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

was pretty disappointed we didn't get a malvo/solverson/fbi standoff in the cafe

I dunno, I liked the suspense of his wary standoff with Molly's dad and then leaving-as-she-arrived thing. I know its a bit cliched.

in the end, some good performances but it really did become a dour slog

wait so gus figures out where malvo's hideout by asking a wolf where it is

that is how the case got solved

and alison tolman's out of the frame, pushed out of the climax by the script as cruelly as sandra bullock in demolition man

the elusive and supernatural malvo, suddenly made flesh, reeling with pain, methodically mending himself in excruciating closeup, oh hi it's gus, bang bang

FARGO

IT'S MY THING
SHE GETS TO BE CHIEF

and alison tolman's out of the frame, pushed out of the climax by the script as cruelly as sandra bullock in demolition man

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, June 18, 2014 6:36 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i read an interview with the creator where he explained that there was a little meta element of them flashing forward and the viewer going 'oh so it WILL be a pregnant cop that saves the day' and they wanted to subvert that expectation. but i can definitely understand having that thought too.

i don't know if shooting malvo about 50 times while he's incapacitated on a sofa is really "saving the day" :/

::rolls eyes:: i was referring to the expectation of what she'd do, not what Gus ended up doing

always disappointed when writers don't have a better reason to do something than "subverting expectations." It's one thing if the desire to be unpredictable leads to a unpredictably fulfilling, but otherwise it just feels like vanity.

fittingly, dude's getting a lot of grief for announcing he wanted "mike yamagita" moments - but thinking that meant little bits of coeny rando, rather than lateral moments of revelation and plot advancement. admittedly i didn't realize the logic for the sccene when i first saw it, but i was a teenager and not running a TV series based on it.

There's an aspect of Molly be shunted to the side i could have gotten behind, esp tied to her anecdote to lester, but the whole climax was so sloppy i don't want to do to much thinking for the writers.

leads to an unpredictably fulfilling moment, i mean

yeah i'm not defending the overall vision at all, just noting what i read. it's been a while since i've been this annoyed at myself for sticking with a show through the whole season, in some ways i really found this show appalling.

there's definitely something in molly consenting to gus' request, then gus doing some macho take-out of malvo anyway and the two just glumly accepting what went down and scooting off to a tv dinner, but "gus senses the wolf's call, spots malvo taking leave, decides to wait for him to come home instead of telling anyone the suspect is on the loose, blasts him to hades on his couch and everyone just accepts the choices of the executioner mailman without qualm" is such a dumb way to do it

i dug a lot of the performances (though let's never ask keegan michael key to play a knockoff agent cooper again, please) but it was ersatz Coen to a fault by the end

if he'd named the show 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag, then I'd have been pleasantly surprised by the outcome

after he got shot i kind of wanted billy bob's face to CGI-morph into al pacino's

yeah far too often the show reminded me of the more curdled Very Bad Things end of the murderous black comedies that came into vogue after Fargo's success

yeah it's funny that "well, somebody's seen fargo" would have been a slam of a movie 15 years ago but now "somebody's seen fargo!" is a TV selling point

so let me get this straight, the show's main writer based the climax on what he imagined my memories of an 18-year-old movie would be?? thanks guy, total curveball, you did it

for the record pretty much the only thing i remember about fargo the movie is the trunk of somebody's car opening one time

http://robsmovievault.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/600full-feeling-minnesota-screenshot.jpg

#FargoSeason2

i did like the evolution of bob oedenkerk's character and i'm always glad to see keith carradine but honestly its bigger news if I DON'T appreciate the presence of Bob Oedenkerk and Keith carradine on your show

*skims* woah woah wait are you guys talking about the finale *covers eyes, havent seen it yet*

As noted above, the show had a lot of great performances, and also a lot of great little moments and a wonderful facility for inducing dread and anxiety. And it looked great. And I basically don't feel like it has any real rewatchability beyond some of those particular moments and performances. It feels more than a little shaggy doggish after the fact. The entire Oliver Platt storyline, for example, feels super tacked on and perfunctory and basically only there to tie the show into the movie. Yanagita-lite, if you will.

