Conan Troutman

It's alive, dammit! It's a miracle! Wait, wrong show, but who cares - yay! I wasn't quite as pessimistic about its chances (besides critical and awards love mainly because it at least maintained its numbers from the premiere and even slightly improved upon them, which is always a good sign, and because it seems to be a good fit for streaming), but I definitely didn't expect an early renewal along with the rest. It might only get 13 episodes and/or get moved to summer, but that wouldn't such a bad thing, really.

I think Kim and legitimate!Jimmy are a great fit. And likely the only possible one, too, but alas, that's not what we'll be getting. If anything, Kim and Slippin' Jimmy can't work out.

They mentioned those yo-yo videos Mark Proksch (Pryce) did at the beginning of the first podcast this season. This is glorious: Yo-yos for hobos!

Yeah, the two cars, one cup situation is clearly full of symbolism. I think the Mercedes stands for the straight career path at the law firm and that you have to play by the rules with them. The car just comes with the holder as it is, there's no way for Jimmy to do anything about it because all the other cars of the model have the same cup holder (the law abiding conformity). It's the cup that would have to change, i.e. use a different one, which means leaving his Slippin' Jimmy persona behind. Right now, he tosses the cup aside and takes the car, but we know he'll eventually ditch the car (whether by conscious decision or not). Knowing this show and VG's attention to details, I'm pretty sure we'll see the cup in another car with a fitting holder (he'll probably select the car on the criteria of cup holder size) eventually.

For those wondering what that song was early on:

A .4? Whoop there it is! Relative to what? Compared to the CW genre stuff, I'm pretty sure it's not. It may be slightly more expensive than JtV, but that's about it. And not all musical numbers are as expensive to shoot as the West Covina one from the pilot. I don't see how budget could be a detrimental factor for renewal.

HAMMER!

What... what the hell is this? It's not that it's bad, because it isn't. It's hardly good, either. It's just a weird ratio of jokes that are really, really lame (and weren't any better 30 years ago in the ZAZ movies they were lifted from) and some really hilarious bits that even B99 is hard pressed to come up with. Did they just kidnap Mike Schur, Friedberg and Seltzer, toss 'em in a joke blender and release it upon the public? [Actually, that is my working theory. I'm not kidding. Has anybody seen Mike Schur recently?] It's still funny, for some reason. Keep watching, but what the hell made this show??? PS: David Anders hasn't aged well at all. PPS: It gets better. A lot. They somehow got rid of most crappy jokes and now it's legit funny.

Rachel Bloom just ruined Salma Hayek for me.

Or on the CW's own streaming service. If they really want to move away from Netflix, they need some exclusive content, as Netflix still has the US streaming rights for past seasons of all shows that started prior to last summer for the remainder of their run (so they can't just pull stuff like the Flash from Netflix even if they wanted to for the next couple of years, if I understood that correctly). CXG obviously only has niche appeal, but a strong one and is pretty cheap to make - that's pretty much what you want for VOD.

True. Though I could use more Liv/Gilda. Maybe put Liv on bitch brains and have an epic bitch-off with her.

Yeah, more Beth sure sounds promising. Hopefully we get a glimpse of Alison's new story in the real trailer.

Are there any promising theories about that? I can't help but think it has to be a reference to someone or something named Barbarossa. I thought maybe there was some connection between Mycroft and Friedrich (or Frederick) Barbarossa, but nothing jumps out. Could it be the death in a river on a crusade (going after Moriarty's empire)? It was a rumored heart attack, after all, which could be why we got Fat!Mycroft. Maybe he has those health problems for quite a while now, which could be why he's seemingly overcompensating with his fitness regime. Then again, the more logical connection here seems to be between Sherlock himself and Moriarty as frenemies Barbarossa and Saladin (though Moriarty would be the better fit for Barbarossa in this case). Maybe Sherlock's takedown of Moriarty's empire goes terribly wrong at some point, akin to Operation Barbarossa - though how you could compare Mycroft to the 6th army or something like that is beyond me. The less obvious ones according to Wikipedia include a couple of medieval Turks (a pirate and an admiral), a British nuclear weapon (called Red Beard directly though, not Barbarossa) and some rather obscure stuff. Anyone?

Interesting theory and you may be right. Hiding the foreshadowing under a funny callback to the books would be quite elegant. Mycroft's death would fit well with the above quote from Moffat about season four: ‘We have a plan to top it. And I do think our plan is devastating,’ he replied. ‘We’ve practically reduced our cast to tears telling them the plan … we’re probably more excited that we’ve ever been about Sherlock.’ Out of all the possible choices (John excluded as that's obviously not going to happen), Mycroft's death would certainly have the biggest impact on Sherlock. And he didn't have a huge role in the books either, so it would make sense canon wise.

