S02.E10: Palindrome

[ChipBach]

Precisely. "Bad girls"--women who are physically and possibly sexually abused and try to find their own way out, women who love other women, women with ambition, women who don't want to be wives and mothers, women who claim that women can be anything, women who refuse to stay home while the men do the dirty work--are punished. Good girls are rewarded with happy, if fleeting, bliss.

 

 

She isn't any less for making that choice, but she isn't any better, either. The problem is that the story clearly frames the domestic, maternal Betsy as better, the sort who knows her place in the world--wife and mother and that's it--and doesn't have airs above her "station" the way Peggy, Simone, Floyd and Constance do. That's pretty fucked up. 

 

Yes - the bad people died, good prevails.  I don't find that fucked up.  Betsy demonstrated many times she could protect herself and objected to anyone else doing so.  She also was key in terms of understanding the crime better than the two policemen.  At no time did Lou demonstrate he was embarrassed by the fact that Betsy was sharper than he and her dad.  I think Lou struggled the entire season with trying to be empathetic to Betsy's situation/sickness without being condescending.   

 

Peggy is just mentally unbalanced.  Schizophrenia?  I don;t know what her classic diagnosis would be, however leaving Rye in the windshield and preparing the hamburger helper was pretty telling that she is out of touch with reality.  Ed was simply an enabler for her.  She should have been encouraged to seek help.  Ed was just as delusional (until his last act) ignoring some pretty strong behavioral issues.  Again, 1979, when mental disease was something people were ashamed to face.

 

Simone and Floyd were criminals and shared the same fate of almost all the male criminals.  I am sure Simone grew up in an abusive childhood.  But so did Dodd.  Was he a victim too?  Probably.

 

Constance was really a predator.  If a man were to identify an attractive, demented/vulnerable/unhappy married young lady, put the two in a hotel room and planned to ply her with alcohol, that guy would be pretty villainous...  So, in the spirit of equality, I find Constance's predatory ways got her killed.

Edited December 15, 2015 by ChipBach

[Desperately Random]

And they all died. Every woman who tried to fight her situation and better herself died (or loses her freedom), while the happy homemaker ends her story by lovingly serving her husband and father coffee.

The "happy homemaker" is dying of cancer. So your point doesn't make much sense since we saw all season that Betsy was very ill and going to die a slow, painful death. Sure, she was happy in that last scene but everyone (audience, the characters) knows that is going to end for her very soon. We don't see Betsy's death (for which I'm grateful) but she is not getting a happy ending.

 

Edited December 15, 2015 by Desperately Random

[AuntiePam]

She isn't any less for making that choice, but she isn't any better, either. The problem is that the story clearly frames the domestic, maternal Betsy as better, the sort who knows her place in the world--wife and mother and that's it--and doesn't have airs above her "station" the way Peggy, Simone, Floyd and Constance do. That's pretty fucked up.

 

The choices made by Peggy, Simone, Floyd and Constance are what fucked them up.  A man making those choices would have encountered a similar result.  Peggy was blase about the danger of her situation (think Llewellyn iMoss n No Country for Old Men), Simone went against the family (Fredo in the Godfather), Floyd went to war with bad information (George Bush and Iraq), Constance  -- well, Constance chose to flirt with the wrong person (all those Lifetime movies). 

 

That's one way to look at it.  It could be viewed as sexism, but I prefer to think of it as a communication problem, which continues today.  We'll probably never get past it. 

[Nutjob]

 

That's pretty fucked up. It's also distinguishable from Lester and Jerry, since there was no gendered dimension to their motivations for doing what they did.

That's not true at all. Both Lester and Jerry were routinely emasculated by their wife and father in law, respectively, and felt like they had to assert themselves to be the "man of the house" society wanted them to be. Lester, in particular, had extremely gendered motivations for his actions--he killed the man who bullied him for being a wimp, killed his harpying, emasculating wife, and later on challenged Malvo because he finally felt like the manly man he always was made to feel he wasn't. To say Lester wasn't motivated by expectations for his gender is ignoring his motivations for pretty much everything he did.

 

Also, in 1979 women were just largely finding their voice independent of men, hence the heavy emphasis on communication. Floyd and Simone both made the mistake of allowing men to play and use them instead of being the true independent women they could and should have been--to me, that's about as non-sexist of a message as you can get. Floyd could have defeated KC, but her maternal instincts betrayed her and her loyalty to her very flawed sons were her undoing.  Simone could have put herself in line to take over one day, but she let her hatred for Dodd cloud her judgment and allow herself to get used by Mike. Their trust in men instead of themselves were Floyd and Simone's undoing.

 

Now, Peggy? She's a different story altogether. Peggy is mentally ill and in clear need of psychiatric help, which may not have been taken as seriously in 1979 as it would be now. Regardless of her struggles to shed her wife/mother restraints, it doesn't excuse the chaos she caused. The minute she thought to convince Ed to cover up Rye's death is the moment her justifications went out the window, in my opinion. And yes, people died because of her, and a lot of them--her husband included. I didn't find it sexist at all for Lou to cut her off in a moment of frustration, particularly since I believe most of his talk about protecting his family was overcompensation for the fact that he knows Betsy is dying, and there isn't a blasted thing he can to do protect her or stop it from coming. He tried to protect Ed and Peggy, too, and they wouldn't let him.

[shapeshifter]

I felt like Lou's frustration with Peggy's blabbering descent into "BUT I'M A VICTIM, TOO" was because he was trying to comfort her with his Vietnam story and it's ultimate meaning - doing anything to protect your family - and let her know that while the circumstances that brought Ed and Peggy to that freezer were stupid and misguided, Peggy and Ed both were, at the end, trying to protect "their family" the best they could.

Peggy's fatal flaw was that she could never, ever see how her actions - or sometimes inactions - impacted the people around her. From Rye, to Ed, to Constance, to Hank, to Lou - hell I could go on listing just about every character on this season - Peggy never once stopped to ask "If I do what I want, what does that mean for [fill in the blank]?"

Even at the end, in Lou's car she's more worried about serving time in California than pondering the fact that her husbands and tens of people - innocents and criminals - are DEAD because of her.

Hell, her pondering about "Why did that man have to walk in the road???" made me scoff out loud. How about wondering, "Why didn't I just call the police when I ACCIDENTALLY hit a man?".

