“Storia Americana” is the shortest episode of Fargo’s fourth season. More than that, it’s unusually short, with the screener (including credits) topping out at a scant 39 minutes. Watching it, it becomes eminently clear why. Despite season four’s large and sprawling ensemble, despite the seemingly endless collection of subplots and side missions, when it comes time to close the shop and head for home, Fargo seems to have run out of things to say. Of it’s less-than-40-minutes, “Americana” finds time for a montage of the season’s casualties, and several long, slow scenes full of swelling music of people looking at things. The plot is wrapped up, more or less, and most of the conclusions are definitive. One or two of them is even unexpected. But very little in this finale is surprising or edifying. It might clear the bar on “satisfying,” if all you really wanted were a few more corpses.
I expected Josto would end up in a ditch before the end. Points to the show: I did not expect that Loy telling Ebal about who really killed Donatello Fadda would lead to Ebal pinning the crime on Josto himself. Once again, Fargo has a point to make about organized crime becoming a business, one where family loyalty is less important than meeting the margins. Which is fine, and there’s some drama in seeing Josto’s hot-tempered irritation finally running into a brick wall he can’t power through. Schwartzman gave one of the season’s better performances, and he goes all out here, showing first Josto’s post-Gaetano decline (he gets real drunk, then murders the hell out of his former potential father-in-law and Doctor Harvard), and then the light gradually dawning on him when he realizes he’s screwed.
It’s just, did we need a season to get to this point? Josto was obviously unstable and ill-equipped for leadership from the first episode. Stretching his fate out over 11 episodes didn’t clarify his situation or edify our understanding of him. Putting a character usually relegated to side-kick or secondary status in the center of his own tragic arc has some novelty, and I thought his exit (an annoyed “What?” to Oraetta right before he’s shot in the head) was appropriately sudden and funny. But knowing how much time we spent watching him be in over his head, only to see him finally be in over his head, feels way too pat and easy.
And god, his death takes forever. Not the actual shooting, which is over in a second, but the initial scene where Ebal confronts him with Oraettsa’s confession feels endless; there’s some power in the awkward, squirming discomfort of it, as it’s clear from the moment Josto walks out to see Ebal surrounded by his men what’s going to happen, and the longer that drags on, the harder it gets to watch. But at a certain point, the drag feels less like a way to build tension or to show Josto for what he really is, and more just a way of getting the most out of one of the episode’s handful of sequences that’s not a montage. Once you start wanting them to just shoot the guy so you can move on, the drama is lost.
As for Oraetta getting hers, well, I guess it had to happen, and the fact that she was closer to Josto than any other character means there’s some justice in them going out at the same time. But despite Jessie Buckley’s best efforts, I don’t think Miss Mayflower was anything more than a sum of her twitchy, overwritten parts. She was never a force to be reckoned with like previous wildcards on the show, and she never expressed a coherent enough perspective on events to be compelling as anything more than an oddity. It’s fun having a character like this around, because they have a tendency to throw off carefully made plans, but in the end, Oraetta was just a sad disturbed woman who got away with murdering people for a while, and then one day, stopping getting away with it. The fact that she would’ve ended up in jail thanks to the stupid misstep with Doctor Harvard just makes her seem too inept to really be scared of; and if she’s not scary, and if she’s not tragic or really funny, well, why introduce her in the first place?
I mentioned last week how happy I was seeing Ethelrida in the mix. I probably should’ve watched this episode before I said it. After bringing Loy her plan in the previous episode, Ethelrida is once again back on the sidelines here. We see Lemuel and the others carrying Loy’s property out of the Smutny home, showing that Loy, at least, is as good as his word. Near the end of the season, we see her reading paper she wrote to her parents, before cutting to show her sitting in a room somewhere with a pair of suitcases; the implication being, I guess, that Ethelrida is going places. Which is lovely. It just would’ve been nice if she’d been more of a walk on here. I’m not even sure she has a character arc—she’s smart and resourceful in the beginning, then she solves the case of the Murder Nurse, and finds a way to pay off her family’s financial obligations to Loy’s mob. She didn’t learn anything because she already mostly knew it; maybe we saw so little of her because she was too good at her job for a show about fuck-ups.
As for Loy, he sort of gets what he wants before losing it forever. I wondered how that ring was going to solve everyone’s problems; somehow Ethelrida and Loy knew that giving Oraetta’s identity over to Ebal and the people he represented would be the end of the gang war, and what’s more or less what happens. Did Loy know that Josto and Oraetta were hooking up? I didn’t think so, but that would’ve made this make a lot more sense. As is, it’s as if the characters read the finale script before we did, and made their decisions accordingly.
So, Ebal takes over the Fadda organization, making some “minor” adjustments to the deal with Loy that ends with Loy losing about half of what he thought he owned. Like Josto getting kicked out in favor of a more organized version of organized crime, this twist isn’t much of a twist; it’s odd Loy is even surprised about it. If the season had spent more time letting us get to know Loy and his family, if there had been more of an effort made to underline the challenges facing a Black mob in the ’50s (and just Black life in general), there could’ve been some sting to this, but as is, it’s a shrug.
It was lovely to see Satchel and his family reunited, and there was some painful dramatic irony in Satchel having to see his actual father die so soon on the heels of losing his surrogate father. But Loy’s fate didn’t have much pathos in it. Zelmare was so clearly a Chekov’s gun figure that even though I’d briefly forgotten about her, I wasn’t surprised to see her show up at the end; and given that, as far as we know, Loy absolutely ordered Odis to shoot her and Swanee both, it’s hard to feel that sad for him. He didn’t get screwed over by fate. He made ruthless choices, and he paid for them.
This is all very pretty to watch, and the soundtrack is impeccable, but it’s not much more besides that. While several characters made bold statements about America (Josto’s “This is a ladder. But there’s nowhere to go.” was pretty good), there was never any sense that this season was actually saying anything more than the obvious. Hell, even the final post-credits sequence, which brings Bokeem Woodbine back for a brief cameo, just serves to tell us something we already knew. In a better season, that would’ve been a fine grace note, a brief nod towards the future. Here, it just feels like yet another redundancy. I’d wondered if Fargo was done after its third season, and I’d hoped the messiness of that season was going to lead into something new. But season four was just reheated leftovers at best, and nothing at all at worse.
Stray observations
- Oh hey, remember the Roach? No sign of him this week. What was the point of that? And why did he save Ethelrida from Oraetta?
- They spent a lot of time reinforcing the importance of the exchange of sons between crime families; Satchel’s story was one of the better ones of the season, but the exchange itself always played more like the idea of something thematically weighty and the actual thing itself. A lot of that going around, unfortunately.
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It was nice to see Bokeem, but I kinda wish they hadn’t spelled it out so explicitly.
They waited until into the credits to drop that shoe. I’m okay with it.
They kind of had to because they had Satchel return home, for some reason, which… why? Hell, you could even have him arrive home, see his father dying on the doorstep, and have him leave again because he deems it not safe. The whole name-change situation now just gets confusing.
The name change situation isn’t confusing if you consider that the Cannons lost their grip on KC and Satchel wants to reinvent himself. He also doesn’t know who the lady is who killed his dad, so he might want to change the family name to throw off his father’s enemies.
I kinda wish they hadn’t spelled it out so explicitly.Or at all. We just find out the endlessly fascinating Mike Milligan was actually a pretty boring kid who took a long walk once. It’s Anakin Skywalker all over again.
But like Anakin, his mentor was the best part of the story.
In the “Fixing Fargo Season 4″ fanfic that I’ve already started to outline, Mike Milligan kills Roulette in the flash forward and that’s how the ghost starts showing up in his life (as Redditors pointed out).
Oh hey, remember the Roach? No sign of him this week. What was the point of that? And why did he save Ethelrida from Oraetta?
Correction: He actually did make a brief appearance. If you look closely in the scene right before Oraetta’s death, she’s looking at her reflection in the car. Just over her reflection’s shoulder is the Roach. Why? I have no fucking clue. He was the Smutney’s curse but I guess he just wanted to go along for the ride this time
I’m surprised he didn’t show up on the window Loy was looking through.
Ooo, that would have made the most sense.
Nice catch. There’s always some astute eyes here that catch things like this. Similar to the newspaper clipping in the black and white episode that explained what happened to Rabbi and Calamita after the tornado.
Maybe he jumped over to her since she had even more death associated with her and she had a more active role in creating it.
Maybe he was pissed she was just killing white people.
The fact that he was at the execution proves that they’re using his occasional appearance as simply a specter of death, Not just a curse to the Smutny family.
I think maybe Ethelrida taking the curse with her to a place of far worse people inflicting misery and death on others may have “transferred the curse.” She introduced it to the chaotic violence of Swanee and Zelmare; the organized and regimented violence of Loy, and the psychopathic violence of Oraetta. Perhaps Roach thinks to itself, “Hmm…maybe haunting a family whos ancestor killed to escape bondage isn’t as warranted as it would be for all these fuckers.”
AH! You’re right! I took that shot to mean that Oreatta was getting jazzed that she could look into her OWN face as she was murdered. Very exciting for her. I guess she takes the Roach curse with her into the afterlife? Roach was just waiting to make amends to the family by saving one of them?
Naw…
Very laconic.
That was my take on Roach. He wasn’t haunting the Smutnys (or rather, Ethelrida’s family line); his curse was to protect them. I’m not sure why Ethelrida saw him in the hall or Zelmare in the bathroom, but other than those scenes, he showed up when one of them was in danger.
That was it? Wow that was a whole lot of nothing. Just like this whole season. It’s amazing that 11 episodes passed and it feels like nothing happened in them. It felt like they were just killing time until the end and when they got to the end it was just a bunch of clean up to make it align with later seasons. Like at the start during the first 10 minutes I thought to myself “Wow this is just a pointless side character mop up isn’t it?” And then we just went through the motions of offing Loy, Josto, and Orietta.
