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Fargo - Season 2 - a new true crime chapter takes us to 1979 Sioux Falls - Mon on FX

N

Niraj

I shot people I like more for less.
Crazy how good this season is already. After next week we'll be halfway through though I guess.
 
E

ezekial45

Banned
I keep thinking that the Elder Gherhart is the same actor who played Wade Guftasson from the movie.

Anyway, great episode. Patrick Wilson is fucking incredible, and Dunst is amazing as well. Every installment of Fargo needs a scheming coward, and she just does in such a unique way.

So far, I'm liking this season more than the last. I adored the last one, but this is just on another level.
 
I

IronRinn

Member
Yeah, Wilson is doing some next level work in this. Dunst following in the footsteps of Macy and Freeman before her.
 
S

Stoze

Member
That episode was pretty much flawless, best of the season for me easily.

And yeah this maybe the best role I've seen Patrick Wilson do.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- THR: Jean Smart on Her 'Fargo' Matriarch: "I Don't Think She's Afraid to Die"
The fourth episode is maybe my favorite of the season, because I just love that "When you look at me, you see an old woman," monologue. It tells you so much about this woman. Did you know those details when you played her in one, two and three, or was this something that Noah [Hawley] told you before this episode?

Actually, that is the scene I auditioned with. That was great because it definitely gave me so much information about her.

How much of a family tree did you get, did you want, did you need, to play her?

That made it pretty clear and I had come up with my own ideas about why she was named Floyd. I did not ask Noah why he named her Floyd. I figured I would just wait until the season was over and ask him. I just came up with my own ideas. I don't know, it's always a combination of what seems right to you as an actor, your first instinct, but mostly the script. You just have to go with the script as your roadmap so that's what you have to go by and as you said that scene is very telling about her and the life she has had. She had a hard life. I mean, she and her husband ended up being extremely successful but they worked very hard.


Now, you mentioned this, when you have a woman named Floyd, it's kind of like a "Boy Named Sue," in terms of its specificity. What did the name initially give you to work with and you say that Noah, you didn't discuss it specifically with him?

No. Later we did, after the fact. I just thought that possibly, actors come up with all sorts of things to see and hear the character in their mind, but I just thought she probably ... maybe her father was the kind of man who, he was going to have a son named Floyd, come hell or high water, and maybe he never had a boy. So, I was Floyd. She probably grew up being treated, whatever this means, like a boy in the sense that they were farmers and ranchers, and hard work was just part of your daily routine. He probably taught her how to hunt and shoot and ride and all that kind of stuff from the time she could walk. I don't think she was brought up in the kitchen, darning socks and next to the oven.
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This episode, the fourth episode, also has the beautiful wordless scene in the car with Floyd and Dodd, where twice he looks to her for comfort and she pushes him away, and then she pauses, and then she reaches out to console him. Could you talk just a bit about her thought process in that moment?

I think she feels that Dodd just basically almost has signed their death warrant. She is enraged with him and also scared and sad. She just thinks that he just killed them all practically, in the sense that she's basically saying, "It's war now," basically. So Dodd, basically, we've lost everything. We've lost everything, and so it's not that she's giving up, but she's sad that she can't control him. At the same time, she's a mother. That's her biggest dilemma, is she can be very hard and very practical, but she's a mother. He's begging for forgiveness or condolence or something.
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- NY Mag review
- Landgraf talking the current deluge of TV content and Fargo with Marketplace on NPR
We cancel really good shows. We canceled a show called "Married" that is really a good show, and there are many people that really love it.... The answer is that you gotta cancel a good show so that you can try to make a great show. But, on the other hand, we have a great show on the air right now called "Fargo." "Fargo" season one was the most critically acclaimed television show in America last year. The second cycle, which is currently on the air, has been widely judged by critics to be better than the first cycle, and yet the audience for it is a little down.... Ultimately I believe that Fargo will be watched a great deal over the next 10 years because it's just that good. But the reality is that in this moment in time, this show, which will probably once again be the most critically acclaimed show in America, is getting drowned out by a lot of other shows that are good, or some of them mediocre, because essentially there's too much television.
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Niraj said:
-Sepinwall's review

-Onion A.V. Club's review
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Thanks!
 
DiscoJer

DiscoJer

Member
ezekial45 said:
Anyway, great episode. Patrick Wilson is fucking incredible, and Dunst is amazing as well. Every installment of Fargo needs a scheming coward, and she just does in such a unique way.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it just dawned on me in this episode that she is the "Lester" character (for lack of a better description) in this series.
 
