Ozark

Ozark only gets better by the minute. If you need us, we’ll be waiting with bated breath to see how it all comes to a close. Ozark remains one of the best dramas on TV in its fourth season, a showcase for career-best performances from Bateman, Linney, and Garner.

After ending the third season with a bang (pun intended), "Ozark" begins its fourth and final arc with a nail-biting sense of purpose, as the Byrdes continue their dangerous dance with people who you really don't want to get on their bad sides. Increasing the kids' role without losing any of its potency, this Netflix drama remains among TV's best, unfolding with a perpetual state of dread.

Ozark remains a show drenched in blue-gray darkness, its exterior iciness in tune with its subjects’ internal frostiness. It continues to feature one of the best ensembles on TV. ... The series has long been a showcase for titanic female presences, and that’s still the case as it establishes its end-game plot.

Ozark returns to prove its worth in the genre by remaining a riveting and satisfying crime drama to its bitter (almost) end.

As complicated and strained as the “Ozark” plot can sound, with all its precarious threads, it never feels contrived, and the showrunner/writer Chris Mundy and writing staff does an amazing job of never breaking suspension of disbelief.

After a stunning and heart-wrenching season 3—arguably the best of the series—the show has a lot to live up to. Thankfully, it’s planted enough intriguing seeds to keep us watching.

Splitting the final season is one of Netflix’s ploys to keep subscribers paying for longer. But it’s a strategy easily overlooked when the drama is this absorbing.

Season four is at its best when it deftly manages constantly shifting alliances and character developments within those emotional flares. ... Laura Linney is firing on all cylinders this season, sliding in nanoseconds from honey-sweet do-gooder businesswoman to hemlock-lethal crime boss.

With the concluding seven episodes still under lock and key, it remains to be seen whether Bateman and co can pull of an ending as devastating as that of The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. But Ozark’s long farewell is certainly off to a gripping start.

Twists and turns abound everywhere, and even when those twists and turns defy plausibility, it’s still entertaining as hell.

Part 1 isn’t the end, so much as a chance to take stock in what’s kept us coming back to “Ozark” each season. Be it the thrills, the performances, or morbid curiosity, Mundy’s series is still searching for more meaning in its final hours. When Part 2 hits, we’ll finally hear how much “Ozark” has to say.

The first seven episodes of the final season arrive on Friday (the second seven will be available later in the year), and they are easy to breeze through. But I’m still frustrated with the show. The story line, always on the fringes of believability, becomes utterly absurd in the new episodes.