socializing and talking with people. But the place that I need to go to recoup my energy is time to myself and I enjoy talking. But I can definitely have periods of time when I like to be more introspective, and quiet and just think I get lost in my head a lot. That's part of I think, why I enjoy writing and being a writer is brainstorming and living in my head a little bit. But as a mom, that's a little difficult, right? Because we have to be teaching and modeling so much for our children, that I have been especially challenged by it or noticed how challenging it is, as someone who likes to sit back and take in the world. And listen, I noticed that there are times when I probably could be speaking more and narrating more or trying to get my kids to open up a little more. And when my son was younger, I was excited about the prospect of him possibly being a more extroverted person, because he displayed some tendencies of just enjoying attention and socializing. And as I've seen him grow and and have to walk into different situations and environments now, especially that he's in preschool. I'm seeing different sides to him I'm seeing when he gets more shy, and I'm seeing him withdrawal sometimes when he isn't sure about a situation. And I took him to school this morning, it's a Monday. And he was not very like he was seemed very shut down. Like he didn't really have that pep in his step. He didn't kind of run up to the door to greet his teacher. He didn't even really want to say good morning to his teacher. And
Jackie Leonard 03:16
you know, driving home, I just felt a little guilty about that, because I wondered what it was that I could have done differently to help him feel more optimistic about going to school or give him an opportunity to share with me maybe why he was not feeling as excited about going. I have been a little I don't want to say lazy but I, the past few times I've taken him to school, I've let him bring his iPad into the car with him. And for me thinking again, projecting as an introvert, sometimes it's nice for me to kind of listen to something or check out a little bit before I have to go in and be on. I think for him though, he needs to talk things out. And he needs to know what to expect and process things out loud. And I haven't really given him that opportunity lately. And I think that might be why it's so it's like an abrupt shift from kind of zoning out and watching something and then walking into school. And so I obviously was able to kind of pick up on that and make a change and we'll see how that goes. But it was definitely making me feel a little guilty that I had to walk away and and leave him in that place without being able to process it with him. I maybe should have or could have stepped him aside and talk to him a little bit before I let him go. But at the time I just I didn't really think about it until a little later which again, I'm somebody who processes things after the fact often and so wanted to share Do that with you, I also have a very warm place in my heart for the parents who have to drop off their children and then go off to work, work somewhere, I mean that they have to clock in, or that they have somebody who's, you know, expecting them to show up at a certain time. For me, somebody who's working now from home and have has a very flexible schedule, I feel like it's a little different, and it's still is upsetting. So, I've just noticed in the past few weeks, paying attention to the parents who have the children who are screaming and struggling to go into school, there's a few different age groups at the school that my son goes to. And at least once, maybe once a day, every other day or so there'll be like one child who is crying and doesn't want to leave their parents to leave. And I think that's only happened to me once. But I remember that feeling of just being so unsettled, having to walk away and leave them or, you know, anytime I've had my children washed by somebody and the crying, that happens, and then having to, you know, leave and then kind of turn it off or to, you know, try to focus on on your work for the rest of the day. I really feel for those parents every time I see it. And so I wanted to share that in case, you've had a moment like that recently, and felt embarrassed, or, you know, just worried about how that might look. As somebody watching from the outside, all I think is you know, that I just want to you know, send a hug and say, I, you know, you're a rock star for being able to do that, and then shift so quickly into work mode from there. And I do want to disclaim this, I love my son's school, I think it's such a wonderful little place, and I'm so grateful for it. And I've been so happy to see him blossom in that surrounding and learn how to play with other kids, you know, for the first time because of the pandemic. I love his teachers, I mean, it's just, it's a great situation for us. And if you know me, you know, I've had a couple attempts to find the right spot in the past. So, so that all goes without saying, but now that I'm entering my fifth year of being Mom, I've I've seen the the different phases that come up the regression, and how much our kids are learning all the time. And so all these different feelings that come along with it are another part of the experience. And naively I think, I thought, Oh, my son's gonna go to school and once I find the right school, it's going to be perfect and I'm at the very beginning of his you know, school journey. It's not even you know, official school yet. And things naturally come up. So had to get that off my chest first before we dive into Ozark, which has very little to do, I think was school. But it was very much on my mind. So wanted to get that off my chest. And now that it is we can dive into the Netflix series Ozark.