It's always ALL ABOUT PEGGY. And Lou, of all people, just doesn't have any give a damn left for that kind of narcissism.

Lou wasn't dismissive of Peggy because she was a woman. He was dismissive of her because she's kind of an asshole.

Yes, and/or he was frustrated with her because of her "sociopathy," meaning her inability to empathize. Hank was more patient with her because he could empathize with her mental illness since his own grief had taken him to a place where he created a secret language.

 

I was super pleased to see how Constance's constant egging on of Peggy to actualize led to most of this mess.

Good point about Constance being the trigger.

[elzin]

To me, the most striking palindrome was Ed starting out in a meat locker and ending up in one. The "nice" people in this show/movie universe tend to end up screwed no matter what they do.

[Eyes High]

Now, Peggy? She's a different story altogether. Peggy is mentally ill and in clear need of psychiatric help, which may not have been taken as seriously in 1979 as it would be now.

 

Is she? She's had two elaborate hallucinations, but there was no suggestion in her last scene that Peggy was mentally ill. The writers can't seem to make up their minds about it, and she's been completely lucid or breaking with reality as the situation has demanded.

 

That's not true at all.

 

I disagree. He didn't kill his wife because he was emasculated; he killed his wife because she pissed him off and he lashed out. Like Nancy in Weeds, a woman, he got a thrill out of breaking rules and getting away with it. He wanted to be successful as well, and greed knows no gender.

 

 

 

Their trust in men instead of themselves were Floyd and Simone's undoing.

 

Hawley uses Floyd and Simone to make a joke about feminism. Not cool. His writing for this season, as with the 1x10 finale, shows a profound disdain for female empowerment that's disappointing in a series that's otherwise so good on so many levels, and which lured me in with the promise of complicated, interesting, powerful women. Just as with Game of Thrones' rape extravaganza, Fargo after 2x10 made me want to put a moratorium on all white male showrunners until they clean up their act. I'm just so sick of this garbage.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Eyes High

[knaankos]

You know what... Eyes High has won me over. If you think about it overall the show does seem to endorse traditional gender roles. It's one thing to have a character like Dodd spit sexist stuff because we know he's an idiot but it's another entirely to have the shows main hero endorse it in a more subtle way. It's like the show in general is nodding in approval of Betsy's way.

But I still think they white make privledge thing is a big stretch.

[GodsBeloved]

She isn't any less for making that choice, but she isn't any better, either. The problem is that the story clearly frames the domestic, maternal Betsy as better, the patriarchy-approved sort who knows her place in the world--wife and mother and that's it--and doesn't have airs above her "station" the way Peggy, Simone, Floyd and Constance do. That's pretty fucked up. It's also distinguishable from Lester and Jerry, since there was no gendered dimension to their motivations for doing what they did.

Agreed.

 

If it was the intent of the writers to paint Besty as the "better" one because she was a wife and mother and that's it, I didn't receive it that way.

[BananaRama]

Lou has also been through hell in the past 24 hours, has been awake for that long, doesn't know if his father-in-law is going to make it, and  is worried about his terminally ill wife. So yeah, maybe he's not in the mood for Peggy's I'm A Victim crap. I took that Vietnam story as an attempt to relate to why she did what she did - she was trying to protect her family. But then she went off on the victim tangent and he called her on it.

I think that Lou's Vietnam story was an attempt to explain Ed's (not Peggy's) actions. Let's not forget that Lou went to Ed and Peggy's house and pleaded with them to come clean about Peggy's hit-and-run with Rye. Lou knew that Peggy did it and that she wasn't going to confess, but he couldn't understand why Ed - a reasonable and nice guy - would not turn her in. Lou is trying to make sense out of this insane situation. His Vietnam story does make him sound sexist - and on that day in 1979 - he may very well have been a sexist - but if anyone could change his chauvinistic ideas, it is Lou - and he did. Lou raised a very strong woman.

[Eyes High]

It's one thing to have a character like Dodd spit sexist stuff because we know he's an idiot but it's another entirely to have the shows main hero endorse it in a more subtle way.

 

Yes, exactly! It's a clever trick: have an identifiable villain spout openly misogynist rants so that the benevolent sexism of Lou and of the show in general slips by unnoticed. Lou simply can't be sexist, since he's not like Dodd saying that women are the devil, after all. Great catch.

 

I've been focusing on Lou and Peggy, but another good example is Ed chiding Peggy with his last breaths for trying to fix something that wasn't broken. Of course Ed's home life wasn't broken to him; at the time, he had everything he could possibly want. Peggy's life was broken; she was desperately unhappy. Ed's refusal to acknowledge that is another example of sexism. His perspective was that everything was fine and that Peggy was the one with the problem for wanting something more for herself than marriage and motherhood. Ed doesn't view her feelings as valid, or at least as valid as his. Ed's perspective appears to trump hers in the episode from the writers' perspective, since it dovetails nicely with Lou shutting Peggy down. Why? The answer appears to be "Because he's a man." His opinion trumps Peggy's. He didn't think it was broken, so it wasn't. More sexist nonsense.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Eyes High

[GodsBeloved]

Betsy demonstrated many times she could protect herself and objected to anyone else doing so.  She also was key in terms of understanding the crime better than the two policemen.  At no time did Lou demonstrate he was embarrassed by the fact that Betsy was sharper than he and her dad.  I think Lou struggled the entire season with trying to be empathetic to Betsy's situation/sickness without being condescending.   

Good point about Betsy. She was definitely ready to be the protector of her home. Karl smiled and sounded proud when Besty asked if she looked like she needed looking after. She even reminded Lou that she didn't need looking after and told him to remember how long they've been together, which implied to me that Lou is very aware of Betsy's gun yielding abilities.

 

Regarding Lou not being embarrassed by the fact that Betsy was sharper, he even told Molly that Mommy was doing Daddy's job again to which Molly says Way to go mommy!

Yes - the bad people died, good prevails.  I don't find that fucked up.  Betsy demonstrated many times she could protect herself and objected to anyone else doing so.  She also was key in terms of understanding the crime better than the two policemen.  At no time did Lou demonstrate he was embarrassed by the fact that Betsy was sharper than he and her dad.  I think Lou struggled the entire season with trying to be empathetic to Betsy's situation/sickness without being condescending.   

