So, it looks like we’re in the “shit meets fan” portion of the season. Last week, I commented on how Fargo’s bold storytelling decisions didn’t always pay the dividends they need to in order to work. This week, we get some more big swings. Thankfully, I’m at a point where I’ve largely given up on this being a coherent season (Hawley has apparently lost the knack and/or interest for that sort of thing), so I can more readily appreciate the style. Not everything really works in “The Nadir,” and even twists that do work feel like they were dropped in from another, better structured season of television. But there are some stylish action set pieces, some unexpected moments, and a general welcome vibe of creepiness and tension. The episode is called “The Nadir,” after all. Some bad news is going to go down. It’s just a shame it has to feel so disjoined when it does.
Let’s start with Gaetano’s return to the Fadda fold. This is a good bit: after beating up on Josto for a while, Gaetano reveals that he knows exactly what his brother did (kill Satchel to drive Loy to murder him), and that he’s proud of him. Once Josto recovers from the punches, Josto swears fealty, calling himself the bull and Josto the chameleon, expressing his admiration for his brother’s tactics and basically ending the feud between them. It’s the most I’ve liked Gaetano all season, not because I have a deep need for sibling affection, but because it’s the first time his character has been more than an obvious cliche. Sure, “strong man who is won over by a show of strength” isn’t a new idea, but it’s interesting to see part of Loy’s plan to destroy the Faddas fall apart in an unexpected way, and it’s a nice resolution to the feud.
That’s one thing “The Nadir” does do right, and fairly consistently: we’re giving several resolutions, or shifts, that alter the status quo throughout. The Faddas are reunited to show a strong front, just as Loy continues his assault (the attack which ends the episode, leaving Josto and Gaetano alive but killing their mother, which I’m sure both boys will take just fine); so no more talk about whether or not this is all out war between the gangs. It’s still unfortunate that the least original and interesting element of the season—the fight between the Cannons and the Faddas—has taken up so much screentime, but at least now we won’t have to waste time on characters pretending they can avoid a conflict the narrative’s simple existence makes inevitable. (I mean, it’s theoretically possible this season could’ve unfolded without the Cannons and the Faddas coming to blows, but that was never really in the cards.)
There is quite a lot of death in “The Nadir” even before Mama Fadda and some goons get shot (and burned alive). Deafy finally catches up with Zelmare and Swanee, threatening Loy into giving up their location and coming down on them with a team of cops; but the raid (set in a train station) goes south fast, as both women pull out their guns and open fire on their pursuers. Officers and civilians are slaughtered alike, but in the end, Deafy nabs the escapees after they run out of bullets. Then Odis, who’s been doing his twitchy thing in the car, pops in, shoots Deafy and Swanee, killing them both. Zelmare runs screaming, and Odis is left to vibrate nervously on the floor, aware he’s damned but apparently unable to help himself.
Deafy’s death isn’t entirely unexpected (he was too much a calm center in the storm even with his religious beliefs, and Olyphant was listed as a “guest star” each episode, rarely a good sign for a character when they’re being played by someone as famous as Olyphant), but I hadn’t called Odis being the one to take him out. Even better, in retrospect it makes perfect sense, given the way the two of them had been sparing beforehand. Odis’s speech back at the police station about how much he needs to be in control didn’t quite land for me; while I appreciate how it pays off, it doesn’t sit quite perfectly with the earlier revelations about his time in the war and his dead fiancee. The stories don’t contradict each other, but it feels the character might have worked better if it had made Odis’s need for power and control to be more obvious from the start, instead of briefly pretending that his twitchiness came from being a minesweeper and then losing his fiancee. (As is, I mostly just wondered why the army decided a guy this tightly wound should be handling explosives.)
Still, it’s good to have the cast tightened a bit. Also good to have Zelmare and Swanee’s story cut short. Zelmare is still around, and probably extremely pissed at Loy (she’s not an idiot) as well as Odis, but her and Swanee were just another subplot in what sometimes feels like a sea of them. The season’s lack of focus, its efforts to tie in a lot of disparate elements by stressing a very thin thematic connection, is arguably its biggest weak point. When the cops closed in on Zelmare and Swanee, I was curious what would happen, and enjoyed the horrors of the result, but I wasn’t particularly invested in either character. They always seemed, at best, tangential to the plot (which raises the question “what is the plot?” and, uh, you got me there), and while there is that aforementioned theming, theming isn’t enough to make a story work. Especially not over a multiple episode season of television.
But hey, we might actually get more than a single scene with Ethelrida next week! Oraetta, after learning that Josto is getting married (and being none too happy about it; the two have amped up their s&m foreplay considerably), makes a quick call to the hospital to check on Doctor Harvard. Unfortunately for her, the worst has happened: the doctor survived the poisoned macaroon, and, as Oraetta finds out later when she pops in to work, he’s been transferred out of state for treatment. (To a “hospital specializing in the treatment of poisons.” Honest question: is that a thing?) Finding out the police are involved sets off Oraetta’s fight or flight instinct, but when she goes home to pack for a quick escape, she finds Ethelrida’s notebook in her trophy closet, and connects the handwriting back to the handwriting on the letter the doctor received.
Which means we’re finally heading into an Ethelrida vs. Oraetta showdown, the most interesting and unusual conflict of the season. What’s frustrating is how little the season has been about either character; so much time spent on retreading crime war stories, and so little time on getting into what it means to be a mixed raced teenager with big dreams and a psychotic nurse with an unusual bedside manner. I don’t think the two characters could’ve support the entire season on their own, but in the past, the show has been better at that balance. Or at the very least, it was better at making sure all of its various subplots were more connected. Too much of this season feels like a handful of different shows slammed into each other and just decided to roll with the chaos for a bit. That’s not a new vibe for the series (I remember it being a problem last season as well), but the novelty of that approach is gone. At this point, it’s worth appreciating for the nifty moments and the few compelling characters, and giving up on it all coming together in a meaningful way by the end.
