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DaveKap posted:I think a better argument to make is that Fargo is a show with a lot of really good cinematography in it and a moment where said cinematography could have been really good, it was actually really not good. Scenes are shot then dropped all the time in the edit as the creators piece together what they are trying to say tho.
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Jan 23, 2024 19:22
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I think the dissonance around Lorraine was deliberate, Noah Hawley is pretty explicit in interviews that Fargo is a) a series of stories about the stories America tells itself about America and b) "the evils of capitalism". For decades (centuries?) America has told itself stories about The Good Guy With a Gun, the Thin Blue Line, the One Noble Lawman, and so on. Popular culture is still rife with copaganda despite increasing awareness that is it copaganda. Even Fargo falls into it in many of its iterations. Season 5 has the absolute darkest distillate of this long running Story About America with Roy Tillman, who terrible on every level. It has the tragic result of believing in the pure distillation of The Noble Lawman with a Code in Witt Farr. They're two extreme sides of the spectrum, but there are still hundreds of stories being told (in fiction, in real life) even today about lawmen in between them, and America is conditioned to Believe that they're usually the heroes of their stories. And then there's Lorraine. She's a capitalist, a titan of industry. America has a long history of lionizing (or demonizing) them too, from Carnegie and Rockefeller to Edison, Ford, Gates, Bezos, Musk, the Kochs, the Murdochs, etc. etc. Even smaller stories about scrapper entrepreneurs and inventors and small business people. Lorraine is closer to Tillman than Farr on the "tragic hero -- damnable villain" spectrum of All Capitalists are Bastards, but like the loose cannon cop, the sheriff who takes matters into his own hands, the detective who has to bend the rules to get results, she spends the back half of the series being portrayed as part of the protagonist's team and taking down someone even worse than her. It doesn't make her "good" or a "hero" any more than Vic Mackey or Tony Soprano or Walter White or any other Difficult Man protagonist, and it's easy (for the viewers or even the creators) to slip into fist-pumping for these characters, especially (as with Lorraine vs. Roy) they're up against even bigger bastards. So it worked for me as sort of an inversion of the typical story, where the cop bends all of the rules and goes off the book to gently caress over the mob boss or corrupt magnate. And is directly followed by an extended scene where the main protagonist disarms a supernatural killing machine by repudiating her entire philosophy. I understand why it doesn't for others, re: the whole "no such thing as an anti-war war movie" and the countless people who end up rooting for the aforementioned Difficult Men.
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Jan 23, 2024 20:05
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I love that Lorraine delivers all her lines like an old B/W heroine. I half expected her to ask Wit Farr if he knew how to whistle.
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Jan 23, 2024 20:33
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Edge & Christian posted:I think the dissonance around Lorraine was deliberate, Noah Hawley is pretty explicit in interviews that Fargo is a) a series of stories about the stories America tells itself about America and b) "the evils of capitalism". This is a good way of putting what I was trying to get at, thank you I only half meant the skyler white thing but I do suspect it is easier for many female viewers to see her as redeemable because of the way she is presented as a woman in a cutthroat man’s world, and the catharsis in how she undermines it. Also she’s fun, and I don’t think villains in Fargo are particularly fun (they’re scary and unhinged). I would have a drink with her, but I wouldn’t have a drink with Malvo, any of the Gerhardts,, Vargas or Mayflower.
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Jan 23, 2024 20:55
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Malvo is super fun! I mean he's basically Satan but he's playful about it
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Jan 23, 2024 21:12
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Lorraine is Harambe.
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Jan 23, 2024 21:24
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I know people who love Darth Vader. You know, the guy who blew up an entire planet full of people. Then there are other people who love Kylo Ren. You know, the guy who blew up multiple planets full of people. I guess the point I'm making is that villainy in media is easy to ignore if the media gives you the chance to ignore it. JJL performed Lorraine so goddamn well, it's easy to ignore. Edit: I went to read a couple interviews with Hawley prior to making my previous host because I was curious if there was any mention about filming and dropping the finale battle. What I found was him mentioning that after Season 2 was over, people wanted him to continue making a show starring Lou Solverson, which he denied. The fact anyone wanted a Lou spin-off seems crazy me because the only character that felt like they should get a spin-off was Mike Milligan, which was then teased for us in Season 4. And now here I am wanting, knowing I will never get, a Danish Graves spin-off. Oof. DaveKap fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jan 24, 2024 |
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Jan 24, 2024 00:11
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I want a spinoff kids show about Postman Gus learning lessons about the world while delivering parcels to the colorful townsfolk Edit: Or a series of instructional YouTube videos where Nikki Swango teaches how to play bridge. Nameless Pete fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jan 24, 2024 |
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Jan 24, 2024 01:20
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Nameless Pete posted:Edit: Or a series of instructional YouTube videos where Nikki Swango teaches how to play bridge. i could use it. that stuff looks complicated.