Jackie Leonard 08:19
Sir, right off the bat, I have to share the story of how it came that I even started watching this show, this show will always have a really special place in my heart related to the birth of my first child, the little boy that I was just talking about. And it's kind of funny that this dark drug crime drama is a part of my son's story from the first few weeks of his life. So my son was born in August 2017. And in those first few days, weeks, I mean for the first four weeks postpartum, he was on a pretty strict feeding schedule. We had to feed them using SNS tubes because he was not able to latch and we were trying to get him to breastfeed. I was pumping after I fed him it took a really long time my husband was the one who was getting the milk and prepping it and would, you know do all the help with you know, holding the tubes and all these things. And so it was a team effort, which required kind of round the clock attention and that meant in the middle of the night as well. And I don't know if it was a week or two in but we were getting restless or just having difficulties with our setup upstairs in our bedroom and so we decided for a few nights to sleep in the living room. And I can't exactly remember why but might have had something to do with it being closer to the kitchen. I don't know. But we had a blow up mattress set up Obviously, my son was still really little. And so we would kind of like, put him in the his little bassinet or on the air mattress, and the schedule and the pumping and all that required us to stay up. And I think one of the things I was struggling with was falling asleep and him not being able to wake up quickly. And anyway, so naturally, in that situation, we thought about watching something to kind of entertain us while we were tending to our child. And there was a lot of buzz around the show Ozark at the time that had just come out somewhat recently around that time. And we decided to start watching it. And my husband, I mean, he is not somebody who really watches TV shows or gets into things, he'll watch movies from time to time, but not somebody who can like, really get interested in episodic viewing. And he got hooked. And it's one of the very few shows we've been able to enjoy and watch together. He is kind of passively watched with me a few things. But this one was the first season he really kind of sat and we watched it together and got kind of hooked on it. And we talked about that time off and about how exciting it was to watch it. And I think part of it was just that we were so like brain fried and so overwhelmed that this was like a nice escape to watch. And so as a result, I just always have this really fond memory of that first season of Ozark. For those of you who aren't familiar with the show, I'll share a little bit of a synopsis. Essentially, the show starts off with the main character whose name is Marty bird. And he's played by Jason Bateman, who is a financial advisor. And he and his partner who is also his best friend, are wrapped up in a money laundering scheme with the Mexican drug cartel. And that the plan that they had goes wrong when his business partner and best friend is found out to have been skimming money from the cartel. His friend is murdered right in front of him, including a few other people. And Marty really quickly on his feeds, kind of pitches an idea to the you know, the Associate of this drug cartel. And that essentially saves his life. And Marty has to as a result, relocate his family from Chicago to Missouri, in the Ozarks, where he now has to kind of make amends to this Mexican drug cartel and wash a considerable amount of money and set up a larger operation in the Ozarks. And that's kind of the premise for the show. And it takes place in the Ozarks, where he is trying to essentially stay alive. And we also kind of see that Marty, who at the beginning of this, the first episode of the show is obviously and rats, he is very bored with his life seems to find his calling through this work. And I guess just the adrenaline or the high stakes of making sure that he wins and doesn't die.
Jackie Leonard 13:16
So like I said earlier, it's a pretty dark show. And there aren't too many that I could have gotten into I don't really like you know, crime dramas or things like that. But something about this show. I mean, I know what it is, but the show really latched on to me and I've continued to watch it, even though it is a pretty violent show. And as long as that's not a huge, you know, turn off, it is one that I would recommend to watch. As long as you can kind of tolerate a little bit of that happening alongside the rest of the plot. And I remember at the time when Ozark came out the obvious comparison to it was breaking bad and I can't remember how long it had been since Breaking Bad had aired when Ozark premiered. But I will say I did watch Breaking Bad it took me a really long time and a few attempts to even get into it. And to be honest, I really had to force myself to watch it. I did not get the hype of the show. And watching it all the way through didn't help change my opinion. I honestly think part of the reason I finished it was because I kept waiting like okay, what's what's what's, what am I missing? Maybe it's going to come maybe it's going to come and it didn't. Of course there were a few things that maybe I was interested in but not to the effect that warranted kind of the love that I saw for the show. I think there are some just obvious like comparisons where you have like, good typical guy who gets sucked into this dark world of drugs, but that's kind of where the comparisons and in my opinion, I think obviously you have a character who is an antihero. And at the time that Breaking Bad came out the antihero was kind of this popular like God a revival in being the protagonist of the shows, I think another person that comes to mind is the show Dexter Dexter Morgan was obviously an antihero in the same fashion as Walter White was for Breaking Bad. So those are, I think, why I did the shows have been compared a lot. But like I said, I see an obvious difference in just the way that I've responded to one show over the other. Maybe that's why I have like blinders there. But to me, the thing that sets apart the show Ozark and part of the reason that I'm even talking about it on this podcast, is because the women on this show are just by and large, way more compelling than the men and I would say the show is strong and it's characters all around. But I I mean, they're my favorite characters, the characters that just captivate me that frustrates me that drive the stories in such you know, juicy places are the women and I can't say the same per the show Breaking Bad not that this is turning needs to be a you know, compare and contrast sort of situation. But that has been why the show Ozark has been so compelling for me and that's why I was able to continue watching it even when it got really dark and had you know, the murders and the drug stuff that was just a little heavy. I kept coming back for these characters because they were so rich. To give the show a little bit of backstory. I