 

Simone and Floyd were criminals and shared the same fate of almost all the male criminals.  I am sure Simone grew up in an abusive childhood.  But so did Dodd.  Was he a victim too?  Probably.

 

Constance was really a predator.  If a man were to identify an attractive, demented/vulnerable/unhappy married young lady, put the two in a hotel room and planned to ply her with alcohol, that guy would be pretty villainous...  So, in the spirit of equality, I find Constance's predatory ways got her killed.

You said this much better than I could. I hadn't looked at Constance as a predator but I can see it now.

[barbedwire]

To me, the most striking palindrome was Ed starting out in a meat locker and ending up in one. The "nice" people in this show/movie universe tend to end up screwed no matter what they do.

Good point!  Hadn't thought of that:  Ed starting out in and then ending up in the meat locker.

[RustbeltWriter]

Listening to Peggy in the back of that cruiser I realized just how around the bend she is. She hoards magazines, steals toilet paper, ran a guy over and drove home with him in her windshield and left him to die agonizingly slowly while she made dinner. She convinced her dull witted husband to grind him into hamburger and planned on attending a seminar despite her husband being taken in for questioning in a murder. She also tortured a guy who was tied up by stabbing him. To top matters off she assaulted Ben Schmidt after he saved her and Ed's lives. To me, these actions prove she's as crazy as an outhouse mouse.

 

Listening to her speech in the car I didn't think it had anything to do with sexism or chauvanism but rather she was trying to excuse the truly horrific decisions she had made and paint herself as the victim. Her whole spiel was nothing more than trying to use the conversation about women's rights that was occurring as cover for what she had done. It was convenient for her, nothing more.

Edited December 15, 2015 by RustbeltWriter

[Nutjob]

 

I disagree. He didn't kill his wife because he was emasculated; he killed his wife because she pissed him off and he lashed out.

She pissed him off because she constantly compared him to his more successful brother and told him what a complete failure he was as a man. If Peggy was a victim, so was Lester, with Malvo acting as his Constance, urging him to "actualize." And that's all I'm going to say on this matter--we are just not going to agree, and I'm OK with that.

 

Would Mike's new job be the mob equivalent of middle management? I mean, he didn't even get to have henchmen anymore. All that, and not even a Kitchen Brother at his disposal.

[seacliffsal]

Does anyone know who did the voiceover narration at the beginning of the episode (the whole "events happened in..."). I was dumbstruck by it as it was so heartfelt and world weary at the same time. This was an exceptional series-I really enjoyed it. I must admit that my eyes teared up a bit when Molly was having her vision of the future. The way they shot the scene with the first series characters caught me off guard as they started with views of their legs and backs-which led me to think that they couldn't get the original actors so were going to fake it. Then they pulled up and showed us their faces. It was a wonderful moment.

Just a wonderful episode (dragged a bit when Mike was giving his sovereignty talk), and a wonderful series.

[Dev F]

I disagree. He didn't kill his wife because he was emasculated; he killed his wife because she pissed him off and he lashed out.

 

I think Lester's anger was pretty explicitly the result of his feelings of emasculation. After being terrorized and humiliated by a bigger, tougher man who jokes about having had sex with his wife, he comes home to an argument with said wife in which she sneers, "You're not a man, Lester. You're not even half a man."

 

Of course, it's not directly comparable to Peggy's situation, since Peggy is undone by her attempts to transcend sexist expectations, whereas Lester and Jerry are undone by their attempts to conform to them. Though in her final monologue, Peggy seems to reframe her actions as a futile attempt at conformity:

 

"You wouldn't understand. You're a man. It's a lie, okay -- that you can do it all, be a wife and a mother and this self-made career woman, like there's thirty-seven hours in a day. And then when you can't, they say it's you."

 

In that sense, I think, it's possible to see Peggy's actions as the tragic result of sexist expectations just as much as Jerry's or Lester's. In a way, she self-destructed not because she tried to make something of herself but because she tried to do it without letting go of anything else. She wasn't just hoarding magazines; she was hoarding a whole life she didn't really want, because the world told her that a cool modern woman could have it all. And because this model of self-actualization didn't admit the possibility of pain or hardship -- because she still had to be a perfect perky housewife as well as a go-go-go career woman -- the only compatible reaction to running a guy down with her car was to drive home and make dinner and smile at her husband like nothing had happened.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Dev F

[Desperately Random]

Listening to her speech in the car I didn't think it had anything to do with sexism or chauvinism but rather she was trying to excuse the truly horrific decisions she had made and paint herself as the victim. Her whole spiel was nothing more than trying to use the conversation about women's rights that was occurring as cover for what she had done. It was convenient for her, nothing more.

I couldn't agree more. I posted this in another thread but it applies here as well. Peggy would have come out of this a hero if she had done the right thing and a lot of people (including her husband) would still be alive. After hitting Rye, she should have gone to the restaurant to call for help. (Which is what anyone in that situation should have done.) Of course, she would have found all those bodies and the police would have been called. Rye would have been taken to the hospital and arrested for the murders. Instead, Peggy thinks only of herself and drives home where she continues to make selfish choices that result in many, many deaths. She has only herself to blame for all that has happened to her and I had no sympathy for her when she was trying to justify her choices. I also didn't blame Lou for calling her out on her bullshit. He tried to talk her into doing what was right before things got even worse but she refused. Poor Lou was almost killed by Bear and Hank was shot because Peggy wouldn't own up to what she had done.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Desperately Random

[Nutjob]

Does anyone know who did the voiceover narration at the beginning of the episode (the whole "events happened in..."). I was dumbstruck by it as it was so heartfelt and world weary at the same time.

I'm pretty sure that was Patrick Wilson.

[Midnight Cheese]

I think there's a distinction with Peggy - I don't take her speech with Lou as trying to 'cover' what she'd done, not consciously anyway.  She was in deep flail, and couldn't see in front of herself rather literally, with hitting Rye with her car (even though he contributed more than 50% negligence-wise IMO), and figuratively, in seeing what Constance was and what she was trying to do with her seductive approach to 'mentorship.' 