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Jan 24, 2024 01:40
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I'm not sure what I want from a weird Fargo continuation on the whole (besides Mike Milligan), but I do know that I want the big climax to be a very hopeless situation when suddenly Munch appears with a biscuit, and he eats it, and portals start opening up behind him like Avengers: Endgame and out walks Lorne Malvo, Hanzee Dent, VM Varga, Gaetano Fadda, Anthon Chigurh, Leonard Smalls, Karl Mundt, Gaear Grimsrud, Sy Ableman, and a badly CGI'd Paul Newman, all also eating biscuits. And then they forgive everyone.
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Jan 24, 2024 01:44
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The one continuation I really love is S2 having Lou be the father of S1's main cop. There's something really touching in that her mother is introduced terminally ill, and they even fake out her death at one point - but it turns out she just fainted. And the season ends with their family in tact, for now. For all the destruction and death that happens in that story, this life and family is spared - but only for a little longer. And knowing that Lou survives to continue to raise the daughter on his own, and see her become the protagonist in her own right is really beautiful to me. Would have been awful to do a spin-off based on him.
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Jan 24, 2024 02:44
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Pattonesque posted:a piece of media making you root for and somewhat like a villainous monster is pretty common. they do it a bunch of times in previous seasons of Fargo alone Hell by the end I wanted a whole season of Munch killing people and telling them about A Man. Or just eating pancakes.
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Jan 24, 2024 03:18
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I dunno, I found the show trying to gull me into liking Lorraine under the guise of feminist sentiment to be distasteful, and I'm not fully convinced that it was deliberate from the outset. It's not like they didn't drop a handful of other subplots throughout, like Wayne's increasing credulity, so I'm not encouraged to trust the season full stop.
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Jan 24, 2024 03:25
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ChesterJT posted:Hell by the end I wanted a whole season of Munch killing people and telling them about A Man. Or just eating pancakes.
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Jan 24, 2024 03:38
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Munch in 3300AD landing on Alpha Centauri and baking biscuits for the locals
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Jan 24, 2024 04:02
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ChesterJT posted:Hell by the end I wanted a whole season of Munch killing people and telling them about A Man. Or just eating pancakes. God I love so much that the show punctured Munch's air of mystique that just humanized him more, whole pointing out that he is an utterly ridiculous person to encounter. A man, uses I.
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Jan 24, 2024 04:04
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Wafflecopper posted:Munch in 3300AD landing on Alpha Centauri and baking biscuits for the locals I can help!
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Jan 24, 2024 04:07
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Open Source Idiom posted:I dunno, I found the show trying to gull me into liking Lorraine under the guise of feminist sentiment to be distasteful, and I'm not fully convinced that it was deliberate from the outset. Agreed. As a lady viewer, I bristled at the post suggesting women who watch this show would be fans of Lorraine for her girlboss capitalism. IMO women who see Lorraine as some sort of righteous badass instead of the parasitic monster that she is are equivalent to men who think Tillman is god’s chosen special warrior cowboy, in that both are celebrating toxic displays of dominance and annihilation of the weak by characters conforming to male gender norms. A true feminist perspective is not simply “hire more women CEOs” who are just as ruthless and cruel as the men who built the glass ceiling in the first place. It was nice to end on Dot’s counterpoint showing strength through traditionally feminine norms of community and compassion. While it was fun to see Lorraine emasculate the banker bros and ranchers, if only for their cartoonesque “buh buh buh but you’re a WOMAN?!” response, even if the show was going for a redemption arc for her I sure didn’t buy it. Roy is in prison where he belongs, but Lorraine is still free to torture and enslave. In the first episode I laughed at how bad her accent was, then it grew on me, then at the end I thought it stood out as horribly bad again. Indiria’s husband won the award for most distracting terrible accent though.
