Ozark “Civil Union”

There’s a wonderfully ironic moment in this episode where Wendy, feeling full of herself, is telling Jonah how honest she’s been with her kids about what she and Marty have been doing.  And, not long after that, Darlene walks up to do some taunting with Baby Zeke in tow, and Jonah, well, he has some questions about how Zeke ended up with Darlene.

Because, you know, so much of what happens on this show has to do with who is lying to whom about what.

For example,  Wendy wants to buy a casino on behalf of the Cartel, only not for money laundering.  Marty isn’t interested and wants to keep his head down.  Wendy, seeing problems there, went to Helen for back-up, and now the head of the Cartel is calling Wendy for advice since she impressed him that much.

Marty, meanwhile, is doing what he can to stop the sale.

Wendy makes nice to the woman who owns the place with her husband.  She’s willing to sell.

Her husband, well, it’s his dream, so Marty casually suggests fighting for it.

The deal falls through, and Wendy ups the price.

Marty gets Frank Cosgrove to sabotage the competition’s fireworks display, giving the place Wendy wants to buy a financial breather.

Wendy, really angry, recruits Ruth and some others to sabotage her former sellers slot machines.

Wendy is…rather ruthless when you get right down to it.

That’s a bit scary, truth be told.  Marty is not into this, and Wendy really, really wants this.

Something like that will only cause trouble since, well, the two would need to be on the same page, right?  This is a delicate balancing act of a show.  Having anything where the two aren’t working together is going to cause more trouble for the both of them going forward.

Like, say, Wendy’s emotionally unstable brother Ben moving into the basement…

Dude, that guy was on Iron Fist, but at least there he didn’t have a terrible Southern accent and a bad pony tail.

You know, this may be the show I have the most trouble writing about.  It’s good stuff, but on an episode by episode basis, it’s hard to see where individual plot and character points are going.  That’s good for viewing, bad for a write-up.

Then again, the FBI is now monitoring Marty’s books very closely, so maybe he was right after all.