Jackie Leonard 16:50
have mentioned that Jason Bateman is the you know, the protagonist, the main character of the show. He's been such a high profile person for this show in terms of like every time I've heard the show referred Jason Bateman's right there and I thought for a time that He was the creator of the show for some reason. He was not it was created by build a book. I don't know if I'm saying that at all right. And Mark Williams, but I do know that Jason Bateman is an executive producer of the show, and he has directed a number of episodes as well. So he does have a heavy hand in the production of this series. Earlier this year, actually, Jason Bateman did a profile, I want to say with variety, but I could be wrong, I'll link it, but it was this, you know, profile that that chronicled his career. Jason Bateman as a child actor who has been able to transition successfully into a successful adult acting career, which we know is not all too common. He did have a period of time that he describes in the 90s as being you know, a drug haze that was a real like a lost period of time, career wise for him. And he describes having to kind of scramble to recover for a few years because he checked out for a while. And the role that he got that helped revive his career that a lot of us may be familiar with is the role of Michael Bluth in Arrested Development. In his profile, something that Jason Bateman says that I appreciated or the writer actually shares about Jason Bateman is that he talks about his mother a lot and his mom was a flight attendant for pan-am and originally from the UK. And Jason Bateman says if something is hilarious to him, it's because my mother is British and everything is dry to her. So I always like when moms get a nod from from people in interviews. And that same profile, the writer shares a story that in the past, Jason Bateman has shared that he only took the role in Juno because his daughter had recently been born and had colic. And it guaranteed him three weeks out of the house. And then he says, no, no, no, he now says disapprovingly. I said that to be fun. I said it with hopefully an obvious wink. So maybe that comments in the past got him in trouble. But something I thought that was interesting about Jason Bateman that was written about in his profile is that when he plays his characters, he starts out as something you think you understand a wholesome every man then becomes a much darker character on whom the coating of nice guy shellac shimmer is somewhere between between stick and active deception. It's not a huge role, but is a perfect distillation of Bateman's mature performances. The guy who uses his everyman face like a Trojan horse, he says he likes to play characters as not too far from the average person, even if the part is not right in the lane, but maybe adjecent to it, I will pull the character into that even if they're not vanilla on the page, I like pulling them into vanilla. And the character that the profiler is referring to was his character in Juno. And if some anybody has not seen that movie, Juno is a film about a teenager who gets pregnant and chooses to give the child up for adoption. And Jason Bateman's character was the potential adoptive father that this this teenager was considering. And his character starts out as like, they describe kind of this every everyday man. You know, with the face, it's like a Trojan horse and he's seedy and achy, and, you know, starts to come on to the teenager and talks about leaving his wife and he plays that character so well, that he's just, you know, you want to punch him. But he tricks you. And I think that's part of what what he's able to do. I think Jason Bateman knows the kind of face in the way that people perceive him. And he likes to play that to his advantage in the characters that he plays. And so in the show, Ozark he he plays this, you know, every man again, the guy that's the financial advisor works hard for his family
Jackie Leonard 21:37
is making decisions in the best interest of his family. And that's the character that's set up to be the the main person on the show. And like I said, though, the women really, really take over and I've kind of joked that this show is a little bit of what I would call the cautionary tale for men who force their wives into, you know, not working or staying at home who don't want to. And I'll share a little bit about why I feel that that is the case. It is worth noting, because I do like to point this out that for the most part by and large. This is a show that is pretty exclusively written, produced, directed by men. I was surprised because when I first looked at it, and you look at the the summary, it is all men created by men directed by men, produced by men. But in summary, there are a couple of episodes. One of those being season one, episode seven, the episode is titled, nest box. And there's another episode later. And season three episode five called it came from Mitra con that is also written and directed by women. And there are also let's see 123 other episodes that have either a writer or a director, who is a woman. So worth noting, as Robin Wright, who is famous for being the Princess Bride, among other things, directed an episode in the most recent part one of season four. I didn't do this, it could have been interesting. But it would be kind of a cool exercise to go back and rewatch those particular episodes and see if there was a strategic reason why. Especially the ones that have both a director and a writer who are women. See why you know, that choice was made? I'm just I'm curious about that. Because, like I said, the most of the show really does feel like a bit of a boys club, which again, makes it