S05.E10: Bisquick

[sistermagpie]

9 hours ago, iMonrey said:

But the almost supernaturally untouchable bad-ass characters like Malvo and Milligan, which everyone else seemed to adore, were the big turn-offs for me.

I remember feeling like the first season seemed more gritty cable drama than Fargo. I liked the second season because I felt it brought in the "little bit of money" sensibility.

8 hours ago, SunshineOnMe said:

I loved this season. I was a little bummed or unsettled about Roy's 3rd wife being arrested. I felt like she'd been so abused and threatened (also with a horrible dad) and lied to by Roy about Dot. What did you all think?

She was abused and threatened but also seemed to respond to it by becoming the kind of white woman who supports all that stuff because she gets to be #2.

As somebody at the compound she'd just get arrested as part of Roy's group. If she wants to claim she was there against her will, she can. But she may have been armed to fight as well. The sent her kids away.

[Blakeston]

On 1/17/2024 at 4:48 PM, iMonrey said:

I don't think it's an accident that Dot never killed anyone - I don't think she has it in her. Of course, she got someone killed by switching the names on the hospital rooms, but she herself did not kill anyone. I feel like the writers made a deliberate choice not to actually go there with her.

Dot killed Munch's partner in crime in episode 1 with the booby trap in the gas station bathroom. That's not as direct as killing someone with her bare hands, but she definitely got said hands (justifiably) dirty.

I understand why they chose to kill off Witt in the finale. If the FBI had just shown up and taken out Roy without any of the protagonists dying, it would have been too neat and clean. And they had established from the get-go that Witt had lovely intentions, but was way too pure for this world.

A big theme of the season was male weakness. Almost all of the men were evil, pathetic, or in over their heads. In the end it made sense for Dot, Lorraine and Indira to be the ones who saved the day.

I understand that the only Black character being the only casualty of the finale rubs people the wrong way, but I disagree with the argument that characters of color are red shirts on this series. Hanzee turned season two into a bloodbath and lived to tell the tale, and Mike Milligan was one of the few survivors. The Black high school student and her interracial parents got a happy ending in season four, and the Black lesbian character (please don't ask me to remember any of the S4 characters' names) survived and got her revenge. And Indira did well for herself, and was probably the most upstanding and competent character of the season.

Edited January 22 by Blakeston

[iMonrey]

1 hour ago, Blakeston said:

Dot killed Munch's partner in crime in episode 1 with the booby trap in the gas station bathroom. That's not as direct as killing someone with her bare hands, but she definitely said hands (justifiably) dirty.

She didn't murder him. She booby-trapped the bathroom and he slipped and cracked his skull on the toilet. Yes, she was responsible in the same way she was responsible for the death of the hospital patient but it's more of a gray area than actually straight-up shooting someone and slitting someone's throat. Everything she did was in self defense, in contrast to the people Roy killed. 

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, Blakeston said:

I understand why they chose to kill off Witt in the finale. If the FBI had just shown up and taken out Roy without any of the protagonists dying, it would have been too neat and clean. And they had established from the get-go that Witt had lovely intentions, but was way too pure for this world.

 

MMV, but to me having it be that clean seems like a much better way to make the point. All that bluster of Roy's was completely empty. It practically was totally clean except for the one guy not with everyone else having that confrontation with Roy. Wayne was probably even purer than Witt and he got through just fine!

[LadyintheLoop]

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I understand that the only Black character being the only casualty of the finale rubs people the wrong way[.]

Lorraine's aide (Jerome?) was Black. So was Bowman, Roy's foreman and right-hand man. Roy clearly respected and trusted him, which may have been the real reason for Gator's racial resentments.

[Dev F]

On 1/19/2024 at 11:30 AM, sistermagpie said:

People had that same issue with the UFO in S2, iirc, but to me that fit just fine, since it fit perfectly for the year and there was an actual sighting around then.

I mean, the UFO stuff is part of why I don't like season 2 quite as much as season 1, but I didn't have as big a problem with it as with the sin eater thing. Partly because, as you said, UFO sightings were a real thing during the setting of the season, whether or not there were actually any alien spacecraft hovering around. So I can imagine a true-crime story in which there was a chaotic gunfight that was interrupted by weird lights in the sky, and some of the survivors whispered that it was an extraterrestrial visitation. And then Fargo "dramatizes" it decades later by filling the scene with actual alien flying saucers.

