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TheLastBaron

Fargo (TV series)

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So I just found out there's a show of Fargo now.  That just sounds like such a dumb idea. Fargo is for sure in my top 5 movies so I'll probably hate this, but I'll watch it. I hate Billy Bob Thornton though.

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I've heard good stuff about the first ep of Fargo.

 

That Iago is from the Anthony Hopkins Othello, right? Where he's blacked up with an awful afro wig that bounces around when he's RATATATing his angry dialogue out.

 

 

FARGO IAGO OTHELLO AFRO

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That Iago is from the Anthony Hopkins Othello, right? Where he's blacked up with an awful afro wig that bounces around when he's RATATATing his angry dialogue out.

 

 

FARGO IAGO OTHELLO AFRO

 

Ugh, unfortunately yes.  It's the worst thing about that production.  But it was the first version of Othello I had ever watched, and that was already one of my favorite Shakespearean plays.  At the time, I only knew Hoskins from Roger Rabbit and the (at the time) recently released Super Mario Bros. Movie.  So to my late teen mind, I was blown away seeing him play Iago, and owning it. 

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So I just found out there's a show of Fargo now.  That just sounds like such a dumb idea. Fargo is for sure in my top 5 movies so I'll probably hate this, but I'll watch it. I hate Billy Bob Thornton though.

I've heard good stuff about the first ep of Fargo.

 

Billy Bob Thornton is probably the best thing in the show so far. There's a few other hitmen that've been introduced and they're fine but I don't know them that well yet.

 

Anyway, I hear you, Baron. I was skeptical, because the movie Fargo is so good, but the show isn't a retelling of it at all. It's just using the setting, the themes, and some of the characters to tell a lot more of a slow-burning story about murder and deceit in the frozen north. I can't find it, but there was a good article about how Lester Nygaard is the best deconstruction in years for the "empowering" Heisenberg-style antihero that's all the rage these days.

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Empowering? I saw Walter White* as a dire warning.

* Also, Don Draper, Hubertus Bigend.

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Empowering? I saw Walter White* as a dire warning.

* Also, Don Draper, Hubertus Bigend.

 

Hence the scare quotes. In the Fargo series, Lester Nygaard exhibits most of the same characteristics as Walter White, except that he's not inexplicably hyper-competent, so the antihero thing falls apart almost immediately, like it ought to do, rather than only at the end of several seasons, like it did in Breaking Bad.

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The first two episodes of Fargo were engaging enough, but it's overall more violent and nasty than the movie. It's also missing the great humor and banter that made the movie so special. That dialogue spoken seems so cheap in comparison.

 

I'm curious how involved in this the Coens will be. I see Joel Coen is an executive producer, for whatever that's worth.

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I was going to post something about how it's Fargo and not Game of Thrones that wins the "dark and stressful but always worth it" award among the TV shows I'm watching, but the latest episode left me incredibly cold, no pun intended.

 

Really, Fargo? You're going to stuff your only female character, other than the three harpy wives with bit parts, in the fridge halfway through the season? Commenters on most sites are rubbing their hands in anticipation of a show that now becomes about two meek men, one called to evil and one called to good by the deaths of women who were too good for them. Me, I'm vomiting. Even if Molly comes back, it's still just a cheap scare to prop up the forgettable Colin Hanks as something more than a confused kid trying to punch at Billy Bob Thornton's weight. Television, right?

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Well, it is a true story? I do find myself disbelieving that fact more and more when I watch it. I quite like to read up on it and find out if this was exactly how it went down.

I just get infuriated by how incompetent the police are, I was actually angry watching it last night

Edit: it appears it's mostly all made up :? Apparently when the coen brothers tagged 'this is a true story' to the beginning of their movie, they did it as a joke and they seem to have followed suit here

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That's it, Mington. It's completely made up, both film and show.

Gormongous, I'd guess it's just a scare, but that doesn't bother me so much as the turn from darkly humourous to grim and nasty that the show has taken.

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Gormongous, I'd guess it's just a scare, but that doesn't bother me so much as the turn from darkly humourous to grim and nasty that the show has taken.

 

Yeah, I'd literally just finished watching when I posted that. I realize now there's no way it will stick, but nevertheless I agree with you about the shift in tone. It's going from a show where the deck is stacked against good to a show where good never had a chance at all, which I don't know if I like as much. Fargo the movie had a sense that, as insane as everything in it was, there was still an underlying logic that would make everything hang together, if only you could see the whole picture at once and grasp it. I don't know if the show's aping that and failing or if it's outright mistaken it for mean-spiritedness.