really interesting to see. What are they trying to say about women here? And I've been really thinking about it for four weeks now. Actually, maybe months since I watched part one of the fourth season. I really was curious about what are you know, what are these people trying to say with these characters they've created. And I'll describe each of the characters of notes to you, and what I think about them. So to go back to what I shared about the show Breaking Bad. I fell into a little bit of a rabbit hole reading up on just this idea of unlikable characters and how often those are women and I couldn't not bring her up because Skylar, who plays Walter White's wife in the series. I remember even watching it, you know later than when it aired. I remember how much hate there. There was for her character and was surprised to actually I read that the actress who played Skylar and a gun ended up writing an op ed piece. Because she felt like she had to speak to why that was where this hate was coming from, for her love for her character. I mean, but I shared in the first episode this season about parasocial relationships. And I'm sure she was getting like a lot of heat. Because people really have a hard time separating the actress from the character. But I think she was interested and intrigued about why do we hate this character so much. To give some context, part of what people hated about her, seemed kind of contrary to what you would want in somebody in real life, her husband was cooking meth,
Jackie Leonard 25:46
he was doing something that was illegal, dangerous, he was putting his family in danger. And so her objections of this should have been warranted, you know, we would have expected that that would be what a rational person would do. And yet, people hated her for getting in this character's way all the time. So what she wrote in her Op Ed was I finally realized that most people's hatred of Skylar had little to do with me, and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives. And I would add mothers. Because Skyler didn't conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetype, typical female, she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes toward gender. And I would argue that that really is how we perceive most characters when we watch them. And I think that's why sometimes when we have certain reactions to characters, it's important to, to reflect on on what that kind of means about us and all that. So I think she's pretty spot on there. And an Esquire article I found that's titled why you hate Skylar white. They talk about how her character was often described as being a ball and chain a drag a shrew. And to some, she sort of committed the cardinal sin of stereotypical awful wife, you know, characteristic, and she was a nag. So really, what they hated about her was she was so naggy. And she irritated the main character, Walter. And I think for a lot of the men watching the show, that you know, again, was reflective of something that they felt irritated with and were projecting. So I wonder how much the people who wrote and you know, created the show Ozark were aware of the show Breaking Bad I mean, I can imagine they may have known that that would be an obvious comparison. And in creating the women that surrounded the the main male character, if they were more conscious of wanting to create, I don't know, women who subverted what you would expect a wife and mother to do and how she would react when put in a situation against her will really, at least seemingly, and because her husband, you know, decided to pursue something that was illegal and dangerous. And so from there, I have to introduce the character. Wendy bird who is Marty Byrd's wife played by Laura Linney, who is just fabulous actress, you may be most familiar with her from playing the caretaker character in. She plays Sarah and Love Actually, she has a very well respected career. And I believe she's done Broadway. But I know her most before this from love, actually. And then this role that she plays in Ozark is so fascinating. She just does such an amazing job of creating complex blood character, all the women that I'm gonna describe, to come are and they create their individual motivations create such juicy tension, when, you know, when her character gets in the way of another character and so forth. You know, they just all get in each other's way. And they're all just pushing the story along. I, I read, I was reading a little bit about the show, and I saw a reference comparing Wendy burr to Lady Macbeth. And I had made that connection as well and watching and seeing her a sort of grow and power and also start to lose some of her sanity. And Macbeth is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. And so I love that connection. I think That's part of why I'm so drawn to her. And to catch you up, if you're not familiar with Macbeth, or it's been a while, Lady Macbeth makes an appearance in the play as basically the wife who is whispering in her husband's ear, encouraging him to seize an opportunity to murder the king, when he comes to visit them, and stay at their, their place, I believe. And
Jackie Leonard 30:30
Lady Macbeth, you know, is really just pushing him and pushing him. And there's all sorts of different ratings into how involved she was how much she drove him to do this, or if he just used her as an excuse. But she is basically depicted as the, you know, the bird on the shoulder or the, you know, the wife who is getting the husband to do her dirty deeds. And after the murder, and you know, subsequent events, we see Lady Macbeth spiral, because she's so guilt ridden about the murder, that she, you know, she's can't sleep. She's having hallucinations. There's a very famous scene where she is scrubbing our hands furiously, because she feels she sees that they're stained with blood, even though they are not. And at the end, in the play, she kind of dies off stage and it's suggested or, you know, heavily implied that she died by suicide that she died by self and violent hands. And so it makes me wonder how if she wasn't Wendy bird was intentionally kind of crafted around this Shakespearean tragedy. And the character specifically, if we may see her have a similar fate. For those who have seen season four, or at least part one of season four, she is slowly starting to unravel in a way that suggests she's losing her grasp with reality. And I say that she's