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Doltos posted:I feel like that's a fairly straight forward interpretation? Seems reasonable to me! uber_stoat posted:"I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand." Exactly
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Jan 31, 2024 13:26
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The Grumbles posted:He engages with Tillman in that way not because he sees him as a 'nothing poor person' (wild take imo) but because he incorrectly sees him as another political chess piece on the board. But he obviously recognises that Tillman has a modicum of power, he just has a pre-populist view of Tillman's own relationship with that power. None of that would make sense if he saw him as a 'nothing poor person'. I don't think that's a wild take. He's a billionaire's lap dog. They live completely different lives than millionaires, which Tillman is. He's a local sheriff, not a senator or governor. It felt like Danish was there just bullying another person for Lorraine who was insignificant in their world.
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Jan 31, 2024 20:46
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there might have been some ego, it's hard to say. but i think what he offered tillman shows at least some respect for tillman's dignity, like, that's why he recognizes the point of leverage. he just doesn't get 'dignity' means something else to tillman
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Jan 31, 2024 21:05
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I’m through episode 7 of season 4 and though it took me a couple episodes this season is good as hell?
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Jan 31, 2024 21:52
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"Danish" must be a take on all the Midwesterners named "Dutch" right?
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Jan 31, 2024 23:42
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They got it out of the same baby names book as 'Gator'.
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Jan 31, 2024 23:57
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veepfake posted:there might have been some ego, it's hard to say. but i think what he offered tillman shows at least some respect for tillman's dignity, like, that's why he recognizes the point of leverage. he just doesn't get 'dignity' means something else to tillman Yes, this. It's realpolitik vs fanaticism. Things tipping over where real violence wins against political violence Although it is true that is a class subtext there for sure - the bureaucrat who moves within abstract/implied power structures vs the straight shootin' man of the clay, which also satisfyingly fits in with the show and film's preoccupation with 'minnesota nice' as a concept. Not that Tillman is really straight shootin', obviously.
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Jan 31, 2024 23:58
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The weirdest thing to me was that they set up Tillman as openly ignoring state/federal laws on drugs (as well as guns,which makes sense) but never really went anywhere at all with that angle.
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Feb 1, 2024 00:07
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I think he's just a big fat libertarian
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Feb 1, 2024 00:14
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The Grumbles posted:Yes, this. It's realpolitik vs fanaticism. Things tipping over where real violence wins against political violence yep totally
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Feb 1, 2024 00:33
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just finished my rewatch of season 1. billy bob is so good (as is everyone else but he steals the show)
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Feb 3, 2024 01:37
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Yeah I've been rewatching all the seasons too. V.M. Varga is the most overpowered villain then Lorne Malvo then Mike Milligan then Tillman. The dumbest cops are Shea Whigham -> Bob Odenkirk -> All the cops at the motel shootout -> Witt. Smartest cops are Glorial Burgle -> Molly Solverson -> Lou Solverson -> Witt. Haven't rewatched season 4 yet.
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Feb 3, 2024 02:14
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"Lester, have you been a bad boy?"
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Feb 3, 2024 21:24
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Feb 3, 2024 21:30
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I didn't love the politics of this show.... We're supposed to cheer for the "good" billioniare at the end becaues of girlbossery?
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Feb 6, 2024 05:41
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I mean you don't have to, but yeah "making this terrible person likeable" is part of the schtick.
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Feb 6, 2024 05:57
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She won but that doesn't mean you have to like her or cheer for her.
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Feb 6, 2024 06:26
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Owling Howl posted:She won but that doesn't mean you have to like her or cheer for her. If her scenes were about making the audience stew in their dislike for her and their frustration at her success then the show didn't do a great job, as demonstrated by all the people here, and elsewhere, who were pleased by her success.
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Feb 6, 2024 06:28
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Yeah, Lorraine is a bitch, but at the end of the day, she goes against Roy so she's a good bitch. Even though she's still in the same lovely business she was in when the show started and has the same kind of rotten character, we're supposed to forgive her for her obnoxious debut and everything she stands for. This season was a good one but they really missed the mark when it came to handling someone so transparently evil. Like the dude she ruined. He was literally being threatened with death by Roy and she goes and ruins his entire family because of it. The guy probably wasn't an angel if only because he's an old bastard who frequents strip clubs, but he was put in a compromising situation. Don't even get me started on how she had Danish sock her son in the face because he wasn't tough enough or whatever. Shitenshi fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 06:42
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,
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Feb 6, 2024 06:58
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i don't think the show would've had plenty of scenes of people's lives being ruined or ending due to debt if it wanted us to cheer for lorraine. i don't think the final confrontation would've been about how it's your moral imperative to forgive debts if that was the case. i've been thinking a bit lately about the scene where wayne is back to work after getting zapped and he gives the car away to the family because the rules of capitalism don't make sense to him at that moment. it is played for laughs and it is quite funny but i still think it's one of the more important scenes to the thematic essence of the season.