I usually love Andrew Scott's take on Moriarty, but somehow he didn't feel menacing enough for me this episode and came off more like a pants-off crazy lunatic, less like an incredibly dangerous lunatic. I guess he works better when he presents an actual threat and not just represents some threat that's not really coming from him (in this case, Sherlock getting lost too deep in his drug induced trip). Hopefully, when Sherlock will be dealing with the remains of Moriarty's criminal empire and whatever post mortem plot Moriarty's come up with before his suicide, that will work again as the threat will be coming directly from Moriarty. I'm still torn on whether I like the whole "it all happened in his mind(palace)" thing or would've preferred a strictly off-canon episode. One the one hand, it functioned well as an appetizer for next season and made sense. On the other hand, it devalued the actual case and I found the ending rather meh because of that (the part where they're digging for the corpse felt somewhat superfluous, too). But the individual parts were more than enough to compensate for those weaknesses. The dialogue was fresh and sharp as usual, some of the scenes were just hilarious and it was just great seeing the guys (and girls) back together.

I just can't believe that Leia would buy that so easily. While she's not a trained Jedi herself, she said in the OT she always felt a connection to Luke. Vader and Luke felt each other's presence. Okay, if Kylo dropped her off far enough, maybe she wouldn't have noticed immediately. But when Leia and Rey met again, that should've popped up. Plus Leia should've sensed that Kylo was lying (not necessarily via Jedi powers, just motherly instinct and kids being poor liars). Same for Han, he caught onto the fact that Finn was holding something back pretty fast and even said "women always find out". So no, Rey being a Solo/Organa would pose all sorts of problems and I really hope they don't go that way. Exactly, Luke didn't go into hiding straight after RotJ. Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley are 32 and 23 respectively, so if we assume their characters are a couple years younger each, that checks out. So yeah, Rey could easily be Luke's daughter. Besides, he doesn't have to have abandoned her. It's entirely possible Rey's mother ran away very early in her pregnancy, unbeknownst to Luke, or something like that. So her being a Skywalker works a lot better than her being a Solo/Organa. Though I would probably prefer it if Rey was simply some random girl.

I hope that's not exactly what we'll be getting. I'd be fine with it, as long as it doesn't play out almost exactly like Vader's arc. The best thing would be if they threw us a curve ball and either kill him in episode VIII or bring him back to the light side way earlier than expected. Ah, that's what the mask reminded me of! Yeah, those were (or better, still are) great games. Don't care about the EU at all, but that's one element they easily could've kept, as those games were set thousands of years earlier and have pretty much zero impact on the "recent" events. They also were a great example of how you could tell creative and original stories in that universe (and even put the OT to shame in my opinion). I really liked TFA, but the a bit too conventional approach to storytelling seems to be the one thing that could potentially hold the new trilogy back from being truly great and not merely pretty good.

Evil overlord advise #1892: Being able to magically pull lightsabers into your hand sure looks cool, but maybe sometimes you just want to walk those five steps and pick the damn thing up while you're facing the hero. Just sayin'... That Han would die was a bit obvious and you could pretty much tell how that scene would play out, but at least it was handled well enough in execution. The resolution of his past after the events of RotJ wasn't all that satisfying (you really couldn't come up with anything better than "Han and Leia had a kid that turned to the dark side and then kinda split up"?), but at least it fits the character. The plot was a bit thin and the main mission "destroy Death Star #192" wasn't exactly the epitome of original ideas, either. But then again, Star Wars never was known for its intricate and layered plotting and I'll take a simple, straight forward plot any day over whatever the prequels were trying to do. Maybe episode VIII will be a bit more confident in its storytelling. Just please not another Death Star. The most important thing: They got the main characters right. Rey and Fynn weren't anything groundbreaking, but were believable (well, other than Rey being a little bit too adept) and sympathetic and both actors did a good job. I liked that they didn't do a one hour origin story, but jumped right into the action. We know about that Force stuff already, so it was nice to see that Rey was just able to use it intuitively and they skipped the whole training with Obi-Wan part. It was cool in the OT, but no need to redo that over and over again. I also liked that Fynn just used that light sabre - there's really no special Jedi training required for basic stuff like smashing and blocking. You could still see that he was lacking any real skill and stood no chance against Kylo. Although it was a bit unbelievable that Rey kicked Kylo's ass just like that (okay, he might've been not at 100% after killing his daddy and is probably not one the same level as Darth Vader was yet, but come on... at least let her use some trick or distraction instead of flat out manhandling him). At least she didn't let him live because of some inexplicable plot reason or due to some lame Jedi code. They did follow the hero's journey maybe a little bit to closely for both Rey and Fynn (and leaned a bit too much on Luke's and Han's respective arc from the first movie), so they're decisions were pretty predictable throughout the movie and will probably continue to do so. But again, if it's executed well, I can live with that. Another plus: Fynn really did tell her that he was a Storm Trooper once they got a bit time and we skipped that whole worn out romantic comedy trope where she finds out some other way. Thankfully, they didn't feel the need to shove in a lot of crap that's clearly only there to sell toys. The cantina scene was short enough, Maz Kanata (sp?) was gladly able to speak in a not completely silly way and no one stepped in poop. The comic relieve was well placed and BB8 was far better (and less annoying) than C3PO and R2D2, who thankfully only had a short cameo. No crappy new alien races either, so well done. Overall, pretty solid effort. Hopefully the next one will be a bit more daring and original, but that was as good a start as you could reasonably hope for.

