I love when a show changes its tempo for an episode. It’s something The Walking Dead does (or did) a few times a season, and it nearly always worked on me. Most weeks, you get multiple storylines spread out over several characters, creating a kind of revolving door serialization that can either be messy or satisfyingly sprawling, depending on the episode. But “East/West” slows things down to focus on just a single plot: the fate of Rabbi Milligan and a few others. Rabbi is on the run from both the Faddas and the Cannons, and has decided to make tracks with Satchel Cannon to Liberal, Kansas, a ton where he has some money stashed away. Calamita is in hot pursuit, but so is Omie Sparkman, with an Italian fella in the trunk of his car for good measure. It all comes to a head at a gas station during a terrible storm, where an act of God settles the issue, leaving Satchel to find his fate on his own.
Stripped of texture and most of its incident, that’s a reasonable summary of “East/West.” But this is very much an episode about that texture, for better and for worse. Rabbi and Satchel hole up in a hotel (the Barton Arms, wink wink) run by pair of eldery white sisters who hate each other; their refusal to budge has separated the building into two sides, the “East” and “West” of the title. Said sides are distinguished by a line running between them, and there is clearly Symbolism at play here, but I’d be lying if I said it added up to much of anything to me. I like the episode overall, but I wanted to love it; there’s a lot of quirkiness and a clear attempt to mean something, but it fails to cohere in a satisfying way.
To the good: Rabbi and Satchel’s relationship is one of the most interesting the season has offered us, to the point where I wish it could’ve pulled more focus. Going into this episode, it seemed reasonable to assume Rabbi wouldn’t make it out alive; there’s a good chance Satchel is going to end up as Mike Milligan from season 2, and Mike’s ruthlessness and relationship to the Kansas City mob would’ve been at odds with Rabbi’s basic, if desperate, decency. And heck, that decency itself is enough to make him a target on a show like this. He’s stuck in an impossible position, he tried to make a semi-moral choice that put him on the wrong side of everyone, and he’s likable. That’s about as close to a death warrant as you can get.
Taking all of that into consideration means that most of “East/West” is suspenseful even when it’s not explicitly trying to be. Rabbi doesn’t meet his fate until near the end, but every moment before that feels laden with possibility. It’s also a function of choosing to focus the hour entirely on his and Satchel’s story—that level of attention means something important is going to happen, so even when the script is just spending time showing us the various strange inhabitants of the Arms, it never gets boring or slack. One of Fargo’s big tricks is how it often tries to approach sudden scenes of violence from unexpected angles, and while that trick has lost its shock value over time (especially once you realize that there are only so many “unexpected” angles to work from), it essentially means that even the most innocuous conversations are laden with portent.
Where this suffers a bit is that portent or no, a lot of this falls into that “odd for the hell of it” vibe that the show has always struggled with. I have no doubt that all of this is supposed to be some kind of metaphor; there are a couple of scenes of Rabbi getting into contentious conversations with a fella painting a billboard that resonate like someone tapping you on the head with a hammer. But for this sort of thing to work, the show needs to convince us that it’s all to a purpose even if that purpose isn’t immediately relevant. This season, Fargo has lost its knack for such convictions. “East” and “West” is probably supposed to mean something (the fact that both sisters hated “coloreds” but once is more open about it than the other is surely indicative), as is the semi-random collection of oddballs. There’s a fella regularly quoting from How To Win Friends And Influence Enemies, another fella heading to Texas for oil, and an elderly general with a young niece who wants to hear fairy tales over dinner. Oh, and a guy all bandaged up who quotes the Bible. (Revelations, I think?)
This all makes the cut for being baseline interesting, but, as is so often the case when symbolism fails to justify itself, it’s just a bunch of parts without a sum to look to for meaning. Worrying what was going to happen meant that Satchel wandering around on his own talking to people was never boring, but once we got to the end, we’re forced to reckon with how little any of this meant. Why is the episode in black and white, only to switch to color when Satchel wakes up on his own? I get that it’s a Wizard of Oz reference—they’re in Kansas, Rabbi (and Calamita) just got sucked up into a tornado—but just making the reference doesn’t actually mean anything in and of itself. Is Satchel’s life on his own supposed to be a dream? Is he not in Kansas anymore, even though he very much is still in Kansas?
About that tornado: it’s a thrilling, gorgeous sequence, but I’m not sure it’s a satisfying conclusion to Rabbi and Calamita’s story. (I guess it’s technically possible that one of them survived this, but it seems unlikely.) Having a character in extreme danger taken out by a completely unexpected threat is a trope for the show, but while the apocalyptic fervor of the tornado itself is a sight to behold, it doesn’t really say much about anything beyond “shit happens.” “East/West” choosing to spend this much time on this particular situation made me more inclined to like it, but it also sets up expectations for a conclusion that earns that attention. I don’t know if that was achieved here.
