I'm really interested in this since it looks like they kept the spirit of the film.

And it's an anthology.

http://collider.com/fargo-tv-show-featurette/#more-323514

Premieres April 15th

Fucking outstanding.

One of my favorite movies of all time, I'm at least checking it out.

Lookin forward to it

In the back, I was like this really does have the spirit of the movie.

I think I can fuck with it.

That shit had me rolling man.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/3/5579190/fargo-miniseries-adaptation-preview-first-seven-minutes

Fucking killer pilot.

billy bob is killing this

***************************************
rosemary's babydaddy
***************************************

Martin Freeman was stellar.

_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

This is gonna shape up to be GOOD!

But I can't speak for Bemidji. It's way in the middle of nowhere, and it's entirely possible they could be run by a Juggalo Council.

>But I can't speak for Bemidji. It's way in the middle of
>nowhere, and it's entirely possible they could be run by a
>Juggalo Council.

tunk

interesting that there were a lot of parallels to the movie, but just enough to be slightly off and push in a different direction.

they kept pushing the "oh shit" factor, too...you're thinking "how the fuck is he gonna get out of this" and then they add another body.

really good shit.

hell of a start

the last murder was unfortunate but the other two were very satisfying.

what the fuck does that mean? the wifey says it in the couple's opening scene referencing how well the toaster works, that Chaz fixed.

***************************************
rosemary's babydaddy
***************************************

God dammit TV. Too many good shows.

On the real though first two episodes were pretty goddamn amazing. im on board.

I'm all in.

The sign language was an excellent little detail.

The female cop steady following her instincts is good stuff, but for some reason you're like damn will she stop badgering this dude? Even when you know he did it!! Good ass writing and directing.

This show has some incredible feel to it.

I'm like "Odenkirk's right, stop harassing him," until I remembered "oh yeah, he did that shit."

I mean dude left some hand cream in the CVS because she rolled up on him.

.

Billy Bob at the post office reminded me of Anton Chigurh talking to the gas station guy.

I can't call it if I don't know what i stand to win.

You stand to win everything. You've putting it up your whole life and you didn't even know it, now call it!

just watched both episodes tonight, i'm hooked.

coen movie staple

Billy Bob is killing it

when he was playing the coy pastor in the interrogation room, i was dyin'.

The kids were killing me.

just great dark comedy

gonna catch the most recent 2 tonight, this show is great, I can't believe how many LOL moments I've had though, almost all from Billy Bob, his delivery is fucking great

the money in the briefcase from the movie? Because I'm pretty sure that's the same one.

Malvo getting out of it almost stretched this past plausibility, but he was so convincing as the minister (and these people WANTED to let him go,) that I still believed it.

>Malvo getting out of it almost stretched this past
>plausibility, but he was so convincing as the minister (and
>these people WANTED to let him go,) that I still believed it.

the way he changed up for Hank's character, then flipped it on the other police officers was awesome.....i'm guessing the reverend thing is an established alibi from a small town...

>the money in the briefcase from the movie? Because I'm pretty
>sure that's the same one.


>Malvo getting out of it almost stretched this past
>plausibility, but he was so convincing as the minister (and
>these people WANTED to let him go,) that I still believed it.

Yeah, I skeptical at first, but he had an airtight alibi and those cops are all pretty incompetent.

Apparently Platt has a painting of the red ice scraper hanging in his home. I gotta go back and re-watch that scene.

>the money in the briefcase from the movie? Because I'm pretty
>sure that's the same one.

It's certainly a strong wink and nod.

>Malvo getting out of it almost stretched this past
>plausibility, but he was so convincing as the minister (and
>these people WANTED to let him go,) that I still believed it.

IMHO, Molly fucked up the investigation when she went to Chief Bill. She went in their hot-to-trot over the connection to the murder of Lester's wife and the old chief, a case she wasn't on and she knew Bill didn't want her anywhere near. If she'd framed it as a lead to the guy she found out in the wilderness, Bill probably would've let her go with the ID and maybe they could have brought in witnesses to the guy's abduction to ID Malvo as well. Would have been enough to hold him and then tie the rest of the murders in after that.

He was real quick to keep her away from Duluth.


>IMHO, Molly fucked up the investigation when she went to Chief
>Bill. She went in their hot-to-trot over the connection to the
>murder of Lester's wife and the old chief, a case she wasn't
>on and she knew Bill didn't want her anywhere near. If she'd
>framed it as a lead to the guy she found out in the
>wilderness, Bill probably would've let her go with the ID and
>maybe they could have brought in witnesses to the guy's
>abduction to ID Malvo as well. Would have been enough to hold
>him and then tie the rest of the murders in after that.

but who would he be connected to the goons or malvo

Then when they had that shot of the fence at the side of the road, right out of the movie, I just about jumped out of my chair at what was gonna happen.

>the money in the briefcase from the movie? Because I'm pretty
>sure that's the same one.

the week-long wait between eps been unbearable : (

.

i really can't see this stretched out over two three seasons

it'll be a completely different story with mostly different characters.

.

in the car was just nicely done. That line got me laughing like crazy.

I'd say by far by ep. 1 was awesome (they all have been both those 2 stick out)

It feels like they accomplished a lot in this episode yet I did not want it to end... Everything seems to be being pieced together but no way in hell we get an ending we all expect...

@rob_starrk

What a dude.

i could've watched a whole episode of him and Billy Bob going back and forth

.

.

not to say I'm shocked, and I get the game of thrones affect of nobody's safe on tv (especially in a 10 episode series) but damn, that hurt!

I also think this show has been SO GOOD, that we have been ignoring so many sons of anarchy reaches in the writing... the whole storyline of Martin Freeman last night was, wow, escaping is 1 thing, going back to the hospital and nobody noticing a thing? ok

and if a snowstorm is coming down that heavy and fast where you can't see... blood would be covered in 2 seconds, that part felt smart but unrealistic to me

it is funny that everything about Lorne Malvo is working strictly due to unbelievably incompetence by the police


@rob_starrk

>
>I also think this show has been SO GOOD, that we have been
>ignoring so many sons of anarchy reaches in the writing... the
>whole storyline of Martin Freeman last night was, wow,
>escaping is 1 thing, going back to the hospital and nobody
>noticing a thing? ok

Had to be gone, what, an hour minimum? And noone checks the room and sees radiology guy is in Lesters bed that whole time?

