Ozark “Tonight We Improvise”

OK, so, Marty Byrde is either in way over his head or he’s doing what he does best and is somehow underestimated by, oh, everybody.

Probably a bit o’ both.

Leaving aside Agent Petty’s…really odd attempts to get close to Russ Langmore given the older man seems to be a wee bit homophobic and Roy can’t help but bring up how he’s gay…much of this episode comes down to two different problems.

The first is Jonah is dragging dead animals over to the house and, from the looks of things, cutting them open for some reason.

The second is Marty really wants to know what’s up with Bobby Dean’s strip club.  He does manage to get some inside info from one of the strippers, a woman who is downright surprised Marty doesn’t want anything sexual from her.  Apparently, Dean’s club is losing money, but he has a safe in his office.  Surely there’s something good in there.

So, can Marty and Wendy get through either of these problems?

Well, yeah, but only in a  way that leads to bigger problems.

Jonah is the easier one.  The kid was studying the local vultures and knew that was the only way to get the birds to come by.  He opened the guts of the corpses he found up a bit to give off the right smell.  And even as I write that, I see how bad that sounds, but trust me, the kid’s OK.’

Or he was until he got the impression his parents thought he was a budding serial killer.

As for the other, Marty does have other resources.  Well, he has one, and Ruth ain’t cheap.

She ain’t dumb either, faking her way inside to case the joint by pretending she wants a stripper job, only leaving it when Bobby Dean demands oral sex.  She manages to clear the place out by bringing her underage cousins to the joint and calling the cops, but then she can’t open the safe.  Marty has to tow it out of there like a low budget version of a Fast and Furious movie.

Yeah, Bobby ain’t got much money in there.  The safe does have a false bottom, though…something Marty finds and realizes what’s really going on.

The real reason Bobby Dean wouldn’t use his club to launder money was because he already was.  Marty knows all the signs, pays Bobby’s bail, and forces him to sell the club, promising the dancers now working for him they don’t have to give out any more oral sex, leading one to ask how they’re going to make money now.

Don’t feel too bad for Bobby Dean.  He goes to see his real bosses, Jacob and Darlene Snell…and they kill him.

Wait, maybe feel a little bad for the guy.  The Snells, people Marty doesn’t know about yet, seem a lot more dangerous.

Well, if there’s any consolation, it’s that Jonah seems to have forgiven his father enough to ask how one goes about laundering money in the first place.

Wait, that also sounds bad.