It’s just, there really isn’t that much story. Rabbi finding out the place where he stashed the money was bought out by a pair of brothers who used it to finance their kitchen appliance store is a decent twist, but it’s a starting point, not a conclusion. There’s a great sequence where Rabbi goes back to the store to hold the brothers up while Satchel waits in the car; the intensity between Rabbi finding out he’s screwed, and Satchel having to deal with a white cop, is the most alive the episode really gets, but nothing comes of it in the end. Rabbi doesn’t kill the brothers and he interrupts the cop before things can get too bad, and then later, he goes and dies for reasons that have nothing to do with any of this. Hell, if he’d got the money, he might still have died.
There’s pathos in him getting killed just for trying to get Satchel something nice for his birthday, and the whole episode is gorgeous to look at and well directed. The scenes of sudden violence are appropriately operatic. I don’t think I was ever bored by this, and it feels a bit churlish to criticize something just because it wasn’t as good as you wanted it to be. But the flaws of “East/West” feel endemic of the flaws of the season as a whole. When it finds time to pay attention to its best characters, it works. When it aims bigger, it fumbles. “East/West” splits the difference, for better and worse.
Stray observations
- So, the Barton Arms is a clear nod to Miller’s Crossing. (And Barton Fink, I guess.) The tornado is probably a nod to A Serious Man—what else did I miss? (Someone on Twitter pointed out that “The Future Is Now” is likely a reference to the same slogan appearing under the all important clock in The Hudsucker Proxy.)
- Satchel finds a dog named Rabbit, and more or less adopts it.
- The billboard that upsets Rabbi ultimately reads “The Future Is Now!” Satchel ends up staring at it at the end of the episode. I don’t know if we’ll see him again; this could be as much as we get of Satchel’s story, although if so, it would be weird that he wouldn’t just try and contact his parents and go home. I don’t know as he’d been with Rabbi long enough to feel confident striking out on his own.
- The episode opens with a shot of a wrecked building with a page from The History Of True Crime In The West stuck to a piece of the broken frame; it’s the first page of Chapter 7: “Liberal, Kansas 1950: Who shot Willy Bupor?” Looks like Willy Bupor is the gas station attendant Omie talks to early on; when Rabbi shows up at the station later, Will has been gunned down. Presumably Calamita shot him, and Calamita gets blown away, along with anyone else who could’ve told the tale.
- Gonna miss Rabbi. Ben Whishaw was great.
115 Comments
Favorite episode of the season. To me its how Satchel Cannon becomes Mike Milligan, hence the black and white to color. Also pretty sure that billboard is a nod to Mike Milligans speech about being the future. It was a quirky character study that was throughly entertaining.
I LOVED this episode – and I think our reviewer really needs to go back and watch A Serious Man. As soon as I made the Kansas – Wizard of Oz connection, I knew they were going to bring in the tornado. I’m so glad they also brought in the religious/philosophical aspect too.
It was very Serious Man like. The billboard discussion was the most Coen like thing not done by the Coens themselves. Loved it.
It very much is A Serious Man. Just when the hero finds a new beginning (New Testament) the judgement of god comes in the form of a tornado (Old Testament).
And on whom better to focus a Serious Man homage than “Rabbi” 😉
Going with the “Wizard of Oz” motif, I also assumed the East/West demarcation of the hotel was the ‘Wicked Witch of the ___’. Both women were horrible.
I think he has to meet up with a young Joe Bulo (who we saw for like 2 seconds a few episodes ago) before he becomes Mike Milligan
Oh I know he isn’t Mike yet in a literal sense. But there was a clear before and after character progression here complete with some foreshadowing like the billboard quote.
Indeed – I’m just saying the Joe Bulo character was introduced a few episodes ago, and it seems like, given his relationship with Mike Milligan in Season 2, that has to factor into Satchel’s transformation into Mike Milligan at some point
If I hadn’t seen the previews for next week I probably would have been more annoyed that this episode was dedicated solely to writing off several of its characters. Because we’ve only got two more episodes left and it still feels like there’s a lot of ground to cover. I did like it though.
This episode felt a little “try hard-y”, but I liked it anyway. Hawley really loves playing around with visuals and styles even if they might just be window dressing. But sometimes window dressings can be fun
I think he gets one of these per season. It reminds me of the LA episode with the animated robot in the previous season, which I enjoyed even though it was a dry well. But that’s his quota.
Weirdly enough, that was the only episode I really enjoyed last season, but I see what you mean.
Hey now I loved the kitten at the bowling alley moment (maybe not the reincarnated part).
Oh yeah, I also liked the whole bowling alley scene. I also liked that one for seeing Mr. Wrench again. His presence alone brought some kind of heart to the season that I’d been missing.
Oh almost forgot. Damn that cinematography was fantastic. Best of the season, maybe series best.
Calamita’s death was very anticlimactic and I wish we could have seem that POS suffer a lot more. RIP, Rabbi. I hope Satchel and Rabbit have a long future together.
Calamita’s death was very anticlimactic and I wish we could have seem that POS suffer a lot more. RIP, Rabbi
Considering this is Hawley’s Fargo, I could totally see both of them still being alive. Heck, I was expecting Rabbi to be let down gently in a field somewhere at the end of this episode. Given that there’s 2 eps left, I’d say that they are dead, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely that they are still alive somehow
In an epilogue, Rabbi will be seen aboard Season 2’s UFO. As an Irish, myself, I know we’re popular as probe specimens.