Stray observations
- Loy’s wife, Buel, drops by the Smutny house for a chat with Dibrell, in a very much too-little, too-late scenario; neither character has had enough screentime to make an impression, and while I admire the idea of this, it feels like it came too late in the season. I also didn’t know that Lemuel was staying with the Smutnys. It makes sense, given that Loy would want to protect his son and that he more or less owns the funeral home now, but if there was a line of dialogue saying this was happening, I missed it. (Honestly, I’m pretty sure I did miss it.)
- We learn a little about Oraetta’s childhood. Sounds like her mother did some Munchasen by proxy on her growing up.
- Loy is still not very compelling, but I appreciate his ruthlessness. When Odis tells Deafy about the phone call at the police station, he likely wasn’t lying about Loy being on the other end; just, given the cut to Loy after Odis shoots Swanee and Deafy, it looks like Odis wasn’t completely truthful about Loy’s orders.
- A couple of sightings of the creepy monster guy we’ve seen a few times on the show. I want more of this fella, please.
118 Comments
Im sorry but Noah Hawley has been a coherent writer, seriously make heads or tails outta Legion. First off, as they always say, its always the mother. Clearly Oreattas mother is a reason she became a serial killer. Hell the worlds worst serial killer, Harold Shipmen, used morphine to overdose patients. His mother died of cancer and he took it hard, she was constantly on morphine which is interesting. Best you’ll get. And one more note, that shootout was a nod towards two things. One, the station scene from the Untouchables because it was filmed in the same spot. Second, a nod to the real life Kansas City Massacre at the train station from the 1930s. Although this was a bit more mass shooting like. I don’t know, I quite liked it. Bring on the Wizard of Oz episode next week. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_massacre
You mean bring on the “A Serious Man” episode next. I, too, like this season, even though I agree with Handlen’s assessment that it feels like too many plots smashed together. My main problem with this season is that it’s almost completely devoid of any humor. Not even the jet black comedy that both the movie and early seasons of the show were known for (the first season did some nifty stunt casting by way of Keegan Key and future Oscar winner Jordan Peele, which was far more successful). By the way, no one yet has mentioned that Loy paraphrases a Mike Milligan quote to Deafy, ”being nice about NOT being nice”, more than ever cementing the idea that Satchel Cannon becomes the future leader of the Kitchen brothers prog band.
Legion was reasonably easy to follow for the first 2 season, the end of season 3 really shit the bed though.
I think I know why this season hasn’t really had the impact of the previous seasons, and it’s the fact that there’s no driving goal of this season. In the previous seasons it was “There’s been some murders and the perpetrators should be brought to justice.” But not here, here the murder of Mob Boss Fadda doesn’t bother anyone. The only people who care about it are the other Faddas and they seemed to get over it really fast. Meanwhile on the flip side as of this episode no one absolutely no one knows about Orietta being the killer so nobody is after her (For that at least). And once again the closest thing to a hero this season is Ethelrida and besides writing that letters shes basically been in the background this whole season.And so what is driving goal of this season? There’s going to be a gang war at some point I guess. And the problem with that is that we would need to care about least one of the sides in the conflict, but they’ve both been pretty awful so it doesn’t really matter who wins or loses in that fight. They could all die and it wouldn’t really make any impact.There’s also the issue of there not really being any charismatic figures to get behind in this season either. Chris Rock’s trying his best he’s just not up to that level and it became really obvious to me tonight when they put him together with Timothy Olyphant who just blew him out of the water.
Does anyone even know that Father Fadda was murdered? They know he was shot accidentally by those kids and I think they assume that’s what killed him? They seem to have no interest in going after the kids for it, and they don’t know there was any more foul play, so that subplot dropped pretty quickly. As did Josto’s wanting to get revenge against Harvard.
Only Josto knows, because he urged the crazy nurse to do it. And he may have had more than power on his mind with that request. As he said tonight, he was abused by the Irish leader as a child and probably blames his father for letting that happen.
No he didn’t. He didn’t know she was going to murder him. He just asked her to take care of him and she took that to mean Angel of Mercy him.
We read that scene differently. I thought it was clear what he was insinuating.
Yeah me too he wanted his father gone. I wouldn’t say nobody cares about Fadda’s death we have seen that New York is involved in the situation involving the brothers.
I disagree. If he’d asked Oretta to off his dad he would have remembered who she was, and not been so befuddled when she popped into his car to jerk him off.You don’t just casually suggest someone kill your father, then forget all about them and that they know your terrible secret.
Exactly! She barely made an impression on him at the hospital. Not how it would be if he had actually asked her to kill her father. Besides, why would you ask a nurse to kill a patient unless you knew she was into that sort of thing anyway.The episode did confirm a suspicion I have had about the boss of the Irish gang. I had been wondering why “the rabbi” so hated his father that he was willing to turn on him and be the one to kill him. Abuse was one thing I kept coming back to. It may have been something that didn’t start until after the swap between the Irish and Jewish gangs. Rabbi was down with helping his father double-cross the Jews that time. But something changed between then and when he was swapped for Josto.Now Josto admits he was abused by Boss Milligan when he was with the Irish. I suspect his dad wanted Rabbi to do the same thing again, and help double-cross the Italians. But Rabbi decided that he wasn’t going back and that his father had to pay for what he did. Maybe he even told Boss Fadda about what his father was like, to get him fired up to rescue his son from this pervert. It would also explain why the old man and Josto held Rabbi in such high regard, even though he wasn’t Italian and would never be a full member of the gang.
If he was he probably would have used more clear language. Plus he didn’t know Orietta prior to that meeting and there’s a vast gulf between doing Cocaine with someone in a supply closet and asking them to murder someone.
eh, depends how much cocaine.
Definitely not. Their exchange in his car later was clearly written as a comedy of errors, where she alludes to their “agreement” and he never catches on.