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Feb 6, 2024 07:04
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Open Source Idiom posted:If her scenes were about making the audience stew in their dislike for her and their frustration at her success then the show didn't do a great job, as demonstrated by all the people here, and elsewhere, who were pleased by her success. "People" also rooted for Tony Soprano, Tyler Durden and Walter White so I don't think that's a good metric. We're shown exactly what kind of a person she is. She wins in the end and beats up on someone who may or may not be worse than her, but that shouldn't factor into it. If people root for her, that's on them.
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Feb 6, 2024 07:33
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watho posted:i've been thinking a bit lately about the scene where wayne is back to work after getting zapped and he gives the car away to the family because the rules of capitalism don't make sense to him at that moment. it is played for laughs and it is quite funny but i still think it's one of the more important scenes to the thematic essence of the season. I don't think it really makes much sense. Wayne's logic is that you should exchange "a car for a car", which recalls the biblical eye for and eye references and made explicit by Ole Much when he invades their home in the finale. But Wayne and Dot reject that kind of "equality", at least as it comes to the issue of violence and pain. Dot escapes divine wrath, even though in Coen cosmological terms she absolutely deserves it, because the entire system is broken and should just be put aside. (As does Munch -- his own code doesn't seem to insist that he atone for his murder of the store clerk.) So then, do we extend this radical forgiveness of (cosmic) debt unto Tillman's wife? Tillman himself? (i.e. is Lorraine wrong in her final scene?) We're certainly encouraged to excuse Dot, even though her actions led to multiple people people harmed and killed. And how are we meant to square Indira's decision to victimise people just like her? Or is this just the show just letting nice people get away with (sometimes literal) murder because being nice and sympathetic is more important than being moral? It's all very confused, is what I'm saying. The show is often just making aesthetic arguments over moral ones, or has characters present moral arguments because they serve as a useful survival strategy, all of which appear to be satisfying but actually fail to stand up to much scrutiny. I think the show misses a trick by not placing its radical debt forgiveness (espoused by both Wayne and by Dot later in her final scene) into direct conflict with Lorraine. As it is they both just sit alongside each other in the show, as shown by the final two passages in the finale, and the series doesn't really come down one way or the other. At best it's an easy out. Owling Howl posted:"People" also rooted for Tony Soprano, Tyler Durden and Walter White so I don't think that's a good metric. If the show fails to make a clear argument, that's on it. Hell, the Sopranos and Breaking Bad (which were fairly clear about what they were doing, Breaking Bad has it in the title) had characters expressly turn up to explain morality to the leads. I agree that audiences who didn't get the message didn't want to. This show didn't do anything as clear cut. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 07:40
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Clear argument? This isn't a high school debate. But to answer a question, again, yes, Lorraine is wrong. Paying to have a person raped and tortured is bad. I refuse to believe this needs to be explained so congratulations on successfully baiting me. Again
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Feb 6, 2024 08:06
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Shitenshi posted:
And what's more, this was purely for spite: she gained nothing from it. She'd already moved on to the next bank on her list, and he's never going to talk about it to anyone, so she's not reputation building either.
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Feb 6, 2024 08:17
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This show has obviously has plenty of things to say but people in this thread are treating every facet of it as pure symbolism/allegory and not a story about characters. The characters sit alongside the allegory, but they're still characters and don't exist as these purely didactic thought experiments. It's fun to think about the metanarrative of a show like this but the characters are not there purely to serve What The Show Has To Say. Enjoying watching - and maybe even liking - a 'bad person' in television doesn't make you a bad person, it means they've made that person likeable, and successfully giving them redeeming qualities which is a thing TV has done for a long time, and is basically always serving to invite you to find some sense of compassion or relatability with those characters. If anything, this season is expressly about how we're much better off if we see the humanity in people despite any conflicts between our ethical frameworks and theirs. Roy Tillman does not do this and he is a monster. Lorraine does this, and so retains her humanity (and our sense of her humanity). Or - to bring it back to the more immediate characterisation - Roy Tillman is scary and horrible and never shows any warmth, whereas Lorraine starts off scary but you slowly see these flashes of real warmth that makes it obvious she does care about the people around her in her own way. She gets given some of the defining lines in the show (like the excellent takedown of libertarians) and the show obviously wants you to enjoy having her around. But saying stuff like 'if the show doesn't do enough to condemn her that's the show's failing' or whatever that other poster was saying is truly insane. A protagonist can be morally dubious and still likeable. Not everything has to be a shonen anime. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 12:26 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 12:15
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I think it's fair to say that there are different reads of how the show works on a fundamental level here, one where people read it through as having a moral framework rather than as just a story about people who have moral frameworks and coming into conflict over it, but I don't think it's fair to paint the side that you don't agree with as "truly insane". That's gonna make any debate super polarising and makes things unnecessarily personal. I'm happy to disagree on this, we're just talking about a show, but I don't want to have a fight. I've said my piece here anyway. I don't think the show'a thematic elements are very coherent and I think the show gets fairly boring in towards the end of the run, outside the Dot episode and the final scene. Like I said, I think it's just best to agree to disagree.
