from Decider.com
https://decider.com/2020/03/27/ozark-season-3-episode-9-recap/
Ozark S3 Ep 9: Fire Pink
‘Ozark’ Season 3 Episode 9 Recap: My Brother’s Keeper
There’s a Sopranos episode, maybe you remember it, called “Long Term Parking.” In that episode, [CHARACTER A REDACTED] reveals to [CHARACTER B REDACTED] that they’ve been working with the FBI, in hopes that Character B, too, will want to flip on the mob. The two separate, and then Character A receives a phone call from [CHARACTER C REDACTED] that Character B has attempted suicide, and that [CHARACTER D REDACTED] will come pick Character A up to visit Character B in the hospital. As Characters A and D take that ride together, your brain reels back and forth from relief to dread to relief again, since it seems Character A is in the clear. Only they’re not, not by a long shot. Character D isn’t there to give them a ride—at least not the ride they wanted. Character D is there to drive Character A out into the middle of nowhere and murder them, which Character D does. All these characters who seemed to love Character A are revealed as charlatans, or at the very least as people who put their own safety ahead of every other consideration. If you pose a risk to the family, you will be killed. It’s that simple.
Anyway, the cinematographer for that episode of The Sopranos is Alik Sakharov. Sakharov also directed Ozark Season 3 Episode 9 (“Fire Pink”). Why do I bring that up? Oh, no reason.
One of the most emotionally ambitious episodes in the history of this show, and certainly one of the most taxing on its performers, “Fire Pink” presents us with a relatively simply dilemma, enacted over and over again by a series of characters. Ruth Langmore, Marty Byrde, Wyatt Langmore, Darlene Snell, Wendy Byrde—each of them tries, as hard as they can, to save Wendy’s brother Ben Davis from the trouble into which he’s gotten himself by revealing Helen Pierce’s true line of work to her daughter Erin. They try, and try, and try, but they’re up against an enemy even more implacable than Helen herself, the manic phase of Ben’s bipolar disorder. They want him to be okay, and he wants to cooperate. He just can’t, that’s all. He cannot do what he needs to do. Compelled by his misfiring brain, he must do what will get him killed.
It speaks to the skill of Sakharov and writer Miki Johnson that each of Ben’s self-destructive decisions hits like a ton of bricks. Ruth brings him to the Snell compound to hide out? Next thing you know he ignores her and Wyatt’s instructions and shows up at the Missouri Belle casino, exactly the kind of place Helen’s minion Nelson would be looking for him, as indeed he is. Spirited out of the area by Marty and Wendy? Next thing you know he’s using a burner phone to call Helen and attempt to apologize. Wendy breaks his phone and whisks him away? Next thing you know he’s snuck out of her car while she sleeps to tell anyone who’ll listen he’s on the run from Omar Navarro, drawing the attention of the police. Wendy intimidates the cops out of taking the case any further and keeps on driving? Next thing you know Ben surreptitiously buys another burner phone, no doubt to make another dangerous and self-defeating phone call. The face of Laura Linney when Wendy discovers that’s what he’s done says it all, really. He can’t be reasoned with or convinced or talked out of anything. This will never end.
After every one of those incidents I found myself hollering at the screen in exasperation and fear. Jesus Christ, Ben, not the casino! Oh my god, he called Helen? Wendy no, don’t fall asleep, he’ll cause a scene! Ah fuck, he bought another goddamn phone? It’s one of the most unique narrative patterns I think I’ve ever seen on a show of this sort; on most, you only get one screw-up before you get got, but Ben screws up over and over and over.
So it falls to Wendy to make the fateful decision. It’s clear that she’s done so while they eat breakfast for dinner at a restaurant, reminiscing about memories and inside jokes that mean nothing to us in the audience but mean everything to them. (I’m so glad none of this stuff got explained to us. It makes so much more sense that they’d just treat it all as verbal shorthand and not spell anything else.) The question becomes, is she simply planning to abandon Ben, trusting his disease to land him in prison or the hospital while rendering his declarations about Navarro the ravings of a madman? Or will she rat him out to Helen, exchanging his life for the lives of her and her children?
The appearance of a telltale black Escalade in the parking lot answers that question very quickly.
Linney is tasked with trying to cajole better behavior out of her brother, giving up on him, bullshitting her way through a final meal, and then reeling from the emotional impact of what she’s done. “What am I doing?” she sobs into the phone to Marty, over and over again, after selling Ben out. “What am I doing?” Normally the answer would be “saving my family.” But not this time, no. And not ever again.
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