I'd never seen him in anything before, but he has that character down pat. Yah, he sounded exactly like William H. Macy, he did.
There are lots of British actors out there doing American accents, of course, but so far Martin hasn't been one of them. Hearing him speaking in a Minnesota accent is about as strange as it would have been to watch Sean Connery playing a Cajun fisherman.
I'm impressed Martin Freeman has time to do this in addition to everything else he has been in lately.
I really enjoyed the pilot. Billy Bob Thornton is, unsurprisingly, fantastic and his character is even more so. He's like a classic trickster or Cat in the Hat, sowing discord and chaos like Johnny Appleseed wherever he goes!
I had exactly the same reaction after I saw it. I also felt like I needed to take a shower after watching it!
At last, a great TV show not on Sun. nights - my DVR is grateful. Best thing since True Detective. Looks like it will be an interesting cat and mouse game between Nygaard, the police and the Billy Bob Thornton character - all interesting characters.
I'm not a Billy Bob fan and I was overly impressed with the first half but the second half made up for both. Pretty darn good. The regional accent sounds similar to midwest Canadians to me.
I watched it a second time last night. Nothing else was on, so I decided to watch again before I delete it off my DVR. It was an excellent show and I'm sure it'll continue for the next 9 episodes.
Loved this! Very funny, like the film, and close enough to be familiar, but still fresh. Only thing that I didn't like was Billy-Bob's hairstyle. There was just something 'off' about it that made it look weird. Can't wait for the next episode!
Well, file this alongside Bates Motel as a TV reboot that seemed like a bad idea and turned out to be good (in this case, better than good). Billy Bob's character seems like the latest in the series of iconic TV characters cable has given us over the past decade.
I wanted to get into Billy Bob's character more than I did. His motivations were totally unclear/unconvincing to me. What kind of criminal would take it upon himself to get involved with a series of killings in such a rash manner at no profit to himself? He even called attention to himself by going right into that bully's business (just so he could get a look at him, supposedly?) with no apparent qualms about getting caught. It's hard to see how someone like that would last long before ending up dead or in jail. He does all this just for the pleasure of corrupting Martin Freeman? Maybe I'm expecting too much of a rational explanation here and he'll turn out to be more of a force of nature or a symbolic figure, I dunno. I liked the first episode fairly well, but I'm not sure how this is going to hold up over an entire season. It seemed like they covered too much ground in the first episode--killing the bully, killing the wife, killing the cop--I'm not sure how they'll develop things in the next several episodes. I would have paced it a little more sparingly out of the gate.
Lorne Malvo (Thornton's character) is a hit man. He's a hired assassin and his job is to kill people without being caught. Do you remember the guy in the room full of phones answering them? That was his boss or the guy in charge of meting out "jobs" to Malvo. Does that help any? It would seem odd for Malvo to do what he's doing for kicks and giggles, even though there are people like that. But Lorne Malvo is a pro at this, and while it may seem odd that he's out in front of many people at times, most of the time he just shows up an does his job.
This might explain how he's able to walk down into the basement after killing the sheriff and seemingly disappear; there appeared to be no exit for Nygaard.
Yeah, I wondered about this too. I like this kind of weird stuff but I hope it gets explained later. The first half felt a little slow to me. It wasn't until Nygaard 'dealt' with his wife that I started getting interested. Quite a scene, that. But I had a little trouble with Nygaard spending all his life in the same small town and not running into the bully for 20 years. I live on a farm between two very small towns and we tend to keep up on former classmates. It just seemed a bit contrived. The second half will keep me coming back, though. And surprisingly enough, my wife also liked it and she's a tough sell.
I just watched it again with the wife. I loved the premiere looking forward to future episodes. The wife..not so much
Yeah Ed, I can understand her reaction to the Nygaard and his wife in the basement scene. I think I may have warped my wife's sensibilities a bit by getting her into Breaking Bad and True Detective. Sorta changes your perspective on what you can expect from the new cable TV series. I'm like you, I love this stuff!
gave it a spin last night watching about half of the first episode. i thought the movie was comic genuis and FX has put out some really good shows but this one doesn't measure up. the writing isn't very good. production values seem cheap too. no big deal...i have enough shows to watch anyway.
I got the feeling that they had gone through this dance many, many times despite Nygaard's attempts to avoid Hess over the years.
The weirder the hairstyle, the more unsettling the hitman. Call it "Chigurth's Law". We didn't really see the whole basement. Maybe there's a door to the backyard? Don't a lot of houses that are on hills have setups like this?
I think he also takes pleasure in messing with people, as evidenced by the scene where he plants the seed in the kid's head about urinating in a gas tank then rats him out.
