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S03.E03: The Law Of Non-Contradiction


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This episode was just nothingness to me.  It seemed to go on forever without any story development.  It really made me think about the other two seasons and how much story had already been told by this point.  I hope that this does not mean that Fargo is going off the rails like other shows I enjoyed for their first couple of seasons and then just took their audience for granted and start telling nonsense stories.

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Having recently watched the mind fuck that was Legion season 1, this episode was no big deal for me.  Still don't understand the purpose of the robot, but I wasn't bored.

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(edited)

No way am I enjoying this season as much as the last, which grabbed me from the beginning. And this episode was a bit of a trip down the rabbit hole, but the more I think about it, the more I liked it. Gloria is following in the footsteps of the other great "lady cops" Marge and Molly, and it did move the plot forward just a tiny bit (the toilet revelation) and from the previews, she will soon figure out that Ennis's past has nothing to do with his murder. Seems she definitely notices that Maurice's  P.O. has the same last name as her stepfather. 

 eta: I also loved the casting of Francesca Eastwood and Frances Fisher. Brilliant!

Edited by CynicalGirl
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2 hours ago, toodles said:

I laughed out loud when the writer and producer met and Three Dog Night's song Liar started.  

Always loved that song (whoever wrote it must've been burned real bad) and yeah...it was perfect for that sleazy nightclub 70's scene.  Once again I wasn't really thrilled with Season 3 but there were some interesting characters in this LA episode that kept my attention.  I wonder if Gloria took the hand-in-the-box back home with her.  I would've!!

I too was wondering about the age of the young writer, trying to figure out how old he must have been in the 70's to have looked so ancient in 2010. So maybe it was part guilty conscience, part alcoholism that aged him.  He sure looked 85 to me.

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4 minutes ago, annzeepark914 said:

Always loved that song (whoever wrote it must've been burned real bad) and yeah...it was perfect for that sleazy nightclub 70's scene.  Once again I wasn't really thrilled with Season 3 but there were some interesting characters in this LA episode that kept my attention.  I wonder if Gloria took the hand-in-the-box back home with her.  I would've!!

 

It was sitting in the back window of her police car when she got back to Minnesota.

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There has been a theory put forth regarding The Americans, a show that is suffering through a slowburn season, that perhaps it is being written for the streaming audience who will watch it in blocks and therefore, not notice the slow parts. Like The Americans and Better Call Saul (also slowburn) I think Fargo has earned a some leeway from me and I'm going to give it to them. It really doesn't matter, I guess, because I'll watch until the end anyway, just like American Crime and Broadchurch who both just completed the third season and I felt let down. I'm going to rewatch Broadchurch in multiple episode blocks to see if I like it better, and may try these first three episodes that way, too. 

I can't even say what it is I don't like, it's just not grabbing my interest. It's only the third episode, the murder connection will be made soon and hopefully, it will become "Can't wait television" again.

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19 hours ago, AuntiePam said:

Window AC units are common but most people take them out in winter. 

Nikki told Ray that she had been requesting for her apartment complex to take out the window unit, but they hadn't gotten around to it. 

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25 minutes ago, Christina said:

There has been a theory put forth regarding The Americans, a show that is suffering through a slowburn season, that perhaps it is being written for the streaming audience who will watch it in blocks and therefore, not notice the slow parts. Like The Americans and Better Call Saul (also slowburn) I think Fargo has earned a some leeway from me and I'm going to give it to them. It really doesn't matter, I guess, because I'll watch until the end anyway, just like American Crime and Broadchurch who both just completed the third season and I felt let down. I'm going to rewatch Broadchurch in multiple episode blocks to see if I like it better, and may try these first three episodes that way, too. 

I can't even say what it is I don't like, it's just not grabbing my interest. It's only the third episode, the murder connection will be made soon and hopefully, it will become "Can't wait television" again.

