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

W

wenis

Registered for GAF on September 11, 2001.
BenjaminBirdie said:
I hope showrunners don't pay attention to these overwhelmingly negative public responses to finales that payoff on characters and emotional beats instead of just more shooting. I know they get great critical write ups but when they see a Twitter wall of "Finale sucked" "last week was sicker" "nobody cares ted danson go back to cheers and stfu" I hope they don't actually take it to heart.
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The good ones don't.
 
B

BenjaminBirdie

Banned
foxtrot3d said:
No.

I'm not expecting another shoot out or some shocking death and those that think it's what the finale needed are wrong. That said, a finale should feel, for lack of a better term, organic. It shouldn't be this exposition heavy thing that goes step by step making sure every loose end is tied up and every thread is tied to the overall mythos. Rather, it should naturally conclude the arc of its story with its characters whilst reinforcing the themes that it has expressed throughout its story. This finale did not feel that way and instead was more focused on showing us a lot of stuff we already knew about.
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For example?

The core confrontations:

Peggy/Lou
Mike/Work
Solverson Fam

were filled with unexpected depth and were critical to the season's arc, and organically resolved those arcs.

Characters having emotional conversations isn't exposition. The only expositional sequence was maybe Hanzee's finale, but that was elevated by the setting which, even if they weren't Numbers and Wrench, would have still been an incredibly evocative sequence.
 
K

Ken K in the Fresh!!!

Member
Mixed feelings about the season finale, but overall, a phenomenal ride

Funny how some of u openly accept the existence of ufos in the show but not hanzee taking on a new identity haha
 
S

Spectral Glider

Member
Pretty good episode, especially loved the intro and the first half of the episode. But count me in the group that didn't like the Hanzee transformation idea. That's soap opera type stuff. Overall, really entertaining season. Haven't decided if I like it more than season 1 yet though.
 
F

foxtrot3d

Banned
BenjaminBirdie said:
For example?

The core confrontations:

Peggy/Lou
Mike/Work
Solverson Fam

were filled with unexpected depth and were critical to the season's arc, and organically resolved those arcs.

Characters having emotional conversations isn't exposition. The only expositional sequence was maybe Hanzee's finale, but that was elevated by the setting which, even if they weren't Numbers and Wrench, would have still been an incredibly evocative sequence.
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You're listing those parts that I have no problem with although the explanation of the Father-in-laws language stuff was a bit weird. Here's what doesn't work/isn't needed:

-Hanzee shenanigans + Mr. Wrench stuff
-Flashbacks to last week
-Flash forward sequence
-Overtly long Mike shenanigans in the Gearhardt house.
Etc.
 
K

Kid Kamikaze10

Member
foxtrot3d said:
You're listing those parts that I have no problem with although the explanation of the Father-in-laws language stuff was a bit weird. Here's what doesn't work/isn't needed:

-Overtly long Mike shenanigans in the Gearhardt house.
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I disagree with this. The Mike shenanigans really fed into the final punchline.
 
B

Baroquemantic

Member
Cornballer said:
- THR: Bokeem Woodbine on His Perfect 'Fargo' Role: "It Was Like I'd Written It for Myself"
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Don't think I've ever said it before, but I appreciate all the posts you (and some others) make in so many of these TV show threads. You're always linking reviews, interviews, and all sorts of interesting articles. Tons of good reading to be had. Thanks!

--

This Bokeem interview is really damn good. I'm so happy for the guy. I hope he's able to find a lot more success now. He's a damn good actor and his portrayal of Mike was top tier.

The analogy he used comparing himself to being the guy who throws the block, thus being a key facilitator of the touchdown, but usually forgotten or not talked about because all the focus and attention is on the player who actually scored, couldn't be more true. He and a lot of actors are just like that, but it's awesome to see them getting a role that helps propel them to greater recognition.
 
I

IronRinn

Member
Baroquemantic said:
Don't think I've ever said it before, but I appreciate all the posts you (and some others) make in so many of these TV show threads. You're always linking reviews, interviews, and all sorts of interesting articles. Tons of good reading to be had. Thanks!
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Another in a long line of fantastic threads. Cb is a true master.

Edit: Just finished that Woodbine interview. I really hope this guys gets some real meaty roles from this point on. He totally deserves it. Some stellar work on this series.
 
F

Fury451

Banned
Gozer the Gozerian said:
Everything else about them wrapping up his story seemed totally fine to me, but I don't understand how specifically making him that season 1 dude adds anything to his character and doesn't just act as a nonsensical contrivance to connect the seasons.
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Yep, couldn't agree more. It was wholly unnecessary as well as seeming vastly out of character for him to turn into that guy.
 
