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

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ef61993ed6dd84236d5b98555a2547818d4a4786/62_886_1768_1060/500.jpg

ugh

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ef61993ed6dd84236d5b98555a2547818d4a4786/62_886_1768_1060/500.jpg?quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=3e324158001d64506abc12c3099423ca

Omg

it's amazing what you can get away with in a quiet minnesota neighborhood without the neighbors taking notice

Rewatched the movie recently, it's been like a billion years since I saw it, and after it ended I just wanted to watch it all over again. Fuck it's so good.

So I just started on the series, season 1 obv, oh boy BBT fucking rules!

So did anyone call the dream/fantasy sequence in "Linda"? Idk I just went with it because it seemed pretty normal for Hawley.

I didn't, though I noticed the repetition of that chicken recipe. I suppose that Roy actually killed Linda after she escaped, considering that finding a new wife didn't stop him from tracking down Dot--no reason to think he didn't try to track Linda down either. Apparently, the painting in the Camp Utopia room that Dot wakes up in depicts Jean Lundegaard from the original film. I also noticed what looked like a UFO painting in the hospital room.

I thought maybe ride-along, supposedly going-back-to-testify Linda snitched on the runaway like she originally "fed her" to Roy, according to Nadine/Dot. Also what was the significance of Dot looking out the window at Roy's windmill, then that whole quick sequence featuring Linda?

Good calls blatherskite, I initially figured that stuff in the restaurant (the chicken piccata, the Camp Utopia flier) triggered her to go after Linda. Made more sense after the reveal of course. Looking forward to watching the new ep tonight!

I wonder if Dot had to have this fantasy of Linda getting away back when she made her escape, even if she knew that probably wasn't the truth

xxp given the context (and the fact it’s this week’s episode):
Dot realizes the Linda thing was purely her own fantasy.

There’s a scene at the very end of E8 where the lawyer’s body is shoved into a hidden well under a stock tank next to the windmill. The beginning of the Linda fantasy was Dot excavating a box she’d buried next to a windmill that contained the Camp Utopia postcard. That scene didn’t happen, but there was a hole next to a windmill she did know about, if not consciously, and it does contain the answer to what happened to Linda.

(I watched this week’s episode between the last two posts)

Did she tell Gator that his mother was still alive?

Really good ep this week. Yikes our tiger is caged and needs rescuing. Roy just brutal. Lawyer guy too smart / dumb to understand Roy, need the Lyon and the patrol woman to save Dot .

Plus Munch - he didn’t get to visit holy fire on gator this episode but it’s coming and suspect he will head back to the ranch for some biblical payback afterwards

Yeah I can't believe Danish was stupid enough to go over to Roy's place and boast about what he did, FFS what did he think would happen!? Though I'm still a little surprised Roy would kill someone who is actively on his case and would immediately be noticed missing, but I guess he was too angry/ego pricked after dealing with Dot.

I await Lorraine's wrath with anticipation. Everything is rising and will converge. The feds, Lorraine, Roy and Munch.

The 'Toxic' cover during Roy's long walk was a little on the nose, lol.

Danish not taking Lorraine's calls...did he think that she would call him off, or not authorize the election win in exchange for Dot? Or thought he just didn't have time to discuss it?

I think he felt he’d misread the situation by doing a funny little sabotage when it turns out Dot was up in the murder cabin

I don't think those were missed calls. I think it was a Favorites list: Lorraine (home), Lorraine (office), Lorraine (cell), etc.

I read it as he was thinking about calling her but decided against it.

oops, yeah. she was the only person in his speed dial

There was that but I thought he also got a couple calls from her the he declined. Like when he was at the gas station, and the cop went to Lorraine to tell her where Dot was.

Oof, this episode was rough.

xp Oh yeah I didnt catch it but I guess she called him right before he walked in to see Roy

Obviously this season is going to converge in a cataclysm of violence, like all the other seasons. Worth recalling the number of Chekhov's guns Lorraine was posing with in their Christmas card in the first episode. But this season is also so heavy and intense I wonder if it can end with something as pat as a shootout.

Chekhov's Tank was the one that stood out to me.

Yeah. Have we seen the tank yet or was that the first time it was mentioned?

First time I think.

The whole vibe of that scene was so surreal I was initially wondering if Roy was having his own deranged fantasy cutaway bit

I think this episode did bring up one issue I have with this otherwise impeccably crafted season. Roy is depicted from the start as a broad, almost cartoonishly evil villain, but as the season has moved on it's continued spending more and more time illustrating not just his villainy but his outright sadism and brutal abuse. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and more and more brutal, and the amount of screen time spent doing that while all sorts of other stuff and other stories and other characters gets put on pause or shifted off to the margins ... I'm not sure what's gained, from a storytelling point of view, since we're already firmly rooting against him. That's also why the fate of Danish should have come as no surprise to anyone, let alone Danish.

Granted, the Coen Brothers (I don't really know if they have any direct involvement in this) have long been accused of a certain cruelty or meanness in their movies, but I think that reaction comes from their frequently contemptuous, or cynical, portrayals of dummies and comical fuck-ups. But Roy ... he's an odd one, broad and cartoonish at times but increasingly more stomach-churningly real in his evil than one is accustomed to in this generally pretty stylized show. It does make for some intense viewing, that's for sure (that long Toxic walk!). But imo it throws off the balance of power a little, both among the characters but also how the story is being told. He's such a monster that I'm not sure what level of ultimate comeuppance (assuming he gets one) would be satisfying. I wonder

It reminds me a bit of an issue I had with "Bad Sisters," where the murder victim (we know he's been murdered from the start) is introduced as the world's biggest asshole, but the show still spends a chunk of each episode, right up until the end, depicting him as a bigger and bigger asshole, even though his assholery was worthy of an untimely end from minute one.

