Jay Man

The praise of provincial dramas like "The Wire" or "The Sopranos" or Billy Bob Thorton's backwoods classic, "Slingbade" is that they are thoroughly rooted in--and faithful to-the distinct culture of their respective setting, the final product carries with it an air of authenticity, and in turn transports its audience to Baltimore's westside projects and New Jersey at the turn of the new millennium and Thorton's native Arkansas. This quality is absent from Ozark; and instead of being transported anywhere, its audience is made to see what people in Hollywood think of the region without having ever lived there. Or even visited. As reflected by Mrs. Byrd in the first season, when she, recollecting longingly about her days working alongside the Messianic Barack Obama in Chicago, where she was doing "good work" and "really believed" in Obama's politics, laments the fact that she's now, somehow, in "Nowhere, Missouri." It is clear that no one responsible for Ozark's final cut knows enough about heroin or the its means of production--to say nothing of drug cartels--to keep the show from forfeiting its credibility several times over within the first three episodes. If there's a redeeming quality, it does not make an appearance in the first season. I, then, shall not bother with any of the other seasons.