Bannon

There was a lot to like in this, but it ultimately required way, way, too much suspension of disbelief. I gave up when it tried to get me to buy that the inspector could be looking at Ripley, made up like Lon Chaney, Jr., in a Wolfman movie, and not see immediately that it was the same guy he saw in the Rome apartment. Good grief. I don't remember the movie being that ridiculous. Is that scene in the book?

You said it better than I. There was some Magic Mystical Indian stuff in this season that really rubbed me the wrong way, in the way it dealt with suicide.

The most nonsensical part was the notion that pollution from mining was needed to thaw the permafrost sufficiently to recover ancient DNA. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Yeah, I don't think Navarro's suicide was especially ambiguous; her ghostly appearance in full winter trooper apparel on the porch, month's later, is pretty blatant, and as you rightly note, highly romanticized. Really, really, dumb, and if the implication is that this is how this particular native culture treats the phenomena of suicide of young, physically healthy, people, I'm pretty skeptical.

We're simply going to.have to agree to disagree that this story makes sense.

I'll never try to tell someone that they should not like what they like, but.similarly, I also will never try to tell someone that that their dislike of a work is something they are trying to justify, since the work is without flaw. I didn't like this story for varied reasons. One of the more prominent ones was that the science put forth as supplying the central motivation for the 1st murder, and thus subsequent murders, is nonsensical. I didn't like it because we never spend any time with the characters who committed the 1st murder, and thus they are never really shown as real human beings with psychological complexity that results in a rather bizarre murder. They're just plot advancement devices, which is something that fiction needs at times, but hopefully not as central elements of what starts the plot in motion. I dislike the story element of the suicide of a young, physically healthy woman, being portrayed as peaceful, psychologically affirming event, as opposed to what my too-extensive experience with such suicides has been, which is that they are acts of profound despair, despair that is rooted in an inability to broaden one's horizons. I could go on extensively with other elements in this story that I think were quite flawed, but like I said, I'm not trying to tell someone that they should not like it. There were elements that I liked, which is why I watched to the end. Ultimately, however, I didn't think the writing was good.

At least the writers for this trainwreck didn't put cobwebs in the ice tunnels, like the writers for the last season did in the tunnels below the spooky mansion in the last season. I swear, if they have another one of these dumpster fires, they gotta add a funky, 70s-style, van for the central characters to tool around in, and a huge Great Dane dog, that can approximate human speech.

Good gawd, that was too tedious for words, to the point that if I were to try to specifically explain why in detail, I wouldn't know where to start. You can have tremendous acting, but if the writing is awful, there's nothing to be done. Ugh.

I've not found the writing, in terms of dialogue or plotting, to be anywhere close to the acting talent, and that's really unfortunate. As far as direction, when a major character like Navarro has a miraculous recovery from a severe beating, within a few days, well, that's just really lazy. Ugh. This season rubs me the same way the previous saesons have; great early potential and acting that fizzles out, due to subpar writing.

A pack of cigarettes, as a way of taunting him, given cigarettes in prison is currency, and she's just told Roy that she's essentially put a large number of the prisoners on her payroll, for the specific job of tormenting Roy on a daily basis.

Witt died because, unlike Dot, he wasn't fully immersed in the nature of Roy Tillman, and thus tried to reason with someone entirely immune to reason. Roy being in law enforcement likely added to Trooper Witt's hesitancy. You'll notice Dot didn't hesitate to try to put a round into Roy, center-mass, as soon Roy rounded the corner of the porch.

I also prefer the Coen brothers take on such themes, but I still liked this quite a bit, no doubt in good measure due to the acting being so uniformly great. As I stated in another thread, I've met self-made midwestern tycoon women like Lorraine, and am astounded that JJL just nailed that real-life character, right down to the self-designed accent! Really astonishing stuff, and Temple, Hamm, and the others were on the same level. Bravo! I'll also say that even if I find some fault in the storytelling, it's wonderful to have a show like this with real ambition. Finally, how often do you get a finale that takes the time to accurately observe that competently crafted bankruptcy law is critical to a well-functioning society!

I really want to like this show, and this season in particular, and there is so much to like; actors, setting, cinematography. In the end, there is just too much supernatural stuff for me. I can take it in a show like "Fargo", because it isn't featured in every 3rd scene. Here, it predominates, and it just isn't my genre.