 

Peggy lived as she said 'in a museum of the past' - Ed's childhood home, where as Ed saw it, he'd be the butcher and she'd be the beautician and they'd have kids and happily ever after.   And that's fine!  But Peggy began to seek more, want more, and was beginning to be surrounded by a culture where she was encouraged to do so, and on some level to find implicit failure in not doing so.  This is complicated by her mental illness(es?), depression, personality disorder, whatever.  The acceptable trajectory would have been to divorce Ed and move to California.  But we see that she did love him, but felt mired in their lives.  We *did* see, incontrovertibly, that Ed did not listen to her -- the way she said it was 'well, yes, we talked if you mean you talked, and I also talked...." 

 

The point that their status quo felt 'broken' to Peggy if not Ed is an important one, to me.  As is analogizing Lou's speech to Marge's, about how Peggy was 'somebody' now.  In terms of the body count, the only one I'm comfortable laying at her feet is Rye's.  And I think a pretty great argument can be made that Rye was the instigator of everything -- he felt his thug family and nonexistant gravitas entitled him and that sadsack Selectric salesman to get one over on that straight-backed female judge.  If he hadn't murdered 3 people because of his own impotence, none of this would've occurred.  Peggy would've gone to Lifespring, either accepted or rejected Constance's advances, and gone from there.

[Eyes High]

Yes - the bad people died, good prevails.  I don't find that fucked up.  Betsy demonstrated many times she could protect herself and objected to anyone else doing so.  She also was key in terms of understanding the crime better than the two policemen.  At no time did Lou demonstrate he was embarrassed by the fact that Betsy was sharper than he and her dad.  

 

Betsy never tried to go beyond her "station," though, and there was never any suggestion that Betsy might apply her abilities in a professional capacity and get a job doing investigative work. Lou and Hank's cheery recognition of Betsy's superior intelligence and sleuthing abilities smacks of paternalistic condescension, since they knew and she knew she wouldn't be competing against them anytime soon. Had Betsy been approached about bringing her talents to bear in a professional environment, they might not have been so jovial and so free with the compliments about her obvious superiority.

 

In terms of the body count, the only one I'm comfortable laying at her feet is Rye's.

 

Yes. A number of posters have stated that a lot of people are dead because of Ed and Peggy. Well, that conveniently ignores that "a lot of people are dead" because a gang of criminals were murdering everyone who got between Ed and Peggy and themselves, and that a lot of the "dead people" were those same criminals going after Ed and Peggy, or people who were murdered for reasons that had nothing to do with Ed and Peggy (the shitkickers, the bartender, etc.). I mean, if you know that a bunch of murderers are coming after you and won't stop until you're dead, Terminator-style, and that the police are completely useless and are unable to protect you, as the police proved over and over and over again to Peggy and Ed, what are you supposed to do? Just allow yourself to be killed?

 

In The Terminator and Terminator 2, a lot of people, even innocent people, are killed by the Terminators when they get in between the Terminators and their targets. In both movies, a number of police officers are killed when the targets seek their help and the targets are unable to rely on the police for protection. Is it really fair to say that a "lot of people are dead" because of the targets refusing to allow themselves to be killed, though? Or is it more accurate to say that "a lot of people are dead" because the Terminators killed them?

Edited December 15, 2015 by Eyes High

[AuntiePam]

I've been focusing on Lou and Peggy, but another good example is Ed chiding Peggy with his last breaths for trying to fix something that wasn't broken. Of course Ed's home life wasn't broken to him; at the time, he had everything he could possibly want. Peggy's life was broken; she was desperately unhappy. Ed's refusal to acknowledge that is another example of sexism. His perspective was that everything was fine and that Peggy was the one with the problem for wanting something more for herself than marriage and motherhood. Ed doesn't view her feelings as valid, or at least as valid as his. Ed's perspective appears to trump hers in the episode from the writers' perspective, since it dovetails nicely with Lou shutting Peggy down. Why? The answer appears to be "Because he's a man." His opinion trumps Peggy's. He didn't think it was broken, so it wasn't. More sexist nonsense.

 

I don't know how it's possible for me to agree with so many differing viewpoints, but I do. 

 

Do you think Ed would have reacted differently if Peggy said she wanted to go back to school, instead of spending $500 (a lot of money in 1979) for a seminar where she could "actualize" herself, "be a better me"?  Furthering her education might have been something he could understand.  There's also the money issue -- if they had enough for both the butcher shop and the seminar, I think Ed would have been fine with Peggy going to the seminar. 

[Bannon]

The scene between Woodbine and Arkin was one the funnier things I've ever seen on television. Woodbine is a simply phenomenal actor. 

[Bannon]

For all the verbalizing Peggy did of actualizing, it was her inability to simply state, in plain terms, what she wanted, and then act on it, which is what led to her demise. If she had told Ed she wanted a divorce and to move to California, then she likely doesn't drive home with a crime family member in her windshield, but instead calls the police, and moves forward with her life.

 

As Yoda would say, if he were a Lifespring Coach, "There is no actualize. Do or do not!" 

[Eyes High]

The scene between Woodbine and Arkin was one the funnier things I've ever seen on television. Woodbine is a simply phenomenal actor. 

 

Agreed, on both counts. Screamingly funny. Arkin's orientation spiel was too real.

 

For all the verbalizing Peggy did of actualizing, it was her inability to simply state, in plain terms, what she wanted, and then act on it, which is what led to her demise. If she had told Ed she wanted a divorce and to move to California, then she likely doesn't drive home with a crime family member in her windshield, but instead calls the police, and moves forward with her life.

 

Excellent point. Peggy's problem wasn't her desires for freedom, independence, and California, it was her inability to act on them before hitting Rye. It seems strange, because once the shit hits the fan, she has no problem becoming a woman of action. It's just that she could never bring herself to leave Ed, even though she's able to articulate her unhappiness to others. Maybe she was hoping that the Lifespring seminar would give her the motivation she needed to leave him once and for all.

 

As Yoda would say, if he were a Lifespring Coach, "There is no actualize. Do or do not!"

 

Sounds like the guru hallucination telling Peggy she can either think or be.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Eyes High

[Bannon]

Agreed, on both counts. Screamingly funny. Arkin's orientation spiel was too real.

