from Decider.com
https://decider.com/2020/03/27/ozark-season-3-episode-8-recap/
Ozark S3 Ep 8: BFF
‘Ozark’ Recap Season 3 Episode 8: One Flew Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest
What we have here is a chickens-come-home-to-roost episode. Ozark Season 3 Episode 8 is titled “BFF” for reasons that I must say elude me at the moment; it’s the antepenultimate installment of Ozark‘s third season which sees a lot of long-delayed reckonings, as characters wake up to truths that should probably have been self-evident. And the truth hurts.
Things begin inauspiciously, as Marty Byrde visits his therapist Sue, only to discover she no longer exists. It says something about where both Marty and Wendy are at in their personal ethical ecosystem that Helen Pierce orchestrating the murder of their sweet old (mildly corrupt) marriage counselor barely moves the needle for them anymore.
As far as they’re concerned, they have bigger fish to fry. For one thing, there’s their plan to recruit FBI Agent Maya Miller by feeding her information about other predatory white-collar criminals. When she refuses, Wendy uses her latest political connection, with whom she’s throwing a thousand-dollar-a-plate charity-foundation fundraiser, to pass the intel over Maya’s head directly to her superiors. Her boss is so disgusted with Miller for not taking this layup that she demotes her and sends her back to Washington, DC. As Marty tells Wendy after he gets the news, they may have undermined her too well.
Then there’s the charity dinner itself, which is supposed to be the crown jewel in the Byrdes’ attempt to become legit community leaders. It all goes belly-up when Wendy’s brother Ben—who’s really the star of the episode, thanks to a harrowing performance by Tom Pelphrey—shows up, off his meds and infuriated. Already in this episode he’s gone from the loving afterglow of a night with ruth…
…to assaulting a perfect stranger when his plan to avenge Ruth by beating up Frank Cosgrove Jr. doesn’t pan out.
After Helen gets him released and Ruth picks him up, he harps on the fact that the Byrdes did nothing to actually punish Junior for beating her up. When he calls Wendy soft, Ruth corrects him—the woman did murder her father after all—but instantly regrets even hinting that Wendy might have done something to her, because of how it will obviously affect Ben’s state of mind.
Sure enough, after a strikingly shot one-on-one argument with his sister at the Langmore compound, Ben puzzles out what Wendy did to Cade Langmore. (He also lays several other murders at her feat, from Marty’s old Chicago business partner to FBI Agent Petty, though Ruth eventually corrects him on the last one.) That’s what leads him to crash the charity soirée, where he makes a scene and eventually cold-cocks Marty.
As a result, he’s committed to a state mental institution, a fate he greats with a series of throat-tearing “NOOOOO”s. All Wendy, who’d promised she’d never have him committed again, can do is literally cover her ears and sob, trying and failing not to hear her brother’s recriminations. Both Pelphrey and Laura Linney shine in these dark moments.
Since Helen is telling the truth when she tells Erin that Ben is mentally ill, there’s a chance, albeit a slim one, that her denials might actually be persuasive. But the look on her eyes as the episode cuts to black doesn’t bode well for Ben’s future, that’s for sure. It should be noted that after the charity debacle, she actually goes so far as to tell her boss that it might be time to put an end to the Byrde experiment in toto.
Oh, and somewhere in there Erin kisses Jonah, rather from out of nowhere I thought. But the look on actor Sofia Hublitz’s face as Charlotte sees what’s happening and tries to contain her surprise is worth the swerve.
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