K

Kid Kamikaze10

Member
I'm cool with Hanzee's fate. He was raised into that life, but in the end, the only problem he saw was the lack of control.

Now the face changing stuff is a bit much, and numbers/wrench showing up, yeah, also a bit much.
 
B

BenjaminBirdie

Banned
foxtrot3d said:
You're listing those parts that I have no problem with although the explanation of the Father-in-laws language stuff was a bit weird. Here's what doesn't work/isn't needed:

-Hanzee shenanigans + Mr. Wrench stuff
-Flashbacks to last week
-Flash forward sequence
-Overtly long Mike shenanigans in the Gearhardt house.
Etc.
Click to expand...

- Already addressed how the texture of that sequence made it phenomenal
- What?
- Well, that was more of a "Stop Reshooting Old Coen Brothers Sequences, Noah" problem, but it was pretty important to connect the dots between Betsy's fear of losing a great future and the UFO appearance
- The Gerhardt sequence was essential in setting up the payoff for Mike's new office later

All of it was clearly part of the vision of the show, so I'd be hesitant to say "it didn't work". Maybe you just didn't like the show that the people who made the show wanted the show to be.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
BenjaminBirdie said:
;D
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Heh, you beat me to it. I agree with what's said in this essay and what you mentioned on Twitter earlier today.
NY Mag said:
In fact, I’ve become such a fan of the TV show that I wish it would abandon its source material entirely. The show has its own distinct aesthetic now — its own rhythms and concerns — much in the way that Tarantino has his own distinct aesthetic despite being crafted from a lifetime of absorbing countless B-movies and grindhouse films. I know there’s zero chance FX would ever change the name of one of its most critically acclaimed series mid-run, but wouldn’t you love to see an installment of Fargo set in, say, Miami Beach? Or the distant future? Now that we’ve seen what Noah Hawley can do with Fargo, I’d love to see what he’d do with an entirely blank page. (I guess we will soon enough, as he’s signed on for several new projects for FX.) Fargo the TV show has proved capable of the impossible, or at least the highly improbable: It’s become a worthy tribute to the iconic material that inspired it. But, like any successful offspring, it’s also developed its own distinct and intriguing personality. Which is why it’s time to finally set Fargo free.
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BB on Twitter said:
Fargo S2 was extraordinarily great, but I sincerely hope Hawley has gotten all of his direct Coen lifts out of his system... The show soars when its his unique vision and craters whenever he cuts and pastes your favorite Coen Hitz.
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I think the only times the show briefly stumbled for me this season were when they aped the Coen brothers a little too closely and a few of the too cute attempts to be clever. It's a difficult line to walk because the amount of careful viewing and analysis of television shows in the internet age means that everything gets scrutinized under a very fine microscope each week. It's hard to produce subtle nods and tie-ins to other content (Coen brothers films or S1) without everyone knowing what you're doing as soon as it happens since there's a lot of chatter online. It's similar to how difficult it is in this day and age to hint about upcoming plot twists and inversions because someone is going to figure it out and shout about it on the web. Difficult nut to crack, but hopefully Hawley trusts himself and his staff enough next season to do their own thing a little more confidently.
 
B

BenjaminBirdie

Banned
Cornballer said:
Heh, you beat me to it. I agree with what's said in this essay and what you mentioned on Twitter earlier today. I think the only times the show briefly stumbled for me this season were when they aped the Coen brothers a little too closely and a few of the too cute attempts to be clever. It's a difficult line to walk because the amount of careful viewing and analysis of television shows in the internet age means that everything gets scrutinized under a very fine microscope each week. It's hard to produce subtle nods and tie-ins to other content (Coen brothers films or S1) without everyone knowing what you're doing as soon as it happens since there's a lot of chatter online. It's similar to how difficult it is in this day and age to hint about upcoming plot twists and inversions because someone is going to figure it out and shout about it on the web. Difficult nut to crack, but hopefully Hawley trusts himself and his staff enough next season to do their own thing a little more confidently.
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Yup x1000.

Hawley is truly brilliant and visionary, and honestly, has a much different and more hopeful personal and spiritual philosophy than the Coens do. I can't wait to see him grow into his own and step out from under the shadow of the Coen ouvre.
 
B

BigDug13

Member
I think having shows like this spread out over 10 weeks is the true disservice. The show really needs to be binged like a super long movie. The finale fits better if it isn't sitting alone a week after the huge climax. Watching it immediately after the previous episode would have far more impact I think.
 
I

IronRinn

Member
The nods to other Coen Bros. movies never really bugged me, though it felt like there were way more this season than last. Honestly, I'm super excited to see what Hawley does apart from Fargo but just as excited to see Fargo continue on as it has.

