I wasn't prepared to like Ozark very much, and as such, I almost didn't even give it a shot. Ho-hum, another tale of a middle-aged white man doing bad things, getting in over his head. Haven't we had enough of this yet? Breaking Bad was exceptional, but every single derivative of it feels like it's had diminishing returns. This time around it's Jason Bateman's turn. Ha! Jason Bateman! Michael Bluth! As a money-laundering fuck-up who's down to his last chance and needs to move his whole family to the middle of the Ozarks just to try to wash some drug money through, like, titty bars and riverboat casinos. Can you blame me for being skeptical?
But Keith told me it was really not so bad, and so I decided to at least give it a shot. And Keith was right! And I liked this a lot more than I ever liked, I dunno, Bloodline or whatever. Too many of these hour-long dramas suck ass because they just drag and drag and never really stop dragging. What draws me to something like Sneaky Pete, then, is the pace of play. The more balls you've got in the air, the more impressed I am by your ability to juggle, you know? And Ozark is, I mean, it isn't exactly fast-paced, but it's telling a fairly compelling story about more than one character and it's moving along at a respectable pace and it's all done after ten hours. Not bad, right?
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