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oh jay posted:There's a "rule" of writing that I've always liked. Coincidence can be used to get characters in trouble. It can't be used to get characters out of trouble. I get what you're saying but it's probably not the most relevant 'rule' because Fargo goes out of its way to break it. Cosmic irony is a very Coen-esque theme, and the series is more preoccupied with how people navigate what happens to them than what actually happens, which is why narrative beats are often resolved by what feels like a purely arbitrary set of circumstances (season two starting and ending with the most audacious/obvious example, which everyone who has seen it will know what I mean so I don't need to spoil). This season could just as well as ended by a truck careening into Roy's ranch and him getting run over by it. Anyway, the more I think about season 5, the more it feels like it's up there for me amongst my favourites. I loved the finale. My only real criticism of this season is its themes feel way more direct and heavy handed than all the previous seasons. I feel like all the prior seasons - even 4 - kind of poke at the edges of whichever way its interrogating modern America, with only the occasional villian's speech that directly explains what the season is about. I feel like in season 5, the dialogue is a lot more blunt about what this series is about. Maybe it's because in the dialogue, people aren't talking about themselves or their own circumstances as a metaphor for society, but there are just big speeches about society itself - "this is how debt works in America and how I feel about it" - which ends up coming across as a lot more on the nose. I feel like season 5 could have held back a little on that front and we still all would have got that it was about debt and/or MAGA". But like, I really loved it. I loved how it played with the mother-in-law character, and I don't agree that the series is unrepentant about her at the end - it's more that she turns from 'this is probably going to be the season's villain' to unexpected anti-hero. She is a bad person who you can't even say 'does the right thing' whole cloth, but who still feels heroic by the end. And her scenes are all very quotable, and very funny (including, despite what I said above abotu the series being too direct, the hilarious admonishment of libertarianism as grown men fighting for the right to live as babies). She is not a good person, but she is a very sympathetic character and you can't help but like her, and even root for her more often than not. That's really hard to do well, especially in a show like this which does usually have well defined heroes and villians edit: I want season 6 to be set in 16th century wales edit edit: ok so 2>5>1=3>4 is the objectively correct ranking. All of Fargo is very good though. The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jan 19, 2024 |
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Jan 19, 2024 17:59
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Hilario Baldness posted:Varga, to me, is the closest that Fargo has had to having the devil as a character. He was vile and manipulative with machinations that were almost beyond human understanding. Isn’t he the most straight forward? He wants to amass enough money and power that he never has to worry about being murdered by poor people and can feel fully in control. Also he has a brummie accent and bad teeth. So if the latter is what you’re referring to then yeah I guess
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Jan 20, 2024 02:14
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Tehdas posted:They were a bit too heavy on showing the viewer that Tillman/Lorraine were the bad guys, like, literally for the first 5 episodes or such, every single scene they were in they were pissing someone off and painting targets on their backs. Which might be okay if they were supposed to be sociopathic losers, but they are the heads of pretty large crews. You don't get to be the head guy by pissing off everyone you meet. She’s very much not the bad guy of this season. She’s an anti hero. That just doesn’t become clear until a few episodes in.
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Jan 21, 2024 14:21
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Doltos posted:Binged through the whole season and was completely let down by the writing and editing of the last episode. Why build up the stand off between the militia and FBI if you're going to show it in the worst way possible with 20 black out cuts?. It was unbelievably frustrating that the sheriff is dead to rights from Dot and the FBI interrupts it, lets the guy just wander off, doesn't follow him with more than one person when he's the main target, and then the idiot cop just gets himself offed in the dumbest way possible. Such strong writing completely ruined. The show itself is stepping in in a 'meta' way to make a point about how there is no glory in that alt-right mythmaking. I think everyone goes in expecting that stand off to be the bulk of the episode, and this is the show subverting your expectations (in a way that honestly is very in keeping with the series as a whole, which is always subverting your expectations for a TV show). In doing so, the show itself is robbing Tillman of any potency. He's not a big bad villain, he's just some dude, and of course he's going to go down like a wet squib. The show doesn't want his end to feel satisfying or climactic, because the whole argument of this season is that people like him are obsessed with puffing up their own chests and making their own myths about themselves, whereas in reality they're weak cowards. The show is cutting this short because it wants to communicate to the viewer that Tillman is ultimately not worth their time. In terms of the blackouts/cinematography/fog, I liked it. Having a big cool fight scene would have glamorised what was going on. Remember the Watchmen movie? It had all these cool slo-mo fight scenes and cinematography, which felt like they missed the point of the book, where violence is horrible and uncomfortable. This season is about the limits of the way people mythologise themselves as heroes, especially when that mythmaking hits reality (like January 6th), and I think the way the early episode unfolds is trying to capture that.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:38
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Arist posted:the point is that it isn't satisfying Yes this. The shootout isn't about the fight between two sides, it's about Tillman specifically, and so the editorial choices underscore that he ( and what he represents in the context of American contemporary politics and mythmaking) doesn't deserve any kind of 'epic' resolution. Although I really liked this season, if anything my one criticism is that it feels less like a meditation on America (like all the previous seasons) and more like a pointed rebuke towards Trump/Arpio/alt-right America. Which like, I don't disagree with, but it ends up feeling very didactic.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:40
