Who Makes The Beds and Other Worries While Bingeing On Netflix
If Wendy is busy laundering money for a drug cartel, how does she keep her house so neat?
So forgive the mini-spoiler, but we all know Wendy Byrde on Ozark is deep into the Navarro drug cartel laundering money with her husband Marty via various dubious schemes involving casinos and faux foundations and such. Yet, she’s still a mom.
Of course, we have a lot to talk about re her parenting style.
I mean, would you admit to your pre-and full-blown adolescent kids how entwined you are with the KC mob?
Maybe it’s just me, but some family secrets are best kept hidden waaaay back in the closest, at least until the first unwanted teen pregger.
But, as I said. We all have our own approach to fostering familial bonds, be it helicoptering or more permissive 60’s throwback approaches where the family practices full-on nudity and engages in philosophical discourses on the evils of The Man instead of bedtime fairytales.
Whoops? TMI?
Back to Kondo-ing on screen.
The woman has a 14-year-old-boy. How does she have time to harass a Mexican drug lord on his private number and still get her son to pick up his clothes from the floor? Because that’s where boys put their clothes. It’s in their genes or they take a class in clothing care instead of shop. I don’t know. I had a girl, and that was bad enough.
But every time one of the Byrdes bounce down those basement stairs to Jonah’s boy cave, the place is pristine. At least by teenager standards. Instead of the usual mountain of stinky sheets that haven’t been washed in months wrapped around a cross between a sleeping bag, duvet, baby blanket he promises to give up before he goes off to college, we get a fully made bed with hospital corners.
Where are the hundred or so pairs of mismatched sneakers peeking out from under the bed? We’re left to believe that Wendy is on top of her morning routine. Beds made while Marty does breakfast, a quick touch-up of bathrooms and swiffering the floors before she showers, then the first three loads of laundry.
From the stacks behind the office wall in the casino for the cartel. Not the sheets and towels and gym clothes that she’ll stick in the washing machine after lunch. After all, she’s got a business to run. She can’t do everything before she’s had her first cup of coffee.
I mean, come on. Who does that? Juggle a controlling husband on one hand and a bloodthirsty cartel kingpin with the other?
And still worry that the house is photo-op ready when Helen drops by, the shady lawyer who may or may not be plotting to whack the whole family because Jonah and his raging teen-mones is all over her princess daughter who doesn’t have a clue and witlessly gets people killed but can’t see the blood on her own mother’s hands.
Don’t get me started.
And what about Moira Rose and her bottomless closet on Schitt’s Creek?
Okay, I get it. And love it that she’s all a monochromatic wet dream like her over-the-top son who was like fingernails on a blackboard for the first two episodes and then grew on me like a good haircut so that I was staying up all night to see his latest oversized sweater he snagged from some ex-designer lover in SoHo.
Instead of writing my articles to push my dashboard to the head of the class, you could find me in the bathroom every morning, practicing my eye roll or Alexis’s pouty mouth and self-righteous, “What’s your point?” when one of the parents catches her in a bit of hypocritical tangle.
Yes, I’ve already drawn my line in the sand. I’ve asked to come back in my next life as Moira. Can’t you just see me in all that bling? And her shoes? Of course, I won’t have bunion issues next time around, and I’ll rock those stilettos and gladiator boots. The babydoll jumpsuits not so much, though. I have my standards.
But to my point, where does Moira stash all her stash?
She only has that one closet in the bedroom she shares with Marty. Her shoes would take up her half of the closet, not to mention an outfit for every one of the five seasons I’ve watched so far. And wouldn’t that closet also be where she’d hide the vacuum cleaner and broom and mop she uses to clean the bathroom?
Moira does do the housework, now that they are all but living on relief, doesn’t she? I’m making that assumption because you never see those layabout kids lifting a hand, unless it’s Alexis trying to snag Mutt on her community service gig.
Frankly, hubs seems too much of a ditz himself to figure out the business end of a broom. No wonder they’re in the fix they’re in. That accountant who embezzled their millions saw them coming. And thank god for us he did, because where else would I get so many laughs during quarantine if it weren’t for this hapless crew.
And how much of a coincidence is it that Moira also has a controlling husband named Marty, just like Wendy Byrde? I’m thinking conspiracy theories. You think I’m wrong because the two shows have nothing to do with each other?
But, Helen. Moira’s husband’s name is Johnny, not Marty.
What’s your point?
These shows with the miracle stars who race through their chores and keep the sets spick and span remind me of the days I would visit my mother back in the Bronx.
We’d have to take a TV break over lunch to watch her favorite soaps. She only had a few because she was a demon when it came to keeping her own digs shipshape, a trait my sister got in abundance but which has been lost on me.
It was always curious to me that everyone on the hospital shows and family dramas always had time to attend to their makeup before they flung themselves at the man of the hour.
And while they were saying a tearful goodbye to the child they bore out of wedlock before the adoptive parents whisked her away to a new and plushier home, the heroine at least had a perfect manicure and had time to touch up her roots.
When later she knocked on her best friend’s door, ready to collapse in misery, she could count on her best buddy to greet her, saying, “I just put on a fresh cup of coffee. I’ll pour us a cup.”
How did those characters make it through an episode with all the caffeine they had to ingest? They were either strung out from all the drinking after catching their husbands in bed with their best friends or shaking from a dozen cups of coffee before their big scene ended with a good cry and reassurance the baby was better off, and she had done the noble thing. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, like accounting for babies is such a drag when you’re writing a profile on Tinder. Just sayin.’
Streaming services are supposed to offer a diversion from our worries and stresses by offering a dose of alternative reality. But how can we take the lives of these women seriously when they obviously spend their days primping in front of the mirror when they should be spending their last moments with the newborn they will never see again.
Until next season when the father returns and insists on having a roll in the child’s upbringing and demands to know why he wasn’t consulted about the adoption. This opens a door to a new plotline where maybe they reunite and have a courtroom fight with the adoptive parents.
Still, would you be doing a smokey eye at such a difficult time?
And can we believe that Wendy has her foot on Jonah’s head, demanding he clean his room each day before he goes into the woods for that creepy target practice nobody seems to think is a sign he’s acting out for learning his father is a criminal and maybe their all going to be thrown into the slammer? What else would a 14-year-old worry about who plays violent video games? Or is it just me?
Sometimes I finish a season on Netflix, whether it’s tiger abuse, arranged marriages set up by the show’s sponsors to sell products you can’t find on the shelves anymore, or old commercials of people high-fiving on beach holidays that make you shout, “SOCIAL DISTANCING, PEOPLE!” at your screen, and I think, I’d rather watch CNN and hope it’s time for some good news.
Got to happen one of these days, right?
Stay safe, however you do it.
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