In addition, the very episode in which the UFO drops in also makes a point of reinforcing the true-crime angle of the series. Recall that this is the episode in which we see the "real" book on which the series is supposedly based, The History of True Crime in the Mid West, and Martin Freeman comes back to narrate some supposed passages in voice of its author, Barton Brixby. And Brixby very conspicuously doesn't mention the UFO while puzzling over some of the more mundane aspects of the story, which suggests that there's a more down-to-earth version of narrative that doesn't end with "and then some aliens show up."

And finally, the next and last episode of the season punctures the supernatural implications of the UFO—the same way, as I mentioned before, the Coen brothers usually do. We've been set up to think that the UFO will tie into the mysterious books and pictures that Betsy Solverson's father has strewn obsessively all over his study, but when she finally confronts him about them, he reveals that they're not about alien visitors at all; they're about Hank's personal quest to bring people together through a universal language. As with Malvo and Hanzee, the ultimate point is that these unfathomable forces matter less than simple decency and compassion and ultimately fade into the background of a very human story.

Munch's story this season, on the other hand, doesn't get any of that sort of shading. There's no attempt to tie him in with the "This is a true story" conceit of the series; there's no final revelation that has us rethinking his paranormal nature. It's implied three episodes in that he's an immortal sin eater, and the finale reveals that, yes, he actually is an immortal sin eater.

Maybe it's the lack of any development that makes it feel like a facile morality play to me. I think of the Coens' version of an overtly supernatural character: John Goodman as Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink. Charlie's story isn't that he's introduced early in the movie as the devil, and in the end it turns out he is the devil. He's introduced as the sort of "common man" that the main character Barton professes to care deeply about but actually has contempt for, and when it's revealed that Charlie is actually a notorious serial killer and probably also Satan, it adds to our understanding of Barton's relationship with the common man.

Munch, on the other hand, has an arc that's just sort of like: a) Man, this guy is weird, I wonder what his deal is? b) Oh, this flashback kind of implies that he's an immortal sin eater, but that's probably not literally true, right? c) Oh, wow, he's so weird, with no apparent human connections, that I wonder if we are supposed to think he's literally an immortal sin eater! d) Okay, yeah, we actually are.

Or are there nuances to his story that I'm missing?

Quote

Was she a tomboy to begin with? I don't remember her being that way. She just prefered a tux to a dress, didn't she? In the last scene she's again wearing pants and a sweater.--no big change in her look there. Lorraine called her a crossdresser in the picture, but I don't ever remember her being pushed as all that boyish. I took it more as a nod to how current conservative thought is so fixated on gender roles as a form of oppression under the guise of "common sense." We just no longer live in a world where a girl wearing pants is dressing like a boy.

I'm starting to think that the fraught nature of questions of gender identity is making this a more complicated issue than it needs to be. Putting aside whether Scotty's penchant for suits means she's being "boyish" or what it says about her gender presentation, I just think it's awkward to make it into this big character point in the first episode and then do nothing with it for the rest of the season.

Imagine that Scotty's interest had been in something that didn't really have gender identity implications. Like, say, she loves playing hockey. And her grandmother disapproves because she doesn't think it's appropriate for a young lady, but her parents are super supportive, to show that they don't have Lorraine's outmoded conservative prejudices. That's basically what you're arguing that the "crossdressing" story is meant to be about, right? And no one in this day and age would say that a girl playing hockey means she's really a boy or anything like that, so we can take all that out of the equation.

Imagine further that Munch wears a hockey jersey all the time. It's never explained, but once or twice another character mentions it derisively. And maybe once or twice in the early episodes we see Scotty doing stick-handling drills or something . . .

And then Scotty's interest in hockey isn't mentioned again for the rest of the season, even at the end when Munch shows up, still wearing his jersey.

That would be weird, right?

And maybe I wouldn't be thinking so much about how both these characters' storylines could've been handled differently if the season had otherwise been chockablock with brilliant character moments and story twists and there just wasn't room to do more with Munch or Scotty. But way too much of the season was taken up by roughly eight thousand scenes of Dot getting kidnapped and escaping in some clever way only to get kidnapped again ten minutes later. We couldn't lose just a couple of those repetitive beats to make room for, say, a scene between Lorraine and Scotty that explores the differences in how they think about what it means to be a girl or a woman, or a moment that juxtaposes Munch's supernatural background with the true-crime aesthetic of the series?