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Jan 24, 2024 16:13
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matureaudiencesonly posted:It was nice to end on Dot’s counterpoint showing strength through traditionally feminine norms of community and compassion. Yeah I really liked this. Best scene in the back half of the season and a great note to close on.
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Jan 24, 2024 16:40
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Lorraine destroying the banker is a great scene but like, just on a baseline level she absolutely ruins this man's life and the lives of his family for her own profit. If it was just him that's one thing, but she goes out of her way to use her immense power to crush his innocent children.
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Jan 24, 2024 17:25
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Lorraine is obviously evil and views Dot as a possession needing protection by the end of the season. The 1 year later of her and Tillman was kind of a weird if you don't view it as her just being a vindictive billionaire.matureaudiencesonly posted:In the first episode I laughed at how bad her accent was, then it grew on me, then at the end I thought it stood out as horribly bad again. Indiria’s husband won the award for most distracting terrible accent though. Yeah JJL is a great actress but she couldn't do that accent to save her life. It kept breaking whenever her dialogue went for a while.
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Jan 24, 2024 17:54
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Isn't she doing like a New Orleans accent? I'm not from the USA but I assumed it was some kind of southern belle type deal.
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Jan 24, 2024 17:58
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lorraine sucks but she could be a lot worse, like Roy. at least she gets a person besides her deserves protection. it's like the difference btwn trump and mitt romney
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Jan 24, 2024 18:16
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Doltos posted:Lorraine is obviously evil and views Dot as a possession needing protection by the end of the season. The 1 year later of her and Tillman was kind of a weird if you don't view it as her just being a vindictive billionaire. Tillman hosed with her property. She protecting dot was more reacting to the insult to her station than giving a poo poo about dot. There was some small flashes of Lorraine relating to dot's struggles but it wasn't invested into much. Lorraine acted like a mob boss more so than worried mother in law.
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Jan 24, 2024 18:38
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Everyone is subject to her whims. Lorraine is basically the eye of sauron, and if she sees you then you better hope she approves or you're hosed. She's also someone (along with roy who is literally elected) that society has inflicted upon itself. Debt/collection is seen as necessary so we all accept her existence.
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Jan 24, 2024 20:01
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It's insane and will never happen but for some reason I could see all the Fargo seasons somehow creating an ultimate final season like the movie Glass or the season finale of Marvel's What If? series where Varga meets Lorraine and is all "they're coming for you, with pitchforks" and Wrench and Munch appear ready to fight but wait, who's that... an aged Mike Milligan out of nowhere? And he's with the alien who was piloting the UFO?!?!?
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Jan 25, 2024 13:49
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DaveKap posted:It's insane and will never happen but for some reason I could see all the Fargo seasons somehow creating an ultimate final season like the movie Glass or the season finale of Marvel's What If? series where Varga meets Lorraine and is all "they're coming for you, with pitchforks" and Wrench and Munch appear ready to fight but wait, who's that... an aged Mike Milligan out of nowhere? And he's with the alien who was piloting the UFO?!?!? Aged Mike Milligan should be in Accounting at Lorraine's company
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Jan 25, 2024 13:56
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The Grumbles posted:Isn't she doing like a New Orleans accent? I'm not from the USA but I assumed it was some kind of southern belle type deal. There’s a handful of accents in New Orleans; none of them resemble how Lorraine spoke. Dumb question: I don’t remember if Munch was wearing it during the sin-eating ritual scene, but is it ever hinted at why he wears the long skirt? Or is it some sort of kilt?
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Jan 25, 2024 14:31
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I assumed it was meant to be a Welsh Tartan, which is a form of kilt, yes. Though, his being a (formerly) poverty stricken commoner with no one to care for him, he didn't have a family pattern, so it was in solid colors.
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Jan 25, 2024 14:58
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Tender Bender posted:Aged Mike Milligan should be in Accounting at Lorraine's company This made me laugh way more than it should have.