NY Mag said:
I know there’s zero chance FX would ever change the name of one of its most critically acclaimed series mid-run, but wouldn’t you love to see an installment of Fargo set in, say, Miami Beach? Or the distant future?
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I mean, no, not really.
 
S

SneakersSO

Member
Absolutely fantastic ending. Loved every second of it. A few things didn't happen that I expected to see in the finale (In S1, Molly mentions that Lou had also been shot, something which I expected we see happen in S2.). I'm glad that the show basically didn't feel obligated to show us the things that we already know would happen, which has always been one of my bigger complaints with prequels in general.

We know the content of S1 and its characters. We know that Hank passes away, and that Molly's mom succumbs to her illness. But the show didn't feel the need to take time to show us those events, as if they somehow change anything. I really enjoyed that aspect of this season's execution.

To me, Fargo has easily become my 'must-watch' drama on TV, a void I dreaded would take years to fill once Breaking Bad finished airing. I'm also glad that there wasn't a 'set-up' scene for the potential next season, at least none that is immediately noticeable. Fargo seasons, to me, work best as self-contained stories. Makes them so much easier to recommend.
 
E

excelsiorlef

Member
foxtrot3d said:
You're listing those parts that I have no problem with although the explanation of the Father-in-laws language stuff was a bit weird. Here's what doesn't work/isn't needed:

-Hanzee shenanigans + Mr. Wrench stuff
-Flashbacks to last week
-Flash forward sequence
-Overtly long Mike shenanigans in the Gearhardt house.
Etc.
Click to expand...


The language stuff as beautiful.
 
I

Intheflorsh

Banned
Yeah, definitely a flat ending. It suffered the same fate as last season, they were able to build to an incredible climax but seemingly had no idea where to go from there. At least last season tied up its loose ends without resorting to nonsense like the Hanzee/Tripoli transformation.

It was still a great season up to this point, but I think I'll remember the first season more fondly.
 
Moff

Moff

Member
first and only underwhelming episode of the season.
not even because of the forced connections to season 1, but because it was too much closure, and nothing really exciting or interesting
 
B

BenjaminBirdie

Banned
Intheflorsh said:
Yeah, definitely a flat ending. It suffered the same fate as last season, they were able to build to an incredible climax but seemingly had no idea where to go from there. At least last season tied up its loose ends without resorting to nonsense like the Hanzee/Tripoli transformation.

It was still a great season up to this point, but I think I'll remember the first season more fondly.
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I just can't see how perfectly and organically paying off every emotional development and arc in the season constitutes an execution that "had no idea where to go from there".
 
B

BertramCooper

Banned
Not sure why people are surprised by a low-key finale.

Lots of shows take this route - having the penultimate episode serve as the climax, with the season finale serving as the denouement - and I think it was a very smart move in this case.

The show is an anthology and doesn't have the luxury of wrapping anything up in the next season. So overstuffing the finale would be a really bad idea.
 
C

Creamium

shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
I really should've rewatched s1 before s2, because that Moses Tripoli thing flew right by me, thank god there's this thread. I hardly even remember that character.

Loved the finale, felt very fitting. I always expected it to be a long epilogue, after the madness of ep9. Definitely one of my overall favorite tv seasons.
 
I

Intheflorsh

Banned
BenjaminBirdie said:
I just can't see how perfectly and organically paying off every emotional development and arc in the season constitutes an execution that "had no idea where to go from there".
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What can I say, I just don't agree that everything was wrapped up "perfectly and organically". The Hanzee/Tripoli transformation is last thing I would call "organic", it feels like a very forced way to connect the dots between seasons and neither the character of Hanzee (who already had confusing motivations) or the show itself benefited from it.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
Fienberg said:
On a conference call with Noah Hawley, who says we probably won’t get a new “Fargo” season until Spring 2017.

“Fargo” S1 premiered April 2014. “Fargo” S2 premiered October 2015. So a Spring 2017 premiere for S3 isn’t shocking.
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Warming Glow said:
-Season three won’t premiere until Spring 2017. Said Hawley: “You won’t see it in 2016. It’s a winter show, and we don’t have the time to film this winter.” Production will likely start in November of next year to catch the patented snow-y feel, hence the pushed back start date.
- Season three will be set in 2010.
- Hawley has the first hour written already, and they’re working right now on the basic beats for the rest of the season.
- Even though the new season will only take place a few years after the first, viewers shouldn’t expect to see much (if any) of the season one characters.
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.
 
H

Hatchtag

Banned
Makes sense, though I will say Fargo seems much more fitting when it airs in the winter than it does when it airs from April-June.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- NY Mag with a few more details from the Hawley conference call:
The third season will move forward to 2010 and deal with our “selfie-oriented culture.”