I didn’t hate this season, in spite of all the nothing I can’t say there was really anything bad about this season (Except for Gaetano, he can rest is piss) but there wasn’t really anything all that memorable either. I’ll remember Doctor Senator, Rabbi Milligan, Deafy and that’s probably it.
Nice to see Bokeem Woodbine again, and whichever twin that was, the one who lived. Memories of better seasons I guess.
This season had a ton of great character names I’ll give it that. Hawley clearly had fun with the names.
Like at the start during the first 10 minutes I thought to myself “Wow
this is just a pointless side character mop up isn’t it?”
It’s such a weird choice to introduce Happy so late and then take him out that quickly. How much total season screen time did he get? Like 5 minutes? He added nothing. Nothing. It would have made more sense if Leon was out on his own trying to cut a deal than the way it played out
Even then it’s not like Leon was much more of a character.
“I didn’t hate this season” is how I feel as well, and it’s the nicest thing I can probably say about it.
The nicest thing I can say about it is I did hate it.
It was a disaster and a waste, and I kept thinking what a better season it would’ve been if they’d based it on the Bobby Greenlease kidnapping, which occurred in KC right around the same time, and is the sort of story that, if it weren’t true, could’ve easily been written by the Coen Brothers. You could’ve taken that story, run with it and spun it into something really weird and wild, and have just enough truth in it to really have fun with that silly “Based on a true story” title card the show uses, but by now has lost all meaning.
I think the thing about this season that disappointed me most was the generic setting. It didn’t look like Kansas City, which, fine, most shows outside of NYC, LA, Miami and Chicago don’t have much sense of the place they claim to be set in and usually aren’t filmed there anyway. But I didn’t get the sense this was a world anyone lived in at all. It was just dreary and so absent of spark and life if it turned out the twist was everyone was dead the whole time and s4 was actually set in Fargo Limbo I’d say “job well done.”Basically, I didn’t care if characters died because what’s there to even live for in the world this season presented?
Why was this an episode? It was so short and so little happened that had any real impact that they could have just made episode 10 twenty or so minutes longer and nothing would have been missed.I’d give this episode and the season overall a B-. It’s clearly the worst of the Fargo seasons, but Fargo sets a pretty high bar. This was still decently entertaining television, but it could have been so much more. This season had waaaaay too many characters and it didn’t really seem to have an idea of what to do or what to say with them. Each one was sort of a loose representation of an idea or motif that was barely stitched together to the others around it. You want it to say more or do something more, but at the end, this season was just a basic mob story with some quirky characters.(Also, I did appreciate the oranges signify death easter egg in Loy’s death. A little cliche at this point but I still like it nonetheless)
I liked this season a lot and even I will say, that’s it? 39 minutes? This has to be because of COVID right? The last shot was B roll footage of season 2. Not even explaining why he goes by Mike? I will say Joe Bulo got the best line with laughing off Jostos hasn’t there been enough violence line. Overall I liked the season more then 3 but not 1 or 2. The season to me peaked with East and West, Rabbi was probably the best character this season.
The last four episodes were filmed after the Covid shutdown.
Really? I definitely felt the effects on this episode but the last four? That’s genuinely surprising.
I think that says more that Covid wasn’t the problem.
Covid episodes cost 5x as much to film so yes they were def more sparse due to the shutdown
I am also guessing they may have forced some substantial rewrites due to difficulties with booking actors, crew and locations for what was originally planned.
Not the last four. Half of ep 10 and ep 11. Chris Rock said it in the NYT interview.
This is my feelings exactly!
The reports said it was the last two, where did you see four?
I’ve checked and I keep seeing two not four. Would make sense, social distancing wasn’t happening in East and West like the dinner scene. But everyone was weirdly apart in this last episode.
They had to add the silencer to Loy’s attempted assassination to keep them six feet apart.
(joke falls flat when someone points out the garroting in the same scene)
I’m actually more of the opinion that this wasn’t a short 11th episode, it was a long coda to the 10th episode that they had to air separately. It basically felt like a series of epilogues, The Return of the King style.
So, seasons? For me it’s 2>1>>>>>3>4. 2 by a smidge over 1 and 3 by a smidge over 4. A wide gap between the first two and the second two, though.
A lot of people really seem down on 3. I liked it more than most* apparently so I wouldn’t have the gap. But the order is certainly correct.*My Mary Elizabeth Winstead bias may have something to do with this
I personally didn’t like it as much as the first two seasons and it had some very rough points but I liked season 3 well enough. And it was far better then this season.
Yeah, I would definitely add more >>> between 3 and 4 in AimingforYoko’s ranking.
Winstead is a highlight in anything. Have you seen the film Faults?
Nah. It sounds pretty good reading over the summary. I’ll check it out some time, thanks!
She was great in that, but I didn’t really like the movie all that much storywise. Her best performance in a great movie, for me, was in ‘Smashed’, where she plays a woman caught in an alcoholic relationship with Aaron Paul – who’s also fantastic in it. She also makes nice music with Dan the Automator, under the ‘Got a Girl’ moniker – so she’s clearly one of the best underused performers around nowadays. The only reason I watched Birds of Prey was because she was in it, but her character was really underdeveloped.
Faults is so great!
All About Nina is the most underrated performance of the past decade.
Thanks for reminding me to watch that.
I was a fan of season 3 as well; for both Carrie Coon’s and MEW’s performances. Gloria’s “Oookay then” after they’ve cleaned up the crime scene between Nikki and the police officer in the finale is probably my favorite Fargo “Okay then.”
Carrie Coon was excellent in Season 2 of The Sinner.
Carrie Coon has quietly done a lot superb work in the last few years.
Same on both counts. I could watch that woman do pretty much anything. Also, obviously Carrie Coon rules and I liked David Thewlis a lot as well. This season didn’t really have any performances that lived up to the high standard prior years had set. They were mostly just…fine.
I’m with you on this. I loved season 3. And, yes, my Mary Elizabeth Winstead bias almost certainly has a lot to do with this.
Officer Mac ordering two beers—for himself—-makes Season 3 a winner.
David Thewlis was mesmerizing. Season 3 was better than people remember.
MEW and EW breaking up their respective marriages to hook up is a major black mark against S3, combined with the fact that the only really interesting bit was the one-off episode with Carrie Coon’s character going to LA and finding out about her dad’s secret life as a respected sci-fi writer.
3 possibly hangs together the best thematically, especially on a rewatch. I guess that’s hot take but I’d have it over 1 and not all that far behind 2 (which was just the most fun and had the best set of actors/characters, by far). 4 is naturally dead last
I’m going to agree with you, though I’m also biased due to my massive crush on Ms. Winstead and Mr. McGregor.
Yeah, for me, the only thing that saves season 3 is Carrie Coon, Winstead, and the woman who played the other lady cop. David Thewlis almost ruined all that single-handedly. Michael Stuhlbargh was pretty good though.
My Mary Elizabeth Winstead bias may have something to do with thisShe definitely plays a big role in my own refusal to call season 3 an inferior season. We must be honest with ourselves.
Season 3 was great. Yeah it took about half a season for the ingredients to start cooking together, but it was worth the wait.Season 3 is, I find, a metaphor for what overtook this country in 2016, how rejection of reality had its day but was finally beaten (?) because some people refuse to give in.
I’ve got the same order, but different gaps. More like 2 >> 1 >>> 3 >>>> 4.I’ll always appreciate that Hawley was able to adapt a flawless film for TV and pay tribute to it (and the rest of the Coens’ oeuvre) while making the show its own thing, but it does feel like it’s run its course at this point.
I’d probably rank them as 1>>2>>>4>>3. There wasn’t much I loved about the current season, but there was still a fair amount I liked, and nothing I hated as much as season 3’s Varga, whom I found both extremely unpleasant and totally incoherent as a character.
So 4 is really that bad? I haven’t started it yet, but if it’s even less good than 3 that makes me wary of even starting it.
I personally liked 4 a lot more than 3. I liked the characters better and cared more about what happened, although not much really happened. So it depends what you’re looking for in a season, I guess. If you’re looking for a clever plot, 4 won’t help you much. But I still found it more enjoyable and interesting than 3 for some reason.
Season 4, imho, would benefit greatly from watching it in a binge & with as little commercial interruption as possible.
It’s not bad but it’s just this loose collection of characters that don’t really get tied together with any kind of coherent plot
I didn’t think it was bad. I liked it better than 3. But it’s a little too straightforward of a mob story for the Fargo brand. The ninth episode has a scene that I believe is the first that I rewound immediately since the Malvo’s raid in season one.
It just depends. My husband loved it. I thought it was watchable but certainly not as riveting as the first 2 seasons.
I agree with this order, except maybe lower the gap between 1 and 3, and widen the one between 3 and 4 a bit. At first I was meh about S3, but I did a 2nd rewatch and found myself enjoying it more. It’s nowhere near as great as the first 2 seasons, but it was better the 2nd time around
S4 was fine, but just more forgettable besides the names of people, which are at the very least pretty unique
Season 3 is pretty great on a rewatch.