I have a “real” explanation for those UFOs by the way. Now, we know that the story of the Sioux Falls Massacre is based on eyewitness accounts as recorded in that book, right? Okay, so what would Kirsten Dunst’s eyewitness accounts sound like? “Oh my gosh, and then there was this bright light in the sky, and it came closer and closer, and wouldn’t ya know it, it was so distracting that I didn’t even see that man in the road!” Notice, as well, that she was at the motel when the UFO “appeared”, and in the version we saw on TV, she was completely un-flummoxed by it while everyone else was all discombobulated because they’re just not as advanced. Sounds like how she’d tell the tale all right.My guess is, the historian who dutifully recorded the eyewitness accounts, felt some sort of obligation to include Kirsten Dunst’s statements, if for no other reason than to provide some insight into her character and why she made some of the choices she did.
If you freeze frame the page from ‘Who Shot Willy Bupor’ you’ll find there were “five dead, at least four from gunshot wounds, and the bodies scattered miles from one another. No suspects, no arrests.”
There’s gonna have to be some closure then. Either Calamita is alive and we get to see him get a satisfying death, or we see his feet under a building like the Wicked Witch of the East. It would be really nice if Rabbi is still alive, but I feel his death has a reason and meaning to it. 🙁
I thought Willy Bupor’s feet sticking out the door was the Wicked Witch of the East’s reference, but who knows?
Yeah. I thought we might see Rabbi crawl out of a haystack or something.
I’d say that they are dead Everyone at the gas station is confirmed death by the book page at the beginning. Here’s a closeup.And this if you want to try and make out the rest of it.
Maybe it’s because I’m a screaming Antifa Liberal Monster – and as such I wear those colored glasses on my face – but everyone around that dinner table seemed to me to be an aspect of modern conservatism. I mean they are in Kansas, after all. “Here you go Satchel, the future is now… try and figure this shit out for the rest of your life.”But ask me tomorrow and maybe this episode of the show will come off as totally symbolic of something else. idk. Did the dog come from Narnia?
Well you got a racist cop ready to shoot a kid and a Wounded Knee soldier who is called a hero. Perhaps you are on to something.
I know. That cop was ready to draw his weapon, acting like a little boy and his dog were gonna pull a shotgun on him. Hardly anything has changed.
Very ignorant comment…
Texas Oilman = BushPower of Positive Thinking door-to-door salesman = TrumpPreacher with Domineering Wife = PenceWar “Hero” telling fairy tales to his granddaughter = Take your pick.
Mike Milligan says “We’re the future” in Season 2.
Nvm about the dog. Rabbi asked whichever Testament is the one where you’re reborn.Rabbi = Rabbit.He must have done a two day time-loop to enter the wardrobe as a dog.Again, if he shows up miraculously alive and human in either of the last two episodes, then this theory is bunk. Unless he barks.
Worked for Ray in season 3 so why not.
Rabbi = Rabbit.Ooh! That’s a good one. I thought the name was a reference to Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (connected to Milligan’s reading of Jabberwocky in S2).
What kind’ve moron self-labels as antifa?
Maybe it’s because I’m a screaming Antifa Liberal Monster – and as such I wear those colored glasses on my face – but everyone around that dinner table seemed to me to be an aspect of modern conservatism. Well, the entrance test to determine which side of the hotel you’re on did represent the entire political spectrum from the conservative (Eisenhower) to the insanely conservative (McCarthy).
We’ve got both kinds of music! Country AND Western!
Yeah maybe. It’s frigging 1950.
This whole season has nodded to the Wizard of Oz. There’s an episode called “Raddoppiarlo” in this season, which essentially means “doubling it”. This season has two sets of each of the Wizard of Oz characters. Ethelrida, for example, is obviously the twin version of Satchel. But if you think about it, it’s not hard to import the Oz archetypes onto other characters in the same way. As for the characters in the Barton Arms, Mike Milligan, or Satchel uses these characters to build his new life. Most notably from the salesman character. Also, the book at the beginning of the episode is from Season 2. I think Hawley is brilliant, but Fargo is built for easter egg hunting and sly allegories, and I don’t think most viewers dive deep into it as much as is warranted. Perhaps his biggest flaw is that people either don’t find it interesting enough to dive deep, or simply don’t know it’s there.
there is clearly Symbolism at play here, but I’d be lying if I said it added up to much of anything to meThe Grand Unified Theorem of Noah Hawley
Symbolism in a nutshell, in general.
Oh shit just noticed something. The little hotel has a plaque mentioning it was home of the Mellon family, who it says lured guests into the house and killed them with a hammer. This is a direct reference to the Bender Family of 1800s Kansas. A serial killer family that lured people into there bed and breakfast house before bashing and stabbing them. And just like the Mellons, they vanished never to get caught. Well played Hawley. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Benders
The gone feed store wall made me think of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
So much of the conflict this season is forced because characters refuse to communicate with each other even when the alternatives are clearly dire. Why doesn’t Satchel call his family from the boarding house to pick him up instead of opting to become a drifter?The tornado is going to deposit Rabbi into the season finale’s climax.