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Jan 25, 2024 15:55
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Cat Army
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Old Mike Milligan having one last hurrah after years of accounting does feel like something they could do for a modern day season. I don't really want that, but I'd have some faith Hawley could pull that off in a way that wasn't terrible. CatstropheWaitress fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jan 25, 2024 |
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Jan 25, 2024 17:29
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The Grumbles posted:Isn't she doing like a New Orleans accent? I'm not from the USA but I assumed it was some kind of southern belle type deal. Definitely not southern/New Orleans. I think it was meant to be a take on the trans-Atlantic accent that rich SOBs used in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
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Jan 25, 2024 17:57
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Yeah, it's a riff on what she did in Hudsucker.
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Jan 25, 2024 18:06
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Since Transatlantic accents are 100% an affectation, any time she slips up can be attributed to either JJL or Lorraine without changing the scene any.
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Jan 25, 2024 18:07
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Not really a fan of Lorraine's prison rape revenge ploy. It's perhaps supposed to be ironic that Roy's toxic masculinity is subjected to total subjugation and humliation but just as a general rule I feel like we should try to avoid that particular trope.
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Jan 25, 2024 20:52
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Owling Howl posted:Not really a fan of Lorraine's prison rape revenge ploy. It's perhaps supposed to be ironic that Roy's toxic masculinity is subjected to total subjugation and humliation but just as a general rule I feel like we should try to avoid that particular trope. You’re not supposed to be a fan of it. Lorraine is not given a redemption arc, this is to illustrate she was and remains a horrible person. If you are hootin and hollerin for a person paying for someone to be raped and tortured I invite you to do some serious soul searching. This is without even considering the means and circumstances which allow her to do this.
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Jan 25, 2024 22:42
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Yeah I was thinking all the way throught the last few episodes - in my story, Dot just point blank kills Roy without any hesitation and no torturing on her way out of this back to her own world. In this story, he needs to be erased. Forgotten, nothing, it doesn't even matter if he 'wants to die' as the last 2 eps were putting forth, he just has gotta go because of the damage he does. He won't stop, can't be fixed, and just has to go. But we don't need to enjoy it. Torturing him, or making him feel fear, or whatever - none of it is important, and the need for that kind of violent retribution is the same impulse that creates the kind of person Roy is. You let a bit of that in, and you become a bit worse, something uglier. There's no upside. You chain yourself by indulging in your worst impulses. So, of course Lorraine's response is to take that to the nth degree and ensure he will be beaten and raped for 20 years while she sips expensive booze or whatever. She's an emotional wreck, violent gratification is one of the few pleasures she is aware of. The thing I really liked though, is that the show doesn't end on that - it ends on what I think of as an anti-fight scene. Munch shows up at Dot's house presumably with some kind of violent showdown in mind, but the entire sequence is just the three family members putting a cork in it every time he tries to push things in that direction. He doesn't know what the next thing to say is, what to do, and finally the violence in him is just gone.
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Jan 25, 2024 23:12
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I didn't think Munch was going to do anything to Dot at the beginning of the scene. The action already felt deflated by that point and I don't think there was much of a thematic reason for him to kill her outside of a pessimistic view on the world. Tillman's ending was kind of predictable from the onset. Maybe not the exact specifics of Lorraine but I doubted from the get go that he was going to come out ahead at all once they made him as evil as they did. There's not providing catharsis to the viewer and then there's actively pissing people off by having someone so cartoonishly evil win in the end. I think there was way better ways for him to lose than how they set it up though.
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Jan 25, 2024 23:33
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Doltos posted:I didn't think Munch was going to do anything to Dot at the beginning of the scene. The action already felt deflated by that point and I don't think there was much of a thematic reason for him to kill her outside of a pessimistic view on the world. Well, yeah. There isn't. I think they knew this because the show had done a hard cut to black several times already by that point. It is adding more angles onto the ending, so there's more to think about. I didn't think Munch was actually going to shoot Dot, but I think he thought he might before he walked in that house. My point is that Munch being pacified at Dot's is a direct response to Lorraine's denouement with Roy, and a much more uplifting note to leave things on. Lorraine's response doesn't fix anything at all, it's not even a victory.
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Jan 25, 2024 23:36
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Yeah definitely agree with that. Lorraine's storyline ends on a bad note because she's no better than Tillman even though she thinks she is. Dot's story is about forgiving and enduring. She ends on a victory because she saved Munch instead of holding on to anger.
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Jan 25, 2024 23:40
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