Ozark or Breaking Bad: Which is better?

Jason Bateman and Laura Linney as Marty and Wendy Byrde in 'Ozark' Season 4. (Image: Netflix/Screen grab)

I don’t know how a chemistry teacher - suffering from cancer and cooking meth with his no-good student - has kept us involved in episode after murderous episode of Breaking Bad. (The money we saw them make, made many of us wish we’d paid a lot more attention in organic chemistry class in school, though.)

Ozark showed up, with the amiable Jason Bateman as an accountant in bed with a dangerous Mexican drug cartel, and everyone sort of poured hate on it - initially.

Now, I loved Jason Bateman in the funny alien movie Paul, in Juno as well as in Tropic Thunder, though I hated Horrible Bosses. I watched the first episode of Ozark with a Breaking Bad-jaundiced eye, and just when I was about to give up, the body of Gary Silverberg came crashing down from his high-rise apartment on to the pavement. Wham! A shoe flies off!

That’s a good way of getting rid of your wife’s lover, no? And he didn’t even have to do it with his own hands (his hands get dirtier as the show goes on). That got me hooked to the show, which recently dropped its fourth season on Netflix.

Imagine if the Barjatyas made a dark, evil Hum Saath Saath Hain? That would be Ozark. Jason Bateman’s Marty Byrde cannot leave his wife and kids behind to face the drug lords, right? So he takes the whole ghar-sansar along. It’s like Salman Khan’s Prem going in his weird graffiti-decorated jeep to pick up Madhuri Dixit’s Nisha with the gang Tuffy, Lallu and Chameli in tow. (Different film, same banner, so same sensibilities!)

Loved Jason Bateman deciding to run from the drug lord after he’s staring down the barrel of a gun. All because he was good at math. Now mathematics and chemistry are both my mortal enemies, but I found myself reacting like Jesse: Science, right?

Breaking Bad made bald heads sexy. Heisenberg/Walt White/Walter Hartwell (Bryan Cranston) should have his own spinoff series made by Marvel. Better Call Saul made it to the Go-to list simply because you first saw him in Breaking Bad. I still remember Jesse saying, ‘We don’t need a criminal lawyer, we need a ‘criminal’ lawyer.’ Odenkirk’s funny hair can be seen on ‘uncle-ji’s’ everywhere. But what a character! I still hear Far East Movement’s Holla Hey begin to play when I think of Badger and Saul…

I was aghast by how grisly (and some funny) the murders get in Ozark, but Walt White’s reluctance to kill (each time) is memorable. Cranston winning awards for his performance was a given. Who else would let a blackmailing, addict who has appropriated (practically-honey trapped and kidnapped) his partner die horribly and wonder if he should or should not be saving her?

And the duo didn’t hog all the best scenes. The owner of Los Pollos Hermanos (the Chicken Brothers) Gus Fring, brothers Hector and Tuca Salamanca, Marko and Tortuga too gave us some memorable performances.

Whilst you cringed at the unpredictable behaviour of the Salamanca brothers in Breaking Bad, the only person who was unpredictable and mean in Ozark was Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner). Her bottle blonde curls and innocent face hide intelligence that even Marty can't fully gauge. Her love for her family, even though she didn’t think too much of them, appears in the viciousness with which she deals with everything. It’s not easy being the most foul-mouthed  ‘fucking bitch wolf’ in a show.

Ozark has its share of weird characters who don’t take kindly to outsiders - Jacob and Darlene Snell - are weird, but then too many movies have been made (some good like Winter’s Bone and some not so, like Hillbilly Elegy) with strange characters that live in the same neighbourhood. So watching Buddy (the naked man in the Byrde’s basement) burn the poppy fields was awesome, but not something you will remember forever like Walter White’s tighty-whities.

Speaking of memorable scenes, I've scarfed down four seasons of Ozark and laughed my head off when the real estate guy’s mother gets run over by the garbage truck, and was taken aback when the Kansas mob guy shoots the trucker’s hand off. But I will never forget the turtle with Tortuga’s head just walking up to the gang. Or the entire episode of the fly. One remembers every single detail as if one wrote it: Jesse's ear block, the new lab has contamination, ‘That could be a problem’ for the customers, not them. Jesse wondered what use was the contraption in Walter’s hand and then Walter announcing that ‘it’s a fly’. Simply brilliant.

Yes, you can say the writers of Ozark had to give the fans their own Heisenberg in the shape of Laura Linney (how could Jason be a bad guy?) and the similarities are there for everyone to see: a marriage falling apart, one spouse betraying/disapproving of the other to a point of divorce, and more when you keep watching. But then I’d rather bury barrel loads of cash in the desert than leave bodies floating in the waters.

You too will search for ‘Quimey Neuquen (Chancha via Circuito Remix) by Jose Larralde simply because you cannot forget the sun shining down on the two digging up the desert. Say what you will, but I think Breaking Bad buries Ozark by the sheer magic of its writing and unpredictability.

Both protagonists use their ‘skill sets’ to make money, and both shows deal with drugs and the drug cartels and you might hear people say it should be Weeds that's compared to Breaking Bad, but thankfully there was only one season of Weeds.

Anyone who has seen The Wire or The Sopranos will know how and why Ozark ends the way it does. Marty and Wendy need to save their family. Like I said, it is a bit like an evil Rajshree film. But Breaking Bad? It will make you buy a Heisenberg T-shirt to wear to an awards ceremony.