They even nailed the '70s lower rung office, for the newly-promoted-to-headquarters schmoe, before the bean conters figured out you could save on real estate costs by shoving all the schmoes into an open area with their tiny cubicles. They give him his "own office", with actual walls and window, but it is the size of a broom closet, with a desk fit for a middle-schooler, which has it's entire surface nearly taken up with an IBM Selectric; Mike Milliken hasn't reached a spot where secretarial help will be provided to take dictation. Brilliant attention to detail.

[Melissa56789]

 

Does anyone know who did the voiceover narration at the beginning of the episode (the whole "events happened in...").

 

It was Patrick Wilson as "Lou"

[ChromaKelly]

Is she? She's had two elaborate hallucinations, but there was no suggestion in her last scene that Peggy was mentally ill. The writers can't seem to make up their minds about it, and she's been completely lucid or breaking with reality as the situation has demanded.

She went on about her business after hitting a person with a car. La-di-da let me fix dinner and act like nothing happened. No concern about the victim. Yes, that indicates mental illness. Not to mention the magazine hoard in the basement.

[seacliffsal]

Thanks for the identification of Patrick Wilson doing the narration. That was my initial thought, but once they showed the series 1 cast I wondered if it might have been Keith Carradine. Nevertheless, Patrick did a brilliant read on that narrative.

[beadgirl]

 

Precisely. "Bad girls"--women who are physically and possibly sexually abused and try to find their own way out, women who love other women, women with ambition, women who don't want to be wives and mothers, women who claim that women can be anything, women who refuse to stay home while the men do the dirty work--are punished. Good girls are rewarded with pure, if fleeting, bliss.

Yes, the bad girls were punished.  The woman who facilitated her husband's criminal empire for decades, who tried to take over for him when he was incapacitated, who ordered a gang war, who raised psychotic sons, was killed.   The teenager who's idea of rebelling against her father was to sleep with an assassin and then give him the information he needed to kill her father and the rest of her family was killed. The woman who manipulated another woman and tried to seduce her in sneaky and underhanded ways was killed.  And the woman who ran over a man and drove home with him stuck in the window, still alive, will be punished for that. 

 

Almost all the bad boys were punished, too; and even the two who escaped -- Hanzee and Mike -- will be punished eventually, by Malvo or corporatism.  Is the punishment because of patriarchy, or because of the objectively bad things they all did?

 

Here's the problem I had with Peggy's victim speech: yes, 1979 was in some ways worse than our current era with regard to gender issues.  But still there were women who chose not to get married or have kids, there were women who became doctors or lawyers or business managers or artists or professors, there were women who became housewives without giving up their identities or personalities and without worrying about whether they were rising above their "station."  Peggy didn't have to be a victim; she could have made for herself the life she wanted.  The fact that once things began going pear-shaped she took a lot of initiative shows she was capable of it, as Eyes High mentioned.

Edited December 15, 2015 by beadgirl

[EmZeeGee]

Lou and Hank's cheery recognition of Betsy's superior intelligence and sleuthing abilities smacks of paternalistic condescension, since they knew and she knew she wouldn't be competing against them anytime soon.

They admired her superior intelligence and deductive abilities, but it's only a case of paternalistic condescension? Operating in and likely being comfortable in the patriarchy does not render everything they say or do insincere.

 

Yes. A number of posters have stated that a lot of people are dead because of Ed and Peggy. Well, that conveniently ignores that "a lot of people are dead" because a gang of criminals were murdering everyone who got between Ed and Peggy and themselves, and that a lot of the "dead people" were those same criminals going after Ed and Peggy, or people who were murdered for reasons that had nothing to do with Ed and Peggy (the shitkickers, the bartender, etc.).

Many people are dead because of Peggy an Ed's actions, this does not make them culpable for homicide in the legal sense, but it does not make it less true. We know Rye was alive after Peggy hit him with her car and left him in the garage. Had he been taken to the hospital and arrested for murder rather than killed and ground up by Ed, the Gerhardt family wouldn't have engaged in an investigation to find his murderer, which brought Dodd and his cronies to their home, which led to Dodd's capture and Hanzee's pursuit, and brought us to the Sioux Falls massacre. Would their still be death? Of course. The Gerhardts were engaging in a gang war, but Peggy and Ed's actions did lead to deaths that might have otherwise not occurred. Acknowledging their actions caused a chain of events that might not have otherwise occurred is not ignoring criminal gangs murdering everyone, it's describing what happened.

 

The Terminator example fails because The Connors are not the people that created the event that causes the rising action. The proximate cause for the rising action takes place in the future and as a result Skynet sends the Terminator in pursuit. Moreover, it's obtuse to say "refusing to let themselves be killed" is what others were relating when saying lots of others are dead because of Peggy & Ed. Clearly, most posters were referring to the hit & run.

In terms of the body count, the only one I'm comfortable laying at her feet is Rye's.  And I think a pretty great argument can be made that Rye was the instigator of everything -- he felt his thug family and nonexistant gravitas entitled him and that sadsack Selectric salesman to get one over on that straight-backed female judge.  If he hadn't murdered 3 people because of his own impotence, none of this would've occurred.  Peggy would've gone to Lifespring, either accepted or rejected Constance's advances, and gone from there.

 

Now this is much more convincing, but I continue to have trouble deciding when a character raising the stakes begins a new instigation of events. If Rye never tried to bolster his fragile masculinity, if Peggy called the police and an ambulance, if Ed called the police or an ambulance, If the Dakota police didn't attempt some grand scheme to try to snag a bigger fish-- so many moments this could have been de-escalated. I suppose that's just the messiness of humanity.

[Ohwell]

Was Peggy even handcuffed?  I missed that if she was.  When Lou got out of the car to make the telephone call to Betsy, I was expecting Peggy to try to get out of the car and run, and then get hit by a car and the driver speeds off.   

[Eyes High]

They admired her superior intelligence and deductive abilities, but it's only a case of paternalistic condescension? Operating in and likely being comfortable in the patriarchy does not render everything they say or do insincere.

 

Insincere? No. Meaningless and condescending? Yes.

 

Many people are dead because of Peggy an Ed's actions

 

It's misleading to say that in a way that ignores the fact that most of these deaths were attributable to Peggy and Ed escaping from murderers and those murderers killing everyone who got in their way.

 

Many people are dead because Hanzee, you know, murdered them. It's insane to rob all the murderers of their agency to blame everything on Ed and Peggy. Those murderers were not rocks lacking thought or sentience rolling down a hill unleashed by Ed and Peggy. They were independent, shitty, murderous human beings exercising their independent, shitty, murderous judgment. The chain of causation has long since been severed. Enough.