M

Maintenance

Member
Please let the massacre be a firefight of Gerhardts vs Kansas City in Sioux Falls during the course, the Gerhardts go there after Dunst and Kansas City goes there after the Gerhardts, everybody dies.

Either that or Ed going crazy and killing everybody including his wife. Lou said in S1 that "I'd call it animal, except animals only kill for food".

Been a while since I got hyped for an episode so much as the Sioux Falls one.
 
B

Bluth54

Member
I'm glad this season is so good, I was worried it would be another True Detective and have a huge drop in quality after the first season but they have really done a great job so far this season.
 
R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Another excellent episode. This season has been so damn enjoyable thus far.

RatskyWatsky said:
Have they said if they're leaving clues re: season 3 in this season like they did last year? I could see the Gerhardts in 1951 as maybe being the story that next season focuses on.
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Eh, with the flashback in tonight's episode, I'd now say that's pretty unlikely.

Daft_Cat said:
They better not cancel this.
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They won't.
 
K

KAP151

Member
Loving this season. I was a little worried at first, but its coming around big time.

Bokeem Woodbine has been great.
 
S

scabro

Member
Lou's look in your eye speech was amazing.

So many great scenes, best episode of the series so far for sure.
 
Corpsepyre

Corpsepyre

Banned
Why would this be cancelled? Bad ratings?

Such a solid episode! Loving it completely.

Where's Bruce Campbell though?
 
A

AlexMogil

Member
So was the clock at Waffle Hut stuck at 7 o'clock or was it moving? Because when Hanzee looked at his watch it was around 930.

Of course, that was after he saw a UFO and there was a strange time shift camera trick taking place when we saw him looking at it. Are people getting abducted? Imprinted? Messages?

Is everyone having mini strokes?
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- IGN review
- Closing credits song: The Chieftains ft Bon Iver - Down in the Willow Garden

JBVpnBV.png
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- USA Today: Did 'Fargo' scene feel familiar? Lou ties back to Season 1
In last year's first-season finale, Lou Solverson (Keith Carradine) sat on his porch, idly tying a rope knot with a rifle nearby, protecting his family from the conniving bad guy Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton).

"Did you ever do this before? Stand guard?" his granddaughter asks.

"One other time," Solverson replies. "Winter of 1979. Minus-4 degrees. I sat on a dark porch from dusk til dawn."

GSAcxyN.jpg
omnomOg.jpg


In Monday's episode, "He sort of figures out they’re involved, and goes to see them and basically tries to give them a way out and they won’t take it," Hawley says. "He also knows there’s a difference between criminals and really bad people, and people who’ve just gotten in over their heads. He just takes on this responsibility, and a lot of it has to do with his wife and daughter as well, feeling like, 'Will this war come to my home? I need to protect all of us.'"

For fans who miss Allison Tolman's breakout portrayal of Lou's daughter Molly, a detective turned police chief last season, "the second year is the Molly Solverson origin story," Hawley says. (She now appears as a 6-year-old). "I wanted the audience to look at it and go: 'I see, she gets her inventive leap of intuition and crime-solving ability from her mother, and now we know from her father why she runs toward gunfire and not away from it. And now we see the cowboy humor of her grandfather.' You see from those three people where Allison Tolman came from, which I think is kind of fun."
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More via the link.

- NY Times review
 
C

Cornballer

Member
Sectorseven said:
Does Peggy have a mental disorder?
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Dunst talks about it in a THR interview from earlier in the season.
After Peggy hits Rye, does she just go on autopilot, or is her decision to drive home a calculated one?

In my mind it's like, one way is the hospital, one way is the police station -- what do I do? I think she goes, "I've got to go home and think about what I should do." She's so in shock that I think she just doesn't know what to do. So I think in her mind she thinks, "I'm just gonna go home and think about it, and then I'll decide."

But I think Peggy is someone -- we had a scene that got cut, we never actually filmed it, where Peggy's saying goodbye to her fiancé who's going to Vietnam. They're in the butcher shop, and he's friends with Ed and is like, "If anything happens to me, take care of her for me." She lost someone who was probably the love of her life, then she married Ed because yes, they were friends, and out of love...but more like a family and a friendship. Her mental illness comes out -- there are little clues in the first episode. She's hoarding all these magazines and things like that. There are subtle things that I think will show themselves throughout the next episodes.

