When Ozark premiered I had no idea what to expect. I like most everyone else noted that it bore trite similarities to Breaking Bad, but it looked just interesting enough to make for comfort television..except it never got comfortable and neither did I. Over its four seasons Ozark tightened its screws each time sending us whirling through a labyrinth of interwoven plots, personal traumas, shocking deaths, and seethingly cruel rivalries. The shows quality of ensuring we saw the Byrde's for what they were, and the viciousness of this capitalistic landscape combined with its ability to be extremely creative creating great ticking time bomb scenarios one season after another helped make it one of the few truly great Netflix offerings, BUT, of all the things that truly made Ozark great, the thing or rather persons that most made this show stand out was the characters. Julie Garner's resident smuggling prodigy firecracker Ruth Langmore who touted a ferocious tongue and temper. The even hotter tempered Darlene Snell, the wife of Jacob Snell, THE crime family of Osage beach before the Byrde's arrive and turn everything upside down. The snake like Roy Petty, a bit of an unhinged FBI agent determined to get the upper hand on the Byrdes, and then there is of course the Byrdes ; Marty, Wendy, Charlotte, and Jonah, when we meet them, unlike most shows they are already broken, their marriage is failed, fraught with unspoken of trauma, miscommunications and latent fantasies, they are also already money launderers, it is when they end as full on co-leaders of the cartel we see this family come fully together and that is Ozark's sad, stark genius as a show, its stern look at the actualities of the American dream under capitalism, what it costs, and who it costs, and casts out. In that tapestry of interwoven threads of charismatic corporate and political evil doers the shows standout, the shows center is Wendy Byrde, and that’s saying alot in the Ozarks. The shows most accomplished character was challenging, polarizing, and difficult to watch or hear throughout the run of the show all whole being the hardest to keep your eyes and ears off of her. A captivating anti-hero of sorts just that side of Laura Dern's Renata Klein in “Big Little Lies” she was as vile as she was compelling and funny, the most revelatory aspect of Wendy's character was how she morphed from a limb to the head of the Byrdes ascension into gangsterdom essentially making her the subversive matriarch and gangster no 1 in that family.