I think it’s worth splitting the difference. I don’t think Josto immediately clocked Oraetta as an Angel of Death serial killer who’d murder his father for him (I still don’t think he has any idea that’s what she is), but with his inhibitions down under the influence of whatever pharmaceutical nose candy she provided him, his request for her to take care of his father sure sounded like he was hoping his father died—I don’t think Oraetta misinterpreted him at all. His behavior afterward bore that out, with him not acting broken up in the least by Papa Fadda’s death. He just thought he lucked out.
No, they don’t. The closest would probably be Ethelrida since she has his ring now but I’m guessing she doesn’t know the significance since she’s had zero connection to the Faddas.
I think the criticism of the driving goal is fair, although I don’t agree. But it does seem that the lack of a legitimate voice for regular order in the discussion about belonging in America dampens the impact of the season.What I don’t get is the running complaint in these reviews about the coherence of the season. I feel like the subplots and characters are all bound together pretty tightly, as much as Season 2, clearly more than Season 1 and especially more than Season 3.
Not really, Orietta & The Smutney’s stuff has been on the sidelines for most of the season besides each one having a connection to one of the gangs and unless the final fight is going to be in the street between Orietta and Etherlida’s I can’t particularly seen how either one is going to figure into the final fight.
The Smutny family is pretty tightly connected to both the Cannons and Oraetta — they don’t feel like a loose end to me. The addition of Loy’s son and the strong chance of Zelmare returning for revenge means they are likely to be involved in the end game, not to mention whatever Oraetta is up to, possibly including going after Josto.They feel like a strong part of what has happened to me — they’re not like the long grocer subplot in Season 1, for example, which seemed as much as anything something to keep Billy Bob Thornton on screen while the Lester plot moved along.
The driving goal of this season has been the gang war, and more specifically Loy trying to get his son back from the Faddas. Now, if you don’t like Rock’s performance, I’m sure that driving goal doesn’t seem appealing to you. But as someone who has liked what Rock’s doing a lot more often than not, my opinion’s a little different. In the moment, it looked like Olyphant blew Rock out of the water. But given the end, with Deafy staring sightlessly at Odis, you have to look back at that confrontation a little differently. Olyphant barreled over Rock at the beginning of the conversation, up until he invoked Satchel’s death, in part because Loy was supposed to be numb with grief and tired at that moment. Immediately after that Deafy shows off his quickdraw skills—his gun wisely pointed at Loy, not Opal, who’d gone for his own piece. And at that point the power shifts, and Loy starts laughing, because he knows how he’s going to kill Deafy. He does the thing Deafy expects criminals (and black people) to do—roll on their fellows when threatened. He adds the little threat at the end to put Deafy at ease. He probably even instructs Odis to tell the lawman the call he got was from him.It’s a nice piece of work, which works because Rock doesn’t give away the play. When he gives up the outlaws, he looks defeated. There’s no mustache twirl or affectation that makes it obvious Loy’s setting Deafy up, and the double-cross doesn’t become obvious until we see Odis still trapped in the car after the shooting has started.
Also, Deafy called Loy “boy”, so he was doomed.
Josto did NOT order the killing of his father, you have to not follow the show at to assume that. In the eyes of the Faddas, no one killed the father.
The two presumed leads are the biggest problems, for me. Both Chris Rock and Jason Schwartzman are woefully miscast in their roles and they’ve made both characters completely uninteresting. The rest of the cast and characters are fantastic, so these two just suck the life out of the show whenever they appear on screen.
So Swanee definitely saw the dead guy, ruling out the theory that it was some curse that only Ethelrida’s family can see. Well, I guess it can still be some kind of family curse but the fact that others can see him is notable. I’m still banking on this not paying off in anyway whatsoever though.
Also, does Loy want Zelmare alive for some reason? Was the order to kill all of them and Odis just screwed it up? I couldn’t tell because Odis didn’t really try all that hard to kill her. That scene came off weird to me because he clearly had enough time to shoot even before she charged him.
I think Odis just fucked up, he got spooked and didn’t fire in time.
How old is Swanee supposed to be, aside from older than the hills, rivers, and trees?Maybe Odis was shocked that he just murdered a kid, but I wish it made more sense why he didn’t just plug them both.
I would guess around the same age as her actress, late twenties to early thirties.
I’d have guessed she wasn’t much more than a teenager, and Odis seemed to think she might be a minor when he asked how old she was.I think maybe they left it ambiguous on purpose.
I also would like to know why Odis had to kill all three at the end. Him killing Deafy was shocking, but I thought, okay I get it. But then when he shot Swanee and then attempted to shoot at Zelmare, I was lost.
Tying up loose ends, I’m guessing he wasn’t lying to Deafy about that. Just that he didn’t mention that Deafy was one of them.
Loy likely didn’t want the women to live because it would damage his reputation that he gave them up.
I think it was more basic than reputation — he didn’t want them getting away and coming for revenge. Which I’m sure is coming up now.
But that over-the-top raid would be evidence enough he spilled the beans on them among even the most clueless of the crime families and gossipers. I think he wants Zelmare alive to distract both local and federal law enforcement from the brewing crime gang war, which may backfire anyway.
Loy ordered them dead, for the same reasons Odis told Deafy—when you order a federal agent dead because he rubbed your nose in the death of your son you can’t have that coming back on you. Once Deafy was dead, Z and S were a liability. If set loose, they could be caught any day, and tell the cops the story about how a cop that Loy Cannon owned murdered a marshal right in front of them.As a strategy goes, this one was surprising because the whole thing needed to be a monumental cock-up in order to work.
