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Season 3 was bad enough that I'm only reading the thread for season 4 now, instead of watching the show.
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Oct 28, 2020 07:23
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 01:25 |
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How does murder nurse fit into the rest of that reading, though?
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Nov 11, 2020 03:55
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Just wait for the inevitable, deeply embarrassing Noah Hawley interview where he explains that this season was also about quantum physics.
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Dec 1, 2020 09:49
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u brexit ukip it posted:No way, S2 of True Detective was dire, beyond the first episode or two. Yeah, the finale to this was bad, but TD Season 2 was laughably incompetent.
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Dec 3, 2020 11:05
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For the first episode I had to keep reminding myself that this Fargo and that Dot is the season's designated Peggy-type figure. And then the second episode has her set up a bunch of murder traps around her house. She gonna incur some collateral damage this season. Probably her husband -- as foreshadowed by the opening where she tasers the cop. Which, I dunno, I'm not convinced that this season's fully moving away from having police characters act as mouthpieces for sensible morality. Though the show's always had lovely cops too e.g. Bob Odenkirk's character. I don't see the set-up here as too significant a departure. I liked those scenes between Dot and her husband in the second episode. He clearly doesn't believe Dot's story, but he'd very much like to. As such he's willing to ignore his misgivings and just construct a version of the truth as defined by her. You get the sense that a lot of this season is going to be featuring domineering partners and weak partners, themes about enabling, etc. (cop and her golfing boyfriend, JJL and Danish Graves, even that couple that Hamm is counseling at the start of episode two).
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Nov 28, 2023 01:49
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CBJSprague24 posted:the stupid "This was based on a true story" bullshit they still insist on having in the intro to each episode.. I always felt this was in poor taste after that mentally ill woman became obsessed with Fargo being based on a true story and froze to death looking for the lost cash.
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Dec 1, 2023 06:21
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I think the funniest thing about the "we have a different reality" thing is Lamorne Morris insisting that it's "not a thing" -- it shouldn't be a thing, but literally every other character in the show is wandering around in their own fantasy world. Cop lady thinks her husband's golf career is worth supporting, he's self-deluding. Mrs. Lyon (elder) has a PR machine and probably thinks of herself as a warm and nurturing mother, her lickspittle thinks he'll one day be considered family, Tillman and his little kingdom, etc. etc. So, yeah, it's a thing. Except maybe the 500 year old welshman, though who knows what the gently caress is going on in that subplot. Is he a good leader, is he gonna take care of this random woman he's scooped up into his world and is calling "ma", or is he just as poo poo as Tillman? Pancakes or blood? (personally I vote pancakes, since blood is boring but hey.) Be really funny when Morris and Munch cross paths again, because I doubt Munch fits into the cop's understanding of reality. Nate RFB posted:The writing is still not quite as snappy as it was in the early seasons. The FBI subplot and the rather tortured analogy about the sparrow culling just feels like something that would've been done so much more elegantly before. Hmm? I don't think this was meant to be a scene where a smart man was saying a smart thing. It's nonsense.
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Dec 8, 2023 15:57
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I was surprised that it was so easy for Dot to admit the truth (or, maybe, just part of the truth) at the end there. Getting the sense that Jennifer Jason Lee was kind of right to put her in an institution though, she's uhh probably quite crazy and definitely dangerous. Lol that her husband is probably still locked in the toilet.
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Dec 13, 2023 14:36
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CBJSprague24 posted:I was expecting Roy and Lorraine to team up. Nope. They have very similar, but utterly incompatible world views where they're both kings of the universe and lawbringers to lawlessness. They can't cope with someone else in the same position, because that's their position. The season's been really insistent with their similarities. They both have a couple under their thumb that they counsel through their issues, they both have roughly symmetrical followers (her Danish is his Gator, plus a more competent black dude who acts as chief of security in either case), both have a separate police officer sniffing around them. They're not perfect one to one copies, but it's all very chess-like all the same.
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Dec 14, 2023 02:51
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SPIRIT HALLOWEEN SALE posted:I know I'm not the only one to pick up on this. But I think I'm too stupid to "get it." It's too on the nose to be coincidental. No, it's deliberate, but they do poo poo like this every season except for different Cohen films. I've never really got much out of it though.
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Dec 16, 2023 03:01
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Hawley's a bit of a wanker, go look up his "what is this thing we call TV" essay he sent to critics along with preview copies of Legion season two. I wouldn't put too much stock in figuring out what he's saying beyond the idea that the premise is very closely riffing on the film.
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Dec 19, 2023 02:40
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CatstropheWaitress posted:Dot might win, but Fargo has a wonky karma. Generally points towards the heroes, but wobbles. Thinking Bilbo's wife in the first season, Swango's fate in the third. Hope she does. Dot's treatment of her husband and that guy in the hospital makes me think she's not destined for a happy ending.
