We need a thread for the FARGO TV show yah? Oh, yah!

Have loved Billy Bob in this, especially his interaction with the fitness blackmailer.

"I'm confused."
"That's all right, I'm not."

Am I the only one that thought when Freeman was getting more... enthusiastic... with Sam's wife that the camera would pull back to show she was dead, that maybe he'd choked her to death?

Got a real Usual Suspects vibe off Freeman walking out of the police station smirking last week.

Yeah him fitting up his brother was awesome. They set the right characters up for knockdown, though I do wonder, will Malvo get a comeuppance? I feel like no. But I dont care! I kind of love his malevolece!

Oh wait - Malvo = malevolent. Ha.

Also yeah the "I'm confused!" "thats ok, I'm not" exchange made me grin.

Keeps getting better

key and peele! why nobody mentioning key and peele!

Who's key and peele and when were they on the show?

Wait were they the feds in the car? That bit was lol.

Yes the file room cops

also, key and peele....?!?

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Thursday, May 29, 2014 1:53 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

key and peele totally took me out of it but they were also a lot of fun

― Clay, Thursday, May 29, 2014 2:04 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just caught that last ep (8?) with the whole file room banishment and the jump in timeline. Threw me a bit, but the cliffhanger was niiiiiice.

And I like how I'm now kinda really starting to hate Lester, instead of feel he's the underdog.

Malvo's limp bangs are throwin' me off... interesting/odd that characters address him as "young man," or whatever. He's got a sort of pretty boy thing going on.

I dug the time jump, though I found Lester's complete personality overhaul a bit much to swallow.

Yeah it was a bit too quick, it felt. I spose the whole idea was the "I got away with it" renewed confidence, but it all feels like its bracing for a big crash.

Just caught that last ep (8?) with the whole file room banishment and the jump in timeline. Threw me a bit, but the cliffhanger was niiiiiice.

― the Bronski Review (Trayce), Monday, June 9, 2014 11:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for some reason i had it in my head that the season was 8 episodes long so i was watching that whole thing like it was a finale and it totally felt like one to me. was surprised later that day to look something up and see there were 2 more episodes coming.

i'm kind of "i've come this far, might as well see it through" about it all, though. as of episode 6 i've felt downright embarrassed for this show.

Huh, I'm really loving it! THo this latest one was paced rather strangely.

Yeah I think it's been pretty much ace front to back so far.

my favourite bit was the awkward Molly-Gus romance building, felt like they skipped that forward too soon.

I didn't have a problem with the time skip. A year is a long time. And you know, it's tv. Just go with it.

yeah i like the idea of doing the jump forward in the middle of the season, kinda like that better than when i thought they'd done it in the finale, where that's more of a predictable move.

although rmde at HEY LOOK NOW WE HAVE A PREGNANT LADY COP

Possibly my favourite thing on (UK) TV, at the moment though I do hope it is only *this* series.

I liked that there was a point where I (kind of) wanted Lester to get away with it.

is there any rationale for why malvo kills hess, beyond pure caprice?

or why he lets the deaf hitman go?

He kills a policeman just to free mr wrench when he could have killed him. Probably because of some hit-man code thing.

he says something like "you got closer than anybody ever has." meaning... you got closer to killing me than anybody has? my hat is off to you, sir?

i would love to see mr. wrench (that's his name?) some more, he's possibly my favorite character after solverson

He is actually a deaf actor and yeah he has been one of the most distinctively watchable people in this series, with his partner in crime of course.

he is kind of the best. but i don't quite buy adam goldberg as a hitman no matter how badass he cranks it. and tbh i'm not really buying billy bob either. not to say i don't appreciate all billy bob's little actor's business, his fey shuffling steez, his menacing calm, etc but c'mon. now the guy that played hess, i'd buy him offing a couple of fools.

I really enjoyed goldberg, more just the deep friendship between him + wrench. They only work together these two and become quite vulnerable on their own.

he says something like "you got closer than anybody ever has." meaning... you got closer to killing me than anybody has?

I was confused by that too, bf agrees with you and said thats what he meant. I didnt twig at first the little key was the handcuff key either. Whys he want him to be able to escapeso he can "look him up later"? I was a bit baffled at that bit.

His organisation have all been killed by Malvo, he's deaf and his partner (more than business?) is dead. Dude is alone and nothing to look forward to than a life in jail - I figured Malvo thought it would make them even, unwritten hitman code and all that.

That makes sense. I forgot to link all that to the mad shooting spree in the office thing. a lot happened in the last couple eps.

Malvo never got his money off the supermarket guy did he? Figured he was doing all that more for a chuckle than the cash though.

i have a grim suspicion that the show sees malvo as a kind of motivationless "joker" character which is just... ugh

malvo is sort of a Chigurh character. show feels like a "greatest hits of the cohen themes" mashup.

this last episode tho -- such a bleak ending

All caught up now and this fucking show

i miss when malvo seemed more puckish (goading the kid to piss in the gas tank) rather than just a guy who blasts holes through everything at the drop of a hat

i liked the idea that he was a principled, crafty hitman who was capable of the occasional murder of pique, but now he's this angel of death who marches through public spaces offing people without a second thought

while a handful of good actors survey the wreckage with a solemn "oh jeez"

I can't remember what he Malvo said but didn't he explain why he was giving Wrench the key immediately before doing so?

http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q686/tinyservants/Screenshot2014-05-23at32951PM_zps23b2d380.png

YEah that latest episode, man. Cant wait to see how it all unravels in the last episode.

that scene where malvo turns up at molly's dad's place was brilliant.

it was a hitchcock type scene where pure evil is pitted against a benevolent type.