 

The Terminator example fails because The Connors are not the people that created the event that causes the rising action. The proximate cause for the rising action takes place in the future and as a result Skynet sends the Terminator in pursuit.

 

Skynet wouldn't have sent the Terminator back had Sarah not given birth to John, knowing what would happen, and had John not led the resistance to victory. Are they at fault for those actions?

 

 

Moreover, it's obtuse to say "refusing to let themselves be killed" is what others were relating when saying lots of others are dead because of Peggy & Ed. Clearly, most posters were referring to the hit & run.

 

I don't think you can infer that from the statements. It's not at all obtuse to point out that almost all the deaths resulted from Ed and Peggy trying to save their own lives, and many of the posters upthread have eagerly condemned Ed and Peggy for those murders, rather than the murderers themselves. The Terminator is a very apt comparison, as dozens of collateral deaths resulted from the characters trying to save their own lives from unstoppable, merciless killers. I have yet to see someone condemn John or Sarah for all the death and destruction they caused in trying to save their own lives. 

Edited December 15, 2015 by Eyes High

[Ronin Jackson]

I enjoyed this season quite a bit, and I wasn't a fan of the first. I didn't get all the Season 1 references (besides the obvious flash forward), and I'm actually disappointed that Hanzee is supposed to have turned out to be the season 1 crime boss. Since I didn't make the connection I'll choose to ignore it because the character deserved a better fate that being a cheap insider tie in to Season 1. But other than that generally well done. Hawley's writing definitely does come off at it's least effective times as a Tarantino derivative, and of course they are staying close to it's Coen Brothers crime film influences, but he hit better notes for me this season overall. I really enjoyed Hank's language speech and the Twin Peaksy vibe of Peggy's hallucination. 

 

 

I will truly miss this show.  It was my Monday night!  What a great cast:  every performance so fantastic.  Well done Coen brothers and all.

 

I feel compulsively compelled to point this out whenever I see these things, but the Coen brothers don't have much to do with the television series. They obviously read the initial scripts for the first season and agreed to the idea of their film being adapted as an anthology series, but Noah Hawley runs the show and deserves the primary credit (and blame) for how the show is received. Sorry if you weren't intending to credit the Coen brothers that way here, but like I said, I feel compulsively compelled to point it out when I see it.... same thing for J.J. Abrams and everything that happened on Lost after the pilot, or Quentin Tarantino and various films he "presents". I once saw someone try to credit David Fincher for Tarsem Singh's film The Fall and I had to register an account just to correct it!

[EmZeeGee]

It's misleading to say that in a way that ignores the fact that most of these deaths were attributable to Peggy and Ed escaping from murderers and those murderers killing everyone who got in their way.

But Peggy and Ed weren't suddenly escaping murderers. They were escaping murderers and kidnapping a thug because they chose not to seek protective custody, report their hit and run or turn over a criminal to the police. This doesn't dismiss the autonomy of others; however, their actions had predictable consequences, which Lou made them aware of and they chose to ignore.

 

Skynet wouldn't have sent the Terminator back had Sarah not given birth to John, knowing what would happen, and had John not led the resistance to victory. Are they at fault for those actions?

That's not true, we have no idea what would have happened if Sarah had not given birth to John because that would create a whole other timeline of events that we cannot predict. Another leader might have risen and Skynet would have been sent back to kill someone else, or Skynet might have ever been created. What we do know is that John's imminent victory is the proximate cause of sending the Terminator back.

 

The Terminator is a very apt comparison, as dozens of collateral deaths resulted from the characters trying to save their own lives from unstoppable, merciless killers. I have yet to see someone condemn John or Sarah for all the death and destruction they caused in trying to save their own lives.

This completely ignores the stakes. John and Sarah not getting killed is, as far as they know, in order to save humanity. Peggy and Ed are purely out of a selfish desire not to be brought to justice for the murder they committed.

 

Meaningless and condescending? Yes.

Mmm.

[shapeshifter]

Was Peggy even handcuffed?  I missed that if she was.  When Lou got out of the car to make the telephone call to Betsy, I was expecting Peggy to try to get out of the car and run, and then get hit by a car and the driver speeds off.   

I was expecting her to stab him in the neck with something.

[Ohwell]

I was expecting her to stab him in the neck with something.

Yes, I forgot to mention that I was holding my breath, afraid she was going to stab him, then run out of the car into the path of a vehicle.  Then I remembered that Lou lives.

[iMonrey]

 

I was fine with "exploring the characters." I was not fine with the form it took, namely the pretentious, self-consciously philosophical speeches: Mike defining "sovereignty" and going on about being the king was probably the worst (like Tarantino on his worst day terrible, and the world does not need more shitty Tarantino imitators, Tarantino himself is quite enough Tarantino for this world), but Lou's interminable anecdote about the dude trying to land the fucking Chinook--although I hoped the reference to the "Chinook" was some sort of Alberta shoutout--and half-baked musings about the "burden" and "privilege" of, well, male privilege, was also egregious, as well as being sexist.

 

This is kind of where I am too, in regards to the pretentious, non-stop blathering, pontificating and philosophizing. I've been complaining about Mike Milligan all season long. Every time he opens his mouth it's like I'm sitting through one of Matthew McConaughey's long-winded, pretentious monologues from True Detective all over again, and I'm sick to death of it. The writing for this character strikes me as being extremely self-important and self-impressed. You're right, nobody talks like this, and I found the character as a whole unrealistic in the vein of super-human archetypes who are way too cool for school because they are always the smartest people in the room. All the other characters were broken, flawed and relateable in some way. Not Mike. 

 

I'm sure my neighbors heard me groaning all the way down the street as I was obliged to sit through that ridiculously written scene where he goes on and on about "the definition of sovereignty." Which ends with him shooting the guy, which made me question aloud, couldn't he have just done that to begin with? I don't know if this is a character that just loves the sound of his own voice or if it's the character the writers are so busy patting themselves on the back over they care not one whit whether he's believable or not.

 

The season as a whole was an improvement over Season 1 IMO but it, too, had its ups and downs, and pretentious monologues like Mike's were my main problem with it. Like you, I found this last episode especially egregious in that regard.