Once Deafy was dead, Z and S were a liability. If set loose, they could be caught any dayIt’s not exactly this. This consideration would have come to Loy BEFORE sending them away to Philadelphia, so he just wouldn’t have done that to begin with, or he would have already set up an ambush.What changes once he revealed their escape plan to Deafy is that now Zelmare and Swanee know Loy gave them up, so they would be hellbent on revenge. Hence, Odis couldn’t just rescue them, he had to prevent them from going after Loy, while at the same time retaliating on Deafy for his lack of respect.
Before he sent them to Philadelphia, the only leverage they had on Loy was a crime they committed on his behalf, something more dangerous to them than to him (they’d have to confess murders, and a case against Loy would still be difficult to prove because of U.S. rules on the admissibility of uncorroborated accomplice testimony). As things shook out, they might’ve figured that someone gave them up, but they’d know for certain that Loy’s guy, Odis, saved them, which is why they were cocky—not angry—when he showed up, and shocked when he turned the gun on Swanee. If Odis had let them go, I doubt they would’ve been nearly as focused on getting back at his patron than on getting the hell out of dodge. Regardless, once Loy decided Deafy had to go, they were dead, because the only way to make the heat from Deafy’s death go away was if the entire matter was wrapped up, both fugitives and lawman dead. If another fed shows up in KC to continue the investigation of Deafy’s missing fugitives, they might uncover Loy’s involvement, and that’s a much bigger threat to him than the outlaws ever could have been.
I bet dead guy pays off when Oretta comes to the Smutny house in the dead of night looking for Ethelrida. Like the UFO or the bowling alley weigh station it’ll never be explained, but these things do pay off in the sense that they effect the narrative in pretty major ways.
This is dead on, I think. We know better than to expect a real explanation of a piece of supernatural weirdness like this, but we should expect it to be consequential. More consequential, I hope, than Odis failing to kill Zellmare because her seeing Mr. Snowman spooked him.
The dead guy is real, somehow. We saw him in the casket last episode when nobody else was looking.I think Odis suddenly started feeling bad about shooting Deafy.
Getting getting a speech from Timothy Olyphant is worth the price of admission. But was there ever any doubt that Odis was going to betray him? You can see it coming a mile away.
To answer Zack’s question (To a “hospital specializing in the treatment of poisons.” Honest question: is that a thing?), medical toxicology is a thing. A friend of mine who’s an ER doc did a fellowship in that. I assume back during this time period of Fargo, it was probably an extremely rare specialty so Dr. Harvard had to go elsewhere.
You have to wonder if he was sent to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
That would have definitely been in the realm of possibility since that’s a renowned hospital.
Yeah not to be rude but… there’s a hospital that specializes in just about everything. My father worked in a both a hospital mostly aimed at heart attacks and cancer. Back in the 1950s specialization was less common, but poison has been a common enough problem since the beginning of recorded history so I see no reason to not believe one was around.
Zack was asking an honest question and I was just answering it.
That’s because heart disease and cancer are two of the most common diseases in the world. A hospital specializing in poisonings wouldn’t have enough business to keep it open, especially for inpatients. I think it is more likely that Dr Harvard’s hospital doesn’t have a toxicologist on staff (good reason for Oreatta to work there!) so they transferred him somewhere that did.
Exactly, thank you, Dr. Lizardo. Even today, if you were to need acute inpatient care from a doctor specializing in toxicology, you’d likely have to go to or be transferred to a tertiary hospital.
And if not an entire hospital, at the very least a ward or wing. Hospital being renowned for their specialist wards are pretty common in every country.
And does strychnine put you down that fast? Like less than a minute?
I previously was only aware of strychnine as poison for vermin, but per Encyclopedia Wikipedia, it says the onset of action is 10-120 minutes so the quickness with which Dr. Harvard showed symptoms seems fast. Oraetta’s macaron recipe would have had to have a pretty high strychnine content, but then I’m sure it wouldn’t have tasted as delicious as Dr. Harvard made it out to be, and gut absorption is slower than inhaling, bloodstream, etc.
I love the cars in this series. I hate that Timothy Olyphant got deaded.
I just want more Timothy Olyphant On my screens… all the screens all the time!!
Too much of this season feels like a handful of different shows slammed into each other and just decided to roll with the chaos for a bit. Yeah, I realized tonight that’s what’s not working for me. It’s a lot of stories that are tangentially connected, but most of the characters have nothing to do with each other. And they’re all off doing their own things, which might be interesting individually, but they don’t feel like they’re in the same show.
Both Oreatta and Ethelrida are just a means to link the main story lines together while attempting to keep any female characters more than incidental. Because otherwise this is a tale of various legions of men – competing mobster gangs and law enforcement – leading up to an apocalyptic regional war. Which quite frankly, any female involvement would have been secondary or incidental at best.
Maybe the next couple of weeks will braid some of these subplots into soothing more cohesive
I felt like we finally got the American allegory of this season being expressed through character instead of speeches this episode. It’s clunky and not clear, but I think that’s what Hawley is going for, like his intention S3 to talk about the Trump election. So maybe Oraetta Mayflower is a representation of the country, with a spirit of enterprise, as she was called when young. Now that we know that she kills because of her mom’s Munchausan’s, that could be symbolic too: something about how America needs to take care of other countries by being the world’s policeman and extolling democracy, but does more harm than good. Maybe being comforted so much by a mom who was really making her sick is metaphor for how America became the richest country in the world but always had an undercurrent of excess violence. Or something; I may be reaching and reading things that aren’t there. Like the first major character getting killed was a Native American was symbolic. If I knew more Mormon history, I could guess how Deafy was metaphorical too.Great set pieces. This episode just looked beautiful. The scene btwn Oraetta and Josto felt like “Finally, we’re getting character work for the nurse.” Making her into a human being, with vulnerabilities, instead of just an agent of death. I could have used this many episodes ago.But I liked this episode more than the previous ones. I initially thought the ambush at the Faddas house had been planned by Josto to kill his brother and make it look like Loy. He had a look on his face as he was crouching down behind the wood. But I may be wrong.