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Feb 6, 2024 12:33
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Open Source Idiom posted:I think it's fair to say that there are different reads of how the show works on a fundamental level here, one where people read it through as having a moral framework rather than as just a story about people who have moral frameworks and coming into conflict over it, I just mean that, like any prestige drama with something to say, it's both. It wants its viewers to think about big concepts, and it's telling a good story with believable and lifelike characters at the same time. But I feel like getting too fixated on the former to the extent that the characters are just ciphers for the overall message, rather than a story that makes you think about big ideas. I do also think there's a distinction between 'asking questions about the world' and 'is presenting a thesis about the world'. I think one of the reasons Fargo is so good is because - like a lot of more 'literary' shows, it does the former without presuming to have the answers. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Feb 6, 2024 |
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Feb 6, 2024 12:36
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TheBizzness posted:I’m through episode 7 of season 4 and though it took me a couple episodes this season is good as hell?
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Feb 6, 2024 13:26
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It was filmed in 2022, I don't think production was caught off guard by covid. Ending rules too.
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Feb 6, 2024 14:21
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CatstropheWaitress posted:It was filmed in 2022, I don't think production was caught off guard by covid. Ending rules too. wiki posted:Production began in October 2019 in Chicago, Illinois, with Hawley directing the first block of episodes.[18] In March 2020, FX suspended production on the series for at least two weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[19] The original premiere date of April 19, 2020, was also pushed back due to production delays. The series completed production on eight of the eleven episodes before production shut down.[3] Production resumed in August 2020 and was completed by September 8, 2020
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Feb 6, 2024 14:23
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The Grumbles posted:Or - to bring it back to the more immediate characterisation - Roy Tillman is scary and horrible and never shows any warmth, whereas Lorraine starts off scary but you slowly see these flashes of real warmth that makes it obvious she does care about the people around her in her own way. She gets given some of the defining lines in the show (like the excellent takedown of libertarians) and the show obviously wants you to enjoy having her around.
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Feb 6, 2024 14:42
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Cage posted:Fargo Season 4, which they are talking about, was filmed in 2019 and again in 2020. Oooooh yeah. I'm a dummy and fully agree with my compatriot.
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Feb 6, 2024 14:45
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It explains why it's clearly summer whenever you see a tree in the last couple episodes
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Feb 6, 2024 14:47
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TheBizzness posted:I’m through episode 7 of season 4 and though it took me a couple episodes this season is good as hell? I love that season and enjoyed very little of season 3. It takes all kinds I suppose.
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Feb 7, 2024 04:25
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the scene between dodd and peggy in the cabin is comedy gold. "oh.... you said you didn't want beans"
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Feb 7, 2024 05:04
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Season 4 is a departure from the formula. It's sides pitted against each other with a bunch of nebulous characters instead of having a clear villain and hero. They moved away from the cops having one rear end in a top hat and one likeable person into both cops being assholes. There's also a lot of plots going on compared to the other seasons between the mafioso power struggle, the nurse, the outlaw sister, etc. Then of course the setting is a completely different time period. It doesn't even really feel like a Fargo aesthetic and could easily have any named attached to it rather than Fargo. I think as a standalone it's fine but attaching Fargo to it put too many expectations on the story beats so people get polarized in their opinion on it. I liked the season fair enough but it was really offputting having farting and diarrhea be essential plot points several times.
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Feb 7, 2024 05:55
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I would imagine Season 4 goes down smoother if you’re into mob based media which I always have been.
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Feb 7, 2024 06:02
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Doltos posted:Season 4 is a departure from the formula. It's sides pitted against each other with a bunch of nebulous characters instead of having a clear villain and hero. They moved away from the cops having one rear end in a top hat and one likeable person into both cops being assholes. There's also a lot of plots going on compared to the other seasons between the mafioso power struggle, the nurse, the outlaw sister, etc. Then of course the setting is a completely different time period. It's def the worst season, but to defend it a little, I do think what makes the show as a whole special is the way it resists feeling formulaic throughout - it's always doing something interesting with the narrative, or the staging, or the framing - stuff that you always come away feeling like it wouldn't be allowed in any other show. It feels experimental but still coherent and confident, and so season 4 - having a season that takes place in a completely different state -feels like it fits if only because it is creatively daring. Nobody's wearing snow boots, and there's no real protagonist, but I do think it still feels very fargo - plenty of people getting their point across via telling some kind of extended fable, surprising asides, people's lives being shaped by chance and chaos, and plenty of unexpected narrative/stylistic flair It's also still underpinned at the American obsession with debt, something that permeates all other seasons (especially 5 obviouslly). If there were fewer story threads - or maybe story threads that all felt a bit closer together - or maybe even if it embraced Rabbi Mulligan fully as a protagonist (I think he's the closest that season has to a true heroic protagonist, he just doesn't get enough screen time) I think it'd have probably ended up being seen as in keeping with the rest of the show because of that sense of daring and experimentation with the formula. edit: also it's the worst season of a seriously excellent TV show, so it's still really good. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 7, 2024 12:16
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There’s also no levity at all. Everything about it is completely serious the entire time, except the aforementioned bathroom sounds which weren’t serious but were bad.
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Feb 7, 2024 15:52
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