Loved Lester thinking about the orange coat and dressing his wife in it. I still think if he avoids getting killed and Malvo does then he can get away with it all.

I reckon Malvo will get him, but what villainy if he gets away with this shit!

Edit: Molly will save him from Malvo and get him after killing Malvo.

that scene where malvo turns up at molly's dad's place was brilliant.

Yes, that was great. How immediately he knew the guy was evil/up to no good. Hence the comment about seeing the less-than-animal in serial killers. He knew, and he knew Malvo knew.

xelab: yeah that'd be the best ending but the show's been bleak enough I wouldnt put it past them for something way more awful to happen (Gus dies/Molly dies/Lester kills Malvo and gets away with the lot/etc)

A bleak ending would be unforgivable, but yeah it might on the way.

Nikki, not Nicki.

Finished S3. Again, better than I remembered. (I think S1/S3 both got pushed into the background for me because I liked S2 so much, which I then returned to two or three times.) A lot to juggle, and not every motivation made sense to me, but I really liked (and had completely forgotten) the ambiguous postscript. (The prologue, in East Germany, still mystifies me a bit, though I think I get it at the thematic level.) Carrie Coon is great, and the whole season was obviously meant to put her in the forefront--just coming off The Leftovers, I remember--but for me it's Mary Elizabeth Winstead who steals the series. Still wish they had killed off Nikki Swango; that was a spinoff just waiting there.

"Hadn't killed," not "had."

I watched the movie for the first time in a long time, and it was cool to have all the additional resonances from things the show ended up playing with.

I first saw it in the theater when I must have been 14, and every line sounded hilarious with the accents alone. After a few more decades of living in the midwest they barely registered, lol.

Fargo S3 came out in early 2017, and David Thewlis' character felt like the best onscreen representation of the alt-right takeover, just pure evil

I definitely appreciated Thewlis much more this time around. Somewhere up thread I recall that I found him a little showy the first time, but this time, he was more creepily effective. I imagine he was originally envisioned as the ultimate amoral corporate raider, but in terms of the timing, I can see that too, the beginning of the Trump era.

He's also such a blowhard in an unintentionally funny way: "I just added two more zeros to your salary."

Never made note of this song/scene first time around; love it. Honestly, I've never heard of Adriano Celentano--150 million albums sold.

this song is somewhat famous in that that the meaningless lyrics are supposed to represent what American English sounds like to people (Italians?) who don't speak it

Finished S4 last night. Again, held up fine. It's so ambitious--a mob story, a ghost story, a serial-killer nurse, a lesbian Bonnie & Clyde, a deeply neurotic detective, race relations circa 1950, and an old-weird-America soundtrack. Many excellent performances, including the three leads (Chris Rock, Jason Schwartzman, Jessie Buckley); it's the only season that didn't get any Emmy nominations, but I would have given supporting awards to both Ben Whishaw (Patick Milligan) and E'myri Crutchfield (Ethelrida Smutny). Found the ending a little weak--the resolution of Josto and Oraetta's stories--but loved the epilogue.

If this season doesn't come through, though, I'll just think of it as a mediocre show with one memorable exception, S2, right out of the blue.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 22 November 2023

Not sure what I was thinking there--I'll put the blame on it having been the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination when I posted that.

Finished S5 yesterday, a complete rewatch. Start to finish, I think it's pretty great. I rated 1, 3, 4, and 5 all the same (7.0) for the last-x-movies thread, and they were all pretty close for me this time. 2 is still my favourite, but the gap narrowed.

Checked back, and the two things that bothered me the first time S5 aired still do. I think the whole Munch story is unnecessary beyond his narrative function; the baffling (to me) backstory, his cryptic and lugubrious proclamations, the epilogue. With another actor, I might have felt otherwise, but Sam Spruell's performance is cartoonish (which I don't feel about Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh). And they didn't need to kill Witt Farr; it would have been nice to see him get to be a hero without having to die, like that was a prerequisite. Lamorne Morris, Juno Temple, Richa Moorjani, and John Hamm are all great. Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance is the one that is highly stylized--affected, if you find her hard to take--but I was much more receptive this time; her comic deadpan never wavers throughout.

I still couldn't spot any connections to the other four seasons, the only season without any--I feel like there must be something there I'm missing. But the usual echoes of the movie turn up, and I thought there might have been a couple of other great TV series alluded to: Dot's happy-face pancakes were out of Breatking Bad, and parts of the score were strongly reminiscent of The Leftovers.

Meant to say: Yes's "I've Seen All Good People" over the chaotic PTA meeting is one of the greatest episode openers ever. (Greatest: "Windy" in Breaking Bad.) Also the S5 season-opener, so right behind "Nobody But Me" in The Office on that count.

Y’all seen the unaired 2003 pilot with Edie Falco?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkZf5ASpVY