Fargo music supervisor Marguerite Phillips talks about season two: http://www.avclub.com/article/music-supervisors-treasure-hunt-found-70s-tunes-fa-229845

Even a week or so after the fact... I still love that family dinner scene. Everybody should have a Ted Danson as their grandfather.

So Peggy is actualized now, after all. Well, that and fucked. Didn't think it would be that dark (I thought Ed would just dump her), but okay. What a great job by Kirsten Dunst bringing that character to life. We did get the Solverson family dinner after all, against all odds. Yay! Mike Milligan's ending was another curve ball I'd never would've guessed. Damn that was sad. Is some demented mind at CBS planning a Mike and Molly spinoff? I'd maybe watch that.

He knows that Peggy and Ed know the motel (because that's where the seminar would take place). It's not unreasonable to guess that Ed told Mike to meet him there and that the police would follow through on that. There you go: http://tinypic.com/r/15qbswg/9 Not much information, but maybe there's some hint about future seasons? ETA: Oh, you meant what followed after that. Completely missed that this was actually readable on the first viewing. I hope someone will make screenshots from a proper 1080 file. Wow, that episode certainly delivered. A couple of thoughts: - I didn't think Hanzee would kill Constance. I was thinking "yeah, he's dead meat now" when I learned about it, but he still made it out of the episode alive. I guess Peggy and Ed will have the honor then to take him out, maybe Lou. - I was afraid Hanzee was planning to dye his hair with that peroxide or whatever it was thingy. Good god, that would've looked awful. - Peggy continues to be the best. - So that's it for the theory that Bear turns out to be the crime boss from season one. He's not going to survive that head shot. - Way to leave us hanging show about Betsy and Hank. I did expect exactly that with Hank, but Betsy was a serious low blow. It seems foolish to hope we'll actually be getting another Sunday dinner with the full Solverson family, but one can hope. - I'm taking bets right now: If Betsy dies, Noreen ends up marrying Lou. Do I have buyers? - Okay, that UFO had no business being in the show, but damn if it wasn't awesome. - What shocked me the most: Neither Mike and the Kitchen brother nor the rest of KC mob were involved at all (other than delivering the best "okay, then" of the season). I was sure the massacre would have to involve them. I guess we'll something for next week, too. - The soundtrack just keeps churning out great songs I never heard before. That alone makes the show worth watching. That bit over the credits? Awesome. - Is Fargo the best show on TV right now? The Americans will have a hard time topping this season, for sure. Same goes for Better call Saul and Game of Thrones. ETA: Martin Freeman narrating was certainly a nice surprise. I wonder if that was supposed to be in character (although I have no idea who Lester would be telling this story to) or just completely unrelated.

Like a measly couple dozen cops could stop Peggy if she's set her mind to it. If she wants to make a ventriloquist routine with Dodd, it's gonna happen. Damn, I wanna see the Fargo vs Muppets crossover now!

So "Weekend at Dodd's"? Yeah, that sounds exactly like something Peggy would come up with.

In-universe, it's possible. But that would make the whole sequence about the racism rather pointless. It's supposed to show us that Hanzee reached a breaking point and just couldn't take it any more, thus finally snapping when all he got from Dodd for rescuing him was yet another insult. That's why he killed him, not because Bear gave him the order. I'm also sure he won't just switch sides. How would that be an improvement? All that would change is that he'd be getting crapped on by different people. Just ask Mike Milligan. As for the hair cut, that was simply a visualization of "cutting ties", here it's the hair that's a symbol for his former life, the one he's had enough of and wants to leave behind. If people radically change their lives, there's often a visual change, be it style of clothing or a different hair style, going along with it. Peggy wasn't about to give him just the hair cut, her actions in this season were also the catalyst that set the events in motion that allowed Hanzee to reach a position where he could make that decision. Thinking about that, it makes me wonder if it's important that they were interrupted by Lou and Hank before she could cut a single hair. You could say that Hanzee wants to leave his life behind and run, but the police has already caught up on him and now it's too late. ETA: Hanzee's whole situation could make for another nice musical callback to the Coen verse. I'm thinking of Bob Dylan's The Man in Me: