FARGO 3.01 - "THE LAW OF VACANT PLACES"

In its freshman year, Fargo presented a startlingly great answer to a question no one had been asking. Then its sophomore effort made such a leap in time and scope that it granted a renewed sense of novelty to what was nominally a prequel, that most fallow ground for such.  This year returns us to the roughly-present day environs, and introduces a cast of types, if not faces, that we recognize, and thus a degree of familiarity, if not predictability, sets in.

But that difference between “predictable” and “familiar” is as vital to the experience of TV as the difference between “singularity” and “continuity” is to VM Varga’s investment lessons.  Predictability is when specific plot points are obvious to the audience before they happen, and is about the worst narrative sin there is.  Predictability is boring.  Familiarity is more general, and is central to the appeal of any fictional series, television or otherwise.  Familiarity is comforting.  It provides the ballast for the unpredictable moments to hit hard without knocking you out of the show entirely.  And this applies to comedy as well as drama; unpredictability is key to giving the punchline its punch.  The last thing, I mean the very last thing, I want is to know what is going to happen on the next season of Game Of Thrones before it starts.  Nor would I want to read the jokes on an episode of New Girl before watching the actors bounce them off each other in real time.  But the entire reason I get excited to sit down and watch those shows is that they will not be a complete blank slate.  I don’t know exactly what will happen, but I have a strong enough sense of the environments and personalities within Westeros/The Loft to know that whatever happens will be thrilling or harrowing or sweet or kooky in turn.  I have confidence that whatever befalls the characters, the show itself will continue to operate in character. 

To that end, let’s look at the familiar types the premiere introduces to us.  May they never become predictable:

THE CRIME – As with the prior two premieres, we are presented with a murder that should not have been a murder but for the criminal’s haplessness.  This time, our sacrifice was Ennis, like the judge/waffle hut patrons and Ms. Nygard before him.  While Scoot McNairy did his best to make Maurice as distinctively pathetic a screw-up as Kieran Culkin did with Rye Gerhardt last year, I have to give it to Nygard on shock value and the Waffle Hut sequence for scale and humor.

THE COVER-UP – As apparently is Fargo’s wont, it’s not the first murder that is the actual inciting incident for the season’s big events, but one committed as part of a cover-up.  To that end, Maurice’s end by plummeting AC unit may be telegraphed much more heavily than those in prior seasons, but it definitely wins on style points.  The camera tumbling end-over-end with the unit was a fantastic touch, and the impact a gloriously, gorily abrupt capper to such an indulgently cinematic sequence.

THE CONSTANT CONSTABLE – The newest in our line of small-town cops that previously included Gundersons and Solversons is Gloria Burgle, played by Carrie Coon, who is one of the very best actors working today.  If there is any justice in the world, she will grow into Meryl Streep’s career shoes.  And if Gloria hews to the mold of prior seasons, she will prove to be decent, brave, and craftier than her colleagues or targets (or motion sensors) give her credit for.  The most significant difference with her predecessors seem to be that she is more personally involved in the initial crime, with her crusty stepfather being the victim.  Maurice didn’t cover his tracks very well with the gas station attendant, and Nikki mentioned that she rented the apartment he died in front of with a fake name.  If she is true to her type, that will be enough string for her to pull on.

THE QUOTE-UNQUOTE MASTER CRIMINAL  – From Jerry Lundegaard to Lester Nygard to Ed and Peggy Blomquist to (now) Swango and Stussy, Fargo isn’t Fargo without an amateur stooge convincing themselves they have what it takes to commit the perfect crime, to bloody disastrous results.  Making the single desperado a duo was one of last year’s best innovations, but this year’s twist is to introduce some actual romance to the pairing.  The Blomquists marriage was clearly never great, and Peggy’s huge but vague desire for something better stands in contrast to Nikki and Ray’s endearingly small visions of regional bridge glory and a decent engagement ring.  It’s totally the middle child in me, but I found Ray and Nikki’s crowing about their 3^rd runner-up finish really sweet.  But they are not, as she says, simpatico.  They can’t agree on a proper beer analogy, she has to remind him that she likes her doors and chairs pulled out for her, and Ray is not quick enough to pick up on her bathtub distraction in time to actually disarm Maurice.  Though it’s kind of sweet all over again that it’s due to his being just as entranced by her nudity as the mark. 

