I finally saw the whole thing and really enjoyed it. I think I liked the first season just a little more but this was really cool too. I liked that it was set in the 70s and everything and all the sort of homages to various Coen brother movies was cool too. I thought it was kind of funny how Mike ends up at a desk in an office. Although I don't believe that 401Ks would have been something that were super common in corporations yet by early 1980... although that was coming quick.
You plus a large share of the audience I'd wager. It made reading Homer's the Odyssey in Western Lit a more worthwhile endeavor.
I've been avoiding this thread until I got caught up. I really liked Season 1 and thought Season 2 was even better. The bar has been set very high for Season 3. Like many others, I didn't care for the UFO subplot. However, the show was so good otherwise, I can look past it.
Well, that's how it was presented. They could have left it ambiguous, but chose not to by throwing it in our faces, so I disagree that the motif is being taken too literally.
i really don't see why you feel that way, and i tend to agree with you when you comment on the shows i also watch. it felt very ambiguous to me.
I understand that folks are split on this issue. My objections and others' are explored in many, many prior posts here, which explain why it didn't work for me (us). It obviously worked for you and that's fine.
for one, we don't actually know whether it really happened. i felt it was clearly supposed to mean something and intentionally ambiguous. what it meant, i'm not sure. that's one of the reasons i'm quite fond of this show/season.
I posted quite a while back, but I'm pretty sure they did it because UFO mania was huge back then. I think most of the people who have problems with it don't understand that it was simply putting what really happened back then into the show. There many instances of it such as Reagan running for president being in the news and other facts of the time. It could very well have happened back in 1979.
We understand very well, and that argument makes little sense in the context of how it was used to affect a key plot outcome.
I could be remembering wrong, but I thought Lou and Sherriff Larsson had a conversation about omitting it from their reports, implying that they both saw it. I believe Peggy referenced it as well. I didn't think it was presented ambiguously.
Just finished watching season 2. Never saw season 1. So how "true" is it really? What was the plot based on? And what about the UFO?
The movie had that 'info' as well and it was false...the TV series is just as false. I guess it was an homage to the original.
Just finished Season 2 with the wife. Terrific - fantastic series! A few things and my thoughts: Not as gripping as the first Season as Martin Freeman's character was really the central figure and he was a nerve-raging "average guy" making mistake after mistake... and of course Malvo. A main bad guy - evil to the bone. But I think they made a VERY smart decision not to "one up" Season 1 by getting a guy (in this case, I though it would be more about Dunst's "Nurse Betty" character) making bigger bad decisions, and have another bad guy being worse and more intimidating and colder than Malvo. That would have felt like a retread and "jumping the shark". So the choice to make it more of an ensemble with much more insight into the complexity of the characters was really the way to go - and it worked. But again, I miss the anxiety-educing main character, but I think Ed (the husband) was ultimately the saddest character arc in the film. I kinda knew when he "settled" back into a butcher freezer that that was too coincidental and that his time was indeed, up. And it was explained to us that it's not a husband's burden - it's his privilege to support his wife. And his future (which was never going to happen anyway as he states "we're too different" but wants "to go back to the way things were" really never existed - because Dunst wasn't, and probably never was, onboard with that life. "Living in a museum". After Ed's hanging and everything's he'd gone through... to end that way. That was the most powerful moment of both seasons IMO. However, I LOVED Milligan's ending. It couldn't have been better. I knew something was up with they cast Adam Arkin as the "guy behind the lights" (well, he directed episodes too) but - HIM - I had a feeling the whole time he was so corporate and schlubby (in a good way) that putting Milligan in an entry level after he did ALL THAT DIRTY WORK was hysterical. He may as well have started in the mail room! Looks like his "Kingdom" was very short-lived! Reminded me very much of Gretchen Moll's fate in the final of Boardwalk Empire - a fate worse than death or prison. In their own prisons... so great. Yes, plenty of Coen Bros. homages the whole time - especially the last episode which was basically a dark, dark take on Raising Arizona left and right - from stopping the truck (by a guy who should not have