But yea, good enough to overlook it I guess.

Lester's escape and return was just was a big "Come On" moment.

I don't think I agree about the blood on the snow tho

also for me the "supernatural" moment with the fishes kinda annoyed me

Fuck.

Dennis got Dennis'd, man.

And yet, he ALMOST got out of it.

Damn, that was brutal.

Gotta give it up for Lester, though. He's becoming a really smart (or lucky) low key criminal. I'm sure he'll get his comeuppance, but it's fun watching him keep going.

And I like it.

I won't go as far as to see she is (possibly was) bad police, because she's gotten solid intuition and detective skills, but man, her gung-ho shit helped get herself possibly killed. Charging out into the middle of a blinding snowstorm without telling your "partner" where you're going to pursue a shoot-out with unseen and who knows how many assailants is about the worst thing she could possibly do.

.

empty, snow-covered fields from the movie. But they absolutely have.

This is one of the most beautifully shot TV shows in a while.

abrupt end of Malvo's calm into the shootout was perfect

but wtf is up with the fish? made me think of Magnolia but i hope there 's a real answer to it. although if Malvo somehow set that shit up via fly by fish drop it'll be kind of hilarious

Though that might be a stretch even for him.

.

Of course, it could just as easily been Malvo (and likely was), but while watching it, that's what I thought was happening.

Best show currently running on tv.

.

I'll get you on it

dude seems like he's always working or at home... I'm still not sure if I want Lester to just keep on living like a badass or get caught

He's creeping into season 5 Walter White territory with his assholery.

Shit was like a video game.

Dude going all God mode, not giving a fuck about Key and Peele, and blasting his way through every level.

And we didn't even see anything. It was like the Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting on steroids.

Badass.

.

shit was masterful

shieeet.

the closing... shiieeet

otherwise incredible sequence, and incredible episode.

though i find myself rooting more for lester than Molly

she's doing the right thing but she's such a constant busybody, even though she's probably the best cop in town. Gus really should be a mailman like he wanted. he's not 'bout that cop life at all.

I think with Lester it's a Walter White thing on a much smaller faster scale. We saw his beginnings of being bullied and disrespected for 40 years, got pushed to his limit, went into self-preservation mode, and now has completely crossed over.

this show has really exceeded expectations.

Another reference to an old Coen movie.

GRIM DAWG OUT THERE DOIN (MAIL) WORK!

And then BAM, time jump.

Gus and Molly are happily married and expecting, Key and Peele (forgot their names) are stuck in a room with files, and they're both still thinking about Malvo.

Also, it's been fun as hell seeing Lester turn into a full fledged asshole. Man, it's going to be satisfying when it comes down on this dude.

this show is awesome...i wasn't expecting the 1 year jump forward though. Lester has really been feeling himself this past year.

...as was his stapling them kids

i shouldn't root for him, but i do

which is bugged out. seeing Malvo must've been the first time he's broken character in that whole year.

Stapling heads is so G, man.

Great series and season -bring on the finale!!
_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

>Great series and season -bring on the finale!!

most welcome correction ,great show !
_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

we saw malvo at his best talking to the deaf guy
lester's speech!!
gus and molly ending up together

can't wait to see how they wrap this up... Key and Peele still staying involved with Malvo, the grocery store gets tied in again, Molly obviously still wants to find him, deaf guy could still be hunting for him, and of course, him and Leseter end up in same place...

Very excited for final 2

just saw this in an interview with Alison Tolman (Molly)... IMDB confirms

I read that you bonded with the cast over a "crazypants" meal. What made it crazypants?
There was so many times during filming where I was like, What is happening? Look who I’m hanging out with. This is bizarre. And there was one night where we were at a hotel bar, Bob, Martin Freeman, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, and I, which is odd enough on its own, but then Stephen Root walked into the bar, and I was like, “Oh my God, that’s Stephen Root,” and Martin was like, “Oh, yeah!” And I said, “He must be here filming something,” and Martin goes, “Allison, he’s in our show.” “What?! Go get him!” He’s not in my storyline, so I pretty much went, “Are you fucking kidding? That’s amazing.” So Martin went and brought him over and the amazing amount of comedic talent at the table increased exponentially. I was honored to even be there.


@rob_starrk

I did not notice that... was too busy keyed on Malvo hoping he'd turn around

@rob_starrk

He gonna hunt down Lester for taking his shit.

Lester dies by hanging...whether he commits suicide or Malvo chokes him out, I dunno - but there was a foreshadowing shot in the last episode when he was cleaning out his wife's closet.

I do love the show but I think Malvo is so unbelievably untouchable that it's over the top. Martin Freeman is KILLING it though.

>I do love the show but I think Malvo is so unbelievably
>untouchable that it's over the top. Martin Freeman is KILLING
>it though.

especially him walking into that building and taking out 22 people without anyone killing him, this goes for freeman as well with the hospital escape...



@rob_starrk

>
>especially him walking into that building and taking out 22
>people without anyone killing him, this goes for freeman as
>well with the hospital escape...

is when he walked out, and key and peele should have seen a man walking out casually when they thought the killer was in the building. he didn't try to hide it or anything.

he wanted this shit and now hes acting like the most swollen asshole in american sales insurance. please just choot dis piece of chit.

Lester is such a piece of shit.

And he doesnt even get the Walt White "at least he's doing it for his family" pass.

Lesters just an asshole.