a fascinating character to watch. That does not mean that she's an enjoyable character, or one that I can relate with or identify with completely, and she's very frustrating interactions. But to see her unravel in the way she has, has been a really, it's kind of like, you know, watching disaster, go go out in front of you. But slowly, slowly, slowly, watching a woman lose her. Her sense of self, her sensibilities, and yet seeing her also thrive or, you know, hold on to power or seem, you know, just, I don't know, just so complicated, so complicated that woman. And I believe I already mentioned earlier that I've joked that this show is a cautionary tale for the wife who is kept, you know, kept at home, when she desires to go out of the home, and particularly those who are very intelligent and motivated and no too much. There's this kind of reoccurring reference to this idea of being too smart to live in the conditions that you are, because you know, that there's better out there. And I see that in Wendy, I see that she is, especially at the beginning of the show, this woman who had a promising career in politics, she helped run campaigns. And in the first season, she was trying to get a job again, after all these years, spent raising her children and having doors close to her because she's older now and not with it. And you know, all the things that that we see, when mothers take gaps to raise their children, and saying how much it's also emphasized that Wendy is very intelligent, very good at what she does. I can't imagine all those years spent at home with her children knowing that this is a woman who should not be reduced or constrained. And that's not to suggest, of course, I don't even know that I need to say this, but that women who do choose to stay at home and who do love to raise their children don't exist. I'm not saying that. But knowing the character who is Wendy, there isn't anything about what we learn about her. That suggests that that's what she would want that she would want to do. And in my reward, of the show, I kept looking for reasons or references to why Wendy would not have worked. And the only thing I could think of, even though it wasn't obvious was just the sort of expectation from her husband that that's what she needed to do. And I think there's just a few little lines here and there, where he makes a comment about how, you know, you
Jackie Leonard 35:27
don't have to go back, you know, full full time right away, or, you know, when she went out looking for a job right away, he kind of had some ambivalence to that are not very supportive of that. But they're very subtle. And I do feel a little like, let down by that, because I, it seems like a disconnect from her character. And I believe it was in the third season when her brother joins the show for most of the season, that he kind of references who she was before, and the fire that she had in her. And I think he directly says, at one point that her husband, Marty, was the reason for why Wendy wasn't Wendy anymore. And I thought that was a really interesting tell, because up until that point, we hadn't really seen much of other people who knew Wendy besides her family. And so it could be easy to just assume, Oh, she was this typical housewife for all these years. And this new exciting situation brought out a different side of her. But when her brother joined and was able to reveal that insight, it made me see and think this is who Wendy has been all along. And she either intentionally chose to play a role to sort of be what she thought people expected of a wife and mother, or the man she married was somebody who expected and sort of encouraged that behavior. Even though he comes across as this very mild mannered, even keeled person, you, you get the sense that there was something more controlled about what he expected of people. And he had to sort of let that go when his worlds you know, very drastically changed. And that's another part of the puzzle that gets really interesting is this idea that, because Marty is now involved in work that is dangerous and illegal, and could get them in jail, he has to let go of some of his rules are the things that he was able to leverage to control the way his family operated? You see, when they kind of say, I'm going to do this, and what do you essentially what are you going to do to stop me and his kids do the same thing to him, and he realizes and knows very quickly, that he doesn't have a lot of, of ground to stand on, in kind of forcing people to act the way he needs them to act. And that does create a lot of attention, tension, especially in season two, and it's very much a Wendy versus Marty sort of situation. You get the sense. I think it's the end of season two, that he's almost created this monster, and she's more dangerous, and maybe not as careful as he is in his decision making. And yet she's very intelligent, and she's gaining a lot of power. And so then the cautionary tale, right? Like, that is like what happens when men let women do too much. And I kind of that's that's what the cautionary tale is now that I think about it before I was trying to say it was more of a this is what happens when you don't allow women to do things. But really, if I were to kind of think, more cynically about the motivations of the writers and the people who created the show, it's like less than two men do not ease the control of what you allow your wife and mother of your children to do because she will overtake you with her extreme intelligence and her ambition and her desire for power. It is bigger than even yours. I say that in jest of course, but it is it is interesting and
Jackie Leonard 39:43