Why doesn’t Satchel call his family from the boarding house to pick him up instead of opting to become a drifter?Because of Milligan. He convinced the kid his family was sure to be wiped out and they had to wait out the war. He’s not wrong either. Even if Loy somehow killed the entire Fadda family the New York end would just send someone else to take control.
Also he’s kind of got issues with his family for sending him to the Faddas in the first place.
Rabbi was the only adult he trusted by that point, and I don’t think Satchel had pieced together how much Rabbi was using him at that point as a tradeable asset. I don’t think Rabbi had figured out what his plan was either, to be fair.
He’s not wrong either. Even if Loy somehow killed the entire Fadda family the New York end would just send someone else to take control. Joe Bullo’s in KC, so that “somebody” might already be in place.
Since Rabbi knew the Faddas tried to kill Satchel to foment the war, why couldn’t he at least call the Cannons along the road to let them know that their son was alive so they wouldn’t be fighting half-cocked with grief?If the NY mafia plans to keep control of Kansas City, why bother approving the son-swap truce? Just kill the newcomers before they even begin to settle in. Why didn’t Cannon Ltd. move into a city that wasn’t already a mob stranglehold with a violent history of turnover?
I think these are limitations of the story Hawley decided he wanted to tell. Satchel can’t go back to being Satchel Cannon and grow up to be Mike Milligan. If Loy sets up shop in another city there’s no conflict. That said my read on the situation is that Rabbi has no love for the Cannons, and as he told Loy he expects they’re all going to die. I think he also had some real loyalty to the Faddas. They rescued him from being abused after all, and didn’t immediately dispose of him after taking out the Irish. I’d wager there was some real affection between the elder Fadda and Rabbi.But when the son swap happens again he decides he can’t let this happen to another kid.And yeah, the son swap makes little sense. You have to assume each side figures they’re going to be the one that betrays and kills the other in a couple years. Why New York didn’t just send reinforcements and obliterate the Cannons before the truce? No idea. Maybe they were busy fighting amongst themselves.
Maybe you’ve somehow dodged this in all of the rest of cinema and tv…but this ridiculous tired trope has been the engine of drama for decades. Hell, LOST survived on this alone. Have information, and don’t share it= drama/plot(+character development) is the formula they go by.
Anyone else with captions on get the text of a Latuda commercial near the beginning?
I got several sets of commercial captions during the show. Latuda was twice, once for a roomba (or at least with dialog about a roomba). It was distracting- at first I thought it was actual dialog that was too faint too hear.
>“East” and “West” is probably supposed to mean something I think it’s mostly just a continuation of the Oz metaphor – the sisters as the Wicked Witches of the East and West. As far as that meaning anything to the story itself, I don’t think it relates any more than the rest of the Oz stuff.
I was secretly hoping it was the Paul Butterfield song East and West.
When Rabbi, and then Calamita, looked up in the sky and off-camera, I thought there was a chance a house was about to fall on Calamita.
I didn’t like this episode much. It felt surreal for the heck of it and pretentious symbolism without meaning. I’m seeing the show with commercials, so if the plot is slow and nothing happens, it’s dragged out too much. My favorite bit of the episode being the hilarious billboard painter and his musings after the job is done about his precarious future. He felt more Coen-esque than anything else has this season. I thought one of the sisters, when we saw her painting, was Judi Dench. Alas, not, but it would have been cool if she cameoed. Nothing in this episode resonated because we hadn’t spent much time with these two characters this season, and the plotting was random and meaningless for this season’s story, as well as how Satchel turned into Mike Mulligan. The visuals, especially the tornado scene were gorgeous as usual.
I think what is going on is anti-symbolism. Classic symbolism loads up a work of art with coded symbols and there is a meaning that can be unlocked if you know the key.
I don’t think Hawley is going for anything more than being evocative, and he deliberately dodges anything that adds up in an easily translatable way. He’s putting in stuff for the sake of atmosphere and mood instead of a clear formula.I think it’s fair for someone to dislike this approach in general or in this particular case, although I liked it a lot in this episode. I will say that a whole season of this would drive me nuts.
I thought he loaded it with ridiculous symbolism -a rabbit coming out of wardrobe at cross roads in black and white to color at boarding house run by two East/West sisters and obviously a tornado killing everyone- because it’s funny. It was well executed and looked great and now that story’s over in regards to this season. That’s it. Last season there was an entire episode that was just a story that happened. It didn’t quite push anything forward just yup that’s that. This leading to Mike Milligan is the real point I guess, maybe.
An A episode for me, especially if viewed as more of a stand-alone. Even if I can’t attribute specific meaning to every scrap, it all worked to supply atmosphere—which can be meaningful enough on its own. Plenty of mention already about fairy tale stuff. We’ve got the East/West sisters in place of Oz’s witches. Satchel gets his own Toto. A man gives an interesting take on Goldilocks. By the end, I imagine Satchel must transcend his helpless role. Take control and leave the grey behind. But if he really does become Mike Milligan, we know he eventually wakes up (like Dorothy) from a colorful new life—and enters the dull reality of a tiny office.
Standalone is it, yeah. If someone tells me they’d watch Fargo Season 3 but don’t know where to find the time I’ll tell them just to watch this episode and skip the rest.