I know Lester wants to show off the "new Lester" but to be shut down by Lorne once at the table, and then KEEP going in the elevator I thought was odd...

great episode tho that set things up for what should be an epic finale

-Got rid of the wife who hated him
-Got rid of the brother who humiliated him
-Is now rid of the bully who tormented him (and fucked his wife to boot)
-Got away with murder
-Married the woman from his office who is entirely devoted to him
-Salesman of the year

The Lester who doesn't take shit form anyone seems to be doing pretty well for himself, and he doesn't realize he's the same sniveling toad of a man he was in the first episode, while Malvo is a professional predator. He thinks he's really THAT DUDE.

...i was riding for Lester til this ep...i could excuse all his earlier behavior, but everything he did this episode was dumb...

the convo between Carradine and thornton was awesome...as was ole boy realizing he saw Malvo, as was Stephen Root's appearance...as was everything Malvo did...as was Key and Peele realizing that they may not be totally screwed and giving ole girl some props in front of her idiot boss...

...this was an awesome ep...although i wonder why Lester's wife covered for him with her stop to the cops...i know she's down for him, but she never even asked why she lying for him....

She had complete faith that she was with a good person who would never do anything wrong. Instead she just fell for a manipulator.

and he showed her zero respect to the point that he let her get smoked.

fuck lester, man.

As far as covering for him with Molly.

She saw how he wielded that stapler, and to the kids of a woman he had "come inside of" hours earlier.

I think she was enjoying the excitement, but didn't know how deep it all went. She realized in that moment of the interview that there was trouble, and she decided to play along.

>...i was riding for Lester til this ep...i could excuse all
>his earlier behavior, but everything he did this episode was
>dumb...

"I'm not saying he should have killed her... but I understand"

as well as he's doing he's still gotta realize he can't defeat malvo. malvo is too smart and doesn't care about anything.

in just about every scene, too. Vegas, the house, the diner, the insurance co.. just, wow.

was rooting for lester on some level before this ep, but from his stupidity in vegas to how he straight sacrificed the wifey, it's a wrap. fuck this twerp.

Havent rooted for his bitch ass one minute since he let Hess punk him. He's an awful human being, manipulator and bitch made

Wait, so what was the point of using wifey as bait like that?

Was it just to get his passport when Billy Bob bounces? Or is he just an asshole that wants to run solo?

Found out from a safe distance.

>Wait, so what was the point of using wifey as bait like
>that?
>
>Was it just to get his passport when Billy Bob bounces? Or is
>he just an asshole that wants to run solo?

He sacrificed that poor girl who had his back because he's a coward. Made her throw on HIS jacket and TOLDE HER to put on the hood because he knew Malvo wouldn't be able to make her out as a women.

I have a strong hate for Lester

Fuck that dumb ass police chief. I fist pumped hard as hell when they were like "what dumb fuck", even though they're dumbfuks, in the show, lol

Since they gave them the chance to explain themselves a little... like they said, 154 days or whatever or absolutely nothing led them to slip up a bit, that makes their stupidity the day of the shooting a little more plausible

Was happy as shit for them.

They weren't as much incompetent as they were unlucky with that damn massacre.

Lester is the biggest piece of shit for sending his wife in there like that. And then to just let dude walk away? Coward.

I'm not sure $100,000 for a job that requires six months of prep time is worth it though.

>I'm not sure $100,000 for a job that requires six months of
>prep time is worth it though.

successfully playing dentist!?!?! it's dope all by itself...


i cracked up when he called himself "a card"

i'm out.
_____________________
"WHOLESALE REUSABLE GROCERY BAGS!!"
@etfp

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

http://i.imgur.com/ObvF9Op.jpg

i'm out.
_____________________
"WHOLESALE REUSABLE GROCERY BAGS!!"
@etfp

It's not really clear tho.

Havent rewatched tho.

It looks like he prints off two tickets, yet the boarding pass says Lester each time he prints. But then he's clearly holding two pieces of paper when he tells his wife he's got the tickets.

Storywise, it doesn't make sense to me why he would only print one. He's got a paranoid suspicion that Malvo will come for him, yet he's hoping that he can get the passports and fly out of there before Malvo arrives. So if his wife was able to get the passports, how would Lester explain only having one ticket? I think he printed two.

Also, after rewatching, it's pretty clear that Malvo confirmed the kill and realized it wasn't Lester. I thought Lester's orange jacket plan was underestimating Malvo's assassin skills, and the sacrifice was unnecessary. Malvo is still gunning for him an hopefully Lester will get his next episode.

Only 48 hours until he gets his head blown off (I hope/assume.)

I just watched all the episodes in two nights

so good, so good. so well shot, always interesting, and billy bob is at his creepy best.

doesn't always make sense, but hey it's fargo.

did they ever explain or even suggest how malvo got out of the basement so easily?

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

>did they ever explain or even suggest how malvo got out of the
>basement so easily?

depending on the area of the hospital, I've been shocked how easily you can just walk in and out

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

Lorne was a dentist...FULLY immersed into this new world within 6 months...okaaaaay. He's also COMPLETELY untouchable. The shootout, killing that cop in the bathroom, the syndicate murders...I mean, he's never even remotely in danger.

I still think the show is so well shot, and heightens tension, and is hilarious at times...but I can't ignore how simply invincible Lorne is. Lester's a piece of shit tho.

but it's so good.

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

And that's basically how I take him.

Ironically, the one thing that's really surprised me about him so far is when he was taken by surprise: when he was thrown by Lester coming up to him in Vegas. I woulda thought he'd have some kind of plan at the ready if such an event occurred, to say "this is an old friend, can you excuse us for a few seconds to catch up on some personal stuff?" or something like that. That's all it would have taken to get Lester off his back, and a hell of a lot less suspicious than to pretend he didn't know him.

...to lots of other Coen Bros. movies throughout the series: A Serious Man (Gus' conversation with his neighbor), Raising Arizona (Malvo tells a janitor he "missed a spot" exactly like H.I.), and other little things.

Malvo could just as well be thought of as a Leonard Smalls character (who, by the way, was also a bounty hunter).