THE LOQUACIOUS NO-QUOTE CRIMINAL – David Thewlis’s Varga doesn’t waltz into town with as much style as Mike Milligan or the demonic glee of Lorne Malvo, but he seems to promise just as much trouble for the Stussy family as they did for their regional rubes.  You might say that the rotted teeth are laying it on a bit thick, but that’s only because they are laying it on a bit thick.  His puzzled response of “America?” when asked where he’s from suggests that he won’t be entirely lacking in his predecessors’ sense of fun, at least.  Also promising is that he has Ewan MacGregor and Coen vet Michael Stuhlbarg to play off of. 

JAKOB UNGERLEIDER – No seriously, what the fuck is up with Jakob Ungerlieder?  What does the opening, with his troubles that would make Franz Kafka weep blood, have to do with the price of fish?  Okay, I can see that mistaken identity issues play into the troubles of Maurice and the Stussys.  And obviously the line about how “we are not here to tell stories, we are here to tell the truth” fading into the This Is A True Story disclaimer (with the “True” fading out first, and “Story” last) suggests that there will be the customarily heavy lean on the intersection of truth and fiction throughout the season.  So far it seems like elder brother Emmit has the most direct link to this bit, as he almost leaves the house in the same slippers Jakob was dragged off wearing, and gets to experience both sides of the opening dynamic:  successfully imposing his version of the stamp/car trade on his brother, but then having his interpretation of the deal with Varga overridden by the latter’s views on continuity vs singularity. 

But I also wonder if the opening is just a parable, or if we are going to see Jakob or the interrogator pop up down the line in some fashion, the way Ronald Reagan or even Jermaine Clement’s character on Legion eventually did after being introduced via such a disconnected vignette.   It’s a device that feels familiar, but I don’t have any idea where they’re going with it.  That’s the sweet spot this season of Fargo needs to stay inside.

Okay, then.  Let's do Coen Bingo and Other Random Shit

                                                                                                                                               

COEN BINGO AND OTHER RANDOM SHIT

• The opening recalls the Coen-scripted Bridge Of Spies in content, and the oblique parable about the dybbuk that opens A Serious Man in terms of structure.

• Buck claim that “Don’t know him.  Don’t vouch for him.” Is a direct quote of Shep Proudfoot from the film.

• Also “I gotta say, you’re math seems shaky there” recalls “I gotta disagree with your policework there,” which is one of Marge Gunderson’s most memorable lines.

• Vargas’s broker is named Ehrmantraut, a name I can only spell because it is the name of Jonathan Banks’ uber-fixer from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.  If I’m right in guessing that this is the role Jim Gaffigan is playing, I doubt he has much in common character-wise.

• Maurice fails to flick his joint out the window while driving, and it drops back into his lap.  The Dude Empathizes.

• Gloria stumbling on the sci-fi books that served as inspiration for Enis’s carving recalls Betsy’s finding of her father’s secret glyph project last season. 

•  As far as murder schemes go, Nikki’s AC drop gets a 10 for Improvisational Inventiveness and a 1 for Practicality and Precision.  Even with Maurice helpfully stopping to stand still on a cold sidewalk, it still seems like it had about a 5% chance of solving the problem and a 95% chance of sending him running either straight to the police or back inside, gun blazing.

LEGION - "CHAPTER SEVEN/EIGHT"

Sorry about that week off, folks, but hey, at least I only missed one of the best-weirdest episodes of TV in the last decade, right?  I was skeptical about spending a lot of time in an elaborate, hallucinogenic mind-prison designed to trick the characters into thinking it is real.  But the resolution, as with most of the season, was trippy and horrifying and somehow comprehensible to watch while being nearly impossible to describe out loud without starting to wonder if this is what it sounds like to hear yourself have a stroke.  It finds room for stylistic indulges like the awesomely-terrifying silent film attack and chalkboard fight (I keep telling you, this is a weird show), but knows when to cut through the narrative crap by having Syd cut off an exposition-dump by hitting the big bullet points and noting “I’ve been paying attention.”  The rest of the exposition load is carried by Oliver’s amusingly addled stream-of-conscious dialogue (his vague conviction that his wife was Asian was one of the season’s best bits of comedy) and David’s rational mind manifesting with a British accent (the logic of this being utterly unassailable, even to that rational mind, is another).  And then it wraps up that by offing the Perm in particularly brutal fashion, to underline that these elaborate mindfucks actually have consequences for the characters in the “real” world.

