I liked it better as the season progressed, it was just a hurdle for me to overcome before buying into the whole thing.
I'm obviously way late, five years to be exact, for this thread. I just finished the first season last night and was reading through the comments. This one hit home to me. There's no question that in real life, Gus would've at least faced charges for B&E and manslaughter, if not first-degree murder, of an unarmed man, in his own house, who was physically incapacitated. Even cops need search warrants to enter a suspect's domicile - Gus wasn't even a cop! But I realize it's pointless to argue such points in a drama such as this. Malvo was an evil bastard who needed killin' and he got kilt. Gus's character transformation was even less plausible than Lester's. The whole series Gus was an emasculated, ineffectual and incompetent cop, who I guess became a competent mailman. But he was also a deeply moral person, a good friend, father and neighbor. Now, because his family is threatened (and where's the evidence of this anyway?) Gus grows a brass set and kills a man in cold blood? Because he "figured it out"? Moreover, he didn't even do that - it was Molly who explained the shades-of-green riddle to him. The whole scenario evinces a "tie a bow on it and let's get this show wrapped" mentality. A shame, because the series as a whole was quite entertaining.
Chris Rock’s character will be called Loy Cannon. Production starts this fall for an early 2020 airing Bring it! 'Fargo' Season 4: Chris Rock on Name; FX Boss on Production, Premiere
I'm a newbie who just started watching the show over the weekend and am now seven ep's in, and I'd say that the "problem" isn't so much that Malvo is a psychopath, but that he's been portrayed so far as one of those omniscient, omnipotent characters who know exactly how everything is going to play out, and can take on a couple dozen thugs and kill them all without getting so much as a scratch. It takes one out of the overall reality of the show (something the plague of locusts and rain of fish didn't help with). Took me a while to recognise Martin Freeman too - even though I knew he was in the series the transformation is pretty severe.
Isn’t that often par for the course for the Coen Brothers? “Look upon me! I’ll show you the life of the mind!” That surrealism was one of the reasons I liked season one (that and the various references to their films).
As Mister Jones said above, that was the point. They wanted him to appear that way. For one thing it amps up the tension (if rooting for the other guys) and even in death it seemed to that character like HE COULD NOT DIE, HE WAS OMNIPOTENT etc. Not meant to be a "reality" show by any stretch....
Well, actually, don't they say something at beginning of each episode that says it is a TRUE story LOL
I won't discuss how it all turns out (since Dudley Morris hasn't finished season one), but your "omnipotent" comment reminds me of the old lady in The Lady Killers. How silly and unrealistic - yet side-splitting - was that? You have to be in an "anything can happen" frame of mind to watch the Coen Brothers (or the Fargo spin-off). Yet it seems to make sense (at least on a symbolic level) and has an internal consistency (even though I'm often hardpressed to explain it). Like a Pinter play.
We just finished season 3. All I can say is.. Nikki Swango/Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Actually I can say a lot more but overall I enjoyed this season just as much as the previous two. I have found that watching the brief 5 or 6-minute recaps on youtube help me tie together certain apparently random elements. For example, the bowling alley scene went a lot deeper than what I gathered on first viewing.
I loved her character (& the actress) but I did not like what happened to her at the end. With all she went through she had me really rooting for her... Spoiler ...and it would have been "ok" for them to kill her off, like if Emmitt had ended up shooting her by mistake or something, but the way that went down with her killing an innocent cop (who killed her as well at the same time) let the air out of the balloon of making her a flawed heroine and instead ruined the good will factor we/I had for her. It was like they did that on purpose merely to fck with the audience saying "so you liked her huh? how you like her now huh? you gonna root for a cop killer huh? take that you *****" etc. Of the 3 seasons I felt this was the weakest one (I grew tired of the whole corporate greed weirdness angle & that annoying "wolf" guy, plus felt the god/angel stuff was too much over the top), but it still had its moments. Plus the ambiguous ending (meh). Season 2 is my favorite.
Yeah, both my wife and I said "oh no" when that happened. But she had turned (broken bad) due to the events with Ray. In the last four episodes we saw a much different Nikki.. hardened, bitter and vengeful. I would love to have seen a spin-off series titled "Swango" (cool name) that featured her outwitting various Varga types.
Good news. athough I thought it was a "winter show" and didn't usually air until then (I could be confusing airing with shooting/recording).
Is "Wrench" Mr Drums' name? I never knew/can't recall if they gave him a name. Awesome artwork there. Artist should have given her a kitten (reincarnated Ray) instead of a grenade though!
Right now, new material that's in the can is more precious than gold. Glad they wrapped this before COVID shut everything down.