Mine is still 1, 2, 3. 1 and 2 were both really well done, and 3 was unique and had the right cast for me to love it.4 though, jesus… I didn’t love the casting, the plot is boring and overdrawn, and it has almost nothing to say. I feel like it was a season filled with a million little distractions that might have been interesting if they were ever developed, but instead we just move on to the next strange thing.Highlights of 4:-Chris Rock’s performance. I knew this was going to be the biggest hurdle for me, but I feel like he did a really good job of holding the character (even though I think Loy was a little one dimensional and had some questionable motivations and decisions), and never felt like I was getting Chris Rock more than Loy Cannon.-Oreatta’s performance. I don’t think I’ve ever loathed a nurse as much as her. My only regret is that she ended up being pointless in the end, and that she didn’t eat her own cookies to avoid being caught.-Ethelrida. Easily my favorite character, and while she has no arc (as mentioned in the article), she was the most interesting and compelling character simply because she wasn’t inept like everyone around her. Looking forward to seeing E’myri Crutchfield in the future!-Gaetano. Who would have thought that a homicidal maniac with PTSD would end up being the comic relief this season? His antics within the mob were great, the dustup with Loy, the about-face as soon as he’s returned home (seriously, I had to pause and laugh at him vowing loyalty to Josto because he’s a ‘snake’)… and of course the gag of a death.
Ethelrita was DULL DULL DULL!
It might be a reaction to all the antipathy to 3 but I’d go:3>2>>1>4. 4 had a lot of pluses. 3 wins it all because there were more ideas that I still think on. I don’t know that 2 or 1 affected me much even though they were beautiful to look at.
2 > 1 >>>>> 4 >> 3. I’m pretty close to where you are on the gaps, but I do think S4 edges out S3 thanks to the tornado episode. I also liked more of the cast (Doctor Senator, Milligan, Josto, etc) compared to liking and even remembering only maybe two characters in the third season.
My thoughts exactly. It’s honestly hard to believe that the same writer/creative team was behind both seasons 2 and 4, they seem like they’re from different universes in terms of quality.
For me, it’s 1=2 >>>> 3 >> 4I get that some people love Season 2 more than Season 1 and vice versa. Those two first seasons represents Fargo at its creative height that have yet to be topped. I also loved the 3rd season, though agree with some of its criticism that its story and pacing and development aren’t as strong. The themes and performance and one of greatest villain in VM Vargas from that season more than make up for its deficiencies.Season 4, for all of its clever ideas, represent the series at its creative worst, unfortunately. Its neither incredible nor mediocre, just solid television that should have been better with its premises. The main problem (as I said often) is that there’s just way too many characters bogging down the plot and pacing that would have otherwise allow the story to evolve and grow, much like previous three seasons did. Its such a shame that a lot of actors clearly brought their A-games to their craft, despite their efforts being unable to save the script (aside from unfortunate miscast for Loy Cannon and Gaetano, the actors didn’t feel like they brought the right demeanor nor pathos to their characters).At least I am happy that the story still found a nice way to end on Loy Cannon losing out to Fadda Mafia Business, some karmic retributions doling out nicely and appropriately, and Satchel finally confirmed to be Mike Milligan, seeing him riding with the Kitchen Brothers and remembering how he came to be.If there’ll ever be Season 5, Noah Hawley seriously need to consider bringing in extra staff of writers to help and develop the scripts because despite some good in Season 4, this would have to rank among his weakest effort since Season 2 of Legion (another show I loved, S1 & 3 are just oh so good, 2 is very much not quite so…).
Agreed. For me, I enjoyed 4 more than 3, but it’s a difference in inches. Seasons 3 and 4 each have the same problem, now confirmed as Season 4 is over; they each had self-important slow builds that result in nothing important at all. I just had a little bit more fun with Season 4’s characters than 3.
My whole problem with Season 4 is it doesn’t have any “Fargo” flavor in it. It was just a show about a gang war. It didn’t have that much dark comedy, no midwest wholesomeness (sincere or not), no major role for police detectives, nobody really bumbling their way into levels of crime way over their head. I might have liked it better had it not been called “Fargo” and set up all those expectations, but then I probably wouldn’t have watched it either because I don’t care for that kind of story.It would have been a lot better if we had followed Deafy through the series like any of the other police characters in the other seasons. As it is, I wouldn’t rank this season of Fargo anywhere, because it’s not really a season of Fargo. It’s just too different. I feel like I got tricked into watching a Scorsese movie that Wes Anderson took over halfway through production, and it just doesn’t work for me. (Note: I don’t care for Scorsese movies.)And FYI, Fargo S1 is one of my favorite ever seasons of television.
I will echo others when I say it was a fine season but nothing to write home about. Especially for a finale, you kind of hope for something, anything, memorable or different. Would have liked for either Oraetta or Ethelrida to have a bigger storyline. Felt like it was kind of building for one of them to have a moment. Thank you Mr. Handlen for providing your insight in these recaps. Looking forward to next season
I felt like Oraetta’s story worked well, and I think her relative calmness at the end reflected the fact that she knew the gig was up no matter what.Ethelrida’s story felt too choppy, though.
For just a second there, while Josto and Orietta were fighting, I thought they might use it as a ruse to overpower the goons and hit the road together. It would’ve felt like kind of a copout, but I think I’d have been OK with it.I bit my lip when Josto got it. I could taste blood. I knew it was coming, but not so suddenly.
I had the same thought. If either of them had thought to grab Joe’s gun during that scene things might have played out much differently.
“Can you kill him first so I can watch?” Whatever else can be said of this season, that was a fantastic character with a fantastic final line.
Im not fully sure they ever used her well but she and Rabbi were the best characters by far. Rabbi complaining about its not right to let a man wait like that was probably my favorite quote all season.
One hundred percent. Rabbi was a great character. Only ten minutes ago did I discover that actor was the new “Q” for the Bond films. I could have watched a season just with him and Satchel doing a take on Costner’s Perfect World.
East and West was the first time in the whole series where if you told me Joel and Ethen wrote it and Roger Deacons shot it, I’d believe it. A man arguing with an unfinished billboard and then later arguing that the message is shit before a philosophical conversation about how the future is now, all while in black and white and proceeded by a Bertram Russell quote, is so Coen Brothers like it hurts.
It may have been my favorite single episode of the whole series.
Top five of the series for me. Up there with Palindrome from season 2, Law of Constant Motion from season 3, and both the pilot and Baredins Ass from season 1.
She easily had the best lines this season.
The season could have ended with the Smutneys smirking their asses off as they prepared Loy’s body for his funeral…welp, I guess showing Mike Milligan was okay but we all figured out that he was, once upon a time, Satchel Cannon, way back in episode 1.I’m also guessing that the final season (if there is another one and I’d figure that would be the last) would be set in more recent times, featuring an elderly, but still boss Ethelrida (in a perfect world, being portrayed by Angela Bassett) and us finding out the thing with The Gentleman Roach
I don’t know if this congealed as well as the other seasons yet, but I’ll say the weird antipathy for the third season (the best, by my vantage) makes me wonder if we’re missing some larger thematic aspects to this season. I can’t tell if Ethelrida’s presentation has a layer of depth that is more profound than we’re seeing in our discussion, but I suspect it may.
It’s amazing how much you scrutinize a show that actually attempts something more than predictable storylines but let pass some of the most blase fair. I guess you’d all rather watch Riverdale.
Was hoping the Milligan flash forward would be him reminiscing in his office right as Malvo slaughters everyone
Yeah, this was by far the worst season. It had nothing to say nor any justification to exist, with too many side characters and none of them having an interesting story to tell. If they would have quit after Season 2, Fargo would have gone down as a stone cold classic of TV. A shame.
It’s increasingly being a bad trend for Noah Hawley. I’d rank Legion as one of my favourite shows ever if it wasn’t for seasons 2 and 3 dragging the whole thing down. At least with Fargo we can mostly just take the first two seasons as a nice standalone story.
Legion was great until they decided that the lead was going to be the villain, the villain was actually going to be an anti-hero, and the ending was going to render the entire series pointless.Season 1 was phenomenal though.
Legion IS a villain though. And the chief problem with the TV show is that they didn’t have the rights to the X-Men, Lorna Dane, Magneto, and the New Mutants to do a proper version of his story, so they made shit up then decided to have him be evil ala the comics without the necessary foils.
Charles leaving the Shadow King just like ‘sure go do what you wanna do’ was really out of character though.I love the first two seasons but the third one just fell right off a cliff.
I’d love to know why they decided to wade into the plotline of making David a friendly mind rapist, because good lord, that was a catastrophically bad idea and it was something the series never came back from.
This. There is ‘the problematic protagonist becomes an antagonist’ and then there’s ‘the manchild with mental health issues who has been the focus of the show is actually an unrepentant rapist as he starts his descent into petulant evil’.
Unrepetant? I mean, I’m not defending his actions, but you have to acknowledge that the entire last season is literally all about undoing his past actions through time travel shenanigans so that an alternate version of him will make better choices…To say that it was all pointless, as you did in a prior reply, suggests that you’re taking it all as if it’s a, “it was all a dream” style ending, when I don’t think that’s the most meaningful way of interpreting the ending of that show.
Definitely not an ‘it was all a dream’ ending; but it was a dark ending (imo) because the third season wasn’t about undoing his past actions, it was about completely circumventing accountability. It was a hard reset on the story, which certainly doesn’t preclude him from growing into the exact same person again… especially since nothing was really learned from his perspective.Basically, David lives an evil, selfish life and once the world has turned against him and he’s exposed for who he really is…. he gets a complete do-over. Nothing about that says that he’ll make better choices, just that his victims will have some influence on his development this time (implying that he was only a monster because of his upbringing, which I don’t entirely agree with).
I don’t really agree. The show has him admitting what he did was wrong and painful. At least, I’m pretty certain that comes up in a scene between David and Syd. There is certainly some element of blame that is assigned to Farouk, and the season is also about expelling demons that maybe contributed to painful behaviors. So, sure, there’s some of that. But in the same way that mentally ill people hurt others, assigning blame and assessing their actions maybe isn’t quite so black and white as people in the current climate are willing to admit.