But another thing is, she's so desperate to go to this Life Spring seminar. She thinks it's going to be the key to change her entire life. Then this gets in the way. She can't let anything stop her.

That's interesting about the unfilmed scene. In the first episode, it seems more like they're a couple who maybe are just in a rut.

In her mind, she's putting things on hold to get to her ultimate dreams. To me she's someone who lives in her fantasy mind, through her magazines and things like that.

Do you think she's unhappy? She doesn't act that way, but there's a sense that she knows something more might be out there.

I don't know if she's happy. I just think that's the only way she knows how to be in that town and that environment. You just pick up your chin and keep going -- it's a facade, I think.

Is her stealing toilet paper from the salon part and parcel of all that?

I think that's just one example of things to come.... She's repressing things and it's coming out in this hoarding kind of way. But she's also a really bad liar. She has sociopathic tendencies.
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I

IronRinn

Member
Cornballer said:
- NY Times review
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So, tangentially related to the show: Has anyone else been struck by just how bad the NY Times' reviews for tv shows are? I mean, contrast this review, with it's flippant afterthought about Lou's "Off balance" monologue being "a bummer", with the AV Club which uses it, rightly, as part of a central thesis about the characters in the show, the era, and nostalgia. And it's not just here, they consistently put out the most the surface level, unincisive recaps/reviews.
 
K

kurahador

Member
Oh my god this season has been amazing!! And we're approaching halfway of the season, I'm anticipating some serious shit to go down next week.
 
Lactose_Intolerant

Lactose_Intolerant

Member
This is the best show on tv right now. Patrick Wilson's character can handle anything (besides maybe his wife's situation) because it basically doesn't compare to the shit he went through in Nam.

I would say it was the Knick but it hasn't quite found its footing yet and they keep adding tv stuff. Wife out of nowhere is back!
 
Grizzlyjin

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
The seminar that Peggy is so intent on going to reminds me of the Est Seminar that played a part in The Americans. And right now this is around the same time period, I wonder if that Est movement is where they're pulling inspiration in Fargo.

Lou is probably my favorite character this season, with Mike Milligan following closely behind.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
Noah Hawley Q&A on the NYT website:

- Noah Hawley on ‘Fargo,’ Comic Haircuts and Living in the Coen Universe
Q. At what point did you know the second season was going to be a prequel set in a different decade?

A. In the second hour I wrote this anecdote for Keith Carradine, who played Molly’s dad, for him to say, basically just as a former cop, “I think I’ve seen something like what you’re seeing right now, and my advice is don’t go down that road. Because you can’t really turn around once you’re down it.” But it wasn’t until later in the year, as I sat down to write the last two scripts, that I realized that if we were going to do another season, that I could start setting something up that would pay off in the second year. So I included more allusions in Episodes 9 and 10 to the massacre at Sioux Falls and set up a few story points we’d have to match.

Q. You’ve talked about how you see the film and the different seasons of the show as various chapters in a Midwest true crime book. Have you started to think about what other chapters would look like?

A. I’m starting to think about it. What I look for is a jumping-off point. In our first year that was two men in an emergency room — one of them has a broken nose and is a very civilized man and the other is the opposite. That feels like a premise you could imagine in a Coen movie and the questions become, who are these two guys? How did the guy’s nose get broken and what happens after they meet? The second year started with, a woman drives home with a man sticking out of her windshield and starts dinner for her husband. Who’s the woman and the husband? Who’s the man in the windshield how did he get there? And what happens after? That’s what I would be looking for in a third iteration. What’s the catalyst?
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- Daily Beast: How Cristin Milioti Met ‘Fargo’—And Left ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Behind
 
G

-griffy-

Banned
Grizzlyjin said:
The seminar that Peggy is so intent on going to reminds me of the Est Seminar that played a part in The Americans. And right now this is around the same time period, I wonder if that Est movement is where they're pulling inspiration in Fargo.
Click to expand...

There was actually a USA Today article about this very thing, as well as Mad Men where self help factored into the final episode. I think it's less that The Americans inspired Fargo, and more that they were both inspired by the same movements of that era.
 
S

Stoze

Member
So was that scene with Hanzee after he picks up the headlight glass outside the diner supposed to allude to him losing time via UFO? Or was he just big bossing it and using his phantom watch
 
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