The finale itself remains extravagantly incomprehensible to anyone that hasn’t fully immersed themselves in the detailed parasite metaphors surrounding Amal Farouk, and the hazy intricacies of Melanie and Oliver’s history or Cary/Kerry’s powers, and the back-burnered machinations of Division Three.  It’s a bit of a comedown from the high-pitched lunacy of its immediate predecessor, and as such it is not the strongest episode of the season, but rather the exact sum of its parts.  I wouldn’t say that I was completely tired of watching David and Syd astrally wrestle with Lenny’s various projections, but I am glad that they settled on eight episodes, rather than ten or twelve, for this particular arc.  And while David may have finally exorcized the devil that has infected his mind his entire life, Legion didn’t suddenly cure itself of all eccentricities in the home stretch of this inaugural season.  We still get things like the fantastic, cheeky image of the SWAT totem pole, and the gnarliest make-up on Lenny yet.  But I’m most intrigued by the reintroduction of Clark the interrogator, and the groundedness the character brings to a show that has been more Mad Tea Party than X-Men spinoff.

Pictured: The most grounded aspect of this show

One of the things I like best about Hawley’s work on Fargo is the ability to suddenly promote a minor character and make them feel rounded and vital to the story in the course of a single episode or scene.  Legion has already dabbled in this, with the early glimpses of Cary/Kerry and Oliver’s first appearances barely hinting at how sympathetic and central to the climax they would become.  It’s also kind of done it in reverse with Ptonomy, who had an early spotlight as an idealized, zen spirit guide before dropping unceremoniously out of the astral plane and whose characterization seems to have regressed into a bloodthirsty partisan for the finale.  To be fair, it does make sense for the guy whose superpower is never forgetting anything to be the one advocating for a scorched earth approach to warfare.  But David, whose memories are anything but infallible and not even entirely his own, sees a broader if fuzzier truth, a forest obscured by the trees of total recall – that no war can ever be ended without a certain degree of willful forgetfulness.  As Littlefinger once rasped at us, we don’t have to “make” peace with our friends. 

The lengthy, humanizing intro sequence showing us the toll that David’s rescue took on Clark serves as a counterpoint to Ptonomy’s intransigence, a reminder that even the biggest asshole is the hero of their own story.  And actually, the only moment when he has even come off as much of an asshole is when he orders the rest of David’s Scooby Gang killed.  But then, how many of the Division have they killed throughout the season?  We’re not predisposed to look kindly upon government agencies wanting to study our heroes in labs; movies have taught me from birth that they are the bad guys in that scenario.  But if mutant powers actually existed, that is exactly what I would want. And it’s not like the “good guys” at Summerland aren’t doing the same.  They just have nattier wardrobe choices and a jauntier soundtrack to compliment their poking and prodding. Clark and Ptonomy have both picked their sides and dug in, but really, one’s position is not inherently more heroic than the other’s. 

Because didn’t the dinosaurs have the right to fight for their survival?  The mutants’ agenda seems reasonable in that they are only asking to be left alone, but is that viable option for someone as self-evidently dangerous as David?  “Live and let live” is a great platitude, but we’ve been putting reasonable (and not so reasonable) limits on precisely how we let live since we were chillaxing in caves.  None of us want to live in a world where Gary Busey has a fleet of tanks at his disposal, or Kanye West can set off nuclear blasts with his mind.  Is it really unreasonable for Clark and the Division to think that maybe a diagnosed schizophrenic with the power to stop bullets and make people’s blood drain out their eyeballs should not be allowed to walk free?  Syd points out that he’s not actually schizophrenic, but in fact literally possessed by a separate, malevolent entity with superpowers of its own.  She seems to neglect, however, that this is much, much worse than schizophrenia. 

Schizophrenia can be cured through the powers of gambling

and dance, if movies have taught me anything

All of this is by way of saying that one of the more promising aspects for next season is the addition of Clark as a highly reluctant ally.  I am perhaps a bit more skeptical of the Summerland crew’s heroic bonafides than I am supposed to be, and not quite as invested in the Syd/David romance, so I like the idea of having someone congenitally nonplussed around to shake up the group dynamic.  I’m less enthused about the prospect of Plaza splitting villain duties with Jermaine next season (much as I do hope Lenny joins Oliver’s nascent barbershop quartet).  The guy is a treasure, and I’m sure he is similarly capable of stepping up his deadpan to a scarier, more arch level, but Plaza has been a revelation as Lenny/Farouk/King/The Devil.