Slowburn is great, when executed well, which means having the characters behaving non-stupidly, unless the stupidity is deliberately written, for comic effect, what plot development that is taking place have some measure of credulity, within the context of the show, and, most important, having all this reveal interesting things about the characters' psychology.  Some writers, directors, and actors do this rather better than others. I won't compare and contrast in this thread, which is supposed to be about this episode, other than I think the slowburn in this episode was pretty good, and has me hoping it is the start of a trend for the rest of the season.

Edited by Bannon
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I wonder if there is a correlation between the people who liked this episode and people who liked Twin Peaks. Maybe it was Ray Wise being in this episode, but to me it had the feel of Twin Peaks which I watched when it originally aired and was a big fan of. 

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(edited)

Was the robot shutting itself off supposed to parallel the box with the switch? (And it's nice to see that Thing from "The Addams Family" is still getting work.)

Minor nitpicky thing: They misspelled Frances Fisher's name as FRANCIS (the usual masculine spelling) in the credits.

Edited by J-Man
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I am of two minds of this episode. On one hand I liked the 1970s Hollywood noir storyline. On the other hand this show continues to come off has self-indulgent and smug.

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11 hours ago, Christina said:

I can't even say what it is I don't like, it's just not grabbing my interest. It's only the third episode, the murder connection will be made soon and hopefully, it will become "Can't wait television" again.

This episode didn't bother me. Gloria bothers me. They portray her as an idiot savante, who basically bumbles into clues as she is being taken advantage of, and being yelled at and making inexplicable decisions. She flies to LA, doesn't see the creepy cop coming a mile away, has her car stolen, is perplexed (again) by online technology and just as she is about to leave, sees something on the toilet that might or might not be a clue. Uh, good job? Plus, she apparently steals something from the room. Way to go, police officer.

She doesn't have the same dogged detective skills that prior female leads in this show have had. True, she isn't giving up, but she is openly defying her new boss (not even bothering to put in for vacation) and that shouldn't end well. There is such thing as short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, ma'm.

I wonder if her robot dreams tie to some kind of absentminded connection to the crime and the victim, and she is solving this subconsciously in spite of all of her deficiencies in the real world.

Edited by Ottis
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I liked this better than the first two but that's probably because the old man's murder is the only thing I care about on the show this season. I don't think Maurice did it but at least now the story will start connecting Gloria and the Stussy brothers. 

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12 minutes ago, festivus said:

 

I liked this better than the first two but that's probably because the old man's murder is the only thing I care about on the show this season. I don't think Maurice did it but at least now the story will start connecting Gloria and the Stussy brothers. 

 

I'm just curious why you think Maurice didn't do it. I know we didn't actually SEE it. But he basically told Emmit he did it, and mentioned how old the guy was and that he thought it was weird that his "brother" was so much older. 

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8 minutes ago, J-Man said:

Do we think that the robot's name has any significance? MNSKY - Minnesota Sky, perhaps?

Wasn't it referred to as Minksy? I found this about a man named Marvin Minsky:

Quote

 was an American cognitive scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts concerning AI and philosophy..... Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas about the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a video camera, and a computer to build with children's blocks.........Minsky died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 88. Ray Kurzweil says he was contacted by the cryonics organization Alcor Life Extension Foundation seeking Minsky's body. Kurzweil believes that Minsky was cryonically preserved by Alcor company and will be revived by 2045 Minsky was a member of Alcor's Scientific Advisory Board. In keeping with their policy of protecting privacy, Alcor will neither confirm nor deny that Alcor has cryogenically preserved Minsky.

science-y, and science fiction-y.

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24 minutes ago, ghoulina said:

I'm just curious why you think Maurice didn't do it. I know we didn't actually SEE it. But he basically told Emmit he did it, and mentioned how old the guy was and that he thought it was weird that his "brother" was so much older. 