David wasn’t schizophrenic though… he just refused to A) Address his own trauma and B) Take accountability for the mountains of trauma and pain he caused everyone else because they didn’t just give him what he wanted.I understand the nuance of it, as a victim of abuse myself, but he’s an adult and after Farouk was ‘removed’ he doesn’t have someone poking around him mind anymore and is standing on his own two feet… he’s aware of what he did, that it was horrible, and how it turned everyone against him. He never made an effort to face that, or atone for it. In fact, he did awful, horrible things in order to completely avoid confronting that all in hopes of giving himself a better life and a do-over. I just don’t believe that the reason he’s awful is because he was a victim, so I don’t believe that Syd raising her abuser into adulthood is a reasonably satisfying conclusion for anyone besides David.Anyway, I appreciate you sharing your perspective, it’s just very different from what I took away from the show.
Likewise about sharing your perspective. I think that we probably do just take different things away from it. There are real world parallels of course, about knowing the abuses that perpetrators have faced in their lives and whether or not that justifies/excuses/explains their actions. There’s no right answer to it, but I did find the show did bring some interesting questions about this and more to the mind for consideration. I don’t think it was done perfectly by any stretch of the imagination, though. Here’s to hoping Hawley finds something really compelling for his next endeavor.
He wasn’t just undoing his own shitty things though, he was literally rewriting all of reality and essentially killing everyone along with him in order to get a second chance. Even when David did it, he did it from the ridiculous selfishness that he felt like he was owed a second chance and that his own upbringing excused any of his personal faults.
Also, what happened to David’s sister and adopted parents? Those were two major plot elements in season one that were conveniently ignored when it didn’t fit into Hawley’s ramshackle plans for season three.
You’re kind of arguing against something I didn’t say, though. I’m not saying David is a hero or is very moral in the last season. I’m saying that is he repentant, given what he’s done? I think so… for that specific behavior, anyway. I don’t think the ending of the show is meant to suggest, “Ah, everything is great now.” I think it’s meant to be quite a gray ending of some serious compromises and tragic circumstances – which is in keeping with the tone of the show all throughout, since the very first episode.
Zelmare shushing Satchel reminds me of another movie scene, but I just can’t place it.
“Saving Private Ryan”, where Cpl. Upham watches while Pvt. Mellish is stabbed to death. Or maybe the German soldier was shushing Mellish. Either way…
Saving Private Ryan, although that was to the stabbing victim instead of the witness.
1. The dad in “A Quiet Place”.2. The Whisperers in The Walking Dead.
A better show that talks about the ambiguous themes of history, now that Ethelrida mentioned it: True Detective S3.Of course this finale would have that title. I’m genuinely curious what Hawley thought he was saying about America here and how he envisaged these characters and plots saying it. I did laugh when Oraetta told the goons to shoot Josto first. Then we got a heavy-handed shot of seeing herself in a mirror, distorted. Shame Jessie Buckley was wasted.This season: too many musical and visual style choices propping up a weak story. All the episodes were very pretty to look at, but it seemed Hawley was playing around stylistically for no good reasons.
This season: too many musical and visual style choices propping up a weak story. All the episodes were very pretty to look at, but it seemed Hawley was playing around stylistically for no good reasons.Exactly the reason why I hated all of Legion.Seems like he was stuck in that mode for this season.
Attention crime writers, we all get that you loved The Godfather. It was an excellent movie written perfectly but having a lead character holding a bag full of oranges right before said character is killed is played out now. It’s been done to death already. You aren’t being clever anymore it just signifies that you are probably a hack at worst or the last man to catch the “Wink, did ya see what I did there!” train.
In retrospect, the son who witnessed his father dying after the son returned from exile (kinda) changing his name to Michael is one of those weird coincidences.
One or two references would have been hard to resist given you’ve got a Coppola family member in the cast, but it just went too heavy handed in the finale.
Why in the world would Loy of all people (a crime boss) go shopping for oranges en route to his house after just finding out that he’d actually lost a gang war?And why was he buying so many damned oranges that they filled up an entire paper sack? Good grief!
the oranges were from the smuggling shipments. My guess is that he picked up a few rather than have them all thrown out after the shipment arrived.
I thought it was pretty clever, honestly, to have Loy be the one to make the overt Godfather reference. It was like a final indignity to his forced subservience to the New York mob and the Italians. He wasn’t even allowed to escape their tropes even in death.
Thank you! No kidding. A neon sign should have also fallen out of that bag saying “Get it? GET IT??”
THANK YOU. My husband (not a movie buff) was like, why does he have so many ORANGES? And I was like, duh, Godfather reference dude–but a bad one.
When Loy looked inside the house, I said to myself, “He’s happy, so it’s time to die!” and here she comes with the knife and in slow motion. The surprises were kind of few and there were a lot of “that makes no sense” moments this year.
Loy’s death reminded me of the ending of “The Professional”. He gets distracted by a moment of happiness and a vision of the future and it gets him killed.
To me its Road to Perdition. Down to focus on glass don’t notice someone behind you.
cutting to show her sitting in a room somewhere with a pair of suitcases
The painting on the wall was Loy’s (from somewhere in his office, I think?) and Ethelrida looked older. It seemed to imply she and Satchel would end up taking over the Cannon family business.
I agree about Ethelrida, but I think Lemuel would have latched on to Ethelrida and left Satchel/Mike Milligan at the lower level where he seemed to be at the start of Season 2.
I liked specific parts/elements of this season more than 1 and 3, mainly because it is connected to S2 (the apex of the show IMO). However, as a whole this season was very flawed and the finale was like a wet noodle.My Stray Observations:I honestly think that it would have been so much better to have made Satchel’s final appearance the scene in ep 10 where he defends himself against the rednecks in the truck. That made for a really great endpoint to his arc. But the return to his home and reuniting with his family… that was just… back to where he started. They didn’t pay it off in a way that made it seem like he was a different and changed person. When he came out on the porch, saw Zelmare, and then stared at his dying father, he just looked like an innocent kid. And I’m not saying he was wrong for acting that way. But it just kinda betrays the arc of his character this season, going from a quiet, naïve / green kid to someone with street smarts that is ready to throw down when the time comes. I’m not saying he should have murdered Zelmare either. But he acted so bewildered by what was transpiring right in front of him. And it is not in his character to not understand what just happened… he’s a smart kid. He knew that someone just stabbed the shit out of his pops, and then basically froze and did nothing, and let the assailant walk away, and barely even did anything at all. This was just such an odd choice. It is really bothering me. For all intents and purposes, this season was a Mike Milligan origin story. And the way this plays, it seems like, I dunno, that the SHOW DIDN’T KNOW WHAT IT WAS DOING.
Speaking of weird character choices: What the hell is up with Oraetta being so elated and down with her own demise? What happened to her indignation!? What happened to her fighting tooth and nail to stick to her story and deny any wrongdoing? It’s like she completely dropped the sociopath act, yet we never saw why, or what her motivation was to do that. When she was picked up by the mob, she was all smiles. And at first it seemed like she just didn’t understand what was happening. But even up until the moment she was shot, she was amused and calm. And she KNEW IT WAS COMING! So again, this just doesn’t track with her character. The Oraetta that we know from eps 1-10 would have been kicking and screaming until the bullet pierced her skull.
They could have gone in a much more interesting direction with the final scenes for her character. And I get the justice element of her death with Josto, but damn, she just amounted to “not much”. And it seems like such a waste of her insane talent. Jessie Buckley was so good at her part. Remember Timothy Olyphant was on the show this year? Remember he was a pretty big character? Me neither. Ultimately, he mattered very little considering the amount of screen time he got. And I love me some TO. But again, his talents were squandered.Jason Schwarzman was really great overall all season. I thought he really did a great job and surpassed my own expectations for what I assumed he would bring to the table.Ebal’s last-minute dick move was also weird. He spent the entire season being a man with a code. And he ended up just being a mustache twirling villain. I think this was the gas leak episode.I have a bunch of thoughts but its pretty exasperating to even write them all down. So I’m gonna cut this short and just say that this episode felt VERY stretchy. Like, super stretch. Like they were desperate to fill time and get it to an acceptable length for air. Blame COVID all you want, but you’d think that COVID would have bought them time to write a better episode. What the hell is this crap?And what the heck is up with Ethelrida? She was the best character and had very little to do in this episode. Again… gas leak.Finally, Ben Whishaw… you were also awesome. Keep it up. You elevated the material you were given.Hawley… come on man. Don’t you dare make another season unless you run it by some people first. You have such an immense talent and this just felt like the ball got dropped somewhere. It’s okay. Get back on the horse. Get back to greatness.
“Fargo seems to have run out of things to say.”Spot on here Zach apart from the timing. It barely had anything to say at the beginning of season one and had run out by the time Malvo became a fake dentist.
Yeah, it’s definitely a major step down after the first three, excellent seasons. I know some people consider the Ewan McGregor story less interesting, but I loved it – mostly because Mary Elizabeth Winstead once again proves she’s one of the best thespians working (not nearly enough) nowadays. Sure, once again there was some great acting by most of the cast in this season, but the story simply wasn’t all that captivating.I think the biggest problem with this season is that there wasn’t a big stand-off between a well-defined, interesting protagonist and a truly terrifying villain – what the earlier seasons did have. The closest we get to that here is Ethelrida and Oraetta – but the latter, to me, sadly comes off more annoying than frightening.I also understand some people don’t buy Chris Rock as a serious actor, but as a European who hasn’t gotten the same exposure to his comedy persona that most Americans have, I truly appreciated his heartfelt performance. Schwartzman, on the other hand, was indeed predictably playing his usual ‘self-assured, yet totally ineffective putz’ shtick, so that was kinda disappointing.