I thought Loy and Deafy’s discussion worked a lot better than most of the monologues this season — Loy’s calling out of Mormon niceness and Deafy’s analysis of criminal codes fit both characters and revealed interesting things about their perspectives.I agree the episode looked beautiful, but I’m not a fan of the staging of the big gunfights. I don’t like big bunches of nameless extras marching like robots into bullets.
Loy’s calling out of Mormon niceness is almost word for word what Mike Milligan says about Minnesota/Dakota niceness in season two. Which is a little distracting, because satchel wasn’t around to hear it and these things aren’t genetic. But whatever.
Yeah, I rolled my eyes at that. It’s still entertaining but the show is well removed from its peak at this point. The issues that cropped up in S3 have only worsened.
I think this season is a lot better than season 3.
To be fair, that doesn’t sound like a thought that just occurred to Loy in the moment. It’s likely this is a thing he’s already taught his kids in the normal course of educating them about how people will treat them in the world.
Here I was trying to remember where I’d heard it before.
But, he probably heard his father speak like that before. My parents tended to repeat the same things they didn’t like about certain groups of people over and over again if was in the room or not.
“I felt like we finally got the American allegory of this season…It’s clunky and not clear…”
Agreed. One thing I’m finding increasingly annoying is the revisionist approach the screenwriters are taking with the language and attitudes of all the characters of that period. The lack of bigotry displayed, whether interacting between different groups/genders or privately among themselves is not believable and downright banal even by today’s standards. Are the producers so afraid of offending various watching demographics by preventing them from realistically displaying the behaviors of that time while also having other characters (e.g. Zelmare and Swanee) act in ways that would have never taken place openly, all in a cheap shot at appeasing other viewers?
Sounds like Oraetta’s mother had Munchausen’s and was poisoning her as a child. Goes a fair ways toward explaining how screwed up she is. Especially if she’d suspected what was in Mother’s “Special Juices”.
When Gaetano was walking up to Josto I honestly couldn’t tell if he was going to hit him or hug him.Oh, and now he hugs him. Gaetano shows some cunning after all.
He has all the cunning of the bull! Josto has all the might of the snake!
Yes this is 7 months late but…. my favorite bit about that thread in the episode was Gaetano using half a dozen different animals in his comparisons.
When Deafy says “You boys have a nice day” to Loy and his man, all I could hear was Raylan Givens. This is not a complaint.
I’m guessing this comment will die in the “pending” void (as most of mine do)… but here goes anyway:- I understood Zack’s criticism early in the season about the story being too broad and disconnected. And I still agree with that to some extent. However, I must say that it’s gotten better than I expected it to. Almost as if they can’t repeat the higher highs and iconic moments of earlier seasons, but they seem to be sticking the dismount. I like that things are actually happening and getting resolved (or barreling toward resolution).- Wow, I feel late to the conversation, and yet there are only 16 published comments – approx 12 hrs after airing. Yikes! – I have this weird theory that Deafy is Lorne Malvo’s inverse. Deafy is the embodiment of “purity”… or of “justice under God”. This is not a critique nor an endorsement of that concept, just simply how I perceive him. Yet he also has this uncanny creeping feeling about him that there is a darkness beyond the veil of his exterior self. Deafy operates by a code, and in all of his scenes thus far, has abided by said code… except for his last monologue, where he happened to say “hell”.Malvo is the embodiment of “evil” and “malevolence”. He was arguably a “Joker” type of personality that wanted to watch the world burn, and we never really knew why (nor needed to). He also operated with a disconnected, drifter persona (very much akin to Deafy). Yes, we know Dick Wickware is a US Marshall, and we’ve seen his fellow officers, so we know some element of his origin. Malvo we don’t, but I’m suggesting that maybe Lorne Malvo is the reincarnation of Dick Wickware.Also worth noting:- they both got taken out by surprise by a shot to the chest- they both had a “death stare” type of expression on their face after they succumbed to their wounds, and if I’m not mistaken, both scenes depicted a smoke rising from their corpse. Granted it probably wouldn’t be that unusual for a gunshot wound to smoke to some extent because of the powder. But yet most dramatic depictions of gunshot wounds don’t depict any type of smoke. Or maybe I’m just Mandela Effect’ing this and this didn’t happen as I remember it.- Dick Whitware is an anagram of Wicked WraithAnd a wraith is a shadowy figure you see before death.Maybe he is tied to the ghost guy. Probably now that I think about it. – also both characters kinda look similar, and kinda act similar during conversation. Both can be stone cold serious and also affable and charming; and both characters can turn it on and off like they are in total control… for what it’s worth it could be intentional if this does end up bearing some kind of fruit.You heard it here first? For all I know someone called this on episode 1. But it just crept into my head and had to spill it somewhere.
I agree that the season is pulling together. It may be fair to argue the direction isn’t right, but I disagree that there isn’t a strong direction for the season.
What I thought was striking about Deafy’s bit to Loy was that pretty much everything he was saying about the flexible code of criminals felt like the kind of thing that would apply to Deafy. If he had survived, it is easy to imagine him not even blinking an eye over all of the innocent dead in the station and only caring that the arrest failed.
I think what’s lacking is that Chris rock is not the best dramatic actor… he can’t pull a Jim Carey… it’s empty and it effects the whole feel of the season. Also the shooting was cut short by the pandemic and Noah felt a could Frankenstein an episode or two together to finish this year and it shows.
Comments counts are down because of the downward spiral—AV Club doesn’t feature the article prominently because the reviews aren’t getting as many views as expected, comments take a hit because you have to scroll down (or go to the TV page) to know the review’s been posted. Are the actual TV ratings down?Funny thing, I also had the thought about the wraith looking like Oliphant this episode, to the point where I’m wondering if the wraith’s old fashioned clothing is any kind of clue. Maybe the Smutny house was once owned by Mormons who died when Missouri did their ethnic cleansing?