Did he? Okay, I missed that. I admit I haven't been paying close attention because I've been bored with the show. I do think it's weird that he glued his eyes and mouth shut, just doesn't seem like something that dimwit would do. Also, didn't he hear something when he was in the house looking for the stamp? I'm probably wrong though and I don't care enough to go back and watch it again. 

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(edited)

IMO, Maurice just didn't come across as the kind of criminal who would glue someone's eyes and mouth shut (at least not the way he was portrayed prior to breaking into that house).  The noise upstairs was heard by Gloria (when she was supposedly alone in the house w/ the corpse) and I'm suspicious about that. 

Edited by annzeepark914
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3 hours ago, festivus said:

Did he? Okay, I missed that. I admit I haven't been paying close attention because I've been bored with the show. I do think it's weird that he glued his eyes and mouth shut, just doesn't seem like something that dimwit would do.

I agree. In fact, I didn't realize the mouth and eyes had been glued shut until this episode. I must have missed it in earlier eps. Why would a drug addict dolt bother with that? Maybe if he was weird when high (they keep showing those odd shots of him exhaling smoke, which seem totally disconnected from what we are seeing on screen), but that seems pedestrian. Gluing eyes and mouth sounds like some creepy Manhunter stuff. 

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That...sure was an episode of television. I think I liked it, it was certainly interesting, and it actually made me feel more connected to Gloria, but it was just REALLY weird. I almost feel like they should have done this near the end of the season, when we are more invested in the story and the characters, and than Gloria can have more of a revelation about a bigger case, and we can get closer to the end. The whole thing reminded me of a lot of classic Coen Brothers scenes, just as an entire episode. It was like that scene in movie Fargo when Marge meets up with that random guy she went to high schools with, and the whole thing is just a weird, out of nowhere sequence, especially when you find out the guy was lying for seemingly no reason, but it sets the thematic tone and leads to a big break in the case. It was similar, but I think it would have worked better later. But maybe I will change my mind as the season goes on.

It also reminded me a lot of Barton Fink, another Coen Brothers piece about a writers coming to the seedier parts of LA and being chewed up and spit out. The noir feeling was very similar.

The little robot story was actually pretty decent, if it got trimmed up in some places, and expanded in others. The robot was so cute, it was like an early version of Wall E! And I thought the ending was a pretty solid look at the themes of the Fargo Expanded Universe. Stupid criminals do stupid things, evil people do evil things (while waxing poetic about it) and normal people get pulled into crime due to their selfishness, anger, or incompetence. They never learn indeed.

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(edited)
10 hours ago, Ottis said:

This episode didn't bother me. Gloria bothers me. They portray her as an idiot savante, who basically bumbles into clues as she is being taken advantage of, and being yelled at and making inexplicable decisions. She flies to LA, doesn't see the creepy cop coming a mile away, has her car stolen, is perplexed (again) by online technology and just as she is about to leave, sees something on the toilet that might or might not be a clue. Uh, good job? Plus, she apparently steals something from the room. Way to go, police officer.

She doesn't have the same dogged detective skills that prior female leads in this show have had. True, she isn't giving up, but she is openly defying her new boss (not even bothering to put in for vacation) and that shouldn't end well. There is such thing as short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, ma'm.

I wonder if her robot dreams tie to some kind of absentminded connection to the crime and the victim, and she is solving this subconsciously in spite of all of her deficiencies in the real world.

@Ottis, this perfectly puts into words so many things I liked about the episode, and in so doing you have cleared up for me why I like the parts that many others loathe. Gloria reminds me a lot of myself, especially the kinds of things I do that annoy others. But don't worry about me (or Gloria?), plenty of people like me/her and think we're smart in spite of ourselves. :>)

 

9 hours ago, festivus said:

. . . I do think it's weird that he glued his eyes and mouth shut, just doesn't seem like something that dimwit would do. Also, didn't he hear something when he was in the house looking for the stamp? I'm probably wrong though and I don't care enough to go back and watch it again. 