From the dramatic music during Rabbi’s drive to the store to buy a candy bar I can only assume they have a COVID pandemic, too.
They poured on the Oz references a little thick, I think. I guess I should just be glad the dog wasn’t named Toto.
That shootout/tornado scene was fucking spectacular. The blood spatter reminded me of Sin City.
*edit*
Kinda surprised to learn at the end this one wasn’t directed by Noah Hawley.
Enjoyed the high plains bluegrassy riff on Carter Burwell’s original Fargo title flourish.
I took it as a full blown Morricone spagetti western take on the main theme with some sprinkles of Les Siciliens.
I normally read recaps so somebody else can tell me what the symbolism means, but since Zack isn’t feeling it, I have to resort to a bit of original thought:Rebirth and judgement are a big theme in the episode. Rabbi spells it out with the hotel receptionist, but then spends the majority of the episode chasing (green-backed) ghosts of his past life. Conversely, Satchel spends his time stuck in Purgatory, but there he learns what that rebirth might look like. The East-West theme also represents crossroads, and crossroads are mentioned in other places in the episode (e.g. by the billboard technician).What rebirth looks like, and the second important theme at play in this episode, is the American Dream – established through all the 50’s imagery throughout the episode, through the various entrepreneurial characters we see (the home appliance store brothers, the black gold fever hotel guest, the chatty hotel guest), and spelled out at dinner, through the prayer about risk-taking, and then the Goldilocks story and subsequent discussion (which perhaps shows us a societal view of entrepreneurs, a resistance to outsiders trying to get in, and also a warning that rebirth doesn’t always mean the next life will be different from the previous life – as we know would be the case if Satchel becomes Mike Milligan).The unfinished billboard is the clock of this purgatory state. When the “now” is put up, judgement comes – one of our men looking for rebirth is swallowed up (along with Calamita and Sparkman, which underlines this season’s theme that all immigrants are really just chasing the American Dream). The other emerges into a new world of colour. Rabbit the dog plays double duty as an Oz reference, but also as a reference to Mike Milligan’s Alice in Wonderland motif from Season 2, again showcasing that transition. It also represents a coming of age transition for Satchel from caree to carer (the dog is explicitly discussed as a mouth to feed).
Good analysis. I would also note that Rabbit the dog might perhaps be the next incarnation of Rabbi the human. Getting sucked into a tornado and then spit out of a wardrobe a day earlier makes as much sense as this episode.
Very nice analysis. Rabbi’s line about being born again stood out in the moment because he seems like the kind of guy who knows his bible backward and forward (when we saw it in Calamita’s hands a few eps back, it looked like a book that’s been read), and at the same time, Rabbi Milligan personifies the schism between New and Old Testaments as the Irish Catholic who was embedded with the Jewish crime family. That status of the man in limbo (which you picked up on) extends to Kansas itself. It’s the middle of America, an invisible line you’re either East or West of at any moment.
The Goldilocks thing also ties back to the premier, when Rabbi was forced to kill the moscowitz kid after his dad said “someone’s been sleeping in your bed.”
I have not felt this tense during an episode of Fargo since the white-out scene in season one. As much as this season has jumped around storylines which makes some people feel like they can’t feel attached to any particular characters, I a) still feel more interested in this season’s characters than any from season three, and b) have been attached to Milligan and Satchel more than anyone else in this season already. When Milligan’s last message to Satchel was “Tell him I’ll be right back” instead of his usual “dead or in jail,” it felt so ominous I actually squealed aloud.Aside from the obvious references to Oz and whatnot, I laughed when the Italian guy from the trunk (did he even have a name?) basically started telling Yertle the Turtle without rhymes. Can’t remember the publication date on that one, if he could have actually read the book before or if he’s just psychically prone to the same metaphors as Dr Seuss. And, maybe it’s just because I’ve been working on a Back to the Future story lately, but the billboard reminded me so much of the one the DeLorian hides behind in that movie, complete with shouting about the philosophy of time over the winds of an approaching storm. Anyway, I loved this episode because it made me Feel Things, so I call it a success.
Wow, I was gonna say that myself. The billboard looked and felt EXACTLY like Back to the Future.BTW, the discovery of Pluto plaque is in Burdett, Kansas, honoring Clyde Tombaugh. Tombagh also discovered the Kuiper Belt and is in/famous for having SEEN UFOs.
It’s possible the farmland behind the Fargo billboard was slated to be turned into a subdivision, like what happened to the McFly homestead.
Also, the billboard may be inspired by this series funded by the National Association of Manufacturers before WW2 as an anti- New Deal campaign:https://mashable.com/2017/04/01/the-american-way/
The bandaged man was referring to the story of Noah, specifically echoing the spiritual quoted by James Baldwin in his essay — “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time.”
Yeah after starting with the Book of Revelation.
The bandaged man was the same actor that played Rabbi’s father.
WHAT
Yep. Zac missed that of course.
I thought so!
Well, this was my favorite episode of the season. Maybe because it was focused, maybe because it just had more of the little ingredients that are What I Want From Fargo.