[lyric]

Categorical sexism, characters with thought bubbles over their heads, and the Terminator...?  I think I watched the wrong show.

 

Only kidding...I promise. 

 

Nice catch on Ed starting / ending in a meat locker. How about the palindrome that Peggy starts 'imprisoned', is completely insane, becomes actualized, is completely insane, and ends in prison? 

 

I appreciate the poster upthread who said a Coen brother film adapted for tv should've been a recipe for disaster, yet has been pretty much genius for two full seasons.  Also agree that they need to take their time on Season 3 and maintain the level of quality.  It was painful waiting for Season 2, and I couldn't imagine how it would be a good as Season 1, much less surpass it as it has.  Fingers crossed for Season 3; hope springs eternal.

 

This is kind of where I am too, in regards to the pretentious, non-stop blathering, pontificating and philosophizing. I've been complaining about Mike Milligan all season long. Every time he opens his mouth it's like I'm sitting through one of Matthew McConaughey's long-winded, pretentious monologues from True Detective all over again, and I'm sick to death of it. The writing for this character strikes me as being extremely self-important and self-impressed. You're right, nobody talks like this, and I found the character as a whole unrealistic in the vein of super-human archetypes who are way too cool for school because they are always the smartest people in the room. All the other characters were broken, flawed and relateable in some way. Not Mike.

    I'm sure my neighbors heard me groaning all the way down the street as I was obliged to sit through that ridiculously written scene where he goes on and on about "the definition of sovereignty." Which ends with him shooting the guy, which made me question aloud, couldn't he have just done that to begin with?

 

Yeah, I'm with you on this.  I liked Mike, but a little of his speechifying went a long way, and the sovereignty diatribe, that whole scene in fact, went on far too long and seemed incongruous with the rest of the episode - I even mentioned upthread about that as the one pacing problem I had last night.  I can only guess they wanted to show us his level of righteousness at that point to make his next scene and ultimate fate that much sharper, I dunno...  to be fair, not too many people talk in riddles and parables like Malvo either... but yeah, with Mike often ventured into Jules Winnfield territory, and less definitely would've been more.

Edited December 16, 2015 by lyric

[Bama]

 

"You wouldn't understand. You're a man. It's a lie, okay -- that you can do it all, be a wife and a mother and this self-made career woman, like there's thirty-seven hours in a day. And then when you can't, they say it's you."

But Peggy didn't even try to "do it all" because she didn't want to.

 

She took birth control on the down low and lied to Ed about it.

 

I have little tolerance for a woman using sexism to explain away a situation that doesn't even apply to her.

 

And that little speech was to a man we know will actually end up "doing it all" - as a single parent.

 

Lou ends up raising a daughter who is 100 times the woman Peggy ever was.

 

If anyone ultimately understands the plight of having a career and raising a child, it turns out it's Lou and not Peggy.

[beadgirl]

Mike's pontificating certainly got tiring (in general I wish TV villians would stop philosophizing so much, they do it poorly), but I think in his case it serves as a character beat, rather than the writers showing off.  Others have commented in this thread and elsewhere about how hard Mike works to show his erudition, as a consequence of the racism he experiences.

[Christina]

I responded to a post several hours ago, but it disappeared. Since then, the conversation has went in a different direction, so the post should appear any time now. :)

 

One of my comments was that when Lou first took Ed into the police station, Ed made a comment about a book Peggy was reading from the self-help guru about trying to push a boulder up a hill, or something about a boulder. Lou stared blankly at him. In the car, Lou was telling Peggy that he understood the boulder comment Ed was making, and it not being a burden but it was about trying to protect your family.

 

That's when Peggy said she wished it never happened, wondered why Rye had to walk in front of her, and when Lou called him the victim, went into her spiel about being a victim first, because she was born a woman. Then Lou shut her down.

[WearyTraveler]

I think before calling Lou's conversation with Peggy sexist, it's worth to remember how the whole dialog started.

 

Peggy asks Lou if he thinks she can be charged federally, and when Lou wonders why she says because then she could be do her time in California.  She says she's read about a prison there with views to the ocean and it's sunny.  After all that's happened, she's still thinking about herself.  Never mind poor Ed who died because he was in love in with her and was trying to protect her.  I feel Lou was trying to make her see this, to have her show some remorse for her actions because remorse would probably make her less of a sociopath and more human, particularly to a law enforcement officer who knows that the law highly regards remorse in criminal cases.

 

For all her talk about Ed not listening to her, she definitely knew how to manipulate him.  He wanted to go  the police early on, even after he'd killed Rye, and she was the one who talked him into not going.  He was on the brink of confessing to Lou when he was asking them to tell him the truth so that he could protect them and she jumped in and asked Lou to leave to stop Ed from saying anything.  And Ed shut up.  I think if Peggy really had wanted to go to California and have a career, she would have found a way to convince Ed.  That's a lot less to ask of the guy than making ground beef out of a body and covering her ass for a hit and run.

 

I think Peggy enjoyed feeling like a victim in her own little drama.  She grew up experiencing a world where women couldn't do all the things she waned to do, and when that world started offering her possibilities, when the social conversation started to change, she wanted to hop onto that train, but she was afraid she wasn't going to cut it.  She didn't know how to be that woman, and so, she stayed with Ed and placed the blame for her unfulfilled life on him and on a sexist society.  That is a lot easier than taking responsibility for her own actions before the hit and run: not really doing what she wanted to do in the first place.

 

Lou was just calling her on the BS.  And I think he would have called out a man just as bluntly.  In fact, he did call out shitty cop who was promoted and all the other Sioux Falls cops repeatedly. 

 

As to the cops not protecting Ed and Peggy, I call BS.  If Ed and Peggy had come clean when he told them who exactly they had murdered, Ed would not have been attacked at the butcher shop, he would have been in protected custody.  It's kind of hard to protect somebody who asks you to leave them alone.  Had Lou assigned some cops to follow Ed and Peggy around, he would have likely been accused of harassment.  Also, if it hadn't been for Lou's actions (asking Karl to diffuse the situation and sneaking Ed out of a back window) when Bear went down to the police station ready to tear it down,  Ed (and many more people) would have been dead that very night.  Lou was the one who wanted to take Ed and Peggy into protective custody after the events at the cabin, and he even told Ed not to take the deal the other cop was going to offer (to function as bait, basically) and to ask for a lawyer. And what did the brilliant Ed do? Take the deal.  So, I don't think poor Ed and Peggy were acting because the police had failed to protect them.  They got themselves into that mess and made it worse with every decision they made.  None of that is on Lou.

