Though Ozark will naturally draw comparisons to Breaking Bad, its scope isn’t nearly as grand (yet), but Bateman seems to improve with each passing episode. Laura Linney is awesome as Marty’s wife, who gets caught up in the scheme, and Julia Garner is particularly good as the odd local girl Ruth Langmore.
Unsurprisingly, the law finds him anyway, and Marty (Bateman) must scramble to stay afloat while paying off debts to a Mexican cartel. Ozark marks a different look for Bateman than many have seen, as he plays a financial planner-turned-money launderer who relocates his family to the remote Ozark mountains in Missouri to avoid attention from the law. He burst onto the Hollywood scene in the early 1980s as a young heartthrob, starring in stuff like Teen Wolf Too and The Hogan Family before experiencing a major career renaissance in the late aughts with shows like the brilliant comedy Arrested Development. Jason Bateman has had as interesting a career as anyone in the limelight. The show is a clear homage to Spielberg’s coming-of-age films and ’80s horror, and superb performances across the board make this a must-watch. Few shows have been as willing to let children drive the story, and Stranger Things is better for it.
The mystery gets deeper and darker as the show goes on, while more and more members of the Hawkins community get drawn into the creepy tale. Meanwhile, Will’s friends work to find and rescue him, with the help of a mysterious young girl named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), who appears seemingly out of nowhere.
When 12-year-old Will Byers goes missing in the small town of Hawkins, Indiana, his mother, Joyce (Winona Ryder, in a comeback performance), thinks she’s losing her mind, believing that Will has been taken by supernatural forces.
This throwback sci-fi series set the world ablaze in the summer of 2016, igniting a bonfire of nostalgia while simultaneously telling a gripping story that gets more exciting with each episode.