Never Forget

When I first saw her in the promos, I thought okay, she’s going to be in a sardonic, damaged sidekick role.  She’ll be good for that.  Then as she became something of a devil on David’s shoulder, I thought cool, this is bit looser than I’ve seen her, but there was always something vaguely scary about her comedic persona, so it works.  But even halfway through the season I would not have thought that she could carry the primary villain load, much less such a demanding and constantly shifting portrayal.  She had to moustache-twirl, she had to actually twirl in crazy dance sequences, she had to interrogate and sexually harass and obfuscate and freak out and be Hannibal Lecter and a silent movie monster, and do it all under various layers of heavy make-up.  She was fantastic at all of it, alternately terrifying and funny and sexy and otherworldly and always having a viscerally great time doing it.  If the Emmy’s were worth a damn’s toenail, she would get a nomination just for the work she does with her eyes when David freezes her in place.  It’s great, and it’s all done through the full 

Beetlejuice make-up, with the rest of her face frozen in a hideous, underbitten rictus.     

And that’s Legion’s first season in a nutshell.  Ostentatiously weird, pretty creepy and kind of funny, oddly affecting, and unlike absolutely anything else on TV.  It will purportedly be back in a year’s time, but in the meantime, I hope to see all of youse in the frozen north for a new season of Fargo. 

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• During his recovery, Clark contemplates life with half a moustache (or beard, or chinstrap) in his newly burned state, in a subtle reflection of David’s musing about what life – and he himself – will be like without Lenny as a passenger. 

•  Similarly, Kerry and Cary don’t ever reattune, even when they reconcile.  And Melanie loses her husband all over again. Everyone but Syd is facing life as less than a complete set. 

• We never found out what, if any, mutant power Melanie has.  I hope she turns out to be an aged-up Dazzler, if only because it would add a tragic, star-crossed element to her romance with a jazz/barbershop bum if she were the premiere disco-based superhero.  How can one’s terrible music taste ever coexist with the other’s?

•  One good thing about Oliver being Lenny’s new host is that it should mean we are done with the Devil With Type 2 Diabetes monster design.  It was occasionally deployed with some effective creepiness, but all in all I never found its look as menacing as it was supposed to be.

•  Yes, I’m still attracted to Aubrey Plaza even when she’s caked in heavy, rotting, Beetlejuice-with-a-hangover make-up.  So thanks, Legion, now I know that about myself.

LEGION - "CHAPTER SIX"

"It's like a dream...but not an interesitng one."

Thus far, Legion has managed to navigate some rather wankery-y territory while remaining weird and audacious enough to be consistently interesting, and savvy enough to cut against the grain of the most insufferable aspects that come with such territory.  But “Chapter 6” struggles to maintain that streak, as it dives into one of my most disdained tropes for a fantasy series – the one where the protagonist finds themselves in a mental institution, with a shady doctor telling them that the entire series up to this point has been an elaborate hallucination.  This conceit sucked when I saw it on Buffy 15 years ago, it sucked when I saw it on Lost 10 years ago, it sucked when I saw it on The Magicians last year, and without having actually watched the shows, I’ll speculate that when The X-Files, Supernatural, Grimm and/or Sleepy Hollow (probably) did it in the interim it (probably) sucked there too. 

The reason this sucks is that it’s not a very credible threat.  Obviously these shows aren’t going to conclude that they were all a bunch of bullshit, but imo there’s very limited value in even toying around with that notion. As I got at in my recap of the premiere, making a story about an elaborate hallucination is just pointless – putting a hat on top of a hat.  Every story is already a form of elaborate hallucination on the author's part, one they are asking the audience to share.  So what can a story about a mental patient hallucinating they are a teenage vampire hunter accomplish that a story about a teenage vampire hunter couldn’t?  I mean, alright, I’ll allow that Don Quixote may have some literary merit, but it also doesn’t wait until the end to spring it on us that OMG! the giants were really windmills all along.    