A List of Fictional Characters Ranked by Their Success (or Lack Thereof)Is That All There Is? Edition, Part 1EDITOR’S NOTE: Again, the episode makes my standard ranking difficult, so I’m going to rank the living now and follow up with a post ranking the dead later today. As the title suggests, I didn’t love this episode. But it’s also like the old joke that ends, “The food’s lousy, and such small portions!”Ethelrida “History is a form of memory. But what does it mean to remember?” One rule for the season has been that an Ethelrida episode is a good episode, which is why, when the episode started (after the In Memoriam montage, of course) with the Smutnys getting their house back, I had a sinking feeling, because that’s the end of your story, and sure enough, Ethelrida remains absent until the framing narrative of her history report comes back at the end. It’s always an odd point to reach when you have to wonder if the best thing about your season was maybe also the worst. Ethelrida wins the season, but the season isn’t truly about Ethelrida, and you have to wonder if maybe she wasn’t there, we could’ve done a better job of telling the story this season spent the vast majority of its time on. I’m still puzzling slightly over the image of her in a nice gray suit, grabbing a pair of suitcases in what looks like Loy’s hotel suite from last episode, with the Moorish execution painting behind her. I thought for a moment it was a callback to her confrontation with Loy, but the businesswear she used last episode wasn’t the same. Maybe it’s a generic indication that she’s going places? I’m curious what everyone else thinks.Violante “It’s shit no? The old way for the old world. Brothers, uncles, cousins. We live in the new world now. We need a new way.” “This is why the family business doesn’t work: because families are crazy!” “You too are a national outfit, yes? Wait, no. You are one man in one city.” Violante goes from being a non-factor all season to ending up as the only factor that matters in Kansas City, and the voice that says most of the quotable lines this episode. This season wound up being about a shift in the American mob from hereditary monarchies to a more corporate model we see in season 2, with the chaos between Josto and Gaetano as the catalyst to change in Kansas City. And that’s where Violante being a non-factor in the is a problem, because the feelings he’s expressing in this episode are being expressed for the first time. The main window we had into thinking, his monologue in Episode 4, doesn’t really relate to the character we see triumphant in this episode.Satchel/Mike Milligan — I’ve been thinking a lot about prequels lately for something I’m working on, and the feeling of this episode reminds me a lot of the final act of a prequel, where the story goes into double-entry accounting mode, making sure the ledgers are all zeroed out to where they stand in at the beginning of the previous (but fictionally future) installment. So characters who don’t make it to the future get disposed of, and the characters who do go on have to be placed where we’ll find them later on. I say this because strangely, my prediction from episode 8 was right, and this wound up being the story Satchel finding his way home from captivity, and back into the “just right” bed recently vacated by Ziro. The problem is, this shift in the narrative just points up the fact that we didn’t spend enough time with Satchel this season. What’s worse, the finale does nothing to make up for this deficiency—Satchel’s largely silent this episode (I guess he’s busy reading How to Make Friends and Influence People). There’s an excellent moment when the Cannon family is reunited, and Satchel’s in the embrace of his mother and his sister, and his eyes are wide open, the look on his face is ambivalent, bordering on unhappy. And I find myself wishing that in an episode full of montages, languid scenes of people driving, and Oraetta and Josto walking the distance from the car to their open grave in real time, that someone could’ve set aside five or ten minutes for Rodney L. Jones III or Bokeem Woodbine to speak some lines and put that moment (and/or this season) in some context. The season ending on someone asking Satchel his name and him replying “Milligan. Mike…Milligan,” would’ve been pretty corny, but what we got was somehow worse. There’s no explanation of why in the future he wouldn’t go by the name his parents gave him, and we’re left with the feeling that we’ve seen important moments from his life, but we haven’t really seen his story. It’s a lot of work for little narrative gain.Joe Bullo “Wait, is that a serious question?” I’m glad Young Bullo finally got some lines that reflected some of S2 Bullo’s personality. I also liked his interaction with Oraetta, where she compulsively paws him with something between disbelief that he’s so tall and straight up lust.Zellmare “For Swanee” I wonder if/how much this finale was affected by the pandemic, because both Karen Aldridge and Chris Rock look different in the stabbing scene from how they did earlier in the season (in Rock’s case, earlier in the episode). Opal — Finally fulfilled his bodyguard promise, foiling Leon’s assassination attempt (a little more cinematically than you’d like). With Loy dead, he’s pretty much the only remaining choice to serve as the mob’s African American KC underboss. The reaction shots of Opal during Loy’s second meeting with Violante were heartbreaking.Lemuel “Impressive.” Despite the appreciative way Ethelrida’s gaze followed him in the opening scene, I’m guessing the courtship is off, now. “Remember that time your aunt stabbed my father to death?” doesn’t seem like a conversational gambit that leads smoothly to romance.
Eh I found Etherelda’s storyline by far and away and the most boring. If she had never appeared this season, the season would’ve have been any better or worse. This season of Fargo was the weakest, but I still enjoyed it overall.
This season of Fargo was the weakest, but I still enjoyed it overall.Amen.
Good point about the pandemic. Even though this finale wraps everything up nice and neat, it does feel rushed in a way (remove all the slow motion, and this is probably only a half-hour). I believe this was the last episode they needed to finish right when COVID delayed them
A List of Fictional Characters Ranked by Their Success (or Lack Thereof)Is That All There Is? Edition, Part 2: In MemoriamHappy/Leon — Happy and Leon are an example of the weird pacing at the end of this season. Leon had one of the season’s slow burn storylines, we were reminded episode after episode that his ambitions exceeded his skills or accomplishments, making him a ticking time bomb. Happy was the opposite—not even mentioned until episode 7, doesn’t show up until episode 9, about ten minutes after his first appearance he’s already double-crossed Loy, and about 20 minutes into this episode Leon and he are dead, taken down by Opal and an ambush of nameless Loy soldiers, respectively. Oraetta “But well, yeah, you kinda did.” “Can you shoot him first so I can watch?” Setting aside the question of how, exactly, the Faddas got bail for a serial killer, the look on her face after convincing Bullo to shoot Josto first is a perfect end note for the character. I disagree with the idea that her failure to poison Harvard made her an empty threat. The need to retrieve Ethelrida’s letter forced her to kill him at work during business hours, and to call for help before he actually died so as to throw suspicion off herself. These are complications she didn’t face with her other murders. Later, her attempt to kill Ethelrida was only thwarted because a ghost intervened. That’s threatening enough—again, the expectation that she’d wind up being a near-theological force of evil was something we put on her as an audience, not something the show tried to sell us.Josto “We got high… She’s just a skirt I met the one time.” Josto knew he was done at the end of last episode, when Gaetano died. That’s why he went on a killing spree, wiping Harvard (again!) and Alderman Whathisname off the table. While it was nice to see Josto’s lies come crashing down on him, burying the one bit that was actually true—he didn’t know Oraetta was a killer, so he never intended for her to kill his dad. Still, if the season was meant to show that Josto was the bad monarch who convinced everybody that hereditary leadership was a bad idea, it didn’t do a great job of that. Josto was a dishonorable snake, but most of the drama between him and his brother that Violante objected to was instigated by Gaetano, not him. He was unfit, but not necessarily “we need to change our whole way of doing things” unfit.Loy “Get your house in order and we can talk.” There’s been a question of why anyone ever agreed to the child hostage exchange in the first place. In a perverse way, it made sense: in each of the previous exchanges, the hungry newcomers beat the established incumbents, and the exchange gave the newcomers breathing room against the incumbents until they could pull off the inevitable double cross. But from the point of view of incumbents like the Irish and Italian gangs, you could see why they’d go for it, because they’ve already played this game and won it, so they’d naturally think it’ll go to their advantage. It’s a cycle of gang violence, but one that seems to end with the loser ethnic groups assimilating into American society after their criminal rise and fall.Then the Cannon Syndicate decided to play the game, representing a group that’s not immigrant newcomers to America. Loy’s desire for assimilation and opportunity was so strong, he was willing to put up his child as collateral. We knew all along his quest was doomed to failure, both because we’ve seen the Kansas City outfit in the 70s and because we know how history has worked—or rather, failed to work—for African Americans. Someone else always gains the benefits of “inventing” the credit card. Or Rock and Roll. And on and on and on.So in this episode, Loy wins—he outmaneuvers Josto and Happy and Leon. He gets back Satchel, a moment of joy that might be Rock’s best acting of the season, as it slowly dawns on him that his home intruder behaves very much like a 10-year-old boy. He also loses half his business, as Violante breaks down the truth that should have been evident all along: the Italians have a national criminal organization backing them, and Loy doesn’t. He can’t win this war. He never could. Loy’s the only character who gets a real, properly developed character arc this season. He gambled his family for success and advancement. He almost loses everything, and in the last moments of the episode he finally realizes that the intact family inside his house is worth more to him than the half a business he just lost. And of course, at that point Zellmare stabs him to death, because that’s the way it goes for tragic heroes. Even if they find redemption in the end, they still have to die. There has to be a reckoning for all the things his tragic ambition has made him do.Final thought: Although there’s a lot of dissatisfaction in this final ranking, I still enjoyed the ride. I wonder if they could’ve found a more satisfying (or at least, more substantive) conclusion to the story if only the pandemic hadn’t forced them to whip the end run into a narrative meringue. And writing these again has been fun. Thanks for reading.
Far as I can tell, Josto believed his dad died from the accident, so it was odd to me that when he finally finds out Oraetta in fact, murdered his father, he’s too busy defending himself to give this revelation the reaction it probably deserves.One of my issues with Oraetta has been how much the show lets her get away with. Sure they kill her too at the end, but the fact she was standing on the side of the family at all was ludicrous given the circumstances, not to mention how easily she was sprung from prison, or how they honored her request to shoot Josto first as if she has any authority at all.