“It’s a more contemporary story, and I think that’s exciting. Our first year was set in 2006, but we didn’t really deal with what it was like to be in that region in a more contemporary world. I like the idea that we’re now living in a very selfie-oriented culture where people photograph what they’re eating and put it up for other people to see. It feels like a social dynamic that is very antithetical to the Lutheran pragmatism of the region. So many of our crime stories are based on the difficulty that people have expressing themselves and communicating. In a lot of ways, the tragedies that are at the heart of these crimes could all be averted if Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) could have asked his father-in-law for the money or if Lester (Martin Freeman) could have been honest about who he was, or Peggy (Kirsten Dunst) as well. I like the idea of setting up these pragmatic and humble people against the culture of narcissism and [seeing] what that generates for us, story-wise.”

The main characters from season one will not be in the third season.

“None of the main characters from our first year will be back for our third year. The risk we take, obviously, is that we say at the beginning it’s a true story. It’s what Joel and Ethan Coen did in the movie, and what made the movie so powerful and poignant is that it ended. The danger of bringing them back and putting them through their paces for another crazy case [is] the artifice of the whole thing becomes too clear. That’s not to say one of our stories might not intersect with characters we’ve seen before for a certain period of time."

In the first season, Lou Solverson (Keith Carradine) told his daughter about the 1979 Sioux Falls massacre, which became the story line for the second season. The writers did not plant clues for the story of the third season in season two.

“We didn’t really tee up the story of season three within the body of season two. That said, it’s very exciting to now think once more, what else can you do with Fargo? What other kind of movie can it be? It proved in its first year it could be a similar but different story to the actual film. And in the second year, it proved that it could be a much larger epic that somehow managed to turn 1979 into a crime story. And then in the third year, the question becomes, structurally and stylistically, what’s left to say, what do we do that feels similar but is different so we’re not repeating ourselves? That said, we’re always looking for connections and things that fit into the larger body of work that we’re building. “
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EDIT:

- THR:
On the survival of Hanzee and Mike Milligan: For Hawley, it comes down to, "What does victory look like, really? Without getting political, because that's not my goal, but what does one have to sacrifice to join the establishment, on some level? Hanzee went off and started his own, which gave him the most sense of autonomy and agency and ownership over his destiny. And Mike Milligan, he was part of this corporate hierarchy and the only way that he was ever going to rise through the ranks was to get rid of his Western wear and cut his hair and learn to play golf, in other words to really surrender his identity on every level, to become just another traveling salesman, on a level."
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- Variety
“The reality is you won’t see it in 2016,” Hawley said. “It’s a winter show for better or worse. There is not time to shoot another year before this winter is over.”

Hawley also wants to ensure as much of the third season is written before shooting begins. “It’s also very important to me and the other producers that we separate the writing from production. We take our time and break the whole story, write eight of the 10 hours at least and we end up knowing exactly what we’re doing and exactly what the whole story is. We’re going through the writing process now. I’ve written the first hour, we’re about halfway through breaking the season. We’ll be writing over the next few months with the idea we’ll go into production, much like our first year, in November and be back on the air in spring of 2017.”

Despite the show’s success, FX has shown patience with the unique demands of its anthology format. There was a year and a half gap between the premieres of Season 1 and 2. “One of the great joys of working with FX is the idea that we’re making these 10 hour movies and there’s going to be some kind of event quality to them,” Hawley said. “We can take our time and get them right and put them on the air, whether that’s 12 months or 15 months or 18 months after the last one. I think that really makes it an event. I think the minute you’re hitting the same airdate every year you’re just making a television show.”
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F

foxtrot3d

Banned
Kid Kamikaze10 said:
I disagree with this. The Mike shenanigans really fed into the final punchline.
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I'm not saying they needed to be cut but they went on too long, the ultimate point is that Mike believes that he is going to get a King's parade when he returns to Kansas City, moving up the criminal underworld ladder. Of course, he soon learns that the criminal underground of management looks eerily similar to the regular corporate America world he has fought to not be a part of his whole life, to be just another cog in the machine.

Having him go around the Gearhardt house quoting and saying odd things was way too self-indulgent and was the only time I felt they made his character too cartoonish.
 
B

BossDarkseid

Member
I like the Hawley seems to think along the lines of if they can't think of a valid idea for what Fargo could be, they might not churn out another season for the sake of it. I mean i'm inferring, obviously, but I get the feeling he takes too much pride in his work to cash in.
 
G

Gozer the Gozerian

Member
I think the Hanzee/Tripoli thing is by far the stupidest thing in this show so far and really ended the season on a total sour note for me.

BUT that being said by god was that scene in the freezer when Peggy's delusions fell apart amazing. That moment when she breaks down really hit me hard.
 
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