What happens when our experiences of victimhood let us imagine we can exculpate ourselves from the crimes we ourselves commit? When we become trapped in our attempt to escape from the consequences we ignored for so long? When we finally realise the convenience of cash ultimately comes at a price, and there is a hidden cost for everything? These are questions the Byrde family, consciously or unconsciously, must ask themselves in Ozark, a darkly compelling retelling of the story of Peter Pan, season one and two of which are currently available on Netflix.
It opens with the irresponsibility of Wendy, as an adult, indulging in an extra-marital affair. The fundamentals of taking flight in this version of the tale arise from the suspension of morality to which one feels entitled by the frustrations, dissappointments and tragedies one has endured. But it becomes evident early on to this "wendy bird" that she will not be flying out of the window like her namesake when her paramour hits the pavement and Wendy (played in customary note-perfect fashion by Laura Linney) must succumb to reality.
Money is the pixie dust on this occasion, the proceeds of organised crime which the Byrdes must launder, and it propels them to a dark, reverse Neverland, the Ozarks, where water is surrounded by land, rather than land by water, and the protagonists are trapped, fantasising about escape, rather than offering an escapist fantasy. There they encounter a troubled Tinkerbell in the form of Ruth Langmore (played by Julia Garner in what must be an incredible, career-defining break-out performance), living in the woods and struggling to protect her lost boys from themselves. She even has a cuddly alligator, a childhood toy to which she resorts at times of stress.
Mermaids are strippers. The cartel has the Byrdes on the hook. And, as in the case of the original, we eventually discover the story truly starts with the death of a child.
The trap here is more than the Byrdes' obligations to the cartel, which they must fulfil on pain of death. It is a world of senseless cruelty, the licence we imagine its violence grants us to victimise others, and the veil we like to draw over our own hypocrisy. The fantasy here is innocence itself. We may see the blood money that fuels the plot as the embodiment of the abdication of responsibility on which our dysfunctional society of conspicuous consumption and changing climate is based. The thing we are always trying to escape, in vain, is the deferred consequences of our own actions.
It is easy to compare Ozark to Breaking Bad, each with its male protagonist ("bird man" Marty Byrde, played by Jason Bateman) struggling with a criminal endeavour on which he has embarked, and an inevitable moral descent to which he has condemned himself, but in Ozark, as in the original, it is Wendy's journey, and her different response to the moral consequences of her actions, that offers the greatest interest. The justifications for her actions slowly disintegrate in the equivocations with which she must manipulate those she relies on, and she finds a different way to accommodate and reconcile herself to this new understanding.
I keenly await season three to find where she goes next.
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