We may have projected a little (ok alot) on Oraetta, but the show is so hyper-aware of itself, they invited it. So I’m in the camp that agrees she was an empty threat overall because so much of her dastardly deeds were undermined by plot armor or common sense. Yes, she’s encountering complications she didn’t face with her other murders, but who’s fault is that? Why hire a girl to clean your house and ultimately snoop around when you’re not home? Why murder your boss when you can just steal the letter when he’s out of the office? Why worry about throwing suspicion off yourself when him surviving and I.D-ing you is literally the greater risk? Why? Why? Why?
I agree with a lot of this. One of the things I wrote about Oraetta in the first ranking I did was complaining about how a serial killer needs to keep their trophy/dispensary closet locked at all times. But I have to disagree on a few points. First of all, she wasn’t standing on the side of the family willingly or in solidarity. She was, basically, a prosecution witness in Joe Bullo’s custody. (I’d love to ask someone about that scene. The Fadda gang standing there had the stagy Coens look of the initial hostage exchange scenes, but I have the feeling that there’s a depth-of-field visual trick there that made it look like everyone was standing close together in a line, rather than pods of actors social distanced from each other by depth. Similar feeling of hidden social distancing in the dinner scene from the Satchel episode.) And if you’re Bullo, why not shoot Josto first? In his place, I’d just be shocked that she made a reasonable final request. She still gets hers just a moment later.Poisoning Harvard during business hours is the best way to ensure that no one else sees the letter before she can steal it. Him surviving the poisoning and the source being identified was a fluke. The only real thing to fault her on is that she knew at this point Josto wanted him dead, so she’d have been better served trying to make it look like a mob hit, but I guess you stick to what you know.This may just be a matter of personal preference. I tend to like it when the season’s wildcard isn’t a preternatural criminal mastermind (like Peggy and Ed in S2), so I didn’t mind Oraetta having feet of clay.
The Angel of Death type of serial killer doesn’t have to be particularly skilled anyway. They don’t have to set up kill rooms or kidnap people, their victims are helpless to begin with, they just exaggerate actions they perform as part of their everyday job, and somebody else will dispose of the bodies. So Oraetta didn’t need to be formidable to be effective.Plus, only Lorne Malvo was a theological force of evil, that I recall. Mike Milligan in season 2 and V.M. Varga in season 3 were just mildly to heavily eccentric guys. (Though I can accept Nikki Swango as a theological embodiment of hotness. Probably in the form of some cat deity.)
I think Zero belongs on this list, despite losing two brothers plus Mudda & Fadda Fadda over the course of the season, he managed to survive and parted on good terms with his ‘adoptive’ Dad before Loy came to a grisly end.Come to think of it, Zero might have been more of a bad luck charm than the Smutney’s ghost.
Zellmare “For Swanee” I wonder if/how much this finale
was affected by the pandemic, because both Karen Aldridge and Chris Rock
look different in the stabbing scene from how they did earlier in the
season (in Rock’s case, earlier in the episode).
Ah, that’s why it took me a second to realize that it was Loy who got stabbed. He DID look different!
Violante’s turn from “affable consigliere” to “cruel mob boss” definitely felt like a covid incident. I liked the character and actor quite a bit, and he mostly sold it, but it seemed like a completely different person. It needed a few steps in between.
Yeah, that final image of him backlit with his fingers tented at the Fadda desk, looking like the personification of the devil, was over-the-top. I could buy his scene with Loy, and his anger during Josto’s trial, but the parts of the performance didn’t quite add up to the conclusion.
He didn’t feel cruel to me, even at the end. He made that speech to Loy but not with the intent of humiliating him, just as a matter-of-factly way to make him understand the inescapable reality of things. He was never the sentimental guy, just the practical guy who relays orders. It’s not even a given than the families in New York would let him take power in Kansas City, if not temporarily. Despite what he said (or what Hawley believes), Cosa Nostra would keep being a family-based empire to this day.
I’d like to think Ethelrida goes to Paris, perhaps with Lemuel the musician in tow, to hang out with James Baldwin.
I think the reason Satchel changes his name is twofold: 1) Milligan allows him to avoid his father’s enemies and 2) Mike is the most modern, straightforward ‘American’ name of anybody in this season. It’s not old-fashioned like Satchel or Lemuel and it’s not ethnic either.
It’s funny, I spent the first part of the episode trying to remember why Josto was so pissed at Dr. Harvard to begin with. Which is appropriate, I guess.Anyway, Violante’s win feel satisfying to me, for some reason. He always sounded like the voice of reason that tries to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. Since crime will never stop existing, we can only hope it’s done the Violante way.a shift in the American mob from hereditary monarchies to a more corporate model we see in season 2Except it’s historically false, at least as far as Cosa Nostra is concerned. Families kept existing, and power kept being transferred from father to son or nephew or godson. The Five Families are still there nowadays. There’s no explanation of why in the future he wouldn’t go by the name his parents gave himYeah, and even more so, during the whole season, I had no real sense of the affection Satchel had for Rabbi Milligan. He surely trusted him, but to the point of justifying the adoption of his last name. Something more was needed. Also, I don’t think the actor playing Satchel was very good. He came off as if he was on the spectrum at times, and we know that wasn’t part of Mike Milligan’s characterization.Oh, by the way:ZiroIt’s Zero. I wanted to tell you all season. 🙂
It’s Zero. I wanted to tell you all season. :)I know. This one’s a willful misspelling, partly because his of his full name (Zirominu, no clue if it’s a legit Sardinian name), partly because of Ziro the Hutt. I still think little Zero shanking Loy would’ve been a better ending than Zellmare doing it (which was guaranteed the second Loy told Opal to go home; Opal leaves that dude for two minutes and he’s lying dead on the porch). In my mind, he shanks Loy, heads back to Fadda manor, and tells Violante to get out of his chair :)Except it’s historically false, at least as far as Cosa Nostra is concerned. Families kept existing, and power kept being transferred from father to son or nephew or godson. The Fiv are still there nowadays.Yeah, but this is where I’d have to say that world of Fargo is a bit of an alternate history, because (mainly in order to thwart Mike Milligan’s dreams of conquest) at the end of S2 the KC mob is also presented as a faceless corporation, dominated by bureaucracy more than dynastic competition. Heck, if this season had done a better job of telling Satchel’s story, that would’ve been very resonant, because Milligan’s fate would mirror his father’s who in this episode is similarly condemned to middle management with no real hope of advancement, after winning a gang war victory that is (for him) pyrrhic.In any case, I think the kid playing Satchel was okay when they gave him anything to do. He wasn’t amazing, but he delivered his lines well enough. It’s not his fault the show decided for the most part that he was to be seen, and not heard (I think his only line this episode was a short “Dad” when Loy wakes him up). I kind of wonder if there was a substantial time gap between them shooting the scenes of him on the road in Kansas and him at home with the Cannons, because the actor looked visibly older than he had one episode earlier. I thought at the time it was a an intentional perspective trick—maybe they put him in a too-small bed to make him looker bigger and more mature when his father sees him. But now I wonder if the reason he had no lines is maybe he had a growth spurt and his voice changed?
a bit of an alternate historyWell, of course.This is a true story.
It could also suggest a time shift, no? It must have taken a bit for him to walk back home. Chris Rock’s character also looked a little bit older. I’m not sure if that was my imagination, or just intentional thematically, but it’s a possible element.
I don’t think the finale itself, from Rock’s meeting with Violante to his death, is supposed to take place over a long period of time, and Rock looks consistent with Loy’s look throughout the series early in the episode, such as during Leon’s assassination attempt (which may well be composited footage, recycling b-roll of Rock grimly looking out the window with a whiskey from earlier episodes with footage shot later of Opal and Leon struggling behind him). In that last scene, it looks like Rock lost some weight and it also looked like someone different applied his Loy makeup. We’d already seen them change Loy and Buell’s looks a few episodes back, in the aftermath of Satchell’s death to make them look more haggard, so I don’t think this was an intentional change. I just think the end run of the show was shot under difficult circumstances.
-First, you meant to say “of its less-than-40-minutes”, not “it’s”.-You didn’t need a comma inside your hypothetically-quoted “’satisfying,’”.-“We see her reading paper she wrote to her parents” should be “we see her reading the paper she wrote,” not just “reading paper she wrote”. The saying when comparing something to “at best” is “at worst”, not “at worse”, especially when there’s no lower low for the show to go than “nothing at all.”“Satchel’s story was one of the better ones of the season, but the exchange itself always played more like the idea of something thematically weighty and the actual thing itself.”— I think you meant “…more like the idea of something thematically weighty than the actual thing itself.”Editors! Edit! It’s a professional publication for crying out loud.
One thing that should come out of this season is an Emmy nod for Jason Schwartzman.
Eh… He played the same smarmy guy he always plays.
WOW! Do I disagree with you. I personally thought his acting was a massive detriment to the gravitas of the season. He seemed to be pushing constantly to turn this run into a slapstick comedy. Diff’rent Strokes I guess.
I like Jason Schwartzman, but this role didn’t seem like anything special. His VO acting for Klaus was better than Fargo. I don’t feel like any of the actors in this season were particularly strong enough for Emmy nominations, but if I were to guess, Chris Rock will probably get one.
Schwartzman was a caricature this season, he doesn’t deserve any awards for it (I don’t think anyone in s4 does really – even typically fantastic actors like Olyphant and Buckley had almost nothing interesting to work with)
typically fantastic actors like Olyphant and Buckley had almost nothing interesting to work withWhat are you talking about, Jessie Buckley mastered the duck walk! Special Ministry of Silly Walks Emmy or bust!
While several characters made bold statements about America (Josto’s “This is a ladder. But there’s nowhere to go.” was pretty good), there was never any sense that this season was actually saying anything more than the obvious. Yep. This season lost my interest DAMNED quick.