Speaking of “looking like Oliphant”: Tim doesn’t at this point. Both here and in The Mandalorian he seems to have had “some work” done. Really smooth-faced. Am I alone on this?
Not alone. It took me a few seconds to figure out that it was him, and whether it was just the haircut or the face that was throwing me.
Haven’t seen the Mandalorian. He looks a little smooth, but his work done is within reason. He’s still recognizably enough himself that I never see Deafy without thinking of Raylan Givens first.
Laser facial nothing major. I have had it done. He was a swimmer like me and a lifeguard it totally erases years of sun damage that he most definitely had.
He does look a little smooth in the face, but he (to me at least) is instantly recognizable because of how scrawny he is and his walk. When he appeared on the Mandalorian, before he even took off the helmet I knew exactly who it was. He has pretty distinctive body language. He looked A LOT smoother and shinier in The Good Place.
I’m with you: I like this season a lot better than season 3.
A List of Fictional Characters Ranked by Their Success (or Lack Thereof)Facile as Breathing EditionGaetano “I am the bull. All muscle… You are the chameleon.” You know it’s a hard week when being at the top of the list means that you only lost your mother. Gaetano’s the big winner this week because teaming up with Josto finally gives him purpose and direction the character lacked (even if it actually kind of makes him more of a stereotype, rather than less). Also, the bruised face makeup mellows out the actor’s crazy-eyes mugging a little bit. A nice bit of imagery to have his big action moment be a charge straight forward, John Woo’ing a pair of guns so that his arms were out in front of him like a bull’s horns. Up from last week. Loy “And yet here I am. Community leader, deacon in the church.” The moment Deafy brought Satchel into his little game of rhetoric with Loy, he (and Swanee) was a dead man. It was the first moment that Loy’s really been a villain in this story. If the fantasy sequence where he thought about strangling Ziro had been this week, I’d have thought the boy might be in danger. Loy’s rise from last week has a dead cat bounce feel to it as his recent moves have, for the most part, backfired. Letting Gaetano go gave Josto some valuable muscle, playing the Mort-from-Fargo card left the Fadda boys alive and strongly motivated, even his hit on Deafy and the outlaws left Zellmare out there gunning for him. Death prediction: I’d like to say Zellmare gets him, but I have a feeling Loy’s kindness to Ziro (we learn in this episode that he may be the sole hostage in the history of the KC gangster child swap to be treated humanely by his captors) gets rewarded with a knife to the kidneys.Odis “Being a cop is risky. So I make a deal with the street.” Rare that a winner ends the episode on the floor curling into the fetal position, but Odis finally gets the last word in on Deafy, and may the only officer on the force to survive the Train Station Massacre. Death prediction: This one, Zellmare gets.Lemuel — His meet cute with Ethelrida progresses on to the rifling through your album collection stage, which is sometimes promising when a community college dropout who likes things unstructured meets a valedictorian who’s a big fan of things factual and orderly. Kinda hoping all of this makes it to the stage of Lemuel holding a turntable over his head blasting Charlie Parker at Ethelrida’s window. Previously unranked.Josto “That’s love. That’s what it feels like. Believe me, I almost puked in your commode thinking about saying this!” Catches a beatdown, loses Oraetta for the time being, his mom in the longer term than that, even seems to give way on his Election Day wedding gambit, unless KC really elects its mayors in March. Gains Gaetano, however, which keeps him in the winners column. Death prediction: When you do breath play with a serial killer, that has to be where the smart money goes.Dibrell “That’s your captor.” DibrellShows some steel now that Cannon ownership of the Smutny home has turned into an occupation. Still, it’s hard to see how Dibrell makes good to the Cannons.Ethelrida “I like structure.” For an exciting moment, it looked like this was going to turn into a long-overdue Ethelrida episode, but the gangster war and Deafy’s fugitive pursuit got in the way, and I doubt the season’s got enough quiet moments left to give her her due. Death prediction: Mr. Snowman’s been all over her, and now she’s in the actual sights of a murderer, but I’m kinda hoping she lives long enough to vote for Obama, at the very least.Violante — In theory, Gaetano and Josto teaming up is what he (and New York) wanted, but he doesn’t look pleased in the least. That’s one to file away for later.Oraetta “I don’t want to hear about this.” Takes a blow when Dr. Harvard recovered from his coma, another when she finds out Josto’s getting married, and yet another when she finally finds Chekhov’s lost notebook. Oraetta’s failure to thrive story was a classic description of Munchaussen by Proxy, which would mean she was a child poison victim who grew up to be a poisoner. I was about to throw a flag on the idea that Munchaussen by Proxy was hereditary, but apparently, there’s some evidence to it. Pretty much all the way down from last week. Death prediction: If Zellmare had ever given the Smutnys their shotgun back, I’d be calling this as Dibrell going Ripley-in-Aliens on her.Buel “Everybody thinks ‘I’ve got nothing left to lose.’” Has the smarts to see Dibrell’s request coming and try to shut it down, but hears it anyway. Again, kudos to the makeup department but also to J. Nicole Brooks’s performance, since the usually-immaculate Mrs. Cannon looks like someone whose life has been shattered this week. Death prediction: We’ve entered the season’s bloodletting phase, so I see bad things happening at Satchel’s memorial service.In MemoriamDeafy “U.S. Marshall, backed by the power of the mighty American eagle.” “And yet, here’s me still, bamboozled at every turn.” Kind of surprised to see that Deafy also shared Raylan Givens’s quick draw talent, given his slow motion pursuit of Zellmare and Swanee. Has a long-overdue confrontation with Loy, which he appears to win, but even before his extremely preventable betrayal by Odis, Deafy was a total failure. With hours of foresight, the best he could come up with was storming a crowded train station with uniforms 10 minutes before the train’s scheduled arrival?Zellmare and Swanee — Yeah, I know Zellmare survived the train station, but the partnership died with Swanee. An outlaw to the end, it seriously looked like she was stealing candy on principle alone.