 

Finally, as it has been pointed out, Lou raised a very independent and competent woman, one who actually had it all (career and family).  I think Lou was portrayed a bit as the product of his times this season, and that the Lou we saw in S2 probably thought it was a man's job to provide and protect his family.  He was raised in the 50s, after all.  But he was also portrayed open-minded and intelligent enough to see how that view was wrong, since he eventually raised one heck of a woman.

 

So, in summary, I don't think the writers were being sexist at all.

[Happytobehere]

So the moral of the story is in Fargo even the winners are losers and those left standing might have been better off dead.

[WearyTraveler]

So the moral of the story is in Fargo even the winners are losers and those left standing might have been better off dead.

 

Except.... Molly!

[Ohwell]

I was glad that shit cop (don't remember his name) made it out alive and he and Lou were able to have a respectful, cop to cop conversation at the end.  I think shit cop appreciated that.

[annzeepark914]

Well I'm confused.  I thought the Terminator was sent by KC to take out Mike and the remaining Kitchen brother for failing to conquer the Gerharts.  But Mike took out the Terminator and the T's two assistants instead.  So, even though Mike failed to personally destroy the Gerharts, he's given a job by the KC corporate people.  Was that little office and lowly position a "punishment" for not succeeding at his task?

 

P.S. I didn't care for all the soliloquies.

[AuntiePam]

I think Mike was given credit for taking out the Gerhardts.  Even if the newspapers reported it as it happened -- Gerhardts vs. cops -- Mike could claim that he set it in motion, and without drawing attention to KC.  So win win for Mike.

 

Mike told his boss that the Undertaker never showed up.  Even if KC didn't believe that, they can't prove anything.  And if they thought he did take out the Undertaker, he'd still get points because it was the Undertaker who failed.

[Hobo.PassingThru]

There's too much here in these 4 pages to go through and quote others and all the time through the day I was able to read them doesn't leave me too much time to write what I'd like. That said this is too much to expect anyone to read it. LOL! I try to break it up into sections for those prone to skip. Presented with typos and grammatical whatevers!

______

If Peggy had done what most people would do, including see a man brightly lit in the middle of a snowy road and if she had tried to call someone then things would have been different in this story. Everyone would probably agree on that.

 

Obviously, she was near a phone and as the show gave examples phones could be in out of the way places and people did use them. So, if she had gone into the Waffle Hut and saw the carnage, everything would have been different. In fact, given that she stopped the murderer, she would have been a hero. [instead, she started a war and made her husband into the legendary Butcher of Lurverne, as Dodd put it, jump starting, and complicating, his character's relationship with Peggy and Ed.]

 

If she had become a hero, everything would have gone much better for her and quite likely things would have been easier for her actualizing the way she wanted. But, of course, if those things happened, so much of the story would not have happened. And, yes, the kid shooting up the Waffle Hut caused the initial problem. It's just Peggy had a chance to do something unselfish and she chose to ignore it, to bizarre degrees. In fact, part of me wonders if she did hit him intentionally. (see below for another aspect of that scene)

________

That conversation she and Lou had: someone earlier seemed to say what I got from it. Maybe their comment included a quote from Reddit or a review? Both Peggy and Lou were talking at each other. It's not that Peggy was completely wrong that it is difficult for career women who are mothers. And, Lou seeing it as being not a "burden" but a "privilege" to protect his family sounded exactly like he was saying "It's a man's job" but we know that one of the twists is not that Ed was always protecting Peggy, it was often the reverse. But, in the end, they kept trying to protect each other.

_______

I agree that Hank's invented language was a key to understanding how Lou and Peggy talked at or past each other. Both of them were right, in general, by stating what they believed. But, as the show laid out, things were changing. The past would be quickly replaced with what would be to those characters as so different it would be unrecognizable.

________

The scene in the walk in freezer, where Ed died:

Ed told Peggy that they were too different from each other to stay together. And, then he died. That was a moment, for sure. But, I bring up what I wrote about an earlier episode: those two are too dumb to die. Peggy would survive and survive alone and believe it was because she must. In the car later, she doesn't seem a bit torn up that Ed is gone.

 

Another thing about the freezer, when Peggy opened it up and was prepared to attack Hanzee, we saw her and Lou and deputy in those shots. If we had seen Peggy from the standpoint of Lou and the deputy, that would have been freaky. Fortunately, they knew she expected Hanzee to be there and was lashing out at "him".

_________

Again, Peggy couldn't see what was right in front of her face. Ed finally admitted that they weren't right for each other but he was willing to do whatever she wanted, even when he knew all was lost. And, what did she say then? They could still work it out by continuing to run. He meant the marriage, she meant their adventure.

_______

 

When Lou and Hank found the blood soaked money in the road, Hank found a shoe in the tree. Why that was there bewilders me but usually a shoe up that high is just because of a prank. However, in rewatching the episode where Hank was on Peggy and Ed's porch standing off against Dodd, there were two ornaments hanging from the porch, both in the shape of shoes. What does that signify? Good luck? Bad luck? Protection?

 

Also, Hanzee was some sort of killing machine, like Mike and those twins were supposed to be (and for the most part, they were). Dodd was a sexist machine screwing it up and trying to screw it up for all the women he knew. It is even more amazing Peggy wounded him constantly and enough that he died on the ground from someone he'd probably beat with a belt.

Edited December 16, 2015 by Hobo.PassingThru

[Hobo.PassingThru]

And, all those blaming Constance for being selfish and manipulating Peggy: Her plans would have worked with anyone other than with Peggy. Anyone. So, I don't know if she's to blame for wanting to be with Peggy or wanting Peggy to be more than she was.

 

Another thing: Ed did suggest at some point that when he bought the butcher shop and they had kids then maybe Peggy could also buy the salon. He understood she wanted more but he didn't understand what she wanted.

 

Finally for now: Peggy's idea of getting away or retiring was to be in prison at Alcatraz? An island paradise as prisons go, I'm sure.