Tommy Westphall can get fucked, is what I'm saying

So I am not a fan of this conceit, but at first, it seems like “Chapter 6” is going to continue the streak of defying the inherent tackiness of its premises.  The cold open manages to keep things lively by virtue of its seamless transitioning between Lenny’s interviews with all of the supporting cast.  And the episode does at least avoid the most tedious angle by never pretending that this could be anything but a netherworld where the Devil With Type 2 Diabetes holds sway.  But whereas prior chapters have worked around the overly-writerly conceits by having David’s mental state and the deep dives therein be the plot, this is the first time Legion feels like it is stalling.  The only new bit of concrete information we get about the backstory or endgame is some more specifics on the Devil's plans for David – it once had a more symbiotic relationship in mind when David was a more isolated and pliable host, but now that he has a love in his life to make him strong (like another superhero), it’s content to mentally imprison him forever and take the wheel for good.   

But I also think some of the increased drag is due to timing.  I know I was just saying how waiting until late in the game to mess with reality like this is cheap bullshit, but at the same time it is too early in the show’s run to be doing it for character purposes.  The supporting cast aren’t established well enough at this point for there to be much mileage out of tweaking their established characterizations by fiting them into a such a skewed Elseworld scenario.  And the show’s baseline reality is weird and malleable enough that it doesn’t provide the same novelty that, for example, a kooky Sopranos dream sequence could by way of contrast with its grittier, grounded “real” world.  Furthermore, we don’t have enough distance from the pilot for their reenacting scenarios from it (the drool speculation, Syd sneaking into David’s bed) with roles transposed to mean much to us.

The angle from which the episode works best is as the Best Supporting submission for Aubrey Plaza and her tremendous sock game.  She gets to mix up deadpan subtlety and wanton vamping to a degree even the early episodes, considerably wacky though they may be, did not allow.  And look, I may have found a good deal of the episode to be an indulgent waste of time, but I also would’ve watched Plaza wickedly strut and grind her way around David's memory palace in fishnets and a turtleneck for another 45 minutes without checking my watch.  That’s my value judgment, and I don’t have to justify it to any of you.  But while that segment may be the easy, liveliest highlight of the episode, she is equally fantastic all over, whether exuding false warmth and candor with the “patients” or physically menacing David while delivering withering speeches about love as a form of slavery or physically manifesting in a piece of floor pie (I’ve told you before, this is a weird show).  If anything is going to make such an extended bit of wheel-spinning satisfying to watch, it’s such a normally constrained performer cutting loose and clearly having a ball with material designed to squeeze the utmost from her. 

Now for a sad closing note, I will be just diving into an extended road trip next Wednesday, so by the time I get anywhere with enough time to watch and type about “Chapter 7”, it will be time for the finale.  So there’s only one more Legion recap in the cards this year.  But the better news is that FX renewed it for another year in spite of the unimpressive ratings, so we may just reconvene here in a year or two’s time.  Two would be my guess, as his does not seem like any easy show to map out or produce, and with Fargo showing no signs of slowing, Noah Hawley has to rest sometime, right?

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• Best bit of the opening:  The Perm’s shrugging response to Dr. Lenny’s “I’m sensing a lot of hostility.”  The shrug is funny, but it’s the glaring half-beat preceding it that makes it art.

• Kerry/Cary launching fruit cocktail into each other’s mouths in the cafeteria is adorable.  I’m not sure what the point of the Perm menacing her in the dreamscape is – does he think he can actually hurt here there?  Can he, somehow? – but it’s a nice little touch that he and his old partner Oliver are appearing as the sort of angel and devil to the two halves of Kerry/Cary within this dreamscape.

•  The zoom in on the Cherry Pie with Plaza’s face in it feels like a deliberate homage to Twin Peaks’ weirdest, most brilliantly retarded moment.  I know I’m not supposed to use that word anymore, but look – a prominent character evaporates in front of the protagonists and a malevolent dancing dwarf traps her soul in the knob of a dresser drawer.  Give me another word for that and I’ll mail you ten bucks.  

• Particularly in the opening, Melanie seems to be channeling Syd’s hairstyle and mannerisms.  I heard some naysaying about whether she was Syd’s mom after last week, but the performance, if not plot detail, really seemed to underline it this week.  

• I generally don't find things scary once they reach the level of abstraction that this whole episode operates on, but the eyes opening in the wall made me jump out of my skin.