I think it was the beginning of this episode that Gloria said, "They glued his mouth and nose shut. Not much mystery about cause of death there." Did they glue his eyes shut too?

 

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

. . . The little robot story was actually pretty decent, if it got trimmed up in some places, and expanded in others. The robot was so cute, it was like an early version of Wall E! And I thought the ending was a pretty solid look at the themes of the Fargo Expanded Universe. Stupid criminals do stupid things, evil people do evil things (while waxing poetic about it) and normal people get pulled into crime due to their selfishness, anger, or incompetence. They never learn indeed.

That's it! I couldn't remember the name/title Wall E! And yes, it is like an earlier version, which I hadn't quite grasped.

9 HOURS AGO, LUNA1122 SAID:

Wasn't it referred to as Minksy? I found this about a man named Marvin Minsky:

science-y, and science fiction-y.

There's also the movie, The Night They Raided Minsky's about a small town Amish girl who goes to the big city and inadvertently invents the striptease.

But, yeah, I think the captioning showed it MNSKY.

So was Thadeus' screenplay also titled Planet Wyh? There was a line in the episode about "Wyh" being Why spelled wrong. I wondered if there was more to the spelling.

Edited by shapeshifter
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Well, I LOVED this episode. I loved that Gloria found out about a part of Ennis' life. Perfect episode. Hope ray wise shows up again too, love him ?.

 

I'm going to go to Arby's for a milkshake and some curly fries, and to ponder my future moves. 

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3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

I think it was the beginning of this episode that Gloria said, "They glued his mouth and nose shut. Not much mystery about cause of death there." Did they glue his eyes shut too?

I believe that's what happened--glued his mouth & nose shut, not his eyes (weren't his eyes open & staring?)  I wish they'd shown his face a bit longer (than 1 second each time). I'm near-sighted and even w/ glasses on had a hard time taking in what I saw.

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The Leftovers learned when in doubt, it never hurts to give Carrie C*** her own episode.

Good episode and CC was terrific.  It was a fun change of pace with the LA setting and I loved the robot animation.  Ray Wise was pretty good in it too and Gloria’s “date” with the cop was funny.

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(edited)

Ok I'm little confused here. The producer seems a legit one, not a con man who can disappear in the thin air. So, he set up this elaborated con for what? Sci-fi writers in the 70's weren't exactly swimming in gold. 

Edited by Zaku
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31 minutes ago, Zaku said:

Ok I'm little confused here. The producer seems a legit one, not a con man who can disappear in the thin air. So, he set up this elaborated con for what? Sci-fi writers in the 70's weren't exactly swimming in gold. 

The "producer" was really a con who knew just enough about the business to pretend he was "producing" and be believed by neophytes who would be targeted by him when they won large sums of money as awards for writing books that possibly could become movies.

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13 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

The "producer" was really a con who knew just enough about the business to pretend he was "producing" and be believed by neophytes who would be targeted by him when they won large sums of money as awards for writing books that possibly could become movies.

In the retirement home there were posters of his previous movies. Gloria investigated and the information about him said that he was a producer. In what part of the episode they explicitly said that he was a con man and not a real producer?

Edited by Zaku
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(edited)
1 hour ago, Zaku said:

In the retirement home there were posters of his previous movies. Gloria investigated and the information about him said that he was a producer. In what part of the episode they explicitly said that he was a con man and not a real producer?

Interesting. Maybe, even though he had produced movies, he was also an opportunist (like Nikki) and  a bad man who took advantage of Ennis. 

OR. The waitress didn't tell Gloria the true story....

still enjoyed the episode. 

Edited by cardigirl
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(edited)
24 minutes ago, cardigirl said:

Interesting. Maybe, even though he had produced movies, he was also an opportunist (like Nikki) and  a bad man who took advantage of Ennis. 

OR. The waitress didn't tell Gloria the true story....

still enjoyed the episode. 

