On Being Stuck
And why getting unstuck is harder than you might think
Hello and welcome to your mid-week check-in.
Surprise! I have literally zero book updates. Right now I’m working on a few projects, but the local newsletter is taking up most of my time because there’s an election in a few weeks and it’s budget season. So I’m busy going to (virtual) meetings, interviewing people, and writing about my town. It’s really fun.
After the election, I really need to refocus. Whether that means writing more essays, rewriting the beginning to the book, starting to think about self-publishing, waiting around a little longer for agents, or some combination of all those… I’m not sure. But this spring, I’m going to need to nudge myself back into that world.
This week, though, I want to keep talking about home. I went back and forth between two TV shows that remind me of home for very different reasons, but ultimately I settled on Ozark.
The Lake of the Ozarks is a giant reservoir in central Missouri* that, as Bruce and Marty famously discuss in the opening episode of the show, has “more coastline than the state of California.” Having lived on the coasts for the last 20+ years, my go-to when I want to be near the water is the ocean. But when I was a kid, lakes were the only thing around. I think I probably went to the Ozarks once or twice when I was growing up, but the lake itself not what reminds me of home.
In case you’ve never seen Ozark, my one-sentence summary of the plot is this: A Chicago family moves to the Ozarks to launder money for a drug cartel.
This plotline allows the opportunity to showcase several aspects of humanity, and the show explores a lot of them: Is anyone truly bad? How much responsibility can (or must) you take for the situation you were born into? How much of a role does luck play in success (or failure)? Is a good thing done for a bad reason still worthy? And the list goes on and on.
The show also gives viewers a look into what it feels like to be stuck somewhere - whether it’s a physical location or a life situation. Many of the Ozark players are living with poverty, abuse, or other situations that feel out of their control. And they’re in a place without a lot of options.
Education feels like a way out, but it takes a long time and there are a lot of barriers to cross along the way - especially if your family name or socioeconomic status works against you. We see this with Wyatt Langmore, who I’ve rooted for since the day he was introduced (well, after that thing with Charlotte in the beginning). The rest of his family views him as the smart one of the bunch - some see that as his “way out,” and others (those that want him to stick around and not forget where he came from) refuse to acknowledge the value education can provide. The show sets you up to be in his corner for the long haul, cheering for him to choose the path you think is best for him - even when he’s not sure himself.
And then there are the hurdles of being kicked out of school or having to prioritize working or caring for other family members. Wyatt’s cousin, Ruth, is smart as hell, but she felt more of a draw to her family - especially her younger cousins - than a call to further her education.
A much easier, more immediate path is getting involved in the drug trade that’s happening all around you. And I’m not kidding when I say all around. In Ozark, it’s heroin. When I was growing up, in the area where I lived, it was meth. It’s easy to see drug dealers making a lot of money and visualize yourself in their position. But the danger presented by these options it not obvious until it’s too late. Addiction, jail, death from overdose or a deal gone south - I’ve seen it all happen to people I care about.
Ozark is a dark tale that explores the extremes to which we’ll go to protect the people we care about and the things most important to us. I’m wracking my brain to try and recall a single decision a character made that wasn’t to protect a loved one (or themselves, at the very least), and I can’t think of any. And can you blame them? It’s so much easier to look at what’s in front of you than it is to point yourself in a direction without seeing the destination.
I always got the sense that some of the people back home felt stuck. I was one of the lucky ones (Huh. There’s that word from the questions up above. I’m a hard worker, but I do think there has been some luck involved in where I eventually ended up.) who was able to leverage my education and the opportunities it gave me to go explore new horizons. I used to wonder why, if people wanted to get out, they didn’t just get up and leave. But now I know it’s a lot more complicated than that. Money is an issue, family ties are an issue, education is an issue, mental health is an issue. Ozark explores all of these and more.
And they do it in an accent that brings me back home every time.
Next time we’ll talk about another accent that takes me back where I came from.
Until next time,
*I lived in Missouri for my entire childhood, and was just discussing the Ozarks with my parents this past weekend, and until I looked it up just now I had no idea how central the lake is. I definitely thought it was down south, closer to Arkansas. Ope.