stopped!) to the market to Molly's mom's dream sequence looking far into the future - but this time it's not Leonard Smalls who interrupts the future dream... it's Chaos. Anyway, I can quibble about little things here and there but some scenes that stood out to me: Nick Offerman's "Patriot Type" Best in town/Only in town Defense Attorney negotiating with the Geirhardts as they are about to take the station under siege... while drunk! And it works. That was probably the most tense scene. And his character was right - his son (who I guess is now languishing in prison for a few years - not forever) would be on the run for the rest of his life if his dad took the next step... "Out of my way tool of the state!" haha - great scene from start to finish. Brad Garrett's final scene completely commanding over Jean Smart/Matriarch of the Gierhardts because Dodd is a wild card and already "took action" and hence could not be trusted or controlled... never thought his head would be in a bag in less than a day! I had actually never seen Jeffrey Donovan (Dodd) act before (I'd seen his face on endless TV promos for other stuff) but I thought he was great - hilarious. Possibly the funniest guy without over-acting it. Thought "Bear" Gearhardt (sp?) was great and multi-dimensional. He had a heart - but he rarely, if ever, used it. And man, could he take a bullet! (or seven) Don't really know what to make of Hanzee - I can understanding turning on Dodd and the "life" - but he went overboard unless he does have ulterior motives for the future that we don't know for sure about. Why still go after Kansas City if you want out of the life? Why kill Jean Smart? Didn't she take him in as an orphan and raise him? Wouldn't she be powerless (and possibly suicidal) after her entire family, husband children and grandchildren are all dead (well, one in prison)? Wasn't that enough? Reminded me of the story about the person who raises a snake and is surprised when the snake grows up and bites him with poison. The answer: You always knew he was a snake. But that wasn't acting like Hanzee... that was a weird one. He kinda went into Malvo zone by killing her - am I missing something she did where she didn't treat him like her own son? Was that revenge? And if so, what could she have done that overshadowed giving him parents and the life they could give him... maybe not what he wanted, but they took him in! I understand him going nuts and killing the racist guys outside the bar, the cops, and going back in to kill the racist bartender. Even understood him shooting the Park Stop Shop owner (why he grabbed a rotary phone before grabbing one of the guns from the rack immediately behind him was a little weird - especially after their first confrontation) - but I still understood cutting him down. But killing Jean Smart... even with all of his "gone wild" **** in the last few episodes... that I felt, even though she was cold and had decades of blood on her hands - I thought he would be loyal to her. Or at least not KILL her. But a good way to go - by his hand. Better than a cop or stray shot. Both Seasons great - both Seasons different. Thumbs way up! Jeff
Except that in Episode #10, when they flashed back to Bear choking Lou in the parking lot, again, they showed it from Lou's point of view, looking up, and the UFO was no longer there. No green lights. Just a night sky above, and behind, Bear. No UFO.
Except, that is totally wrong. In ep 10 there are two scenes depicting the shootout and one scene at the end where the events that took place during the shootout are discussed. The first shootout scene clearly shows the dead with UFO floodlights moving over the bodies. The second scene, the choking scene, doesn't show the UFO because when the chocking started, initially there was no UFO, yet. Clearly they showed the scene before the UFO appeared and Lou was able to get the upper hand thanks to the UFO. In the third scene, Hank and Lou are discussing what to put in the police report: "gunfight interrupted by spacecraft? Yeah...maybe leave that out as subtext". Definitely, UFO deus ex machina.
There was plenty of UFO spotlight activity on a deceased Bear in the opening flashback scenes of Ep10 and in ep 9 it was absolutely a UFO intervention, which distracted Bear from his evil deed. Unless there was a timely (original series) Star Trek holographed episode being rehearsed in the neighbourhood. There were no flashback scenes to Bear choking Lou in my version of ep10 In ep 9 the drama at the climax resorted to comic book graphical depictions of Hanzee's rifle blowing some desperadoes away, accompanied in part by a silly sounding voiceover for dummies about Hanzees motives, as if leaving a question or mystery in the the plot was beyond the intellect of Fargo aficionados but had to be spelled out. It's not just the ridiculous ufo intervention but the ufo intervention in context of the whole climax sequence, for my part only Peggy's character made the drama in the last 2 episodes. Otherwise brilliant stuff.
