On this week’s Polite Fight, Gus asks John how far critical viewers can or should push their analyses of a show’s smallest details—like two quick jump cuts that caught Gus’ eye in Monday night’s episode of Fargo. The short answer, by our hosts’ reckoning, is to trust your instincts. This talk of fixating on small details leads Gus, with the help of commenter SalonKitty’s, to point out a few unobtrusive nods to the show’s elusive alien presence, and John finally asks the million dollar question: Does this season of Fargo need to resolve its UFO references into something concrete?
John then takes a line from Peggy’s hallucinated self-help guru to articulate one of Fargo’s most important preoccupations, the postmodern notion of, as John puts it, the “detachment of signifier from signified.” Gus links that idea to the title of this episode, “Loplop,” which commenter Verbal Kint illuminated in the discussion thread for Zack Handlen’s review. We finish with a quick observation on the ever-versatile split screen and a comment from mike smith, who connects Fargo to Stephen King by way of John Carpenter.