Deafy — “Beta team will penetrate through the rear.”
“Someone want to let me in on the joke?”
Mr. Snowman’s been all over herMr. Snowman is her protector. Wait and see.
Good point, since it now seems he’s a warning to Ethelrida’s family more so than a threat. Her parents might not be so lucky (IIRC, the last time we saw him sniffing around Ethelrida was when her parents were singing to her for her birthday).
I just want to say thank you for the great work weekly on these updates. That and your user name makes me instantly want to buy you a beer.
Kansas City actually does elect their Mayors in late winter, for the record!
Once Josto recovers from the punches, Josto swears fealty, calling himself the bull and Josto the chameleon, expressing his admiration for his brother’s tactics and basically ending the feud between them. Yall need a better proofreader.
Kind of a big omission not to mention Loy’s order to “Call Fargo” The hit squad at the Fadda’s was likely old man Gearhardt’s crew. Not sure who’s going to survive all of this. Loy isn’t going to survive most likely his wife is going to betray him with the help of the Smutney’s for the whole child trading thing. Oreatta is going to snuff Josto out of jealousy. She’ll also get thwarted in her attempt to kill the Smutney daughter and will end up being arrested. The rabbi will return with Loy’s son who will team up with Smutney to produce Mike Milligan.
Actually the hit squad was Mort Kellerman’s people. Loy gave him most of the guns they stole from the Faddas earlier in the season. In 1941 he or his men kill Dieter Gerdhardt. Then he meet’s Otto in a movie theater where Dodd kills him.
That shootout scene was filled with so many tiresome tropes it was pathetic.
Gaetano, newly redefined from straight villain to anti-hero by making amends with his brother just-in-time to win a guns blazing charge against a small cavalry of men with much superior firepower with just two pistols. With his left eye still swollen, he comes at them head on but doesn’t even get nicked. Yet his mother and sister (?) are killed from a much greater distance by bullets that magically wiz by both brothers yet penetrate the house at lethal speeds? Though somehow these hit men, even from their POV, couldn’t fathom that with two pistols he would run out of amo before they did but scurry off like amateurs? And now, conveniently, his oath of fealty to his brother is solidified in the blood revenge of their mother. -rolls eyes-
Doesn’t it make more sense to say that Satchel is Mike Milligan? This season is in the ‘50s, Season 2 is in the ‘70s.
Im starting to think the point of this season is the chaos and no real central point. It was mentioned about Hawley’s lack of interest for a coherent season but maybe that is the case. With the preview for the next episode it sounds like things are being shaken up in a different way. There is the creepy monster guy who will have some meaning in the end too. Maybe they all end up together to fight off a zombie apocalypse. We shall see where this goes. We shall see
To a “hospital specializing in the treatment of poisons.” Honest question: is that a thing?No it is not. But it is possible that Dr Harvard’s hospital does not have a toxicologist (expert on poisonings) on staff and transferred him to one that did. In fact, if Oreatta is as smart as they are making her out to be, she probably picks hospitals to work at where there is no toxicologist to catch her.
This!!!
I disagree with your complains about the season not being cohesive, it connected everything perfectly and most of us love the characters as a whole, this is why we want more screen time for many of them. And I disagree even more with you saying that we cannot enjoy a good scene if the characters did not had many screen time before, this idea is strange to me. I adored the scene between Buel and Dibrell, one of the highlights this season.Finally, I was able to like Odis until now, but him killing Swanee in this horrific way made me hate him since I did care for her, I hope Zelmare kills him in a cruel way. The death of Defy made me smile though, I cannot stand religious fanatics, Olyphant was terrific though, the whole cast it is.
the train to sioux falls was numbered 666interested to see ben whishaw in the wizard of oz next week!
also i think i recognized a bit of the legion original score (the dark synthy bass line) breaking through to the fargo universe when the train station scene started?
but I hadn’t called Odis being the one to take him out.
Huh. This seemed obvious to me the minute he came along on the raid. But I was primed for all the suspence. I couldn’t have been the only one expecting Zellmare’s warning to Swanee that “Your sweet tooth is gonna kill you one day” to set up some classic Dramatic Irony.
Josto not caring about getting married is indicative of the plot not caring about it either. Seeing his fiance again was “Oh yea, forgot about that!” and it just made me annoyed because she and the father seem funny, and I had hoped we’d get more of a storyline out of that. It speaks to the reviewers point about all the plots this season. (Hell, I forgot about S and Z’s ghost too. What even is all that?) I agree about Gateano and I can’t believe it. He worked this week! Perhaps due to some humility? He’s been captured, beaten, and his brother wanted him dead. As tough and as proud as he is, maybe he realized he should take it down a notch? It says something that when he acknowledged Josto’s intellect, I actually appreciated it. Has this show made me… care about Gateano’s opinions? Or do I just respond to characters being appreciated for their brains? (Even when said character yet again says “Slow your role,” and along with his lewd blowjob gesture to Oraetta, there’s a contemporary feel to Josto that doesn’t fit the era, and it bothers the shit outta me.)
This week in People Attempting to Speak Italian on This Show.Dear Jason “I’m a Coppola, therefore I’m Italian!” Schwartzman, if you’re not able to pronounce the word “proiettili”, and you know you aren’t, please ask for another take where you at least don’t sound like a frog suddenly appeared in your mouth halfway through the word. Grazie!(Also, dears Noah Hawley, Enzo Mileti & Scott Wilson – and especially Enzo Mileti, I’m gonna guess – “aspettare” is the infinitive, not the imperative. That would be, in the second-person singular, “aspetta”).
At least Swanee was able to get some bit o honey before she died
Where are Satchel and Rabbi Milligan is the main question in my mind.
This whole season is just an origin story for Mike Milligan. I’ve been thinking about that for a while and it seems more and more likely as things go on.