This was my thinking too. But it seems to me that the prize wasn't worth it. He just conned out of the advance money of a book, not the full payment. A sci-fi book. Of a writer that no one remember. And what if the writer decided to go to police? "Hollywood producer involved in a con scheme!". 

Edited by Zaku
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4 hours ago, Zaku said:

In the retirement home there were posters of his previous movies. Gloria investigated and the information about him said that he was a producer. In what part of the episode they explicitly said that he was a con man and not a real producer?

He was both.

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I imagine he'd produced a few movies but found that it was easier to sucker a Hollywood newb out of his money than go through the trouble of actually making one.

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1 hour ago, Milburn Stone said:

He was both.

So, he was dividing his time between producing multimillionaire movies and conning out pocket change from some naive guy?

Sorry, but if a real producer wanted to be really evil he would have a lot of ways to make big money. I mean, Uwe Bool made money thanks to some loophole in the German Tax Law! He wanted to make bad movies because failures are more profitable than successes for him. 

Edited by Zaku
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7 hours ago, Zaku said:

Ok I'm little confused here. The producer seems a legit one, not a con man who can disappear in the thin air. So, he set up this elaborated con for what? Sci-fi writers in the 70's weren't exactly swimming in gold. 

When Ennis finally confronted the producer and the producer put him in a headlock, the producer told him he'd been conned and  that there was never going to be a movie. So even if he did produce some movies, he'd decided it was easier to take rubes for what money they had than to work hard at making movies. 

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58 minutes ago, Zaku said:

So, he was dividing his time between producing multimillionaire movies and conning out pocket change from some naive guy?

Sorry, but if a real producer wanted to be really evil he would have a lot of ways to make big money. I mean, Uwe Bool made money thanks to some loophole in the German Tax Law! He wanted to make bad movies because failures are more profitable than successes for him. 

In your post that preceded this one, you never said the word "multimillionaire." That's a new addition to your formulation. I certainly never would have asserted that he was a multimillionaire producer, and I didn't. I said he was a producer and a con man. There are plenty of low-level, bottom-feeder producers in Hollywood who produce actual movies, and therefore are actual producers, despite that they may also be con men. The two are not mutually exclusive.

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(edited)
On 2017-05-05 at 8:57 AM, Ottis said:

This episode didn't bother me. Gloria bothers me. They portray her as an idiot savante, who basically bumbles into clues as she is being taken advantage of, and being yelled at and making inexplicable decisions. She flies to LA, doesn't see the creepy cop coming a mile away, has her car stolen, is perplexed (again) by online technology and just as she is about to leave, sees something on the toilet that might or might not be a clue. Uh, good job? Plus, she apparently steals something from the room. Way to go, police officer.

She doesn't have the same dogged detective skills that prior female leads in this show have had. True, she isn't giving up, but she is openly defying her new boss (not even bothering to put in for vacation) and that shouldn't end well. There is such thing as short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, ma'm.

I wonder if her robot dreams tie to some kind of absentminded connection to the crime and the victim, and she is solving this subconsciously in spite of all of her deficiencies in the real world.

I enjoyed your post and it opened my eyes to a few things that I had not previously realized.

So, I hope you won't mind if I say that I think the term "idot savante" may well miss the mark a little bit. I think it's more accurate to say that the writers or producers just push clues into her path so that it may appear she has some mental prowess that enables her to see the name of the toilet manufacturer and convert that into a clue.

But the truth is that she plays almost no part in that discovery. It's not her mind that comes up with the clue. It is the writers and/or showrunners that force that name into her conscious mind and that delivers the clue to her.

What is the reason for that? It could be any number of things. I doubt that we can know just why they are doing this. Some possibilities may be:

1) Good triumphs over Evil by hook or by crook.