I love this show because it is dedicated to allusion. It references: the original, all Cohen Brothers’ movies, itself, other prestige dramas and, finally, iconic movies. It has always done this amidst brilliant performances by extraordinary actors, a superlative soundtrack, exceedingly interesting cinematography and, above all, deeply considered and interesting stories. …this season had everything but the stories, and without them it suffered.
On The Roach – aren’t we perhaps overlooking some details? The tell about that character is that it/he/whatever comes with the sound of the ocean. MANY characters had that sound especially in The Nadir. And, if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t Roulette SEE a figure over the shoulder of Odis after Deafy dies? I think this figure has actually been in the whole thing a while.
I felt like the finale was a total letdown personally. Both Josto and Loy die quickly, making their season-long power struggle utterly pointless. Ethelrida is barely impacted at all by the season events, making it questionable to even include her and her family in the first place. They could easily have cut her entire plot out and the season would barely have to change. The whole point of the season appears to be revealing that Satchel turns into Mike Milligan which pretty much everyone figured out as soon as Rabbi’s last name was mentioned…If the show wanted a Mike Milligan origin story, they should have done this season Godfather Part 2 style and had half of it be the important beats of the Cannon / Fadda war and half of it be set after S2 with Bokeem Woodbine back.
I think it was really the story of the rise of the corporate KC mob, and the end of Season 2 implied that Mike Milligan wasn’t going to be a player in that world any more than his father’s gang was going to matter after he accepted the shrunken role in the new KC.I think the storyline that was stunted a bit was the growing grip of the NY bosses. Violante’s power play was not well supported by what we saw on screen — I think they didn’t work out how to have Josto surprised by the turn without leaving the audience totally in the dark.
Yea I suppose you’re right – maybe show Mike’s rise in the ranks before S2 then? Either way, I think a season that was truly focused on Mike would have been better overall than what we got. To your other point, I honestly don’t think it mattered that Josto getting blindsided was a surprise to the audience. Because Josto wasn’t a very compelling character to begin with, he was pretty much an outright bad guy with little to no redeeming qualities. I doubt many people cared much about him dying where keeping it a surprise or not would impact the show much at all. Really the same was true for Loy, he was the more interesting of the two characters but I barely cared when he died.
I think it’s less about caring about Josto and more about getting a sense of who “New York” is — they are just this vague force, sort of like KC was in Season 2, except in that season I thought Joe Bulo did a good job conveying who they were behind the scenes while acting as their representative.
I think KC in S2 was much better portrayed, it wasn’t just Bulo representing them, Milligan and the Kitchen brothers were from there too. And they were in the series throughout.It’s similar to how S1 made the Fargo crew seem legit simply by having Numbers and Wrench show up. The show never needed an ensemble of gangsters to make gangs feel real, just a couple of memorable ones. If the point was to show New York’s force in this season, it was terribly executed IMO.
I never understood the point of New York telling the Faddas to “end the war” and then five minutes later saying they were going national and had “endless guys” to crush independent gangs like Loy’s.
I like to think that the Consigliere was bluffing. But it was a massive U Turn on his character either way.
I felt like the finale was a total letdown personally. Both Josto and Loy die quickly, making their season-long power struggle utterly pointless. Ethelrida is barely impacted at all by the season events, making it questionable to even include her and her family in the first place. They could easily have cut her entire plot out and the season would barely have to change. The whole point of the season appears to be revealing that Satchel turns into Mike Milligan which pretty much everyone figured out as soon as Rabbi’s last name was mentioned…If the show wanted a Mike Milligan origin story, they should have done this season Godfather Part 2 style and had half of it be the important beats of the Cannon / Fadda war and half of it be set after S2 with Bokeem Woodbine back.
Although I generally enjoyed this season – particularly the first couple episodes and “East/West” – I thought it was underwritten and I wonder how much of that was because of Covid. I think a story centered on Ethelrida and the central conflict with Oreatta would have been more fun to watch than the rote gang war between the Cannons and the Faddas. I think Odis and Gaetano should have gotten less screentime in favor of Deafy and Violante respectively. Rabbi and Satchel had the most successful storyline, so I wouldn’t touch that. Josto was great in small doses, but the more dramatic weight he had to carry, the weaker he got as a villian. I’m still not convinced Chris Rock had the gravitas necessary for Loy.
How DARE this show waste Jessie Buckley?
Whatever magic Noah Hawley may have had is long gone. Seasons 3 and 4 of Fargo are among the worst TV shows I have seen, especially because of the colossal waste of money and talent. I can’t believe it’s the same team who brought us season 2, one of the best series in recent memory. This was illogical, dumb, cliche, preachy, pretentious, badly written, derivative, and wholly meaningless. No story, no characters, no logic. It was just so, so dreadful. I went from ranking Hawley with Vince Gilligan to ranking him with McG. Sad!
I’m clearly in the minority, because I liked this season a lot. In some aspects, I think it was better than every other season, although in balance I put it a bit below Season 2 and close to Season 1.Where I thought it excelled was putting the charcters in a larger context. I was sucked into Season 3 from the beginning with the succession of truces, trades, and betrayals, and I thought the whole season did a great job of exploring the theme of belonging and exclusion, in terms of family, nationality, race, class and of course law and order.I thought the motivations and actions of the characters all made a lot of sense in that context. And I thought the presentation was often stunning, including the opening montage but also in countless smaller scenes.I think this is something previous seasons have struggled with. Season 2 probably came the closest, with the contrast between the breakdown of the Gerhardts and the challenge by the corporate mob, with some touches working well, like the appearance of Reagan and Nick Offerman’s amazing speech to Bear in the police station, and others not well, such as the predatory lesbian preaching empowerment to Peggy. Season 1 was kind of a mess when it veered into Biblical themes, and Season 3 was just a wreck with all of the Varga storyline.Which is not to say I thought Season 4 was a clunky message drama. At least not most of the time — some of the monologues went too far. But as a whole I thought it did a great job creating a larger context and letting it influence the characters and plot without dictating it.
Where I think Season 4 struggled compared to 1 and 2 was the lack of a compelling character on the side of order and goodness — Molly and Gus and then Lou and Hank really grounded the first two seasons, and Carrie Coon did her best as Gloria in Season 3. Ethelrida, Satchel, Odie and Rabbi filled that role in bits, but none of them were around enough to be true drivers for the season. or counterweights to the evildoers. The first two seasons gained a lot by showing the struggle between sympathetic characters and killers, and this season needed more of that central tension.Still, I thought it told an interesting story well, and I enjoyed the ride.
I’ve concluded after reading Zach and some commenter’s thoughts that I just view television shows differently. I don’t need everything to mean something or have some underlying message. I just watch where the story goes and hope to be entertained. I don’t need messages and answers every episode, I just like to enjoy the ride.That being said, I have to wonder how much tv you all actually watch? This season was still 1 of the best shows this year, easily. Maybe that’s because it’s been kind of a down year due to COVID but a “bad” season of Fargo is still better than 90% of what else is on and this definitely wasn’t a bad season. I guess unless you needed it to have some incredibly profound deeper meaning or had a problem with the cast being mostly African American for the first time, as it seems some did. I’d rank the seasons 2,1,3,4 but they have all been good. Fargo is consistently 1 of the better shows on tv and I look forward to seeing what Noah has planned for season 5. Hopefully it’s not another 3 year wait.
They have “critic brain”. They can’t enjoy something for what it is because they are constantly breaking down, sizing up, looking for meaning in everything, judging, categorizing, referencing….it’s exhausting and doesn’t increase enjoyment. Often it doesn’t even increase understanding. I’ve seen this afflict all manner of people, but the link to Academia is certainly a strong one. From the jump they are comparing- is this as good as that? Season 1 or season 3? This critic, Zack Handlen, was already criticizing this season after the first episode. I mean, it’s in the job description, but what a miserable way to go through life…
Why don’t people like you two just post “let people enjoy things”, like from the stupid meme, and move on? It perfectly encapsulates literally everything you have to say and helps everyone else efficiently skip over it.
No it doesn’t. Nobody is ruining my enjoyment, if you read what I posted. They are so far up their own ass, critically speaking, that they can’t enjoy it themselves. Also, if you’re so concerned about “efficiency” maybe don’t take time out of your busy day to be wrong on the internet. Nice reading comprehension, though.
The criticism was accurate and correct.
.
They can’t enjoy something for what it is because they are constantly breaking down, sizing up, looking for meaning in everything, judging, categorizing, referencing.That’s just what they write, because their job is writing critiques. They aren’t paid to say “I enjoyed it. See you next time!”. I often enjoy something when I watch it, and then if I have to write about it and analyze it, the issues I hadn’t thought about in the moment surface and it comes off as if I didn’t enjoy it, when in fact I did.
I rank them 1,23,4 and this season was much worse than the first two. Child swap, tornado, ghost, super smart kid too stupid not to get beat all the time in school, crazy girl gangsters, twitchy cop, twitchy nurse none of that worked for me.Three was bad too but at least it had some first rate acting.
why did the woke have to come after/ruin such a good show with their pedantic, simple-minded politics? what a waste.
i loved all the other “fargo” seasons but just haven’t been able to get into this one. should i try again?
No. Unless you want to waste 10h37m of your life.
Yes, but with the understanding you will probably just like it, not love it.
I really wanted Rabbi to have miraculously survived the tornado. Oh well. *sniffle*Speaking of miracles, there’s no fucking way Satchel would’ve survived an hour after pulling the revolver on the two rednecks in the truck. Like they wouldn’t have roused half the state to lynch him.
Absolutely. No angry racist redneck is going to just drive on thinking “Phew! That was a close one! Picked on the wrong 11 year old kid that time, my old son. Welp. Off to drink me some Iron City.”
