I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to include more TV and Film reviews this year (they were almost completely absent from this site in 2021). Luckily, Netflix had a pair of buzz-worthy shows in January that almost everyone on Earth has already seen and weighed in on. However, they were both improperly reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes, so there’s still a need to weigh in on them…
[Spoilers for “Ozark,” very vague spoilers for “The Woman…”]
“Ozark”…This is the first half of the final season, and I have to admit to being a little disappointed. Tonally, this season is much closer to the frenetic season 2 than the better, more assured, “slower” (but more genuinely suspenseful) season 3. Season 3 dialed the pacing back so that we could really feel–and enjoy–what was truly happening and were thus appropriately creeped out by the hitman who visited the Byrd’s marriage therapist or devastated during the final episode for Wendy’s brother. Season 4’s first part is more “quantity” than quality when it comes to subplots and introduces a lot more than you would think for a series trying to wind down: a completely unnecessary private detective character; the loathsome, dangerous nephew of their cartel boss; said cartel boss’s decision to step down (and demand that the Byrds help him do it); Ruth recruiting Jonah to help her launder money; Ruth working with her idiot cousin Wyatt and the tiresome Darlene; Jonah’s monotonous presence, rebellion, and various plot lines; shifting power dynamics within the Kansas City mob; a missing sheriff and temporary replacement; Wendy’s quest to set up a powerhouse political organization in the Midwest…and using “legal” opioid money to do it (with a family-run company clearly based off the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma)…and involving a corrupt Illinois politico whose son may be under federal investigation…for creating software that rigs elections…
You see what I mean? I haven’t even mentioned the FBI agent who figures prominently or her newborn kid or the raids she helps set up…and that’s just from one character who is (at best) the 10th most important on the series…in only seven episodes in the final season. “Ozark” is better when we can feel the dread creeping in, and how that really affects the characters we’ve come to care about, but the bulk of these seven episodes is exposition or repetitive shouting matches (Darlene yelling at Ruth, Jonah yelling at Wendy, Ruth yelling at everyone). There’s a flash-forward at the beginning of this mini-season that feels out of place (it’s never referenced again and easily could’ve opened the second-part of season 4 instead), and the only major deaths happen right at the very end. To be honest, I was so excited to see these characters die off, I literally clapped, and I was only reminded of how “Ozark” too often practices anti-survival-of-the-fittest. How are smart, interesting, capable characters like Helen (Janet McTeer) or Del (Esai Morales) or Jacob Snell (Peter Mullan) dead, while Wyatt was able to survive for four seasons? The guy has the IQ of a rock–or I should say had–and the death of him and Darlene (who has single-handedly killed half of the show’s best characters) only reminded me of how reluctant “Ozark” is to let go of some of their most annoying, worn-out-their-welcome characters. [Really and truly, why is Ruth still alive?] And yet, there’s not a chance in hell I won’t be coming back to see if Marty and Wendy can (hopefully) pull it all off. Grade: C
“The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” Those who aren’t familiar with this show probably thought I made a serious typo and/or was drunk when writing the title of this article. And that is perfectly appropriate for a series where the main character is mostly dismissed as a wino, and that so savagely (and excellently) satirizes about 10,000 Lifetime movies and half the novels on the best seller list. The “domestic thriller” (they’re more specific than just potboilers) genre usually features a woman who’s an unreliable narrator, and people generally think she’s making it up when she says her husband’s a serial killer or that the glamorous new friend she’s befriended has disappeared or that she’s just witnessed a murder. [“Woman” is a parody of the “Rear Window” knockoffs instead of the “husband with secrets” dime-a-dozen thrillers. And it even spoofs the “a passenger has disappeared on a train/plane/boat but only I remember her” books in the fabulous closing scenes.]
Kristen Bell is note-perfect as she guzzles buckets of wine–the excessive consumption is a running gag that never gets old–and tries to solve a mystery that involves a “hunky” new neighborhood, his precocious daughter, and his passive-aggressive girlfriend that Bell isn’t sure whether she should envy or dislike. Along the way, we’re treated to hilariously-precise jokes involving her ludicrously “tragic backstory,” the bitchy neighbor who seems to exist only to spread gossip, the conspicuous “handy man” lurking in the background, the hard-nosed detectives who are wrong about everything, the convoluted backstories of red herring suspects, an inexplicable lighthouse detour complete with “mysterious” personnel, and the fall-in-your-lap stupidity of most of the clues Bell picks up on (a poster for an airline’s limited flight offerings becomes important in a way that could actually be in one of the books “Across” is making fun of). By the time the show gets to the actual reveal of what happened and whodunnit, it is gloriously absurd, and might seem familiar to anyone who’s read the preposterous closing pages of many domestic thrillers. Grade: A-