A bunch of the hallway shots in the hotel last episode were straight out of Barton Fink. Somebody pointed out that there was a poster somewhere mentioning White Russians. Episode 8 had some prominently placed music with Beethoven's "joy" theme played on a steel drum (it was hummed in Raising Arizona).

I'm sure there are blog posts out there cataloging all of these things.

the main one being Lester escaping the hospital, framing his brother, and getting back there

1. Mr. Wrench returns, but isn't the one who kills Malvo.

2. Key and Peele get whacked by Malvo.

3. Stavros appears in some capacity. Possibly tangential.

4. Gus kills Malvo, redeems himself.

5. Lester gets away with it... until they find Malvo's tape of the two of them talking the night he killed his wife ("Lester... have you been a bad boy?")

>5. Lester gets away with it... until they find Malvo's tape of
>the two of them talking the night he killed his wife
>("Lester... have you been a bad boy?")

The way they've set up those tapes, I'd bet they'll amount to something more than just a way to make Malvo seem creepy.

Molly's going to bring him down and put him in jail.

Dude's been prepared for everything EXCEPT being caught by a woman (and I think her being a woman is what's ultimately going to lead to her catching him.)

Just like Chigurh. And people will be just as mad about it.

There's this pattern in so many Coen films of "evil" as a constant, ephemeral presence, with ordinary people getting caught up in it, dealing with it as best they can, maybe getting killed from it, and then at the end the story winds itself out but the root of it all is still there. That's very much the feeling I had coming out of the Fargo movie, even though all of the "bad guys" were killed or captured.

They seem to be painting Malvo as a supernatural personification of all this. After all we've seen of him, I can't see Malvo getting squeezed into a wood chipper or getting lectured in the back of a police car.

I mean, you sorta said it in the post: Now matter how many lives the personification of evil infects and destroys, it's always punished to some degree. Often to a great degree. Even if just by happenstance, like Chigurh getting creamed by a car running a red light. So even if Malvo is the Apex Predator or the Snake in the Garden of Eden himself, the idea that he'll just get away none the worse for wear would go against the Coen Brothers entire body of work.

and it seemed to bother him about as much as it bothered Chigurh to get hit by that car. Cosmic justice seems like, at best, a nuisance to these characters.

So yeah, I don't expect Malvo to come out of everything 'unscathed.' But I also don't expect his life to be upended in any way like it has been for everyone else.

Whereas Malvo barely blinked when he lost the $100 K. Well, he was upset for 3 seconds, then decided that seeing the look on Stephen Root's face when he pulled out his gun made it all worth it.

>So yeah, I don't expect Malvo to come out of everything
>'unscathed.' But I also don't expect his life to be upended in
>any way like it has been for everyone else.

Eh, I'm still saying he gets killed. I don't see him headed to jail, because how do you even institutionalize someone like that?

As I remember it, he gets out of the car, buys the kid's shirt, slings himself up, and goes on about his business. All it did was slow him down and I took that as the point of the scene.


But anyway, you were absolutely right about Malvo, and like I said below, I think they handled it extremely well.

It can't be that he becomes a better person by stopping being a cop entirely. They've focused too much on his chance brush-ins with Malvo for it not to pay off in some way.

I hadn't seen that discussed in the thread. the tape he was listening to in his dentist house...wasn't lester.

and he had a bunch of tapes.

so Malvo just does this as like...a hobby?

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I just took as a plausible activity for someone who really is supposed to be evil personified. He likes to tape human suffering and desperation. I didn't look at it as something that's particularly unrealistic or out of character or anything.

just an aspect of malvo's whole thing that we hadn't addressed

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

But like said above, it set's up perfectly for him to be blindsided by being caught by a girl...

Out of Malvo/Lester, I think only 1 get a bad ending, other escapes free



@rob_starrk

Only ones I bricked were the reappearances of certain characters. But I nailed the rest.

Good guesses on your part, though.

Great scenes, dialogue, performances, and references to Fargo and other Coen Bros. flicks. A really, really fucking intense hour and a half of TV.

My one complaints was that it was a little too on the nose at some points: the wolf at Malvo's cabin, Malvo looking like a wolf after Gus plugged him, Lester running on thin ice with cracks forming around him until it gives way and he dies, etc. But the Coens can be kinda heavy-handed too.

More thoughts later, I'm exhausted.

I knew it had to end, but I didn't want it to. It was a great season of television and the whole cast knocked it out the park. My only issues with it were Key & Peele being too hammy and out of place for the show and the whole subplot with Oliver Platt seemed unnecessary. The season could have easily been done in 8 episodes. Glad we got a happy ending though.

My one question with the finale: How did Lester end up in Montana? He called the cops as soon as Malvo arrived, and along with tons of officers being sent to his house, Lester had no car to escape in. No way they would have taken him into custody, heard the tapes, and then let him go. Only explanation is he escaped but I don't see how considering the time frame.


I hope the internet can unearth the case that this was based off of and we can find out more about the true story. Also hoping they renew for a second season (which they haven't yet) because the creator said he had ideas for two seasons.

seemed to me like he was faking to set the trap for Malvo. All the "Is this what you want, Lester?" flashbacks were about him planning a showdown with Malvo. He wanted to kill him himself.

after rewatching that scene, it does seem like he's faking that call because he immediately opened the door without a phone.

so cops weren't called to the scene, but molly was still on her way to his house. i guess it's more plausible knowing he faked the call, but it still seems like a large stretch for him to escape to montana as a fugitive without a car.

http://card.mygamercard.net/lastgame/rjcc.png

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

When Lester goes to the door, there are no cars in the driveway where there used to be two and there's a blood trail leading to where the FBI car was.

Nor was there one for the movie. The Coens have admitted that the "true story" statement at the beginning of the movie was itself a dramatic device, intended to help people see everything in a more realist way. At the end of the movie there was the usual "this is a work of fiction, any similarity to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental" disclaimer.

That said, there were apparently some real-world events that inspired elements of the story in the movie, they just weren't connected with each other, or in the same geographic area, and many events in the move were completely fabricated.