2) People from Minnesota may not appear to be "cool" or "hip" and take drugs or engage in fancy Internet activities. But their slow, methodical plodding combined with their old fashioned American attributes win out in the end. In other words, the show runner wants to show us that plain Minnesota (and other states nearby) folks who are honest and possess the old fashioned qualities that made America great are great people and will win out over skunks and rats.

3) Police do not have to take advantage of the latest trends in order to catch the bad guys. They can triumph merely by using tried and true police methods that have been used for many, many years.

Of course the above three points are just my guesses as to what the writers may be trying to convey to us. They are not very well thought out. But I'm just trying to make the point the writers may be trying to say that good old fashioned values are superior and will win out in the end over new fangled and flashy modern techniques.

Edited by MissBluxom
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(edited)
On 5/4/2017 at 8:45 PM, CynicalGirl said:

No way am I enjoying this season as much as the last, which grabbed me from the beginning. And this episode was a bit of a trip down the rabbit hole, but the more I think about it, the more I liked it. Gloria is following in the footsteps of the other great "lady cops" Marge and Molly, and it did move the plot forward just a tiny bit (the toilet revelation) and from the previews, she will soon figure out that Ennis's past has nothing to do with his murder. Seems she definitely notices that Maurice's  P.O. has the same last name as her stepfather. 

 eta: I also loved the casting of Francesca Eastwood and Frances Fisher. Brilliant!

Dumness that I am, I was trying to figure out if they made a young actress older or was able to make a older actress younger.  Kinda embarrassed to find out that it was clever casting of a mom and daughter.  Wonderful.

17 hours ago, cardigirl said:

Well, I LOVED this episode. I loved that Gloria found out about a part of Ennis' life. Perfect episode. Hope ray wise shows up again too, love him ?.

 

I'm going to go to Arby's for a milkshake and some curly fries, and to ponder my future moves. 

Arby's - I wonder if they are sinking a lot of dough in these FX shows.  Arby's also figures prominent in "Baskets", another odd little gem...  

Edited by ChipBach
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44 minutes ago, ChipBach said:

Arby's - I wonder if they are sinking a lot of dough in these FX shows.  Arby's also figures prominent in "Baskets", another odd little gem...  

And didn't Marge and Wade eat Arby's in the film (Fargo)?  Might've been a nod to that as well.

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I thought this episode was interesting in that it cleared up who both Marge and Ennis essentially are and it did it in a way that cleared up a particular mystery.  Who Ennis was and why he changed his name and life.

I thought Marge did a good job investigation considering Ennis had been in LA over a decade before and she had no legal permission to be there.  For all intents she was investigating as a civilian.    Plus I liked the overall story of a young writer who gets long conned and ends up snapping.

As for the robot story I enjoyed it.  I am not sure how it relates to the overall story or even if it does.  Not that it matters.

i do like the small moments of emerging technology that seems to pass Marge but.  Everyone on their phone at the diner except for her.  Her ex husbands boyfriend getting her son a Xbox before xmas as an anytime gift.  I think it's an interest tidbit about the character.

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(edited)
2 hours ago, lyric said:

And didn't Marge and Wade eat Arby's in the film (Fargo)?  Might've been a nod to that as well.

Marge "whadda we got here, Arbys?" ::pats top of bun::

Also noted the use of the word "malfeasance".

Edited by Nancypants
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3 hours ago, ChipBach said:

Arby's - I wonder if they are sinking a lot of dough in these FX shows.  Arby's also figures prominent in "Baskets", another odd little gem...  

Awww, don't tell me that.  I think I was more enchanted with the idea of how much it was a treat for them, a good part of their life experience.

 

I miss Arby's, there aren't any near me. I would have loved to have joined them. 

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(edited)
4 hours ago, Nancypants said:

Please someone explain the robot saying " I can HELP!" over and over again!

I'd have to rewatch, but I think the poor little guy never got a chance to help anyone.

Come to think of it, I doubt the producer ever helped anyone's career, despite his offers to do so.

Edited by shapeshifter
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