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

again, i'm not saying anything GOOD about TD re feminism, representation, etc. Just that you're overstating Fargo's accomplishments.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2014/06/23/140623crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all

On almost every front, the creators have removed potential sources of ambiguity or pathos: the Nygaards have no child, and nearly all the victims of the two men’s cons are contemptible figures, often in sexualized ways. Lester’s bully’s widow is a money-grubbing slattern (played with admittedly hilarious gusto by Kate Walsh, who grabs the role with greasy palms); his sister-in-law is a bimbo who complains, “You don’t cheat on Miss Hubbard County”; and Malvo’s Barbie-like fiancée offers him her thumb up his butt as kinky payment for her diamond ring.

I don't think you watched a True Detective, s1ocks.

he did, he's just armonding up a storm

With the exception of Tollman, almost all of the characters on Fargo, male or female, were caricatures.

and tollman's playing a pretty 2d copy of an iconic character with no real arc. She's right, no one listens, she continues being right, some people listen, the end.

the nygaards have no child?!?!? i take it all back

silly reason to recant, but we'll take it

#noooo

It's great that Fargo had that one good female role, but I don't think the characters played by Kate Walsh, Rachel Blanchard, or Susan Park were high marks for feminism on television.

Actually, now that I think about it, the degree of caricature varied based on a character's proximity to Molly. Her immediate family and coworkers were a bit more grounded, but the further you went past that Cone of Tollman, the more cartoonish the character.

it's just hard to champion fargo the tv show as How It Should Be Done if you, like, remember the movie

they should have just gone with expanding and improving the world of Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead

It's vaguely reminiscent of my feelings about remakes and cover songs: take something that ranges from somewhat lacking to shitty and make it better. It's almost always a losing proposition to go putting your own spin on something that was done really well the first time.

i wonder what all that past stuff that her dad refers to is all about, and whether we'll see it play out in the coming seasons (the sioux falls/sitting on the front porch stuff).

That caught my eye too, but afaik the new season (if there'll be one) wikl be a new story with new characters.

yeah but there's nothing to say it won't be tangentially connected to S1 the way S1 was to the movie

I suspect it will be.

speaking of macho posturing i was pretty grossed out by the big thumbs up the show gave guns-on-the-front-porch-through-the-generations moment tbh

like great, we got gramps working on 36 hours with no sleep and a loaded shotgun, definitely encourage that kind of thing yee fuckin haw

haha except it was totally pointless and nothing actually happened

I just figured that kind of shit is standard in the US.

would have been nice to have a beat or two of nothing and then the kid is like "i'm going to go get my DS i'll be right back"

just realized that brooding serious interrogators of the universe and its moral complexity could be used to describe Gus as much as it could Woody's character in TD

he's a very small role in fargs, whereas TD spends 95% of its time with those Serious Men

Are you fucking kidding me

nope, that's pretty much how it goes down

i definitely agree he's the most Serious Man in that show, and kind of the only example of that sort of machismo, but if you're suggesting that makes the shows somewhat equivalent on that score, *you* are the one who's kidding *me*

Dude let me know when you settle on what you're actually claiming about these shows, beyond "Fargo is like sooo much better"

slocki otm that's pretty much.... *drinks entire beer, burps, spins in chair, conjugates 5 spanish verbs in 8 tenses each, spins very very slowly back to table* ...how it goes down, brother.

Dude let me know when you settle on what you're actually claiming about these shows, beyond "Fargo is like sooo much better"

― da croupier, Tuesday, July 1, 2014 11:04 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's basically what i'm saying tho

also, fargo is not nearly as self-serious, brooding and borderline misogynistic as the vastly overpraised TD

Ok just wanted to make sure you didn't think you'd come up with a reason that's held up under scrutiny

Xpost oh wait you do

I think the key words of that are "not as" and "overpraised"

Armond

haha dude this isn't like... a court of law

and like... i get why you think it's a slam-dunk argument to call me "armond," but since when is it like... a sin to push back against critical consensus on something?

i mean if i was trying to claim "the following" was better than TD or something i'd get it

but like... i'm saying that a show with a metacritic score of 85 is better than a show with a metacritic score of 87 and you're acting like i'm burning shakespeare's folios or something

always fun to watch when the brass tacks come out and "this show is good / this show is also good" conversation devolves into subtweetable ad hominem

subtweetable? i believe we are all addressing each other directly here sir

My guess with respect to the shows as a whole (as opposed to individual and relatively unimpeachible elements of high quality contained within the shows) is that the critics who were praising True Detective while it was airing will mostly stand by their praise now that it's over while the critics who were praising Fargo while it was airing will be a little more all like "oh hey what's that thing over there oops look at the time gotta go" now that it's over.

xp "apropos of subtweeting" then: not direct slander just throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air back and forths of "are you fucking kidding me" and "you're acting like i'm burning shakespeare's folios"

i think it'll be the opposite BUT... the way that plays out will almost certainly have to do with whether the shows' S2 are any good or not

xp

the difficult second season

Yeah, it's going to be hard to judge, given this newfangled season-long anthology series model that shows are employing nowadays.

i do think this model is great in some ways, especially with self-contained story arcs that just get silly when they're stretched out (didn't they like break out of and then back into prison a whole bunch of times in prison break??) but starting from scratch could also go badly wrong i guess, esp if you're attached to characters/performers/etc

i still think the best way would be to keep the same cast but have them playing fresh new characters!

a la american horror story

what a great idea

Slock, its just ironic that the qualities you're praising Fargo for avoiding re TD are the same ones people regret Fargo added to its source material (brooding, borderline misogyny, etc). My "are you fucking kidding me" was in reaction to you claiming that the sympathetic male lead on Fargo, the instigator of the climax with the closest thing to a heroic arc on the show, was a "very small role".

I keep mentioning armond because bending over backward to maintain a binary with you on one end and critics on the other is armond white 101.

The guy literally does a "movie I liked > similar movie critics liked" every Christmas

They haven't really said a whole lot about their second season intentions, I don't think, so I'm mostly just speculatin' on a hypothesis here, but Fargo is kind of my ideal version of this model: maintain threads but shift perspectives. Not unlike some of the Wire seasons. You maintain audience investment but you're still able to shake things up pretty radically.