For the show, I'm pretty sure none of it has any basis in reality. I think it was actually a mistake to put the "true story" cards at the front of each episode of the TV series. For one thing, this is really implausible as a true story, whereas the movie wasn't.

i can't be the only viewer out there who takes the show/movie for its word when it says based on a true story.

it's also been too long since I've watched the Coen bros' Fargo. i gotta rewatch it again.

All the reviews said it was a true story. I think it took about a decade for it to be generally understood that the movie wasn't a true story. The internet wasn't as big a thing back then, I guess.

Ironically, there's another story that an actual woman took the movie to be real and went looking for the bag of money, and died while searching for it. This story is also commonly believed, even today, but also not true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takako_Konishi_%28office_worker%29

When I started this reply I though that story had been true. I only learned just now that it isn't.

I think I was looking at things differently than the writers. I still thought it was an excellent finale to one of the best first seasons of a show ever.

I wonder if Key and Peele fought over who would get the "slow bleed out of the neck" death.

http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/06/uproxx-interview-creator-noah-hawley-answers-all-your-fargo-finale-questions/

UPROXX: Is Lorne Malvo actually Satan?

HAWLEY: (Laughs) No, but there’s only one actor alive who could say that line, “I haven’t had a piece of pie this good since the Garden of Eden,” and really sell it. I mean, obviously, he died. He’s human after all. I like that thing that the Coens do. They have these almost elemental theories. Anton Chigurh, the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, Peter Stormare. There are these moments where you think, are they human? So I think we played with that idea to some degree. But no, he’s just a bad man.

UPROXX: Was there ever any question that Gus would be the one pulling the trigger?

HAWLEY: There were a lot of questions about it for me. Part of making a true story that isn’t true, it has to feel real, and I wanted to avoid that hero’s journey structure that we’re all so trained to expect and want — that at the end of the day, it’s high noon between our hero and our villain — because that doesn’t actually happen in real life. And if you look at the movie, in the end, when Bill Macy is arrested in the motel room, Marge isn’t there; it’s not her jurisdiction. And that feels real, and you buy that because it feels like real life. In order to have Gus do it, it had to feel real to me, and the way we did that was to set up a mano-a-mano end game, but have it be Lester and Malvo, and then if I’ve done my job right, you’ve forgotten entirely that Gus is in that cabin. So there’s a surprise element to it.

UPROXX: It caught me off guard, because it wasn’t what I expected. But the ending was sold for me when Molly makes that comment about how she’s chief, so she’s won, even if she wasn’t the one who ultimately got Lester and Malvo.

HAWLEY: And in the first episode, Verne says to her, “You’ll make a good chief one day.” But the other thing that made the Gus/Malvo end game work for me was the fact that while on the one hand, you may see it as a victory for Gus, it’s also a victory for Malvo, whose driving motivation in life is to seek and turn civilized people into animals, and he pushes Gus to commit murder, really. So it’s not a storybook ending. There’s some darkness and some grey to it that made it the best way to end the story in my mind.

UPROXX: Why did Malvo spare Lester in the elevator? Was it for the thrill of the chase, or did he see something some relatably evil in him?

HAWLEY: I think, like I said, it’s Malvo’s goal to see how far he can push civilized people. I think he’s actually shocked and delighted at Lester — he did not expect this. The Lester that he met was a milquetoast guy. He underestimated him. In this moment, Malvo’s been chasing this bounty and working this guy for six months, but Lester comes along, and in that moment, Lester’s more interesting. He has no problem killing everyone in the elevator, and then basically telling Lester, “Hey, let’s spend some time together. I want to see what I made.” Lester steps in that elevator, acting brave, but then something terrifying happens, and he kind of chickens out and runs away.

UPROXX: Speaking of that, why did Lester end up in Montana?

HAWLEY: Some of that was just the location. We shoot in Calgary, and we’re about an hour from the mountains. We’d been shooting away from the mountains the entire time, so it seemed nice to end on this incredible mountain vista with a frozen lake. That’s obviously not Minnesota. But I like the idea that he’s fled, and he knows there’s no way he’s going to explain any of this. And he’s very close to the Canadian border.

UPROXX: There’s an obvious fascination with riddles in the finale, and the entire season actually, but I can’t tell if you’re the type of guy who stops and thinks about them, or if you’re someone who answers all riddles with “he should eat all three,” as Webb suggests.

HAWLEY: I like a story within a story. There were three Coen Brothers movies that really informed the season: No Country for Old Men, Fargo, and A Serious Man, which is one of my favorite movies, and I love that it starts in the shtetl with this very strange allegory about the Rabbi who’s either dead or not dead. And there’s this whole Schrödinger’s cat element to it, and it has the whole Goy’s teeth section. I really liked that, and knowing that we were going to do this parable sequence about the rich man, and I also really like the story Molly tells in the last episode about the man’s gloves. So I just decided to make that as a framing device with the episode titles. The underlying theme of A Serious Man is, accept the mystery. The idea that there are more questions than answers in the universe, and you sometimes have to accept that Malvo went down into that basement and then he disappeared. How did he get out of that basement? Sometime you just gotta say, it’s a Coen Brothers movie.

UPROXX: Do you have a favorite Coen Brothers homage that you slipped into the show?

HAWLEY: Let’s see. It’s hard to say. It was fun to put them all in there, and to always be thinking about them. Then there are things that are but aren’t. Stavros is a very Coen Brothers figure, but he’s not a direct adaptation of any of them. There is a wood chipper in there at some point. We do a lot of things that hopefully aren’t gimmicky or distracting. I think the great thing about this moment in time is that people who watch your show, they want to spend more than the hour thinking about it. It was a nice way to start a dialogue, I thought.

UPROXX: Whatever happened to Stavros?