I am very interested in seeing how this storyline for Wendy in particular shakes out. She befriends the head of the drug cartel later on in the show, and you get the sense that he has really been able to pick up on her fear of life going back to the way it was, and her loving the work that she's doing and loving the power and her her place in this world and fearing what it means if they are, are actually able to escape. And Marty is very much, at least saying that he's trying to get out and he's trying to keep their family alive. And Wendy also says that is the same reason why she's making her decisions. But you get the sense that she at least is more accepting of a life in this world than he is. And I think they're both very much hungry for the game that they're playing and the work they're doing, and the excitement of it. But he is still trying to hold on to this moral compass in a way that she has realized, is compromised. I do want to make sure I have time to talk about some of the other mothers on the show. Barry, very dynamic character is Darlene Snell, who is you know, somebody who has grown up in the Ozarks is a very integral part of the community. She is married to her husband, Jacob. And Darlene is really like the villain. She's just a very, quote unquote, evil woman on this show. A woman who is unhinged, has a lot of rage and does not is very impulsive. So she kind of again reminds me of like a character that maybe only a man could create where it's like, all the things that you're afraid of, to give women power. I know that I'm thinking of like that, that reference that I'm sure somebody made once and it's just become a part of a collective narrative. And I'm sure you've all heard it, but the whole excuse about why a woman could not be president is because you know, she has a menstrual cycle. And if she's PMS thing, she is going to have the ability to basically nuke any country. And under those severe hormonal fluctuations, how could we possibly trust them to make a wise decision? So I see the character of like, Dr. Darlene Snell, being like the poster child for that, that arguments because there's a scene at the end of season one where Darlene shoots and kills out of nowhere, the the, the associate a big time, you know, powerful leader in the drug cartel, out of nowhere, just because He disrespected her and her home and her husband is just like, beside himself. And he's like, You can't do that. You can't just go around shooting people, because they make you upsets and insult you. And she just is kind of like, yeah, like, that's what I do. And we see her do that multiple times just making these very rash on you know, unsteady decisions, because she she gets upset or offended, very reactive character, very unpredictable. And so she really, you know, she really keeps people on their toes and scares people because you never know what she's capable of doing. Earlier in the season, she killed a pregnant woman and stole her baby. And that is, I mean, horrific, right? So she has definitely been established as this awful character. What I find fascinating about her as well though, is that she has this deep desire to become a mother. And we don't really get some any backstory into why she has not had her own children up until this point, but she is an older woman. And there's a gentleman that is a like a, a henchman really, for her Darlene and her husband, who Darlene references as being like a child to them
Jackie Leonard 44:17
because he has worked for them for so long. So she has this maternal instinct, even though it's very, you know, unhinged, like I said and problematic but at some point in the show this this henchman is killed by her husband and so Darlene feels like Well, I'm gonna go get a baby since uh, since I lost this, this child figure for myself. And I find it just really interesting how much her I want to be a mother I'm going to become a mother I want to raise this baby was a central part of her specific storyline and How that complicated her character. I mean, I don't know if I would say that it's softened her character. But being a mother and being a good mother and her ability to mother, as an older woman are all these things were storylines for her that I found really intriguing. There's a scene where she, I believe, is in like a mom group, even with this baby that she basically stole and is raising as her own. And she, like some other mom in the group is talking essentially about not wanting to bottle feed or how formula is not healthy. And Darlene, as we have seen is very easily to be upset by people making comments about her. And she, she you know, retaliates by slashing the woman's tires, because I'll because she felt like she was judged for feeding her baby formula. And, again, I just found that really interesting. I don't know that I've made like some real big connections, because it's not, they haven't answered those questions for us. But the fact that Darlene was so driven to be a mother, and even still, when she had a baby, quote, unquote, she, she still felt like she wasn't accepted as a mother, people were making fun of her or not, or not allowing her to smother her child without threat. I also find it interesting that the show doesn't shy away from having deeply, you know, evil, violence, problematic women who are mothers and not letting that sort of soften the way they approach some really heinous criminal behavior. There's another character on the show named Helen Pierce, and she is an attorney who works for the drug cartel. And she comes across as a lot more composed. And, you know, she doesn't show her her cards, shorthand, but also a violent character who's involved in very, you know, problematic. And Deborah's. Like I said, she, you know, I think she at one point, she basically waterbirds another character and is responsible for basically giving the go ahead for people to be killed. So she definitely has her hands dirty as well. And Helen is a mother, she has two children. And there is a in season three, her daughter actually comes to join her in the Ozarks. And you see how for Helen, the boundary for her is that her daughter never find out what, what she does, and she's in the middle of a very contentious divorce. She's, she's kind of switching from like, you know, code switching all the time from like the life that she lives as this attorney for a drug cartel and then having to shift back into being a working mom, who is worrying about her daughter going after, you know, problematic, older boys and having, you know, dating issues and having to enforce curfews and all this stuff. And so it's, it's interesting seeing mothers put in these roles when they are active members of these violence, illegal criminal circles, right. And at the other end of that spectrum, you have also a newer character, Special Agent, Maya Miller, who I believe makes an appearance in season two, maybe or early season three, where she has been sent by the FBI to investigate a casino that Marty and Wendy are running. And she gets further and further into the trenches of the operations that Marty is reading. What I found really interesting about her character from the get go, is that she's pregnant.