Danish is going on about him and Lyon having their own reality early on in the season, I guess the point is that he's been comfortable and in control for too long and he's fundamentally incapable of seeing it coming

Roy's a tough watch in this episode (Hamm's very good!) but as much as it's about increasingly hammering home his depravity, he's also starting to overreach himself and make stupid mistakes that will presumably be his undoing. (He probably should have let her be)

A real downer of an episode, the final scene was one of the most purely grim, miserable things I can remember seeing in this show, particularly taking into account the significance of the wind turbine

Also the way they humanised Gator via the puppet scene last ep and then his and Dot's first real interaction in years ends in this hateful, venomous exchange, ouch

Maybe David Rysdahl will do some more fun unhinged Reggie Perrin type shit in e9, or the despicable Lars Olmstead will face some consequences (not holding my dang breath)

xpost re: Roy, For sure, but wasn't that always inevitable? And there are only two episodes left, too.

I do get Danish's arrogance, I suppose. He maybe doesn't (didn't) understand that Roy is not your run of the mill galoot.

There are so many loose threads that demand tying. Letting the deputy get a W. Indira getting a W. Dot (and her family) getting a W. Gator getting his L. Roy getting his L. Lars getting his L. I don't even know what fate to expect from Lorraine, who seems to have faded into the background of this particular tale. None of these things are complaints, btw, it actually makes me even more engaged. I don't foresee this season ending as down as this episode did, but that goes back to what I was saying. The emotional stakes are so high that I'm not sure how the show wraps it up. Too tidy would maybe be just as frustrating as too messy.

I mean Danish still stretched plausibility I guess, but Coen-related things are always stuffed full of characters who are permanently fixin to do something real stupid, who are then pulverised or rewarded by the universe depending on how far out of their lane they're straying.

Carson Wells never had any reason to think he wasn't the main character until he went up the wrong staircase

Yeah. Have we seen the tank yet or was that the first time it was mentioned?

It has been mentioned multiple times that he uses public funds to buy military equipment for a white militia.

Granted, the Coen Brothers (I don't really know if they have any direct involvement in this)

They have no involvement.

Chekhov's tank

Yeah I got that but was thinking more guns & RPGs or whatever than an actual fucking tank lol xp

I'm all caught up.

Seasons 1 and 2 were excellent.
3 was okay but a bit depressing.
4 not worth mentioning, jeez what a snooze.

Enjoying 5, although it is also quite depressing. Love the Dot character so much though.

This may be a stretch, but indulging in some armchair critic BS…

Tillman seems to be a MAGA-like figure, obviously, so I sort of viewed the Graves situation through that lens, since it seems deliberate that this season is set in the Trump era. Graves is a fixer, usually swinging his weight with politicos, business folks, etc. He’s used to dealing with threats to Lorraine’s interests with money, horse trading, etc. The establishment GOP thought they could “handle” Trump in 2015 but it became clear he wasn’t playing politics as usual. That was Graves’ error—he thought he could just cut a deal but didn’t realize Tillman is playing a different game, where the civil/polite rules don’t apply. Face-eating leopard party and all that.

I think Tillman won’t die, but will be arrested/convicted as a "not above the law" resolution.

We've been rewatching S1 cos the 19 y.o has only ever seen the movie and wants to see all the shows. Its great seeing the scenes with Mr Tripoli, and Numbers and Wrench, and thinking "man wait til he sees the payoff in S2".

(mind you the whole Hanzee/Tripoli thing always bugged me somewhat. I get it he had plastic surgery but turning a rangy thin native american guy into a slovenly italian mobster stretches credulity even for this show.)

Latest episode was a great tension-builder for the finale.

joe keery is great in the failson role. also a very good "game recognizes game" moment at the end of the episode between munch and dot

Munch is one of those surreal characters where I’m unsure what perspective he’s being presented from and the ambiguity is unsettling and impressive

So the show has done an excellent job of illustrating the dangers of f’in around with the wrong people. Not that it is always obvious who can and can’t be f’ed with. Might not know the house cat is actually a tiger. On the receiving end of the “finding out” have been the initial kidnappers, gator, danish the lawyer, indira’s useless husband, and the bankers Lorraine wrecked. Roy going after dot set the whole thing in motion. Tune in next week to see if Roy gets his.

Wondering if some of Tillman's guys are privately not wanting to go full "Masada" (a term he mentioned right away). Father-in-law asking if he wants to be Hitler in the Reichstag or Hitler in whatever that place was at the end.

I think that's what he asked?

Hitler in the bunker. It's just taken for granted that you'd want to be Hitler at some stage of his life, I guess.

Munch is one of those surreal characters where I’m unsure what perspective he’s being presented from and the ambiguity is unsettling and impressive
Right!? I thought he would be like Hanzee but he's way more strange - they havent really slotted him in as anything but himself, outside of the rest of the story. He almost makes me think of a greek chorus or moral correction.

Have not seen the latest/last/last night's episode because we only just yesterday caught up with episode 9, and damn, this is like one of those bands that releases three great records, then releases one really disappointing record, then bounces back with a fifth record even better than the first three. This season is as good as anything I have ever watched, I think. Just masterfully made and acted.