HAWLEY: We shot a scene — it’ll be on the DVD, in the deleted scenes — there was a scene where Gus, following up on the company car thing, goes to talk to him, and Stavros is sitting in his study, throwing copies of American Phoenix into the fire. But at the end of the day, that end moment with Stavros, that pull-up with the overturned car, was such a powerful moment that the scene itself didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. That glove sequence in 1.10 , it was originally scripted that she explains it to him, but on the day of, on set, I changed it so that she just says “goodbye.” It’s not my place to explain necessarily what things mean. I like the idea that they mean many things, and it’s up to you to decide what they mean to you.

UPROXX: One of the things that I decided is that Malvo is the “It” in Lou’s story.

HAWLEY: I don’t know that that’s a conclusion to draw. I think, unfortunately, as we’ve seen, evil isn’t just one thing, or just one person. But once you see it, you recognize it. That’s all I’ll say about that.

UPROXX: Were there any characters you thought about killing before deciding not to?

HAWLEY: I’m trying to think. Y’know, everything was on the table in the room. But there were no big fights about, “We gotta kill this one or save that one.” It was really interesting to me, in episode eight, when the camera pans away from Gus and drifts into the woods, almost everybody that I spoke to said they thought that it was for Gus, that we were going to find Malvo and he was going to kill them. That was never my intention, nor did I anticipate that response. But I realized that we had done our job building this dread into the series, knowing that it’s a close-ended story and having killed a lot of people, anyone could go. It’s a hard world for the little things. I think everybody felt really protective about Molly and especially Gus — he’s such a purely good guy, and those guys don’t usually survive in these stories.

UPROXX: If there is a season two, whose story would you most want to pick up with, or would you rather deal with a whole new group of characters?

HAWLEY: Here’s what I’ll say about that: at the end of the movie Fargo, Marge has seen this awful Coen Brothers case, and she gets into bed and has this moment with her husband who got the three-cent stamp and they’re going to have a baby. The movie ends, and you think, she faced the worst, and her award is that tomorrow, life goes back to normal. We liked that idea — it’s not a modern idea. The modern idea is that our law enforcement heroes, they become demon hunters who are haunted; they have to become dark souls to combat dark souls. If I’m saying it’s a true story, it’s not really credible that she wakes up tomorrow, and it’s another crazy Coen Brothers case. She would stop being her. She’d become that haunted demon hunter just because that’s the human experience. If you’re exposed to too much stuff, it’s hard to return to that innocence. So my feeling is, there’s a whole history of true crime in the Midwest that could be explored.

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/fargo-creator-noah-hawley-talks-season-1-and-the-possibility-of-season-2/single-page

Were you able to map this whole story out in advance, or was it made up as you went along through the season?

Noah Hawley: In order to get the job to do it, basically, I had a 20 page pitch document, which had a lot of big picture stuff and overview stuff, and a general sense. Very specific on the pilot, but a general overview. After we had planned to go to series, they asked me for a series document, which I gave them, which laid out some of the bigger story arcs. That was around February of last year, and it became clear that there was no way to shoot until it snowed, which was going to be a whole 10 months. I suggested I could write the remaining nine episodes, which everybody liked. I said, "Give me four writers in a room for 12 weeks, and we'll break all nine episodes, and give you an outline, and I'll go off and start writing, and I'll probably give you 2 or 3 episodes at a time." And that's what I did. So I got into a room with four writers, and we broke the whole season in very minute detail. I gave the network a 115-page outline, and sat down with Mr. Landgraf and everyone, and had a three hour discussion about it, and then I went off and started writing.

So then everything that happened in this finale was roughly planned out last year?

Noah Hawley: It was all there. Nothing changed dramatically. There were a few things that were tweaked, a couple of things I added, but the overall structure of what we'd broken, and the scenes as laid out were the scenes that I wrote.

Let's talk about the decision to have Gus execute Malvo. Obviously, he needs a certain amount of redemption for his earlier cowardice at the traffic stop, but this is a serious thing he does here, and that other people seem somewhat okay with. Why did you make the decision to have him do that, and to not have Molly and the other cops too troubled by it?

Noah Hawley: Thank you for noticing it's a big deal. It is both a hero moment but also morally questionable on some level. For me, the question is, he shoots Malvo when he's sitting there injured and unarmed. Is it an act of bravery or an act of cowardice? It's not for me to make that choice, but I do feel like Gus has seen what Malvo is capable of and how he can seem to escape from a locked room, and knows that the only way this will ever end is if Malvo ends. There is a nuclear option that he goes with, which is a choice that I think everyone realizes that this is a man who is responsible for the death of a lot of people, and no one's going to mourn for him. I went back and forth on whether Gus should be the ultimate arbiter of Malvo's exit. This being a "true story" is important to me that it unfold in a way that did not feel like the Joseph Campbell hero's journey, but feel like real life with all its messiness and coincidence, where things don't add up in a storybook way. So I was resistant early on to this idea that we had set up Gus vs. Malvo so clearly, that I was resistant to the idea that Gus would be responsible. Until we got much closer to breaking that episode, and I realized that what we were setting up was Malvo vs. Lester, and then if we did our jobs right, we'd play out that Malvo vs. Lester bear trap set piece, and then hopefully the audience has forgotten is that Gus is in the cabin until he steps out of the shadows. And then what happens is a surprise. It's not like you can set up for it. In realizing that, I really did feel like it was the best way to end it.

In terms of who could have been the one to stop Malvo, Molly was certainly an option, but Gus asks her to stand aside for the entire finale. Why did you decide to not have her play much of an active role here?

Noah Hawley: For similar reasons. Obviously, Gus has his motivation that he doesn't want to go to another funeral and doesn't want her out there putting herself in danger. Part of the motivation to jump ahead a year was to make her pregnant and give the audience that moment where they thought, "Wait, that is the movie." But that realization comes with a set of expectations. Whether you think it consciously or not, you assume that the events of the show will play out similarly to the events of the movie. The point of sidelining her was to give her that moment where she's sitting there on the sidelines and decides she can't do that, so she picks up her stuff and goes to her car, at which point we're all very worried that she's going to walk into a woodchipper moment. And then she doesn't, but it was a way for me, in terms of telling the whole story and not just Molly's story, to set up an ending that felt both unpredictable and inevitable.