Jackie Leonard 49:14
She's pregnant, special agent, and I just thought that had to be a choice. And I mean, I haven't read up on the character. But she's played by Jessica Francis Dukes. So I don't know if she was pregnant in real life, and they just decided to add that in or what, but to have a pregnant FBI agent in there, when they've already kind of dropped a few different motherhood pregnancy. motifs in the show. I mentioned earlier there was it was a preacher's wife, who was pregnant and Darlene killed her and I got it wrong earlier I said that she took the baby but actually she she just killed her and the baby was there. Air for when the husband discovered the situation and the wife was actually missing. So it was like especially airy, this, this, you know, preacher who had wronged them comes home and he hears the baby crying and his pregnant wife is nowhere to be seen. And essentially, we all know that Darlene killed her. But later on down the line, the preacher is also killed. And Darlene ends up with the baby. And anyway, so we've got that pregnancy and that new motherhood represented, we have to Orleans desire to be a mother represented, we have, you know, a lot of these women characters are mothers. And then you have this special agent coming in who is also pregnant, it all feels like it's saying something that I just haven't quite gotten there yet. But again, for a show that's primarily written by men, I'm really curious about what these symbols why they keep, you know, representing mothers specifically and pregnancy in this way, it has to mean something. And if it doesn't, there, they're they're just not aware. It's like a subconscious edition that has just continued to grow and see more and more, you know, loud as a viewer. And that's what I love about talking about these kinds of shows, because on first watch, I would not think motherhood is a prominent tenant of the show, but just peel back a layer or two. And it's, it's, like I said, really loud. My Maya Miller, later on and into season four, it gives birth to her child. And we see a postpartum working mom, who is you know, kind of stripped quickly away from her recovery period, after having her baby, to having to help Marty and trying to take down this drug lord. And, again, that to me was really interesting. It, I think an extra layer is that she is a black woman. So again, that feels like a choice that feels like a choice that they have a character who is in this position of power, who may be responsible for ultimately taking down this dangerous family. And this drug cartel is a black pregnant woman in for the FBI. It makes me think about how it's much more widely known than I think it was a few years ago that the black maternal health crisis is or should be a national emergency. In the US black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy related cause. And in 2020, the maternal mortality rate for non Hispanic black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is 2.9 times the rate of that for non Hispanic, white, pregnant people. And so not to like divert away from the show. But like I said, it feels like a choice. And I don't know if it was just as just simply enough that they wanted to show a black woman who was pregnant and moving through her pregnancy or if there's something they're trying to say, beyond that. But I found that interesting. There's a few different little throwaway conversations that don't have to do with the plot, really. But there's a scene where Marty and Maya Miller are talking and she makes a comment about how she had her baby a few weeks early. And I found that to be interesting, like, why did they add that into the storyline? She talks about, you know, not sleeping well. And all these like different things that we are familiar with if we have had children of our own. All these little lines, again, that they're putting into her storyline seem to be if they're not directly related to the case that she's working on.
Jackie Leonard 54:16
She's making these comments about new motherhood. So I find that really interesting. And the last character I couldn't talk about this show without talking about Ruth Lena Moore, who is to bring back the Breaking Bad references. I've seen her compared with the Jesse Pinkman character in Breaking Bad. Ruth begins sort of as Marty's right hand, man, the one who's helping him with operations. He's somebody that he learns to trust. Even though she comes from a problematic family. She's known to steal and do what she needs to do to get ahead, but He's very young, and he what he sees in her an intelligence and an ability to teach her. And they really do form this bond or an attachment. I think in some ways, she sees him kind of as a mentor, or maybe like a father figure she has what we come to see as a very problematic relationship with her father, her father has been in and out of jail, probably her whole life. She lives with a, you know, a set of like three trailers with her father, her cousins and her two uncles. And they're considered, you know, the trash of the Ozarks. And she feels that very deeply, especially I mentioned earlier that that Ruth is actually the one who says that line where she says, something like God made me smart enough to know that I deserve better than where I grew up. But not smart enough to like, get myself out of it. And you see that in her and she shares that with Wendy, because we learned that Wendy came from a very similar background as Ruth. And that's probably why there's that tension there between them. But Ruth is motherless relearn that Ruth's mom died, I think in a car accident, or she was hit by a car or something when Ruth was very young, and so again, even though Ruth herself is not a mother, you get the sense that motherhood has impacted her in a certain way and made her the woman that she is. Similarly, I believe Wendy either lost her mom Young as well, or her mom just abandoned her at some point. So I think there are some real intentional parallels there between who Ruth Elaine Moore is and who Wendy Byrd sees similarities in from her childhood. And the last character I guess I can touch on briefly is Charlotte, who is the daughter of Wendy and Marty, they also have a son, Jonah. But with Charlotte, we start to see toward the end of season three, but mostly in the first part of season four, is that Charlotte seems to be gravitating more toward her mom, and adopting a lot of the similar beliefs and code of ethics or whatever you want to call it, that Wendy has adopted. She had some difficulties earlier in the show with accepting this new life that their parents were living and being uprooted from all her friends. She goes through this period of depression in the first season, but you see her slowly start to warm up to this. This business, you know, venture that her parents have partaken in and seems almost ready to continue working with her family in this business, whereas their son Jonah seems more inclined to try to break away from it, although he himself is getting into the business of washing and laundering money, just like Marty has. So we see the two children splitting off in a way where the son is being more like Marty, and the daughter is being more like Wendy. And we'll see how that shakes out. I didn't mention this earlier. But you've heard me talk about Part One of the fourth season and part two of the fourth season is actually coming out at the end of April. April 29 is when it drops, and all seven episodes, the last half of the season will be out on that day. This is a Netflix original series. And that that'll be the end of the show. It's going to be the final season.