Sorry, but this is incoherent garbage. Whomever Hawley drafted to write seasons one and two clearly left the fold, and what remains are ugly unlikeable characters in gorgeous clothes stopping mid-shot to make awkward, poorly-written speeches. That these unconvincing expositions fail to enhance the story in any way is beside the point (do we really need another Munchausen childhood after The Sixth Sense?); that they larded with anachronism makes them more than annoying. When a lead character is killed, I should feel something other than relief that I won’t have to hear them give another speech about racism, Mormons, or misogyny. The last two seasons of this show have reached Westworld and True Detective S2 levels of shit. I gave it a chance, but this is just fucking awful TV.
Sorry, but this is incoherent garbage. Whomever Hawley drafted to write seasons one and two clearly left the fold, and what remains are ugly unlikeable characters in gorgeous clothes stopping mid-shot to make awkward, poorly-written speeches. That these unconvincing expositions fail to enhance the story in any way is beside the point (do we really need another Munchausen childhood after The Sixth Sense?); that they larded with anachronism makes them more than annoying. When a lead character is killed, I should feel something other than relief that I won’t have to hear them give another speech about racism, Mormons, or misogyny. The last two seasons of this show have reached Westworld and True Detective S2 levels of shit. I gave it a chance, but this is just fucking awful TV.
Sorry, but this is incoherent garbage. Whomever Hawley drafted to write seasons one and two clearly left the fold, and what remains are ugly unlikeable characters in gorgeous clothes stopping mid-shot to make awkward, poorly-written speeches. That these unconvincing expositions fail to enhance the story in any way is beside the point (do we really need another Munchausen childhood after The Sixth Sense?); that they larded with anachronism makes them more than annoying. When a lead character is killed, I should feel something other than relief that I won’t have to hear them give another speech about racism, Mormons, or misogyny. The last two seasons of this show have reached Westworld and True Detective S2 levels of shit. I gave it a chance, but this is just fucking awful TV.
The big shootout scene was shot in Union Station Chicago, which clearly makes sense, as all this season was shot in the Chicago area, but in this case was a bit sad. Chicago’s Union Station is very recognizable, but Kansas City’s Union Station is one of the more beautiful and unique train stations in the country.
That’s gorgeous, what a missed opportunity.
I don’t think this show would be as mesmerizing to me if it were shot in a modern setting. The actors are doing yeoman’s work, some better than others, with an okay script but the scenery, costumes and cinematography are just great. They are really taking advantage of the visual arts.I do think that Jessie Buckley’s performance as Oraetta is exceptional, worthy of awards and praise.
I really enjoyed the kitchen table scene between Buel and Dibrell. Much as I enjoy the big choices actors get to make in Fargo generally, I really appreciate the strong, quiet work they did here.
“Giving up on it all coming together in a meaningful way by the end”That’s my problem with Zack’s reviews in a nutshell. He’s always so desperate for answers and resolution that he constantly complains when he doesn’t get them in a timely manner. That doesn’t lend itself to TV, questions keep people coming back. If you want to complain about the lack of resolution after a finale, I guess that kind of makes more sense. But this is a theme of his reviews. Maybe you should review movies where you can get all of your answers in 1 setting. There are still 3 episodes left, how you can give up on what’s going to happen by the end of the season is beyond me. Seasons 1 and 2 were great. 3 was pretty good as well yet you talk like this show has a track record of being terrible or something. Any who, great episode in what has been a strong season. I’d put it above season 3 at this point.
Oraetta is kinda sexy…until you watch her walk. Jessie Buckley does this wierd splayfooted “I’m clenching my asshole to try to keep from shitting myself” walk that just removes all the sexy when she’s upset, which I’m sure they did on purpose.I’m watching, thinking “She’s kinda hot, I can almost see what Josto sees in her”, then she walks away and I’m like, wow, that just ruined it.
I thought oraetta might be lying about her childhood. She just seems like a liar
No! You don’t introduce Timothy Olyphant only to take him away! Yes, he was racist, but I could have changed him!
Is it just my audio setup, or does anyone else have a hard time understanding what the hell is said on this show a lot of the time, unless I run the volume up to the “danger level”(where my neighbors cry to the apartment management, forcing me to watch it after “quiet time” is over), where I have to keep the remote in my hand in case my cable company does either of two things:1. Do a test of the emergency broadcast system. That digital burst at approx 3am is way way louder than almost anything else on my cable. And some nights, they test again and again. And they seem to know the exact second I go to the bathroom to run a test a few minutes after they ran a previous one. Usually I turn the volume way down when I get up, but once in a while, I forget and it comes blasting out and my cats lose their shit.2. The cable company has this new sound they use at the end of their commercials, and it’s 4x louder than the rest of the ad. Of course, listening through my PC, it doesn’t have the impact it does through a 7.1 system.It only took them about 5 years to fix the problem they had with alternating commercials going up and down in volume. If you nodded off, it wouldn’t be long before an ad came along to blast you awake. They actually told me they didn’t know how to fix it. Great engineers that don’t know how to equalize levels?
Watching with captions helps.
That’s true. But I was kind of waiting until my hearing got really bad before I started doing that.
Apparently no one knows the difference between macaroons and macarons.
Ha, I was just about to make this same comment! I’ve seen no recap make the distinction and it’s driving me nuts.
Apropos creepy monster guy: Is there something comparable somewhere in the Coens’ oeuvre? Nods and references towards the Coen bros’ films are still a thing this season (off the top of my head, when Loy’s goon strangles Odis with a shower curtain for a bit, that was a clear visual parallel to an early scene in No Country for Old Men). And previous surreal touches like the UFO thing in S2 was also semi-based on a (non-sequitur UFO-referencing) moment in The Man Who Wasn’t There. Can the creepy walking corpse guy be traced to any one of the Coens’ movies, too?