The other possibility is they didn’t want to be known as the guys who were humiliated by a little Black kid. Are their friends the type who will tell them they were crying like babies over what was only a six year old and a cap pistol? A real gun? Sure, right.
They didn’t have to tell the story of how they met the black kid. They just had to tell their friends “there’s a black kid” (using different words than I did).
Going into the repercussions of that would be far too much of a distraction. Besides, how are they supposed to all those commercials in?
I just checked the Fargo hashtag on Twitter and it seems people loved the finale and the season in general. Why do you think there’s a discrepancy here?
My guess is most AV Club readers/commenters tend to put a lot more thought and judgment into their TV shows than the average person does. They’re connoisseurs, so pickier. Whereas I just come here to have someplace to talk about what I just watched in longer than 280 characters.
Because, for better or worse, the AV Club commentariat has never been representative of America as a whole. This is true of the regular commentariat of any pop culture website. TWOP was the same way… a tiny minority of TV watchers who thought that everybody should, or did think like them. If you comment at a place like this, you are an enthusiast, not a normal consumer consumer of media.
It’s also true of the Twitter for the show probably dominated by hardcore fans
the AV Club commentariat has never been representative of America as a wholeSome of us don’t even own an America!
I liked this season just fine and look forward to a time when I can watch it in a binge and with little or no commercial interruptions. The last two episodes def need to be watched back-to-back with no commercials. I suspect part of everyone’s sour grapes here and abouts is because the finale was so full of ads, it couldn’t get a rhythm going. Plus there was the past precedent of front loading a finale with commercials so the back half could go 25 minutes uninterrupted. As I watched, I thought maybe that was happening here. When it turned into a “nope” I was like, “What’s with all the goddamn ads!?”I’m in agreement with another up the line who points out that any season of Fargo is a half-a-head above most other shows out there. There’s not much going for TV right now, so this season of Fargo, for me, was very enjoyable and I looked forward to it from week to week. I hope Hawley does more. There’s still plenty of places to go in this world. Do a season set in summer! (Maybe a summer-set season goes against Fargo’s mission statement, idk.) Noah! Go watch the Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullmann double feature of “The Emigrants” and “The New Land.” I liked how Chris Rock seemed to get older and older each episode just as Satchel seemed to grow taller. Odis was a very lonely person who had his army of Hummels. Satchel set out a figurine family upon his return. Yeah, maybe it’s not Way Deep, but there were a lot of nice little touches. It’s a season to check back on in a year or two. They tried for a solid Black person’s perspective with half the characters this season, and I’m curious to see how that sits with everyone over time.
I’m reminded of Watchmen in the effort to make a sweeping drama that talked a lot about the place and character of African Americans in this country, although I think Fargo was a lot more centered. It didn’t reach the heights of the best of Watchmen, but I also thought it didn’t have nearly as many flaws.
On this subject, I think Lovecraft Country does a better job than both
That has been it’s strength unfortunately not so much with the booga-booga
Alas, no aliens. And its the 50s and everything
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/fargo-season-4-finale-explainedNoah Hawley did an interview and talked about the season. There was more shot with Bokeem Woodbine. Mike would have found some success in that office mobster job he ended up in. It was ultimately cut, but the episode kinda feels emptier without it. That it was written for it and then it was trimmed out awkwardly.I do respect that the series story came from the idea of who Mike Milligan was, but not fall into the trapping of making it an origin with every little Mike quirk in season 2 explained. Like having Satchel whisper to a dying Loy “I’m changing my name to Mike Milligan now”.It’s about the events around him that turned him that way.
39 minutes and half of it was in slow-motion.
Um, I think y’all are overlooking this was Episode 11 in a TV show whose previous seasons all had 10 episodes. So they actually had to tack on another episode to make room for denouement after last week’s proto-finale. In that light, I don’t think the season “ran out of things to say” by this episode, as much as there was too much to wrap up, so it split a 90min finale in two.
Of course – as already pointed out – this season had very little to say in the first place, so the many storylines and many (redundant) characters were a way to compensate. Still, I didn’t hate it, overall; The production value was as good as ever, at least, and there were always enough moments and details in each episode to make it worthwhile for me… even if it all ended in a bit of a shrug. The outlying “East/West” episode was probably my favorite. Maybe because I really liked Ben Wishaw’s Rabbi and the dynamic he had with Satchel (a dynamic bolstered by the background established in the splendid opening episode).
Did they even record new footage of Bokeem Woodbine for the reveal? It looked like it could’ve easily been B-roll footage from S2.
I started this season thinking: “Yup, this is no good, they just can’t recapture the magic of season 1 and 2. The stunt casting is weird at best, distracting and bad at worst. I will not finish this.” But about halfway through I picked it up again and became interested in the characters. Chris Rock had found his place, Jason Schwartzman was holding his own, Salvatore Esposito was becoming fun instead of just one-note and annoying, and hey, the relationship between the brothers was suddenly enjoyable. Hell, even Andrew Bird had some good scenes. And I thought East/West was pretty fun and almost clever. But as soon as Gaetano fell and shot himself I realized this show didn’t even know what it had done right, let alone what it was doing wrong. This episode proved that, a lackluster coda that literally made me groan out loud when I saw Chris Rock walk up on his porch with a paper bag full of goddamn oranges. At least I got a little more Jessie Buckley in 2020, which I’m grateful for, even if her character was grossly under(and over)written.
Meh. I wouldn’t recommend this season, but it was enjoyable enough for me to continue watching it. I think if the writers focused more on one or two characters it would have been better. But this was just a mess. I also still don’t believe Ethelrida served a purpose on this show at all. Lots of this show didn’t serve a purpose now that I think about it.
I may be a bit off in my time-lines but how is that that Orietta didn’t manage to skip-town once she knew Dr Harvard was still alive? She seemed hell bent on getting out while the getting was good and then she wasn’t.
I thought all in all it was pretty good, not as great as season 2 but solid nonetheless. The writing was solid and the cast was great so you were bound to find something that you liked. To me, the Rabbi Milligan character and Ethelrida were the most interesting
They took the Fargo franchise out of Minnesota and the Dakotas and the result speaks for itself. This didn’t even need to be called “Fargo”.
I really wish I knew what this season wanted to say, because man, that first episode was gripping and promising. I feel like it sort of devolved into, “keep filming until most of the characters are dead”. This is not to say that there weren’t a lot of good scenes, events, and character moments in it! But I feel like it didn’t know what it wanted to say.People rag on season three, but at least that one had some themes, like about trying to create your own reality as a more convenient substitute for actual reality. That was Vargas’s whole deal, but Gloria Burgle’s boss did it too, and the two squabbling brothers had their own self-serving versions of reality where they were each the victim (which is only half-true, they were also antagonists at every turn). The very theme was communicated in the opening scenes, where that Soviet detective was interrogating the wrong man, because the state’s version of facts didn’t line up with reality. There was also the theme of helplessness in a world where reality isn’t treated as particularly real; that whole robot cartoon spoke to that, as did Gloria’s life, and even how electronic sensors didn’t pick up on her. (My take on that incidentally is that it was confirmation bias: electronic sensors fail on all of us once in a while, but in Gloria’s case, she was just feeling so unreal, she took special notice of it.)My point is, it wasn’t always clear where season three was going, but it was also about things.Season 4 looked like it was going to be about the perpetual war between factions in the US, vying for power. But two of the powers were knocked out of the running early on: a police force that behaves like a crime organization (I don’t think all police are that way but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t some), and an upper-crust WASPy establishment that controls the system so its crimes are simply the law of the land. There could have been a lot to say there. But that fell apart.And I know that COVID probably accounts for some shooting oddities this season, but there’s a lot they could have done to press or advance themes with the help of a narrator of some kind. Did we have one? Why yes, Ethelrida. Just have Ethelrida voice over at appropriate junctures some observations like, “in America, if your people have been in power long enough, it’s no longer recognized as crime, but as the way things are, and indeed the way things should be”.I still enjoyed watching this season. But, like Satchel walking home for episode after episode, it didn’t really take me anywhere new.
I don’t really get why Loy was so easily bullied by Ebal at their last meeting. All Ebal had to do was remind him that the Fadas are a big organization??? They were bigger than Loy’s gang for the entirety of the season, that never stopped them from going to war! Why is that fact treated like some revelation? You’re saying all Josto had to do was meet with Loy and say “I’m bigger than you” and the war would have been over 5 episodes ago?
I’ll be honest with my input (no shit). I Enjoyed this season by the end more than 3…but that’s because 3 held such a nebulous conclusion. And I’m not a huge fan of wondering whether a bowling alley really exists or not in a driving narrative, although I really dug that it was so Twin Peaks-y.
If I hadn’t read any AVClub reviews of the season, I wouldn’t think that anybody considered this season weak, or missing out on potential because of the story being told on it’s own terms. However I do recognize what might be considered soft spots or narratively convenient areas.
The flimsy nature of Gaetano’s death last week at least had some reason and consequences to this week’s story, it wasn’t just “jeez that’s fucked up”. But it’s also hard to call out random occurrences on a show that featured a deus ex machina UFO way back in it’s second season. I understand the idea of a show’s motifs coming across as repetitive to some viewers, but hey, if you like Wes Anderson, you come to watch something expecting to enjoy it’s stylistic consistencies. It doesn’t feel like a bag of tricks so much as the show’s characteristics.
So if the show never comes back, I’d be ok. If it does, I’d be happy to watch again. 8/10. Not perfect, but still watched it out of CHOICE, and not to nitpick.
Oh hey, remember the Roach? No sign of him this week. What was the point of that? And why did he save Ethelrida from Oraetta?I’m pretty sure that’s him in the reflection of the car that Orietta looks into just before she gets it… the implication being that the curse now follows her, instead of Ethelrida, because he likes “sunshine.”