[sistermagpie]

41 minutes ago, Dev F said:

And then Scotty's interest in hockey isn't mentioned again for the rest of the season, even at the end when Munch shows up, still wearing his jersey.

 

I think what makes it easier for me is that I just never made that connection between the two of them at all! If I thought about the two things, they just seemed like background to the stuff that seemed more central to the story, that the villain as misogynist whose biggest motivation was enforcing gender norms that violently shoved both men and women into boxes and made them miserable. Stuff that didn't even occur to the 500 year old guy and the Gen-Z kid from a normal family.

This isn't actually a disagreement with your point, though, because I didn't see the show saying something coherently about it. The crossdressing of both characters just didn't seem that important to me other than being part of the spectrum of the traditional male-female stuff. In the first ep, of course, I thought there might be something more to Scotty's grandmother disapproving of who she was, and so there being something more to Scotty wearing the tux, but that quickly seemed more like a moment set up to be more about Lorraine being sassy and conservative than anything about Scotty.

Loved your post, though, all the Coeh brothers stuff was great. It's funny, because for me the first season seemed so *not* Fargo to me. I couldn't argue why in an intelligent way and maybe I was totally wrong about it, but it just felt more like Difficult Men of Cable to me. Especially super cool, dangerous Malvo.

[possibilities]

5 hours ago, Dev F said:

Or are there nuances to his story that I'm missing?

I think the story ends with kindness triumphing over all, and transforming even a supernatural creature. He may or may not stay immortal (we don't know) but what we do know is that it was cruelty towards him that initiated his sin eater status, and thus his immortality. I think it's fair to make the leap that kindness removed his sin eater status and thus his immortality-- and he seemed happy about it. In other words, kindness is more powerful and more desirable even than immortality.

 

[Eulipian 5k]

On 1/18/2024 at 9:00 PM, Crashcourse said:

Surely, they could have found a better actress than a Brit trying to sound "Minnesota nice."   I just didn't like her in the role.  

Martin Freeman was the lead in Season 1 of Fargo., he's British also .It must be a thing to hire Brits for these roles. Aw jeez, ole chap.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, Eulipian 5k said:

Martin Freeman was the lead in Season 1 of Fargo., he's British also .It must be a thing to hire Brits for these roles. Aw jeez, ole chap.

I heard a theory that British actors come up in the theater and that training makes so many able to take on American accents compared to US actors  going overseas to other English speaking roles 

[Tatum]

On 1/20/2024 at 12:12 PM, SunshineOnMe said:

I loved this season. I was a little bummed or unsettled about Roy's 3rd wife being arrested. I felt like she'd been so abused and threatened (also with a horrible dad) and lied to by Roy about Dot. What did you all think?

I didn't like that either, although, as pointed out, she may not be in any real legal trouble once the dust settles. But as unlikeable as she may be, she hasn't done anything worse than anything Gator did, and she likely grew up just as abused and brainwashed as he did, yet he got something of a redemption, at least as far as Dot was concerned. That said, even if they decided not to file any charges against her, both her sources of income and power are gone, and not sure she really has any means to support herself or her kids. I think Karen was an interesting character they could have done more with than just make a jealous, one note sycophant, but I get it, it was a show with lots of characters and no way to give nuance to everyone.

[Eulipian 5k]

Anyone see a bit of Phil Hartman's SNL Frankenstein monster vibes from Moonk in the Lyon's kitchen?

18 hours ago, Tatum said:

Karen was an interesting character they could have done more with than just make a jealous, one note sycophant, but I get it, it was a show with lots of characters and no way to give nuance to everyone.

Presenting: The Real Housewives of Fargo:

Indira: Kick the Useless Bum to the curb!

Karen: Abused but entitled,"I get to slap the harlot!"

Lorraine: Laconic Lyoness, "I'm soo tired of your bullsh#t, here, waddle in mine.

Dot:  The Tiger!!