One might expect the reviewer to do some work in interpreting the symbolism instead of just throwing their hands up and saying they don’t get it.
I knew Rabbi wasn’t coming back because he didn’t say, “If I don’t come back I am either dead or in jail.” He merely told the desk attendant to tell Satchel that he would be back.
I had the impression that the episode was trying to get at something about Satchel and race with the Oz allusions. Everyone in the episode calls him the “colored boy”, but he sees everything in shades of gray until the final scene.What does it mean for the colored boy to finally see the colors? It still feels a bit like promising but underbaked symbolism, which I agree has been the tendency this season.
Anybody who didn’t ‘get’ this episode needs to watch A Serious Man. You may not ‘get’ it either, but it touches on a lot of similar themes about chaos, disorder, assimilation, and divine retribution.
People don’t “get” it because there really isn’t anything to get with this episode, this season, and increasingly this series. A Serious Man is a great movie, but it’s never struck me as something that really needed to be got. It’s text and subtext go together well; the conflicts and themes have a clear relationship. This was almost all subtext and big themes, and they were so layered that they don’t amount to anything. I guess you can say the beginning of ASM is enigmatic, but this episode was just that intro, but spread out to 50 or so minutes.
I like the kid who plays Satchel. He comes of as way more natural than the kid who plays Ethlerida.
That’s because he’s acting like a REAL child. Ethelrita, on the other hand, is being acted and written as a classic Hollywood child trope – being super smart, Super Wise, and super serious. In other words, nothing like a real child Acts!
If You Think of It, the Story’s Got No Ending EditionEditor’s note: Sorry this is late and buried, life got in the way. Then again, I needed the extra time because this is an episode seemingly designed to make a mockery of my format, so bear with me as I do the best I can. With just about every character we’ve met before coming to a bad end this episode, instead of a ranking, out of respect for the dead I’m just going in order of departure this week. Before we get to the rankings, a few general thoughts: at the beginning of the season, Zack asked if Fargo was a smart show. And I guess this episode really underlines the question behind that one: what do you mean by smart? For a lot of people, intelligence is defined by a breadth of knowledge, a Jeopardy champion idea of what smart is. And under that definition, Fargo is definitely smart. It knows a great many things, and references them. The knowledge it dangles before us ranges from the Mormon Extermination Order in Missouri, a familiarity with literature from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to the Brothers Grimm to the Book of Revelation, and movies from the Wizard of Oz to the full ouvre of the Coen Brothers, which is relentlessly referenced in this episode: Satchel and Rabbi go to hide out at Barton Arms (Barton Fink), Satchel meets a salesman with Ulysees Everett McGill’s “gift of gab,” Satchell sits on the bed with his gun trained on the door like Llewelyn Moss, and the episode’s fateful tornado is straight out of the end of A Serious Man. But aside from the breadth of the show’s knowledge, factual and pop cultural, is it a smart show? Is it told in an intelligent way? I don’t think we can weigh in on the whole season just yet—a lot can change depending on whether or not you stick the landing—but this episode, at least, is a smart move. It might overdo it a bit with the references, but boiling down the plot to just one storyline and letting things breathe just as the main story is picking up pace (the radio tells us there’s been a massacre at the disputed slaughterhouse back in KC) is a smart play that hopefully refocuses the season going into the end stretch. So far, the season has focused on Loy’s desire to get his son back from the Italians, but maybe we’ve had it backward, and all along it’s been Satchell’s story of returning home from captivity. In Memoriam (Mostly…)Aldo “They’re gonna kill all of youse, you know?” “Except the guys at the bottom, they’re getting crushed.” Looks like he got the “paint the fence” and “wax on, wax off” lessons in Karate Kid mixed up. Also got a bullet in the back. Not sure where, other than closed captioning, I would’ve learned this mook had a name. Maybe that’s how memorable the Fadda organization has been, beyond the sons, Calamita, and the consigliere?Willy Bupor “You ever meet you a Korean?” This episode brings back The History of True Crime in the Mid West, and so I assume this humble gas station attendant is the titular Mr. Bupor, who meets his end offscreen at the hands of the murderous Calamita. At least, I’d rather believe that than the idea that Omie killed him, because why the hell would he murder Willy and paint the building? That seems like a clear binary, where you’re not wielding a paintbrush (or letting Aldo out of the trunk) if you’re willing to murder the attendant.Omie “Met a lady from Thailand once. Don’t know what you’d call her.” “White man called my daddy ‘boy’ once. Ended up with wooden teeth, just like George Washington” Omie has a lot of one-time encounters with people. Also knows how to paint a building, but gets the worst of his rematch with Calamita, on account of his revolver running out of bullets.Calamita — Doesn’t say a word, but gets a lot of his enforcer cred back by taking down Omie, Mr. Bopur, and Rabbi before getting swallowed by the Deus Ex Tornado. Initially gets the best of Omie off-screen, which is a disappointment, since we got to see the first encounter—the one that left that scar on his cheek—in great detail. That frustration of that—echoing the big complaint about the Coen’s masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, being Llewelyn Moss’s off-screen reckoning—is alleviated by the episode having it both ways. Constant turns the tables on Omie out of our sight, but their conflict resolves onscreen.Rabbi a/k/a Duffy “Which is the one where you get to be born again?” “If you can’t run, just do as we practiced. Remember: thigh, stomach, chest.” “Only a fool thinks the world’s going to stay the way it was.” “It’s the principle of the thing. Making people live with uncertainty, it ain’t right!” The one time he leaves without the “If I don’t come back, I’m dead or in jail” warning to Satchel, Rabbi gets got. Given the tornado’s destruction and the lack of computerized files in 1950, it’s unlikely his or Calamita’s fates will ever be discovered—they’ll have simply vanished. Before that, he experiences the “underlying unreliability of time” by losing the grand majority of $5,000 he hid in the wall of a feed store in Liberal, Kansas.Satchell Cannon a/k/a Colt, not yet a/k/a Milke Milligan? “She’ll get lonely, and she’ll bark. And that’s unwanted attention, right?” “I just wanted one thing.” Satchell takes the top bunk for himself in Barton Arms room #5, he also gets Rabbi’s knife, Haskell Indiana’s gun, and a white dog, Rabbit, which may be a bit of a reference to Mike Milligan’s Lewis Carroll fandom from S2. Rabbit’s more obviously a reference to Toto in the Wizard of Oz, and we see the transition from Satchel before the tornado to after as a change from black and white to color, as in that film. Like Dorothy, he’s now alone in a hostile world, just him and his little dog, unlike Dorothy, though, he enters this world well armed. Kansas Wit and WisdomHunk Swindell “Well now we’ve got a secret, you and me.” “To his mind, Goldilocks is the classic example of an outsider, in search of himself.” He has the gift of gab, which is an Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? reference. Referring to Goldilocks, though, is a reference to the first episode, where Rabbi’s dad goads him into killing his Jewish counterpart with the taunt “Somebody’s been sleeping in your bed…” It’s an open question who’s Goldilocks, the outsider who gets ousted from a stolen home into a hostile world, in this story. Is it Rabbi, the twice-hostage who gives up his life to defend his ward, or Satchel, who never slept in Ziro’s room but who’s left without a support system after the Deus Ex Tornado, or could it even be Ziro, the hostage who is actually sleeping in Satchel’s bedroom? If so, Satchel may yet be the little bear (or witch) who gets justice by casting the intruder out of his place.“The Future is Now” Sign Guy “The moment I finish this, I’m out of a job.” “Could be a statement as to the underlying unreliability of time. Or a testimony along the lines of ‘seize the day.’” “The future I once feared has arrived, as predicted by this very billboard.” Always nice to meet a Coen greek chorus character, narrating everything, including their own life.Ina Botkins “Plymouth Rock, or Sutter’s Mill?” “Didn’t say they had a rule, just said they didn’t care for us.” “Why any one thing or the other? It just is the way it is.” To really keep with the Wizard of Oz theme, the (slightly more) racist sister of the East should’ve been killed in the tornado, as well. I guess there’s always next episode.Beachwood Indiana “You didn’t see him. Like a poison pack of cigarettes.” Aside from all cigarettes being poison, something America didn’t learn until later and didn’t accept until much, much later, was the idea of cigarettes being poisoned a thing?Haskell Indiana “We bought the store as is mister. Leaky pipes, bag of money, what have you. That’s the American way!” “I ain’t married yet. Who’s going to feed the dogs?” Because of the black and white, I couldn’t tell whether the dinette sets the state-named Indianas were hawking were painted or unpainted, but either way, I think this counts as a Raising Arizona reference.
What a great read.
I’m not sure one sister is any less racist. More like she just sees Satchel as a way to stick it to her sister, and her particular hate of her sister trumps her more general hate of other races.
I didn’t say West sister wasn’t racist (we’re told she is), but even before dinner I’d have wagered the sister who’s Plymouth Rock/Joe McCarthy/Old Testament would be more decisively so, just on principle, and the story bore it out. I don’t think the East sister allows a black person at the table, even to get her sister’s goat.
“My side, my rules!”
I hadn’t realized that Rabbi left for the final time without the “dead or in jail” warning. That makes it especially tragic and sad. Since I assume Satchel left Barton Arms without talking to anyone, he’ll never find out from the front desk lady where/why Rabbi left.
“The future I once feared has arrived, as predicted by this very
billboard.” Always nice to meet a Coen greek chorus character, narrating
everything, including their own life.
LOL!And sticking with the Coen kick, am I the only one who saw the old eye patch guy with a little girl and instantly thought of the Coen’s True Grit remake?
If I remember right, his line delivery that she was his niece was very unconvincing, and when she asks him for a story, she calls him by his first name with no “uncle” in front of it (Seymour?), so that checks out. Except that Mattie would’ve called him Major [Whatever his name was].
That’s also how I read it. He even does a slight delay when he says “Uncle”…and she shoots him a look. She seems fairly friendly to him, but I got a very creepy vibe about their pairing.
Yes! That was absolutely my thought during the dinner scene, and those two seemed just like Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld’s characters.
The actor who played him was the guy from the truecoat scene in the Fargo movie. FWIW the bandaged man and the pastor were played by the same actors who portrayed Rabbi’s mobster fathers.