You talked before about the idea of Malvo as a man who can vanish out of a locked room. As you were writing the series, did you decide at a certain point that you were just going to treat him as a supernatural person, or did you have to say at every scenario, "How could a person actually do this?"

Noah Hawley: I'm a firm believer that when you make a Coen brothers movie, you have to accept the mystery. I had a number of discussions with the folks at MGM who kept asking, "How did he get out of that basement? Don't we have to show an open window or something?" And I said, "No, I don't know how he got out of that basement. You just have to accept the mystery." It was Billy's idea that Gus shoots him and he appears to be dead and then he sits up with that amazing grimace and smile with the bloody teeth. That was Billy's desire to do it that way, and I find it so chilling, and for a moment, you ask, "Is this guy really human or what?" And, of course, he is in the end. But there is that elemental figure who runs through the Coens' work from the lone biker of the apocalypse, to Anton Chigurh to even Peter Stormare. There is always this sense of a wild and elemental force. The Coens, in a lot of their movies, are making horror movies. There is a similar tension, and even morality, this idea that if you transgress, you will be punished, which is very much a horror movie mentality.

One of the things you set up right before the time jump was Malvo letting Mr. Wrench go and inviting him to come after him again if he wants to. That's something you could have revisited at the end, but you chose not to.

Noah Hawley: That's another element that's out there. That scene was one of the only scenes I added after the outline process, in the second draft of episode 8. I did it for a couple of reasons. One was there wasn't a lot of Malvo in that episode, and the other was that I wasn't ready to let Mr. Wrench go. I just thought Russell Harvard was so great. He gets let out into the world, and sometimes there are loose ends. If the audience was expecting him to pop up at some time in the last two episodes, and that added an extra sense of tension, I wasn't averse to that.

There was a lot of debate over the previous episode over what it is that Lester is expecting when he says "Yes" in the elevator. Malvo has asked him this exact question before, phrased that way, and when he didn't answer "No," Malvo killed Sam Hess. Does he understand that saying "Yes" will result in the deaths of everyone in that elevator? Or is he still that oblivious to what Malvo is capable of?

Noah Hawley: I don't think he has any expectation that Malvo's going to do that. I don't think he's thought it through as much. He wants to show Malvo that he's a man now. Before, he answered by not answering, and he's not going to do that again. There's a certain amount of "Whose is bigger?" going on in that moment. Lester's hubris is what led him to confront Malvo in the first place. My hope is that at the end of episode 8, the audience is wondering how Lester will get out of the room without Malvo seeing him, and then when he comes over in 9, you realize he has this almost pathological need to be recognized as something better than he was, that's ultimately his undoing.

"Something better than he was," and yet he's capable of putting Linda into his parka.

Noah Hawley: Better or worse, it's semantics.

But you were with me in that theater, listening to the crowd react with increasing dismay as he has her put on that hoodie. Was that the reaction you were hoping for?

Noah Hawley: Look, it's an interesting dynamic. Part of why people are so horrified and disgusted with Lester is that unlike Malvo, who's obviously a scorpion, when we meet Lester, he's wearing human clothes. So we're judging him against all the Judeo-Christian morality we have, and he fails miserably on all fronts. Part of it is interesting is because this is a man who planted a gun in a child's backpack. Why we would still hold out any hope for his humanity, that's a really interesting facet of how we react to stories. There are three parts to that moment. There's Lester saying he tweaked his back and asking her to go in, then there's him stopping her, and you think maybe he had second thoughts, but then he gives her his coat, and then he stops her again and tells her to put the hood up. And the audience's response escalated from a point of disgust, to horror, to a kind of — I can't even describe what the last sound people made was.

The Sioux Falls case comes up a bunch of times in the series. Is that a story you're itching to tell at some point? Is that a possibility for a "Fargo" season 2: a period piece centered around a young Lou Solverson?

Noah Hawley: I really liked the idea — and you see it through the season — of a story within a story. Whether it's the parable sequence, or Molly telling the story of the gloves, or the fox and the rabbit and the cabbage, this idea that we has human beings learn by telling each other stories. It's why when you're learning math, you say "Johnny has three apples, and Billy has one apple." The idea that your story would be full of stories is important. The Sioux Falls idea was introduced in episode 2 as a way for Lou to tell Molly that he was worried about her, but he's a man of the region and he can't say, "Molly, I'm worried about you," so he basically told her a story and let her draw her own conclusion from it. And then over the course of the series, it became a more important idea, I think, that when Lou does come face to face with Malvo, he gets a sense of something he hasn't seen in a long time. I like to think that there's some leather-bound book with hand-drawn illustrations that's the history of true crime in the Midwest, and these are all stories that are taken from it.

(After the interview, I emailed Hawley to ask if he meant to imply that Malvo was the Sioux Falls killer, which had been speculated about. His reply: "Nope.")

As someone who in the past has written for ongoing series that were designed to continue for years, what was it like to do something this close-ended? Could you have set this up as the ongoing story of Molly Solverson, or would that have just watered it down too much?

Noah Hawley: I think you could have. Obviously, if you have the skill and the actors and you're telling a story that is free to digress, certainly "Mad Men" has been navigating without a traditional road map for all those years. Some of it works better for some people than others, but there's still a firm hand guiding it. But at the same time, the fact that this was designed as a close-ended story allowed me to plan it out from beginning to end. The first scene of the first episode is the first step toward the end, and everything that happens is a concrete step in that direction, and I'm able to kill off characters, or make huge dramatic moves like Lester framing his brother for murder. All of that is a step because I know where the end is. It gets a lot harder when you don't know where you're going, or you know where you're going, but you're not exactly sure how you'll get there. My fear when I spoke to FX the first time, "I said that if we turn this into a TV series where it's the continuing adventures of Molly or Marge or whoever, ultimately, it's going to feel like 'Picket Fences,' where it's just quirky and cute, and no one can ever really change, and small-town decency versus evil, no one's ever going to believe that there are real stakes.

