Ruling Days," the fifth episode in the increasingly engaging Netflix crime series Ozark, contains a pair of major developments. First, Marty Byrde makes the acquaintance of local heroin kingpin Jacob Snell, who introduces himself after blocking the way of Marty's car just by standing in the road. But the pastor's surprising backstory points toward a more compelling reason to watch the show. My favorite thing about Ozark at this point are its little character-developing filigrees - offshoots from the main branch of the narrative in which the supporting players, or even the main ones, are given a chance to show new sides of themselves. Ruth, the show's perpetual MVP, gets one of the best such mini-arcs in the episode. Given responsibility for the strip club during the Fourth of July holiday weekend by Marty, she immediately turns it into a money-making machine by bringing on new staff. When one of the previous strippers (Marty's informant, in fact) complains and implies that Ruth was involved in Bobby Dean's death because "we all know who your daddy is," Ruth viciously beats her right in the middle of the club, then orders everyone else to get back to work because they've got money to make. When Marty sees how well she's done with the place, he hands the day-to-day operations over to her entirely, and she quite uncharacteristically beams with pride. Yet she still tails him to the storage locker where he's hiding the cash - but the look on her face indicates another uncharacteristic emotion, that of guilt. In a few short scenes we see the best and worst of this character, some manifestations of which we've never seen before at all. It's deftly done. A lot of this material brings out the best in Bateman, too. As Ozark continues, he's finding his footing, moving away from feeling like a shoddy imitation of past antihero archetypes into a sort of taciturn straight-man version of them, a guy who does bad stuff and handles bad people the way you might talk to a customer service rep when your cable goes down. His and Wendy's conversation after her lover's kid leaves, when she tells him she never loved the man, is actually kind of a marvel of spare emotional efficiency.
Review of Ruling Days
