SG Showrunners 30: Ozark – Season 1 - Editor's Six Core Questions & Analysis

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This week, the Story Grid Showrunners fell in love with the Netflix TV Series OZARK – a thrilling story about an unassuming man who is forced to run to the Ozarks to launder money to save his and his family’s life. He has to take his reluctant teenagers and a failing marriage. It’s a brilliant combination of a thriller with a marriage love story, underpinned with shades of an internal morality genre

Access the SG Showrunners’ Bonus foolscaps and Editor’s 6 Core questions for Killing Eve, Witcher, You, Umbrella Academy and Ozark here.

What’s the lowdown?

Randall: Pretty good, some nice surprises, overall the story worked.
Parul: High stakes, constantly moving. The story worked as a thriller.

What are the Editor’s Six Core Questions?

It’s a great way to analyse any story and figure out if it works. Here are the questions. We’ll touch on them in this podcast, but the full notes can be downloaded afterwards.

What’s the genre?
What are the conventions and obligatory scenes for that genre?
What’s the Point of View?
What are the objects of desire?
What’s the controlling idea/theme?
What is the Beginning Hook, the Middle Build, and Ending Payoff?
What is the Beginning Hook, Middle Build and Ending Payoff?

What’s the beginning hook, middle build and end payoff?

We start with what appears to be a normal family: Marty is an accountant who appears to watch porn all the time. The kids are pretty normal, Charlotte is a normal teenager with attitude and Jonah seems to be pretty normal too. Then we find out that Marty knows his wife is cheating on him. All of this sets the stage for the viewers, we see the family at home, work and play and we have a good idea what they are all about.

BEGINNING HOOK

Inciting Incident: Marty’s partner has been skimming money from a Mexican Drug Cartel, Marty’s partner is killed in front of him. Marty is about to be killed
Turning Point Progressive Complication: Marty decides/ is forced to flee to the Ozarks with his family to wash $8 million dollars
Crisis: When the FBI approach him, does he trust them to look after his family or continue to work for Del?
Climax: He feigns ignorance and continues to search for way to launder Del’s money
Resolution: Marty realises that his job will be harder than he realised. He contemplates suicide but backs out and finds the Blue Cat Inn might be a great investment opportunity.

MIDDLE BUILD

Inciting Incident: Ruth Langamore steals Marty’s money putting him in danger.
Turning Point Progressive Complication: The Snells threaten to kill the Preacher’s baby when the Church continues to be built
Crisis: Should Marty give the Snells his money and save the Preacher’s family?
Climax: He bribes the Snells with money earmarked for the Cartel
Resolution: He saves himself but is now short of money and runs a scam to take Sam, the Realtor’s money.

END PAYOFF

Inciting Incident: Marty decides it’s not safe for his family to stay and send them away
Turning Point Progressive Complication: Garcia tries to stop them and Buddy kills him
Crisis: Will he confess to Garcia’s murder under torture?
Climax: He doesn’t confess, he explains a way for Del to work with Snell
Resolution: Marty persuades Del and Snell but Darlene kills Del in rage. Wendy & the children stay back

What’s the Genre?

Randall: Thriller is the Global Genre right? Life and death are the stakes in this story.

Parul: However, you can’t miss that Love as a genre is laced in here.

The Love subgenre is a Marriage/ intimacy story where a committed relationship is now at a crossroads. Something external provokes trust issues and challenges the lovers to recognize, accept, and love the authentic other person rather than the illusion the other displayed during the courtship phase. There is a paradoxical (win-but-lose, lose-but-win) ending. The Marriage Love story may be either prescriptive or cautionary.

Marty and Wendy Bryde are at a crossroads, but you’ll see that the thriller dominant genre add a special twist. Marty has been so wrapped up in his money laundering scheme that Wendy turned to someone else for comfort. After the inciting incident Marty has to take his family to the Ozarks – Wendy wants to leave him but is forced to stay with him on threat of death from Del. As the Season progresses, they make up, they have sex, but towards the end we see real intimacy between them. In the final scene, they are reunited and the love is real – they have remembered each other.

Morality is intertwined in this story in so far that we have a man who is using a moral code that is against the societal norm. He has chosen to take this path to help elevate his family’s security and status. However, he brings people around him down – Mason the preacher, his children. Their moral code also changes.

What are the Obligatory scenes & Conventions of the Global Genre?

Thriller (Global)
Inciting Incident of the villain – kills everyone and threatens Marty and his family
Speech in praise of the villain – FBI and Marty to his wife
Hero becomes the villain – Marty and his family are targeted from the beginning
Hero at the Mercy of the villain – yes, multiple times
False ending – yes

Morality (Internal Genre)
To illustrate the presence of morality in this story, look at the showdown. What’s the showdown for Morality?
The Showdown – protagonist actively sacrifices self in service of an individual, a group, or humanity (positive) or consciously chooses to remain selfish (negative) – We have Marty Bryd who is calmly negotiating with the biggest drug dealer and money launderer to create a situation for them to allow his family to live. He has told his family to create a life without him.

The protagonist faces literal or metaphorical death and either loses the battle but gains self-respect, meaning, and peace; or wins the battle but loses those things a great sacrifice. In all internal genres, there is a paradoxical ending. He doesn’t win the battle – Del is murdered, and he’s now dealing with the fickle and racist Snells – but he has his family back, they love him and come back to him.

What are the Conventions of the Global Genre
MacGuffin – Cartel wants its money washed
Red Herrings – we see multiple possible solutions fail for Marty (restaurant, church, strip club, inheritance investment)
Making it personal – the cartel sees the disappearance of its men as personal
Clock – Marty continues to get calls about his deadline to clean the money