I think there's a chance that Roy is going to use the tunnel leading from the bunker to make his cowardly escape, or attempt to do so, after leading his dumbass followers into a pointless slaughter. It was so consistent that Roy, upon discovering Karen on the floor, doesn't even bother to check if she's still breathing. I generally dislike how 99% of movies and t.v. treat being "knocked out", but in this case it might further illuminate Roy's depravity.

The depth of acting talent in S2 was incredible, and was needed to match the breadth of the story; don't forget Cristin Miliotti! My favorite element of that season was the quiet toughness and dignity of a woman facing an early and painful death; that's the real life every day drama that great fiction can illuminate so well. One element I find this in this season that is distinctly better than season 3 is in the critique of capitalism. I thought season 3 to be cartoonish and silly, whereas this season offers something much more refined. It helps to have a great cast working at a very, very, high level.

No, it's not the most tightly plotted story,.and it's horizon's aren't as broad as some other seasons, but the acting is really, really, good. I'd order the seasons right now at 2 in the top spot, 1 and this season tied for 2nd, then 4 and 3 roughly tied, well behind the other three.

Thanks. That really matches my perception, and is doubly interesting, in that I've read in the past that Buckley adopted his manner of speaking in good measure to obscure his Southern heritage. People really are endlessly fascinating.

FWIW, I've met women from this region who came from very modest backgrounds who became serial entrepreneurs, and made themselves quite wealthy. Some of them adopted Lorraine's somewhat odd accent, perhaps as a way to distance themselves from their common background. Some of them also had husbands of a similar background, that they entirely outgrew, even if those husbands also tried to adopt the affectation of not being new money. I'd love to read a JJL interview, and hear how she researched the part.

Oh, Roy's doomed himself with his pathetic, egotistic, lack of self control, while ironically being obsessed with controlling every last detail of the lives of everyone around him . It's just a matter of how many more lives, some wholly innocent, get destroyed on the way to that inevitability.

Lorraine's a billionaire is an adjoining state, who has influence stretching to Washington D.C. If Danish had fully comprehended what he was dealing with in Roy, a billionaire's daughter-in-law, kidnapped and in mortal danger by a whack job county sheriff, Danish could have had serious state and even federal level tactical muscle at the Tillman ranch within hours. He wanted to be faster than that, and more importantly, he thought Tillman was just another bug he could squash with the usual tactics. He didn't really understand Tillman's nature on a basic level.

I don't think it's any more complicated that Danish now knew where Dot was, knew that Lorraine wanted her recovered from Tillman's kidnapping, and thinks he can walk into Tillman's office, insult and threaten him, then offer to let him win the election without further interference, as long as Danish walks out with Dot. Danish simply hadn't grasped that the stuff Danish does, to force others to submit to Lorraine"s will, was not going to provoke the submission from Tillman that Lotraine/Danish get from other targets of their legal bullying.

Really disagree that the tracking shot of Hamm walking to the shed was a writer/director indulgence without utility, or that Hamm's character is tedious due to being repulsive all the time. Yes, know Dot can't die in the third to last episode, but we also know she might take a horrible beating. Yes, Tillman is consistently repulsive, but as an illustration of the totalitarian personality, the writing and Hamm's performance is wonderful. People like this exist; it's not enough to prevail, they must control every uttered thought they hear from other human beings. I think this is the best work Hamm has ever done. Danish was so used to money and the law working in his favor that he didn't pick up on the fact that Roy's playing in another league, even if it is a very small league in a lightly populated rural North Dakota county. He really thought he could steamroll Tillman like a lightweight banker scared of regulators from the Federal Reserve. Thoroughly enjoyed the episode, if "enjoyed" is the right word for such disturbing stuff. I've met some Tillmans and the episode conjured some bad memories.

The puppet show and Roy's arrival in the hospital room were as disturbing as anything I've seen in episodic television. I can see why some found it gratuitous and not providing new information, but I think it really illuminated the depth of Dot's grim desperation, which I think is the central element of this story.

Not a big fan of zombie fiction, but I may stick with this, since the dialogue is better than the norm for the genre, and the acting first-rate. The scene between the brothers, with Joel frankly copping to his terror of getting old, in a world that has become completely unforgiving of any weakness, rang very true. I think I'm going to like the episodes without, or with minimal, zombie content best. In an otherwise good episode, I really disliked last episode's deus ex zombina, for purposes of allowing an escape from the baddies of the week.