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Fargo season 4 (Chris Rock, Jason Schwartzman, Timothy Olyphant)

Started by up_the_hampipe, January 10, 2020, 02:42:00 PM

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olliebean

Around episode 4 I think, it literally said in the dialogue something like "What do people like about crime dramas? They like to root for the villains." I realised that was what they are expecting people to like about this crime drama, and there wasn't a single villain in it that I felt like rooting for, so I gave up at that point.

Inspector Norse

I'm 7 episodes in and it's certainly the weakest season yet. I can't quite decide if it's actually not very good or if it just suffers by comparison but I think the poster above was on the money saying it misses the old Fargo formula of little people getting caught up in big crime - I can understand them wanting to shake things up and do something a bit different but instead they've done something that feels a bit old hat. We don't really care about another warring-gangs show even if it's got the racial twist this one has. And the result is that the people who give the show its heart have been sidelined: we've previously been able to root for the cops - Tolson and Hanks, Wilson and Danson, Coon - or even for the small-time crooks - Freeman, Dunst and Plemons, McGregor and Winstead - but here they feel fairly irrelevant.

There's also a lack of the quirkiness and comedy of previous seasons and a lot of it feels fairly rote. And, unusually for Fargo, a few of the cast don't really seem up to it: Chris Rock can carry the charming bits but not the heavier, darker bits, Esposito and Buckley are both very miscast or misdirected, Olyphant is woefully underused, the fugitive lesbians are weak links, etc.
That said I do like Schwartzman as an atypically bratty, insecure don and a few of the supporting cast are carrying it: Whishaw, Bruno, Turman, and Huston, whose cop seemed a bit contrived at first but who is simmering well and is I think soon going to explode. And there are enough decent lines and images in each episode to make watching it enjoyable. It just doesn't hang together or mean much.

Ant Farm Keyboard

This week's episode was easily the best of the entire season, especially as it's only tangentially related to the main plot. Not everything works, and Hawley, once again, copies the style and the quirkiness of the Coens without understanding the modicum of humility they have, but it had at least some focus totally missing from the rest of the season.

backdrifter

Loving this. Much prefer it to season 3.

Hope they can stick the landing.

selectivememory

This really is a bloated, disjointed mess of a season, but bloody hell I did enjoy it when Gaetano
Spoiler alert
tripped when running with a gun in his hand and accidentally blew his own brains out
[close]
.

selectivememory

Absolute shit. What a waste of time this season was. Should have stuck to my guns and stopped watching it after about five episodes.

Hand Solo

The black and white episode is the only one I enjoyed because it went back to the quiet, quirky Coen-esque origins of Fargo.

The rest is just the same old crime family two-and-fro bollocks you've seen a million times before, Rock's acting isn't good enough to hold it together, either.

timebug

Watched the first three episodes and decided life was too short. Pity as the previous three series more or less 'worked' for me!

Ant Farm Keyboard

At some point in the finale, they make parallels between the mob and capitalism.

It's as if Noah Hawley had just discovered that mob is a metaphor for capitalism (with the very didactic scene about "corporate" in New York taking control of the entire operation). He just didn't realize that the subtext was there in 90% of all gangster related stuff, from Little Caesar to The Sopranos, including The Godfather...

Hand Solo

Quote from: Ant Farm Keyboard on December 02, 2020, 04:04:27 PM
At some point in the finale, they make parallels between the mob and capitalism.

It's as if Noah Hawley had just discovered that mob is a metaphor for capitalism (with the very didactic scene about "corporate" in New York taking control of the entire operation). He just didn't realize that the subtext was there in 90% of all gangster related stuff, from Little Caesar to The Sopranos, including The Godfather...

Or at the end of Season 2 where Mike Milligan is thinking he's going up in the world when promoted by the Kansas mob and is then shown into a tiny office with a desk and typewriter to work on dodgy accounts all day.

Fambo Number Mive

Series 4 is now on 4OD. Halfway through first episode. It's ok, somewhat different from the first three series.

Fambo Number Mive

On episode six so far and it's not doing it for me. It drags stuff out so much and the nurse sub-plot isn't very good. There aren't any fascinating or hilarious characters, aside from Ethelrida and the Don everyone is just dull. I'll carry on watching as there isn't much else on, but it's really hard to be bothered.

It is nice for the series to move away from focusing on WASPS and to depict the racism many groups in America experienced. The 1950's setting is refreshing.

Still better than almost everything else on TV.