I must say(and it’s probably been said before) I enjoy these more than the actual reviews. Salute.
This show is a huge waste of time. Sorry. I really wanted to like it, but Hawley needs to lay off the weed.
Was the guy in the bandages Tim Robbins?
The “Future is…” billboards scenes made me laugh – yeah, they were on the nose, but they were such a simple, visually fun metaphor that I enjoyed them. The billboard guy being particularly well-spoken was great, too.
I thought they really aimed for making this episode feel like a Coen film (well, even more so than usual). Aside from the “A Serious Man” tornado (and Barton Arms, as well as apparently “The Future is Now” slogan), I also felt hints at The Man Who Wasn’t There’s black and white; O Brother Where Art Thou’s riffing on The Odyssey being a riffing on Wizard of Oz here; Inside Llewyn Davis’ cat being a dog here (esp. when it escapes the room); and a touch of The Ladykillers even (especially during the table dinner, and the hotel owners-sisters’ stern-looking portraits).
Rabbi and Satchel’s relationship is one of the most interesting the
season has offered us, to the point where I wish it could’ve pulled more
focus.
That’s been the name of the game all season. The most interesting things have been on the periphery, not getting the focus they should. (I couldn’t help rolling my eyes at seeing the Faddas again in next week’s preview, lol) Credit to Rabbi and Satchel for doing a lot with a little. If their tale is over, I like where it left things. But as it ends, so too does my attachment to the story, as I really don’t care what happens to anybody else left.
I thought it was fitting that a force of nature like Calamita could only be undone by nature itself. The tornado (or perhaps God) even slapped the pistol out of Rabbi’s hands to ensure this. I thought having a dog the same breed as Toto was a little on the nose. I assume the two old sisters were the Wicked Witches of the East/West. Basically they went all in on the Wizard of Oz shit.
Black & white from The Man Who Wasn’t There, History of the West from season 2 and also recalling Buster Scruggs, dinner party from The Ladykillers, Salesman could be from TMWWT or Barton Fink or Ladykillers, pivotal gas stations in several, cached cash from several.
Wasn’t Hickory the name of the farm hand who became the Tin Man in Dorothy’s dream? That was the name of the younger man at the dinner table. The sisters were representations of the witches, East & West.The stair case spiraled like the Yellow Brick Road when Dorothy starts her adventure. When the Munchkins keep telling her “follow the yellow brick road”.The tornado was well, the tornado in Kansas, that started the whole thing with Dorothy and when it turns to color. This time it starts Satchel’s new life, as he and Rabbit follow the road.
I know there were nods to other Coen Brothers’ productions but I guess I was focused more on how Hawley was using Wizard of Oz references.
I adored this episode. I don’t have a burning desire for every conversation and moment in a show to mean something so I can just enjoy it for what it is/was. A gorgeously shot, well written and acted hour of 1 of my favorite shows.It seems that I’m higher on this season than a lot of people. If I’m ranking the seasons today, I’d have it 2, 1, 4, 3. Which considering how much I love seasons 1 and 2, is no slight.I can’t wait to see how things wrap up over the final 2 episodes.
The “Who shot Willy Bupor” page makes for interesting conjecture. Assuming Willy is the station attendant, is the question of who shot him asked from the point of view of having 0, 1, 2 or 3 other bodies of out of town Kansas City mobsters?
The Future is Now is also a nod to the Coen Bros film The Hudsucker Proxy
Checked through the comments and I’m not sure if anyone noticed – the Bandaged Man in the adjacent hotel room was played by the actor who played the Rabbi’s father, boss of the Milligan Concern. Could he have survived his son’s betrayal? I guess. Could it be a purely thematic choice? Also possible, who knows
I’ve searched online, and it seems that no one has yet pointed out that the Bandaged Man in the room next to Rabbi and Satchel is portrayed by Ira Amyx, the same actor to portray Rabbi’s father, Yiddles. He last appeared in the previous episode via flashback as Josto explains how he knows the devil is an Irishman; Josto says that the devil did things to him that no boy should endure. In this episode, the Bandaged Man’s face is not seen until after Rabbi’s death, and it is partially obscured, particularly concealing the portion where Yiddles’ facial scar had been; the Bandaged Man also attempts to persuade Satchel, a boy, to come closer to him, but Satchel senses something is amiss. Clearly, this cannot be Yiddles himself, as his murder was long ago, and it’s not as if he’d recover from the gunshots fired by young Rabbi. However, he could most certainly be the devil.All this is to say, Fargo is far too intentional a show for this to all be coincidence, especially given the heavily thematic elements of this episode.
I thought that might be M Emmet Walsh as the billboard guy, but then I thought he was dead. Now I see that he’s not, and I’m wondering again. Certainly, they were at least going for someone who sounded and acted like him.
I just want to know where the dog came from (beyond “the wardrobe”, I mean). :/
I for one am enjoying this season much more than 3. It’d no season 2, but I think it captures the Coen Brothers feeling pretty well.This ep went straight from Miller’s Crossing to Barton Fink.Also, Gaetano sounds EXACTLY like Nacho Libre.