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Dec 23, 2023 01:24
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limp dick calvin posted:If I was smarter I would form a Take on Minnesota Nice and the hospital guy, I think there’s something there I mean, like, yeah, she starts to smother the arsehole guy (heh) because he's repeatedly poking holes in her story. But it's also because he's coarse and annoying, which gets under her skin and limits her ability to maintain this new personality she's subscribed to. Dot's housewife personality has a bit of a performance, but this scene suggests that she's prepared to use violence to defend not just bodily self, or her new life she's constructed for herself, but even just this idea that she's a typical housewife.
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Dec 23, 2023 02:24
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I don't see this season condemning everyone for their actions, though a crazy high cast casualty rate could be impressive. Just cop in a cast and Scotty, the end. If we're talking just dessets then Wayne's suffering in a tragedy of his own making. He actively looked for reasons to see the world his wife's way even thougj "Dot" was incredibly untrustworthy and he was open about it. He just wanted to go back to being a baby. His brain damage is just a sort of bleak extension of his already existing deliberate choices, one achieved by following those exact same choices. Jehde posted:I am ready for the team up of Lorraine, Indira, and Scotty to save Dot from Roy and his boys club. I don't see the sympathy people have for Lorraine, I must admit. She's pretty horrible despite facing sexism in her professional life e.g. being transphobic, a self image of being something like a feudal lord -- gonna be interesting if she and Munch meet, given they're both...debt collectors. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Dec 23, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2023 12:36
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CBJSprague24 posted:It's interesting how every season seems to stick to the theme of "local cop is the hero/smartest LEO in the show". Cop whose wife has cancer from S2(?) comes to mind. It's been a while, but how did the fourth season square this circle again? I feel like Olyphant's character was a bit of a poo poo. Was there another cop I'm forgetting or
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Dec 26, 2023 16:26
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There's always one or two things that go clunk for me, and it's usually when the show brings in these really minor side characters and tries to characterise them really quickly and it just becomes terrible for whatever reason. That really blunt monologue from the lovely husband last week, and random "that's capitalism!" car dealer guy who spent way too long underlining themes. Yeah, we got what was going on guys, you can be less broad. Only real complaint. I also think I just don't care about the season when Dot's not on screen. Pretty much everything else exists to react to her, so it's her and maybe lady cop (who seems hopelessly compromised, really) that drive a lot of the action. Last week was a lot of everyone else musters their forces waiting for Dot to turn back up. Dot, meanwhile, gets an awesome therapy retreat subplot, and it owned. Lol this ancient feudal dude getting caught up in a blood feud subplot. I can see Wayne coming acropper in the inevitable(?) Tillman / Lyons conflict after Gator gets offed by 500 Year Old Welsh Dragon and Tillman gets confused about who did it. Would pay off his line in Biblical retribution. Fun times.
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Dec 27, 2023 08:19
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I think there's two impulses. Firstly, the show just likes to have these strange supernatural intercessions happen occasionally. Sometimes it's less ambiguous (flying saucer) and sometimes more so (that shot of Malvo with wings of blood). And, secondly, sending Dot to a separate, liminal space allows the show to talk about spousal abuse in a way that's more protected than sort of letting it play out in the middle of the overall plot. So this episode could have largely been a coma dream, or perhaps Dot actually went to the land of the dead and talked to Tillman's dead wife and achieved this personal catharsis (I'm leaning towards the latter). But either way you're taking her away to a safe space where the character can work through her issues on her own terms and at her own pace, without the threat of Tillman invading or her wicked mother in law subverting the mental health process, or just the constant stress that Dot's gonna be feeling because of her various jobs and issues and concerns. And sometimes you just need to have a really good nap.
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Dec 28, 2023 04:52
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I figured she fell asleep at the wheel and the entire episode was a dream, like one of those dreams where you dream about waking up but you're still asleep. Helped me understand the random truck bit a bit better too, since it's not a random truck ploughing into a bunch of strangers, it's Dot's mind rationalising a head on collision. I dunno if it ultimately matters much though.
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Dec 29, 2023 03:23
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Das Boo posted:And Dot is Roy's third wife, correct? We know at least one's buried, but is the implication of this episode that Linda might be dead, too? Nah, she's his middle wife.
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Jan 1, 2024 07:05
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CatstropheWaitress posted:Dave Foley appreciation post I know Foley best from his work anchoring the (somewhat difficult to find) show NewsRadio, which is probably significant either for being the show where Joe Rogan was a regular or for having a huge influence on the development of Dan Harmon's Community. He's been in everything though. It's Always Sunny, Veep, Newsreaders, South Park, Justified, Star Trek, Stargate, loving Fallout: New Vegas.
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Jan 7, 2024 07:26
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I think this has become less interesting these last few episodes, unfortunately. Glad other people are enjoying it, but I think the season's just sort of handwaved away a lot of complexities in favour of a simpler story about an abused women getting her (rightful) revenge on a cowboy cop. But in doing so they've swept aside elements like Lorraine being a Trump supporter* or Dot's tendency towards collateral damage. She almost smothered a man to death with a pillow and then set him up to die, and it's odd that that various supernatural forces of judgement that tend to turn up in this show don't have a problem with that. There also seems to have been a shift in terms of Lorraine and Danish's attitudes to Dot, and I don't get when the show went from them institutionalising her to actually caring about her. Perhaps it's the police photos, but I guess I just don't buy that given how starkly absent of empathy they've been everywhere else. Whatever though, it's a minor thing. The story they're telling now is fine, don't get me wrong, and the episodes have a lot of style. Howveer, it feels like a simpler version of what they started with, and I have difficulty reconciling the tone of events now with what we're told about the characters initially. A lot's riding on the finale in terms of ending a few subplots and working out what the show is trying to say, particularly Indira's apparent path from victim to victimiser. But I feel like the only way I can understand what I'm seeing is if I forget a lot of what I saw before. *or, at least, hyperconservative, but it's 2019 and she's a transphobe who compels her family to take Christmas card photos with assault rifles, it's just Occam's razor.