Jackie Leonard 59:11
I'm I'm excited about it ending and being kind of this tight for season series, I think had gone on longer and might not feel as fresh. We'll see how it ends. I'm really sort of I feel like it could go all sorts of different directions. I would love to feel like by the end I have been able to make some connections with some of the thoughts that I had around why motherhood is represented the way it is and all that. It makes me more inclined to think that Wendy might be the one who is the downfall like the reason why the family goes down or has a hand in in, you know, really putting hurt Children in a much more compromised situation than they already have been. I don't know. I would like to see if my A Miller is the person to take down the birds. How, you know clearly they show us that her type of mothering may have contributed to this this takedown or if they just really wanted to show strong women who are mothers in these powerful, flood complicated, untraditional kind of like subvert subvert the expectation that we have. And they use that as a way to kind of keep us on our toes or you know, elicit some uncanny thoughts because we're just not used to seeing moms in these roles. And for that I find the show to be really interesting and and worth worth analyzing and diving fuller into and, and talking about it because like I said, it really does seem a lot more layered and nuanced and intentional, the more I sat down and thought about these different characters, and I think that's all I've got for Ozark today. Like it's it's a little hard to talk about it in full because like I said, I it's still ongoing, but, but I really enjoyed being able to talk about these different characters. And as I've said already, if you haven't watched the show, and you're not too sensitive to some of the death in the drug world stuff that would be on a show like this, then definitely check it out. I didn't say this earlier. But Ruth Lang Maher is such a fascinating character and so fun to watch. She has this like, explosive temper and like a really bad foul mouth. But it's hilarious. In season three, she calls Wendy a fucking bitch Wolf. And she says it's so good, like her southern twang is just amazing. And Julia Gardner is just like a, she is gonna, you know, go on to do even greater things than she already has. So I mean, to just watch the show for the acting alone is really, really a treat. In, I'm gonna share, you know what rating, I would give the show in just a minute. But I do want to say I'm trying to figure out a way to make these episodes a little more interactive, or, you know, I have these conversations with myself or even when I have a guest. I always want to hear what people who are listening think because I've been on the other end where I've listened and been like, oh, I have all these thoughts, and I don't have anywhere to put them. So I would love for you to reach out to me if you listen to this episode, and are a fan of one of the shows or TV movies that I talked about. Or you started watching something after hearing about it, or a topic that I discussed was really interesting to you or you have experience in something that I've shared. I would love to hear from you. My email is Hello at Mother scope.com. And if you subscribe, or you should subscribe to my newsletter, you can always reply to that. And let me know your thoughts because I do send out an email when a podcast episode goes live. And I would love to find more ways to engage with you if you're listening and just hear what you're liking or you know, what you enjoy about an episode and all that because it really helps me and I like to converse and so to be doing these solo episodes, sometimes I miss that interaction. So to close out Ozark I, I think pretty confidently, I would say I would give Ozark the guilty pleasure rating. I feel like it doesn't follow the life of a average person. I don't know anybody personally, who I know of that is involved in, you know, operations with the drug cartels. So
Jackie Leonard 1:04:00
there is some sort of removal from real world that this show embarks on. I wouldn't say it induces or triggers mom guilt because I think that they've created characters that are so complex and unique and flood, but also, you know, have some humanity in them that I wouldn't say it gets the far end of the stamp, but the guilty pleasure sounds right, because I think they do represent mothers in really complicated, intriguing ways. So they give them depth. They give them agency and active roles in a lot of the conflict and the plot lines of this show. Even though it seems to be sort of centered around Marty bird, I feel like these other orbiting characters are very prominent and influential. And they often as you've heard, I happen to be mothers. So I do think that's very interesting. And I wonder what they are trying to say with that I still On now but, but as a viewer, I think I can appreciate it in that regard. So it gets the guilty pleasure stamp. And for your writing prompt This week I'm gonna go back to this idea of characters who are unlikable, and historically and popular shows the the an unlikable wife and mother and what that all means, and to to bring back the quote by Anna Gunn, who says most people's hatred of Skylar had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives. So this week's writing prompt is, think back to a character on a TV show or movie you watched recently, who was a wife or mother, and you did not like, reflect on what you didn't like about this character? What does that reveal about your own perceptions of women, wives and mothers?