 

 

[smartymarty]

31 minutes ago, Eulipian 5k said:

Anyone see a bit of Phil Hartman's SNL Frankenstein monster vibes from Moonk in the Lyon's kitchen?

Well, I detected Frankenstein, not necessarily Phil Hartman's rendition. The monster who must be taught how to be civilized, and also who is kind to the little girl.

[sistermagpie]

19 hours ago, Raja said:

I heard a theory that British actors come up in the theater and that training makes so many able to take on American accents compared to US actors  going overseas to other English speaking roles 

Also, there's just more incentive since so much stuff is done in the US. If Americans think the actor sounds weird, they won't get the part. It still happens sometimes that a famous British actor's American accent isn't exactly right, but generally they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot with somebody who can't do it.

With American actors it goes the other way--they're usually hiring somebody famous because they're famous and the accent is secondary if it's an American movie. A British show hiring an actor to do an American accent can be less picky because it's for a British audience.

And this is more the Fargo accent, so it's funny anyway. 

[bosawks]

The ending did one of my favorite things in that I did not expect it but once I experienced it I couldn’t imagine it ending in any other way.

[iMonrey]

On 1/22/2024 at 4:34 PM, Tatum said:

That said, even if they decided not to file any charges against her, both her sources of income and power are gone, and not sure she really has any means to support herself or her kids.

Well, her father is dead, so assuming he had any money she's in line to inherit it. We have no idea if she has siblings or if her mother is alive though.

Of course, assuming her father belonged to the same home-grown militia that Roy did, it's possible all of his assets were frozen as well.

[Duke Silver]

My man Witt brought a gun loaded with blanks to a knife fight.  RIP in peace

 

[Kel Varnsen]

I really liked this season, it was such a huge turnaround from the last two. And so much of that was the work of Juno Temple. In all the other seasons I don't think any actor carried the show as much.

And the ending was crazy but amazing. So much tension, but Dot managed to out nice the 500 year old hitman. Which was funny since at the start of the first episode they had the definition of Minnesota Nice on the screen.

There was only a few things I didn't like. I wish we could have gotten some like to the previous seasons or the movie. Especially since Google maps says the drive from Scandia to Stark county goes right through actual Fargo (and not far from Brainerd). I mean the best thing about season 3 was when Mr. Wrench showed up. I was hoping we would see like Varga in the federal prison or a small shout out like that.  Or have old lady Peggy buy a car from Wayne.

I also wish we got some explanation for the riot at the school board meeting at the start of the first episode. Has there been any hints on what caused everyone to go crazy?

On 1/20/2024 at 10:09 PM, sistermagpie said:

As somebody at the compound she'd just get arrested as part of Roy's group. If she wants to claim she was there against her will, she can. But she may have been armed to fight as well. The sent her kids away.

Yea everyone at that compound is pretty much getting handcuffed. It seems like there would be way too much risk of letting people just walk around. Take them somewhere, make sure they don't have weapons and let the lawyers figure it out.

Edited January 25 by Kel Varnsen

[peeayebee]

9 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

I also wish we got some explanation for the riot at the school board meeting at the start of the first episode. Has there been any hints on what caused everyone to go crazy?

I didn't catch any hints in the. I think it was referencing school board meetings IRL where people would scream about parental rights, curriculum, 'grooming,' etc. Just incivility in our current society.

[Kel Varnsen]

One other cool thing I realized that I kind of like. In the last scene when Wayne was bringing up memories, talking about how he saw a tiger at the zoo but has never been overseas, that was a smart way to show that he was recovered from being electrocuted and didn't have permanent memory loss.

[Blakeston]

On 1/21/2024 at 11:47 AM, iMonrey said:

She didn't murder him. She booby-trapped the bathroom and he slipped and cracked his skull on the toilet. Yes, she was responsible in the same way she was responsible for the death of the hospital patient but it's more of a gray area than actually straight-up shooting someone and slitting someone's throat. Everything she did was in self defense, in contrast to the people Roy killed. 

Who said it was murder, or unjustified? I specifically said it was justified.

The only things Dot did that weren't 100% justified, IMO, were a) setting up the cancer patient to be abducted, and b) failing to let Wayne and Scottie know the danger they were in by staying in their home.

