Ozark’s “Careless People”: Allegory of Race and Class
***Spoiler Alert***
This post is intended for people who have viewed the full series, including the final episode, of Ozark.
Many people have acknowledged that Ozark is a well-acted derivative of Breaking Bad. But an analogy just as important, if not more so, is that Ozark is a 2010s-2020s version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1910s-1920s The Great Gatsby.
Marty and Wendy Byrde are essentially Tom and Daisy Buchanan, although Wendy is often more like Tom, and Marty, more like Daisy. None the less, Marty and Wendy fit well narrator Nick Carraway’s description of the Buchanans:
I couldn’t forgive [Tom] or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made….
The Byrdes leave a staggering trail of carnage, larger but similar to the bodies in the wake of the Buchanans. Both couples survive mostly unscathed — at least still wealthy and alive.
If we include the Breaking Bad comparison, the two series’ creators made some important and different decisions about Marty and Walter White — the main white male center of the “vast carelessness” — and some profoundly important different decisions about the parallel characters of Jesse and Ruth — both sympathetic characters who suffer some of the greatest consequences of the carelessness.
Ozark and Breaking Bad ultimately offer some excellent aspects of contemporary series, and nearly equal elements that are problematic. Notably, the shows center whiteness against Mexicans as murders and drug lords — with the whiteness often seeking viewer empathy.
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