Money maestro Marty Byrde (Bateman, who also serves an executive producer and occasional director) and his wife Wendy (Linney) continue to skate on the knife’s edge, running a casino that’s essentially a front to launder money for a Mexican drug cartel.

There are bad bosses, and then there are those for whom failure truly isn’t an option. As always, though, there are complications, perhaps the foremost being that the central couple differs regarding what’s best for the business, each bringing his and her special brand of ruthlessness to the problem.

Wendy previously worked in political strategy and craves more money and power. “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” she tells her husband. With a few calculated risks, they could wind up running things. She sees an opportunity to go into bigger business with the Novarro cartel, who are under pressure from an ongoing drug war, and seeks out their lawyer, the steely Helen (Janet McTeer), to assist. Marty is happy with things as they are, seeing a path to stability, especially for their children, out of the chaos of their recent past. Marriage therapy sessions are failing to reconcile them on this or their other problems. Whatever else might be said for becoming a large-scale money launderer, it strains the conversation over the lasagne.

In one particularly brilliant wrinkle, each tries to pay off their marriage counselor in order to bend her toward their side, a game the psychologist (Marylouise Burke) is hilariously willing to play.

The season’s other major thread involves Wendy’s brother, Ben (Tom Pelphrey), a somewhat lost soul who finds a place with them. Still, not everyone is cut out for this life, even though Ben forges a relationship with Marty’s tough-as-nails right hand Ruth (Julia Garner), who eventually begins to question the Byrdes’ loyalty to her.

“Ozark” keeps writing its characters into seemingly impossible corners, only to find plausible ways out. It drills down into the relationship between Marty and Wendy, who shows off her steely side in a conversation with her brother, where she discusses how “fighting for your life” expands the scope of one’s capabilities.

The bottom line is that Marty, Wendy and their increasingly involved kids (Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner) have grown more accustomed to being thrust into perilous situations, dealing as they are with people who think nothing of leaving bodies strewn about when they don’t get their way. And viewers are watching them gradually harden before our eyes.

Given that the Byrdes are never more than five minutes from cataclysm, they remain remarkably well put together. The difference between how the Byrdes present themselves and the objective reality of their situation gives the programme a restless energy. We will follow them down the rabbit hole, even though it can’t end well, and it’s to the writers’ credit that the characters remain plausible while they take more and more extreme decisions. You might be able to evade the FBI and rampaging drug gangs. Escaping your family is another matter entirely.