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Pattonesque posted:though Roy is an absolute monster, Lorraine is responsible for vastly more harm than Roy and she'll never get her comeuppance 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. I feel like this is Skyler White all over again. edit: also for a show so obviously, like, trying to be a bit artsy and not some comic book style whatever, has anyone else noticed the general discourse about this get to comic book levels of dumb, using the same kind of video game style language and logic to discuss it? I've seen tons of posts on Reddit that are like 'I didn't like series 3 because Vargas was too overpowered', like it's a shonen anime or something. Marvel has ruined everything. Imagine people bieng like 'season 1 of The Wire didn't work for me because Avon Barksdale was too OP' The Grumbles fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 17:41
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Killer robot posted:She's a monster that became a billionaire on the suffering of others and will continue to do so after the story concludes. She just happens to identify with several sympathetic characters because they're family or she finds them useful, and she doesn't like Tillman or his type, and so she does some good things in the story. And of course she has her cool victorious moments since she's very proud of herself. And she's definitely satisfying to watch particularly when she wins one over someone more viscerally evil than her. I think that in the context of a show that is often about playing with our expectations of narrative (across all its seasons), the character is an exercise in making a deeply 'bad' person still feel like a hero. It's the show playing with those tropes and seeing what happens. That's why I think it's reductive to be like 'look at this villainous monster' - and I think a big part of the ethos of this season is interrogating that kind of binary 'are you on the right or wrong side' that is pervasive in cultural discourse in America. Having a character who, as another poster said, runs a debt collection agency and has openly funded the Trump administration for her own ends, seems like a good candidate for the writing challenge of 'can she still be someone sympathetic that you end up kind of having a soft spot for and rooting for. Like, if she was a real person I would not like her or want to be associated with her. But I think the story does a good job of making her fun to watch and even find heroic in a weird guilty way.
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Jan 23, 2024 18:51
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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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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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Meatgrinder posted:Hot drat. Just reading through this thread, and it is all very interesting, but this has to be the worst misheard-lyrics-thing I ever made. Just before, Dot has Wayne take his coat. So I heard him, faltering and mumbling, protest about this "A man... has a coat." Especially with his funky diction I didn't think this was weird because I took the entire scene as the three of them systematically derobing him of his affectations, ending at the core of him, eating love instead of sin, thus entirely undoing him as the unstoppable force so thematic to the works of the Coen Brothers. Witt is absolutely terrified in that scene.
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Jan 28, 2024 14:02
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Doltos posted:Danish was an evil, arrogant minion of a billionaire. He thought Tillman was a nothing poor person like every other person he ran around bullying for Lorraine. He probably lived so long not worrying about ever facing retribution that he became lazy. He was definitely trying to solve the whole problem like he always did in the past but he finally had to face someone that wasn't easily threatened or cowed. 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'. Buoyed by his successful dismantling to Tillman's career, he assumes he can use this as leverage. But the very idea of 'leverage' is something that only exists if people recognise the same set of rules and power structures, which Tillman doesn't give a poo poo about it's about Trump
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Jan 31, 2024 13:18
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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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I think he's just a big fat libertarian
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Feb 1, 2024 00:14
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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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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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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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Doctor Senator is one of the greatest character names in a show already full of excellently-named characters. We must give credit where due.
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Feb 7, 2024 16:33
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I gotta say that I didn't feel like Shwartzman had the chops to be in that season. His performance felt really flat. I don't think he has the depth or range do to a Fargo . I spent the whole time thinking 'you're Jason Shwartzman'.
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Feb 7, 2024 17:46
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| # ¿ May 12, 2024 11:18 |
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roomtone posted:i thought both denouements of roy/lorraine and munch/dot's family were good ways to end the show but you might be on to something about them being too long and now that i think of it, the entire showdown at the ranch was pretty much cut away from, right? maybe they had a bigger sequence planned there which ended up not working or they couldn't shoot,and ended up using footage in those final scenes which would have been edited for pace otherwise It's on purpose yeah. It's for two reasons really - to make the final shootout feel chaotic and in disarray - these panicked sorts of bursts of disjointed adrenaline. And the overall length is, I think, supposed to be the show not allowing Tillman the stage, letting it be known that the shootout itself isn't some blaze of glory, or even that important to the plot. Moving on to more interesting things kind of feels like a way of puncturing Tillman's self-diagnosed main character syndrome. It's the show losing interest in his bullshit, if that makes sense.
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Feb 20, 2024 12:54
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