Ozark: Another Alternate History

At Nick’s recommendation, Paul and I innocently embarked on Netflix's Ozark, “It is similar to Schitt’s Creek,” he promised us.

How wrong were my expectations, when I was waiting for a similar light humor and funny story as in Schitt’s Creek. The deja vu of the Man in the High Castle dawned on me. All of sudden, I understood why we tended to avoid watching those series in the last few years, when everything stayed normal.

Since we were sheltered in place to work from home since March 16, our whole life routine has been altered upside down; therefore, any shows or books with the genre of alternate history have become part of the new normal. They provide their audience perfectly with another self-contained universe to live in and observe. Unfortunately the altered world is no more pleasant or worse than our reality attacked by the pandemic of COVID-19: citizens in the Man in the High Castle are ruled by two Axis forces on two coasts, California as one of the Japanese Pacific States in the west, and in the east New York as Greater Nazi Reich, with the rest of the country as a vast neutral zone. Such a state is by no means stable or permanent; everywhere are senseless killings, upheavals, conflicts and wars between the conquerors, and resistance forces.

Before long, the foreign powers transform themselves from the ones who dictate their orders from Tokyo and Berlin to become the rulers on site, such as Crown Princess Michiko and Heinrich Himmler and his wife Margarete. They are changing the whole country according to their own interest and wishes, from people to landmarks. Strangely, the same is true of Omar Navarro, the mysterious client in the first two seasons of Ozark. In the third season, Navarro has transformed from a hidden figure to the forefront cartel boss, testing the royalty of his American employees Helen Pierce and Marty Byrde by torture, and letting them compete for the final selection of the fittest. He utilizes Americans to build casinos and hotels on the Lake of Ozark to launder his drug money, and buys a horse farm for the same nefarious purpose. He uses American faces to manipulate Missouri politics, and brings his cartel war on American soil by utilizing FBI forces to crush his cartel enemies. He is the real ruler.

If the Man in the High Castle attracts a certain strata of audience interested in history or sci-fi, Ozark has certainly cast a much wider net to capture an all but total Netflix audience. It has all the successful ingredients: authentic alternate history story, good acting, curiosity about cartels, fascination with money and high life, and disillusionment with politics and government. There is one more advantage for the latter: timing. With the order of shelter in place, we are all sitting ducks, eager for any distraction or means of escape, willingly seduced by a reasonably long and spicy show.