the platt storyline served to bring malvo into minnesota in the first place iirc? but i agree, and i agree with your assessment of the show in general - both its strengths and its weaknesses

Another element of the show I wish i'd seen more self-awareness of the show is that Malvo was really, really, REALLY bad at his job.

scratch that second "the show"

dude went undercover as a dentist to find stephen root's brother, gets cornered by an old acquaintance in the elevator and then just blows stephen root and two women away right there?

hotel security was also pretty lax, you'd think the bodies would have been discovered and the place would have been on lockdown before lester and his wife slipped out

completely bungled the oliver platt gig too

ok well he did figure out who the blackmailer was and got him killed in the most dramatic fashion possible, but there was a lot of collateral damage

Yeah, but I feel like Malvo got into the hitman game largely for the potential of collateral damage. He was way more into sowing seeds of chaos than he was about being a professional killer.

Yeah I got his motivation, I'm talking about why mobs would hire him. His track record as we saw it was pretty shitty with a lot of recklessness.

That he wasn't actually good at this but lucky no one interrupted his bloodbaths and assaults in large public buildings.

this basically summed it up for me

http://www.vulture.com/2014/06/tv-review-fargo-season-1.html

I want the show to be smarter about its dreamlike craziness: less wanton, more deliberate; more attentive to internal logic, and not as excited to get us to the next blowout set piece. I want it to be as great — consistently great — as the art that inspired it, and that clearly means so much to it.

Another element of the show I wish i'd seen more self-awareness of the show is that Malvo was really, really, REALLY bad at his job.

if you're bothered that people have critiques, maybe this isn't the right board for you?

also weird to call a show where a crying, bound dude gets blown away by cops while a lonely choir boy sings in the background "fun"

if anything i wish the show had more fun stuff like malvo goading the kid to piss in the gas tank

feel like fun was mostly out the door by the time ItsAlwaysSunny guy and adam goldberg were dispatched

lotta critique there

croup otm

i feel like at a certain point they should've just gone 50 Shades Of Gray and disassociated the show entirely from its supposed source material. probably before the last few episodes where it just became Corky St. Clair: Unstoppable Killing Machine.

Lol

also weird to call a show where a crying, bound dude gets blown away by cops while a lonely choir boy sings in the background "fun"
― da croupier, Thursday, June 19, 2014

so what was the riddle again?
what was the point of the glove story, I'm tired and idgi were the gloves the wives
I hope they stop with the 'answer a question with a seemingly unrelated story/riddle/etc' next time around

i didn't totally get the gloves thing at first, but i think it's something about selfishness - on some level it's absurd to throw your glove out the window in hopes it will find its pair, but it's just as absurd to keep one glove. and lester is the kind of person who couldn't even fathom letting go of that remaining glove, destroying more and more lives in a futile attempt to protect himself

the gloves story made sense -- the other riddle i didn't hear the answer he figured out before he shot up malvo tho?

the "why do humans see so many shades of green" bit his wife solved way back

xps da croupier, that makes sense
not really fair that he got that one about the fox and the rabbit, he already did that one in The Office

on some level it's absurd to throw your glove out the window in hopes it will find its pair, but it's just as absurd to keep one glove. and lester is the kind of person who couldn't even fathom letting go of that remaining glove, destroying more and more lives in a futile attempt to protect himself

THANK YOU, that metaphor was bugging the shit out of me, I knew it was somehow related to his involvement in the deaths but I couldnt slot it in.

I did enjoy this all the way thru tbh, but I was bothered by the fact Gus killed the guy and got a commendation for bravery for it. Um, he's not a cop anymore. He hid in wait for the guy in his own home. I dont care what Malvo did, thats straight up murder!

It was a most cowardly un-rewardworthy type of execution, it isn't like Malvo had a chance as he was peacefully tending to his severe leg injury, unarmed and some home invader fucker comes out of the shadows and homicides him repeatedly! I still enjoyed it as well, it was a good series.