Emmy Episodes: Ozark

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. For the fourth year in a row, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

Ozark: Season 2, Episode 9 “The Badger” (B-)

I skipped one episode to get to the fifth of this show’s six submitted episodes for Best Drama Series consideration, and it doesn’t appear that I missed too much. Mason’s baby is now a member of the Byrde family, but they’re about to lose one of their children. I haven’t seen much of Charlotte in the episodes I’ve watched, and it seems that she’s built up a whole lot of resentment towards her parents. Confiding in an emancipation lawyer is a mistake she’ll likely regret, though hopefully she didn’t actually tell her everything and just enough to get her to threaten her parents with the release of the damning information she did provide. Marty came home and was mad that she was smoking, while Wendy went off fully on her when she realized that she wasn’t going to back down. Marty is ready to get out, and putting Ruth in charge of everything makes some sense, though it will all go very badly if she shares news of that particular promotion with Cade, who continues to make bad life decisions that only end up with other people getting hurt. The one request from the gaming commissioner that the casino not be a union shop is going to be tough to meet, but the Byrdes have faced larger hurdles in the past. Opening with the flashback to Darlene meeting Jacob years earlier after he got shot was an effective sendoff for the character, who I thought was going to take his wife on her final walk in the woods when she managed to get to him first.