[DMK]

To be fair, I don’t think Dot expected any sort of kidnapping attempt on Wayne to result from the nameplate switching. There had been two previous kidnapping attempts on her. I think her expectation was that they’d try to acquire her in Wayne’s hospital room, switched the names so that Wayne wouldn’t encounter them at all, but obviously, that went awry. 

[Crashcourse]

She still shouldn't have switched the name plates.

Also, she should have walked Wayne and Scottie through the house and shown them all the traps so they'd know to avoid them.  

[DMK]

She did. For one thing, Dot had Scottie helping her make all those booby traps. And Wayne and Dot were fighting about it when he came home and saw them all. But he clearly forgot when faced with the panic of armed intruders in the house. Plus, Wayne wasn't supposed to get them cornered in the bedroom, Dot wanted them to escape down the laundry chute. 

[Crashcourse]

Ok, but I still didn't like her for switching the name plates.

[pasdetrois]

On 1/17/2024 at 2:49 PM, tennisgurl said:

Of all the ways I expected this season to end, an immortal soul eater crying over a biscuit is not what I would have guessed.

500 years of eating sin, and he didn't even get rolled biscuits. But this is Minnesota, not Mississippi.

What was in the pack of cigarettes that Lorraine handed to Roy at the prison? All I can think of is cyanide.

I enjoyed this season. The only part that bored me was the Linda sequences, as I've seen that kind of thing before.

[Raja]

2 minutes ago, pasdetrois said:

What was in the pack of cigarettes that Lorraine handed to Roy at the prison? All I can think of is cyanide.

It was just cigarettes. She was telling him that she can hire folks prisoners and/or guards to make his life hell while all he had to offer to counter her was a few cigarettes'.

[Milburn Stone]

On 2/12/2024 at 8:08 AM, pasdetrois said:

I enjoyed this season. The only part that bored me was the Linda sequences, as I've seen that kind of thing before.

It reminded us of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (the Sigourney Weaver vehicle that took place in Australia).

[Gloriosa]

I just finished the season, and here's what's driving me crazy.  How did Dot get returned to a fully furnished house?  Didn't her house burn down?  And she's been gone for what, a week or two, so how did a new house come about?  I guess you could say Lorraine took care of it, but it seems likely to me that Scotty and Wayne would still be at her house while Dot's missing.

[DMK]

1 hour ago, Gloriosa said:

I just finished the season, and here's what's driving me crazy.  How did Dot get returned to a fully furnished house?  Didn't her house burn down?  And she's been gone for what, a week or two, so how did a new house come about?  I guess you could say Lorraine took care of it, but it seems likely to me that Scotty and Wayne would still be at her house while Dot's missing.

It was one year later. Time enough to rebuild the house.

[Gloriosa]

No, I don't mean a year later.  I mean when the cops brought her back from Roy's place, Scotty and Wayne were waiting outside and Lorraine came out of the house.

[DMK]

10 minutes ago, Gloriosa said:

No, I don't mean a year later.  I mean when the cops brought her back from Roy's place, Scotty and Wayne were waiting outside and Lorraine came out of the house.

That was Lorraine’s house.

[carrps]

I think it was Dot's house that @Gloriosa is referring to. IIRC, in that scene they didn't enter the house, but you could see from looking into the front hallway area that construction/repairs were going on.

 

[Gloriosa]

OK, @carrps, that may be it.  I didn't notice the construction.  It definitely wasn't Lorraine's fancy house.  I can stop wondering about it now, so thank you.

[EtheltoTillie]

On 1/17/2024 at 12:34 AM, sistermagpie said:

I admit, I didn't get why he had to die either. Which really stood out since the rest of the season felt really organic. I would never have predicted that last shot of Munch, but it was perfect. Those who cling to toxic masculinity shall have no biscuits.

Also, this is absolutely the best use of orange soda pop I've ever seen. When that bright orance bottle was thrust into frame I lost it. 

Orange idiot. Orange jumpsuit for Roy. Orange soda. Orange is always a Fargo Easter egg, derived from the Godfather. 

On 1/17/2024 at 7:49 AM, bosawks said:

Munch becoming a sin eater because of men in power using food as control and enticement coupled with Munch being healed by a mother inviting him to not only break bread with a family but to help make the bread that will feed the family was incredible.

Well done show, well done.

Also the bread symbolized communion. With orange soda.