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I've got behind on Fargo (in fact, I still haven't found out if it was indeed a fake-out or not), but I don't know if I'll pick it back up. I'm having a similar problem with it as some are with GoT - it seems to have given up being funny for just being a bit nasty now (and even back when it was still a dark comedy, it didn't feel as precise as the Coens' writing). It still stands head and shoulders above the Dusk Til Dawn adap, though. That was bad. What are some good movie to tv shows? M*A*S*H*, Buffy...

 

I'd have agreed with you about Fargo until the last ten minutes of last night's episode, but it's worth knowing that a timeskip has given the show the opportunity to double down on its better themes. It's only a few episodes left and then you can be done with it forever. I think it's worth sticking through.

 

Also, the more I'm forced to say the words "Edge of Tomorrow" the more I wish they'd left the title as All You Need Is Kill.

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I've only watched the first two episodes of the new season of Fargo, but I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first season so far.  It's good!

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Is anyone else not enjoying season two of Fargo as much as the first season? I just really don't give a shit about this warring gang stuff. Seems kind of out of place for what I thought was to be a series of "quaint" stories. I suppose the latest episode has got me interested again, but it's kind of a stretch of nothingness in between the first two episodes.

 

But anyway, here's the weird thing about Fargo Season 2. It's very obsessed with recreating scenes and referencing like every Coen Brothers movie ever. I wish I could find a list because I'm not paying enough attention and I've probably missed many. There's a lot of music reused/remixed like "Danny Boy"(from Miller's Crossing) and "Just Dropped in" (from Big Lebowski). There's also someone begging for their life in the woods ala Miller's Crossing. The UFO from The Man Who Wasn't There returns. Gravedigging from Blood Simple. Also the Waffle Hut from Ladykillers (well the fake Waffle House chain I think) appears in the first episode. And then on top of all of that, now it's recreating sections of the original movie. What on earth is this? Is this reference humor? Where's Seth McFarlane?

 

Anyway I hope someone makes a definitive list sometime soon.

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Ok then.

I like season 2, it's much much different from season 1 though (which I also liked). It's way more violent.

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I like season 2 way more than season 1 (granted, I think I'm only about 4 episodes in).  Season 1 was a lot goofier, and the entire middle portion of the show felt like random filler.

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I liked how goofy season 1 was. I'll be very happy if season 2 ends up with more people like Lester, Molly, Colin, or Bill being their goofy selves about the place.

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I suppose the reason I don't like Fargo Season 2 is the exact opposite why some of you guys like it. Seems like there's only a few funny character moments while the rest I'm watching some version of Snatch where the body count just piles up, and not in the cartoony pan the camera across the windows sort of way (which I liked but I know some people hated).

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I agree it has its weaknesses and they are different from the first season. They are about equally good IMO, noy quite excellent but close.

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Now that the third season of Fargo is done airing, I've been making my way through it and I've been enjoying myself a lot. What the TV iterations of Fargo have argued, with increasing success, is that we live in a universe that appears chaotic to us, with our limited perspective, because of all the moving parts interacting in hundreds of thousands of different ways. Each character creates their own partial narrative, to try to make sense of the seeming noise, but the truth (if you can call it the truth) is always bigger.

 

Season 3 is no season 2, which managed to be a dizzying mess of which no one was in control, but it's still very entertaining as a wheels-within-wheels crime drama. Carrie Coon continues to be a revelation, after being the best part of The Leftovers by far, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is pulling her weight, too. Ewan McGregor has the toughest row to hoe, playing two identical brothers, and he seems to be in over his head a little? Each of the characters is fine on his own as the "dupe" laid out by William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard in the original movie, but together they lack texture. David Thewlis is much better, probably his best stab at milquetoast sinister yet, but he's also responsible for what is probably the least good part of this season? Fargo characters usually get a chance, once or twice in the show, to explain their understanding of the every-growing and changing catastrophe that is the season's plot, usually as a proxy for explaining their worldview, but this latest season has a lot more of this than either of the two previous ones. I've watched five episodes, half the show, and Thewlis has had at least three protracted soliloquies about the power of money in a cold, chaotic, and uncaring universe. It's wearing out his character with too much talk. Hope it improves! Although it's already really good, so who can say.

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I think the first season of Fargo was fine, but I enjoyed the following two seasons a lot more. The focus on the chaos is so refreshing amid all the murder and other mysteries that try to make you obsessed about finding answers. In Fargo, the viewer knows everything there is to know, and can just sit back and enjoy watching others try to make sense of things from their limited perspective. For example, I loved episode 3 of the new season where

 

Gloria Burgle goes to LA in order to find out about his step dad's science fiction career. To what end? Well, in some other show it would definitely have lead him closer to answers...

I also agree that Carrie Coon is amazing in this show.

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