What conversations, if any, have there been about the idea of doing a season 2, given how well this one has been perceived?

Noah Hawley: What's rewarding to me about working with FX is that while we all know it's a business, at the same time, I think we all recognize that the response to this season has been so positive because I had the time to really come up with a great story and map it out and write it all. I think we would all be more than happy to take that ride again, as long as we are confident that we can tell a story that's as good or better. And that's on me to come up with. I'm going to lay flat for a bit, and recover from this first season whirlwind, and I'm going to think about that, definitely.

Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/fargo-creator-noah-hawley-talks-season-1-and-the-possibility-of-season-2#IhLGvL3LF2JaMhVa.99

Unfortunately, I don't want to see another season of this.

I'll watch but still. this was just fine.

i'm out.
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"WHOLESALE REUSABLE GROCERY BAGS!!"
@etfp

I guess it's easier to wind up the tension than it is to release it in an interesting way. The movie ended with such poetry and vision, and this just seemed to tie everything in a bow. The bad guys died, the good guys are enjoying Deal or No Deal. It's unfair to expect the show to live up to the movie, but it's also a testament to the quality of the show that I actually expected it to.

Malvo's end was masterful. As you can see from my posts above, I didn't expect him to die, but they did it better than I imagined was possible. Best thing about the episode.

Lester's downfall felt random and anticlimactic. Fitting, I guess, but I expected more.

Cool how they played the music from the movie right at the end. That knockoff music they've done in the show has been driving me mad.

Despite all my sudden qualms, I loved the series, and I hope to god they figure out a way to do a second season.

American Horror Story and to a lesser extent, True Detective suffered from anti climactic endings, as well.

it's up there with True Detective for me in terms of amazing writing and acting...

and NO, there shouldn't be a season 2...i'm sure there will be because FX has a hit on their hands and they'll drag this out for as long as they can...

but ALL the Emmys should go to:
FARGO (writing and acting and best miniseries)
HANNIBAL (writing and lead acting)
ORPHAN BLACK (Tatiana Maslany for Best Actress. FUCK everyone else who gets nominated)
TRUE DETECTIVE (writing acting best drama)
GAME OF THRONES

all of these shows, with Fargo leading the charge, have been examples of exquisite tv.

Fargo? I have to agree with someone who posted on facebook, FX could make 10 episode miniseries of ANY of the Coen Brothers movies. Could you imagine:

a southern fried erotic drama/thriller based on BLOOD SIMPLE

a period thriller based on MILLER'S CROSSING

the Big Lebowski *AND* Burn After Reading as dark ass, comedy dramas?

FX needs to get on this...

but FARGO was outstanding....across the board.

With that said I was super happy when Lester fell through that ice. I never turned on a character as fast as I did Lester.

Bob Odenkirk pulled it off so well. Brilliantly acted. It really is the scene that summed up the entire series. A direct parallel to Chief Bell's scene in the diner from No Country For Old Men. Perfectly Cohen-esque.

After looking up the meaning of "Morton's Fork" the episode makes a little more sense to me now.

A Morton's Fork is a specious piece of reasoning in which contradictory arguments lead to the same (unpleasant) conclusion.

Lester's situation and Molly's parable were the Morton's fork. The unavoidable unpleasant conclusion was that Lester was fucked. Although it would not have saved him from a lifetime in prison, Lester could have done the right thing and given himself up for the greater good of getting Malvo taken down, but he decided not to throw out the other glove. In the end, no matter what he does, he's on thin ice and the cracks will form around him. His (and Malvo's) fault was daring to wonder "What if you're right and they're wrong?"

>
>A Morton's Fork is a specious piece of reasoning in which
>contradictory arguments lead to the same (unpleasant)
>conclusion.
>
>Lester's situation and Molly's parable were the Morton's fork.
>The unavoidable unpleasant conclusion was that Lester was
>fucked. Although it would not have saved him from a lifetime
>in prison, Lester could have done the right thing and given
>himself up for the greater good of getting Malvo taken down,
>but he decided not to throw out the other glove. In the end,
>no matter what he does, he's on thin ice and the cracks will
>form around him. His (and Malvo's) fault was daring to wonder
>"What if you're right and they're wrong?"

because for a minute he was defending lester to the point where it almost felt crooked.

He just had so much faith in humanity. In his mind, other people do crazy shit like murder their wives, and cops. outsiders from some other town or city... but his neighbors... the kind, and simple people he knows could never be capable of something like that.

the Emmy.

And no, I don't know if it'll be for Best Actor in a Series or Miniseries.

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Funcrusher Plus

>the Emmy.
>
>And no, I don't know if it'll be for Best Actor in a Series or
>Miniseries.
>


I assume FARGO is being considered for miniseries. Then again you never know.

True Detective vs. Fargo showdown at the Emmys? In the TV Drama categories? OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP

yea, SORRY JON HAMM just get that nice Ralph Lauren suit and look pretty CAUSE YOU AIN'T WINNING A DAMN THING THIS SEPTEMBER....

.

Cranston always won for Breaking bad. The one year BB wasn't up for any Emmys, it went to Kyle Chandler for Friday Night Lights final season.

And the show will most likely clean up next year (or whenever their last year of eligibility is) as part of a whole sweeping achievement award thing

Not sure why we're taunting Hamm about not winning an Emmy in the first place

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Funcrusher Plus

I almost expected him to get up from it

Also Malvo re-setting his leg bones was one of the gulliest moments in cinematic history

If they do additional seasons, each one could be centered around the stories behind some of those other tapes. That way Billy Bob can be kept as an anchor character and the setting and the rest of the cast can be changed each season to match their anthology plan. I'm sure there are some other juicy conversations on those tapes and I want to hear them!

What do you all think?

I'm almost at the end of the first episode now. I feel like a complete idiot for not wanting to watch this when I had cable because I wasn't a fan of the movie. Remarkable how action packed the first episode is. As miserable it is to get interrupted by the commercials on Hulu, I'm going to binge watch this weekend.