How many times has it happen to you when you are in the season finale and you feel – “Oh god! When am I going to meet these characters again?"
For me, it was the third season's finale of 'Ozark!'
For a moment, imagine we are not in the pandemic! we are in a restaurant after an exhausted Monday at work. Along with beer we have a great company of a colleague or a friend who is talking about a client of hers. The client who does not want to spend enough money but expects great results. The client who calls at midnight and crib about a typo mistake! And, the client who occasionally flirts with her! Later a friend brings ‘her client’ into a situation and enacts how that client. We haven’t even seen would react in a particular situation. And we burst into laughter, again! Then she says something like- “He is rude but has an adorable daughter who loves him!” Now we know a new information which is contrasting to the one we knew earlier. So now we think of him as a rude person at work and a lovely family man at home.This is what I am pointing at!
The reason dynamic characters works is because they resemble the people we know.
“She is pretty but ignores me all the time”;“He is a genius, but he creeps me out.”“I loved him in the first glance because he too is a cat person, but I don’t think I have the same feelings now!”
Our mind is a complex place. We are in this eternal struggle to hold on to people our brain wants to move on from but our heart does not!
Every character in Ozark have this contrasting, dynamic characteristic. Marty Byrde is smart but insecure. Wendy continues to risk everything to make sure her family will be safe. Agent Petty is about to reveal the crime but ruins everything with his hot head and anxiety. Ruth is partly aware about the reality but continues to believe the Byrds. Charlotte often refuses to believe the situation she knows she is in. Jonna persistently explores how his intelligence can be used to help the launder more money. The Snells are not as informed as they believe they are. Helen believes she is superior to the Byrdes but turns out to be as valuable as a pawn on the chessboard. So, the characters are not only fighting with the external obstacles, but they are fighting with inner conflicts throughout the show which shapes their decision making.
Every character in the show has a purpose. They move the story forward, delay some of the events or shape the characters around them once they die. Ruth’s dad, who gets out of the jail increases the trouble for Ruth. What Ruth goes through because of her father does not really change or move any key events in the story. But later, she develops feelings with Ben would not have been believable otherwise. Keeping Manson in the show after the first season really gives an opportunity for the Byrds, especially Wendy, to explore the goodness that is possibly left in them. It would have made no sense to keep Buddy alive after he burn the Snell’s farm, but it also would have made no sense to let him die because of his ill health. He roams around with oxygen cylinder from the beginning. The Byrds do think he is going to die sooner but he survives long enough and even becomes part of key events in the show. Buddy being able to live in that house with his ill health and the violence around shapes the philosophy of the house and molds belief system of the Byrds.
Charlotte contacting an attorney to get emancipated adds up the stakes. It is the most natural thing that can happen. It questions Marty and Wendy that is there going to a family for which they are doing what they are doing? In the third season Ben going crazy by realizing his sister and brother in law, work for a drug cartel is the most obvious reaction someone has in the show. Ben is never meant to be part of their world. It is very effective that he is one who is mentally ill and everyone else who work with, for the cartel are sane.
Characters who struggle to overcome their flaws or continue to fight for what they believe in resembles us!
Every single one of us. And hence, even if we haven’t been asked to clean cartel money, we can feel what Marty Byrde and his family feels. We are empathetic to them.
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