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Jan 11, 2024 08:23
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CatstropheWaitress posted:Can't disagree with that read more Open Source Idiom. Took multiple episodes and everything Edge described for Lorraine to support Dot. The show has also in no way swept her conservative leanings aside, no clue how you're reading that. Her connections certainly seem to be helping mobilize a swat team to the ranch over Danish's disappearance, but I don't think anything in the last two episodes has said she's right to hate on trans people. I think there's a movement towards Lorraine and Dot reconciling, particularly that phone conversation where she talks about Dot being her daughter and indicates that she cares for people deep down, and I'm just not a fan of the show ending that way. If it's just territorial bullshit like a new study bible! suggested (and was my initial read on the character) that's great, that makes sense to me as a character, but even just the way they're shooting the character now, moving away from putting her next to that big "NO" in her office, giving her softer emotional beats... She does get that joke about a billionaire's right to kill people, but the person she's targeting is wholly detestable -- in the same way that Dot's collateral damage this week was Rebecca Liddiard's wholly detestable third wife, killed(?) in self-defence. I don't see Lorraine's arc as an escalation of her villainy, as Tillman's very much is, so much as a softening of her personality. So, yeah, I think they're attempting to create more sympathy there. Not that you can't have sympathy for villains, but in her case I'm both uninterested and suspect it's misplaced. There's one episode left, and I guess we'll see, and I'm prepared to be wrong, but I don't think the direction this season ended up taking (other than the dream world episode) maintained the complexity of the earlier installments. It mostly feels fairly obvious and inevitable tbh. Edge & Christian posted:It makes sense to me, if you buy that Lorraine is more self-interested/cynical versus operating on pure malevolence. They're definitely not heroic or altruistic, but their version of reality shifted from "Dorothy is lying to us because she is a grifter" to "Dorothy was lying to us because her life before meeting Wayne was hellish and now we are also in direct conflict with the person who made it that way." Yeah, okay, this aspect of the arc makes more sense to me. Thanks. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Jan 11, 2024 |
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Jan 11, 2024 15:19
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Darko posted:She's not even hyper-conservative; she's just hyper-wealthy, which is in its own category, since she'll support whatever at the time gives her money. She'd ultra-embrace liberal views if a liberal was in power at the time or if it helped her gain more power. Given some of the things she says -- e.g. her feudal ideology, policing her granddaughter's (mild!) non standard gender presentment -- makes me think she's conservative. How does you read incorporate those elements?
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Jan 12, 2024 02:57
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You goons are overthinking things. Witt's feeble human physics couldn't handle the unresolved superposition of being both a cop and a likable protagonist so his body tore itself apart from the inside in an act that, coincidentally, looked like a shooting. Tillman innocent.
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Jan 21, 2024 05:42
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CatstropheWaitress posted:How many characters in those five seasons end up in a better place after making the choice of violence? Just this season there was Lorraine and Dot and Indira and the 500 Year Old Welsh Dragon. Which depends on how violent you consider throwing people out of their homes when their parents or spouses pull them into the debtors swamp, but I'd say that's pretty violent. But Dot arranges for the death of a civilian in her husband's place and Ole Munch definitely killed a bunch of people who didn't deserve it (but off screen, give or take a poor cashier).
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Jan 23, 2024 04:05
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The Grumbles posted:She's also not a villain! She is obviously a flawed person but a (possibly anti-)hero in the context of the story. She is the favourite character of every woman I know who has watched this series. She has all the best lines, it's incredibly satisfying watching her belittle both Tillman and those dudes from the bank, and if you're not rooting for her in every scene from like the middle onwards then you're not letting yourself get swept up in the spirit of the show. ...this is a joke post right? Edit: apparently not She runs a predatory debt company and has close ties to Trump and gently caress I'm not going through all of this again can someone else tag in.
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Jan 23, 2024 17:52
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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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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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Yeah, it's a riff on what she did in Hudsucker.
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Jan 25, 2024 18:06
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Witt died because he failed to shoot the guy he was arresting. Moral: cops should be more violent.
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Jan 29, 2024 02:17
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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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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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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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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:Lorraine is a terrible person all the way through, she's a billionaire laughing at the debts of the poor. She does multiple terrible things during the season. She just doesn't face any repercussions from her actions. Yeah no poo poo. I can see what the show was doing but giving her a redemption arc, as you phrase it, isn't something I like. But I think this argument has been litigated ad nauseam by this point.
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Mar 1, 2024 13:51
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