What Up Yo.
I’m 7 episodes in.
This is extraordinary.
It’s is nothing like I expected.
I walked in blind, that is how I prefer to walk into a series for the first time.
Expectation set to low.
I respected the film, but that’s about it.
This…
it is rocking my face clean off.
High octane and all that.
Like the film it claims to be based on a true story, which it isn’t. It’s visual storytelling.
But the caliber of storytelling taking place here is staggering.
It moves like the greats of the long-format series.
Think “Breaking Bad”. Think “The Sopranos”.
When you watch this, it’s like your watching a high polished film. If there were budget issues you would never know by the look of this baby.
Your invested in these characters from the word go and the talent rounded up for this piece is fantastic.
Colin Hanks, Billy Bob Thornton, Oliver Platt, Martin Freeman, Bob Odenkirk “Better Call Saul”, Adam Goldberg, Jordan Peele & Keegan-Michael Key from Comedy Centrals “Key & Peele”
“YOU WANNA GO TO WAR BALAKE?”
And Keith Carradine.
It helps if you keep seeing people you know. It also affirms to me as I am beginning to watch the pilot that something special must be in the pages of this script if so many excellent actors have jumped into this show.
But in reality it’s another massive win for Television, another fine moment in the Golden Age of Television.
The pilot episode drops you right into the show’s plot.
We meet Billy Bob, who plays Lorne Malvo, hit-man and sociopath extraordinaire.
He is in Fargo. It’s snowing. His car veers off the road and he slams his head against the steering wheel.
The trunk of the car opens.
A man in his underwear jumps out and runs straight into a frozen and snowed over cornfield where his half naked body will be discovered the next day by police.
Martin Freeman plays Lester. Lester is a loser. His wife tells him so as soon as we meet him.
Lester runs into his old arch nemesis from high school Sam Ness and his 2 chip off the old block sons.
While being bullied by the three of them he runs smack into a window and breaks his nose.
While both are in the emergency room they strike up an awkward conversation (which are the only kind of conversations Malvo has with anybody) during which Lester explains to Malvo that Sam talked dirty about his wife and humiliated him in front of his children after years of humiliating him in high school.
Malvo states that if someone did that to him, he would have killed him. He then asks Lester if he wants him to kill Sam.
Before Lester can say no, he is rushed in to see doctor.
24 hours later, Sam is killed.
Lester learns of this before going home to his abusive wife and, feeling confused and superior for a moment…attempts to fix the broken and noisy washing machine.
He calls his wife downstairs to see his accomplishment, and he has her turn on the washing machine.
It’s quiet for a moment and then spirals out-of-control…burning itself out.
As she begins to haul off and insult him for not being a man, (she’s kind of awful), he pulls out a hammer from the tool box and kills her.
Yup.
He gets on the phone and calls Malvo to come over and help him. While waiting for Malvo to arrive, the chief of police drops by to question Lester about what happened to Sam. Lester lets him in as they are old friends, and when the chief sees blood on the ground…he draws his gun and radios for help. He begins to place Lester under arrest.
But Lorne Malvo has arrived unbeknownst to either Lester or the chief.
He has found Lester’s shogun, and he shoots and kills the chief of police.
Now. This may seem like I’ve spoiled the story for you.
What if I told you this doesn’t spoil anything?
From that statement you have to deduce that the story is much more involved than what I have told you already.
That the events that I have explained do nothing to take away from the story that unfolds from this point on.
That is why I implore you to get on this show.
Stat.
I can’t turn it off. It’s insanely good. The episode I just watched is like that amazing neighborhood chase in HBO’s “True Detective”
It so damn tight. It even ties into the film.
Remember the money that William H Macys character burrows in the snow at the end of the film?
The ransom money he got?
Remember now no one ever found it?
No longer the case.
I read that if it’s picked up for a second season (ummm…not if. When.) it will be a new story with new charters. Like AHS. Just hope they don’t fuck this up like they did that.
I’ll update you more as I go, but I have to tell you.
The production and editing, the music and look to each and every episode has the feel of a expertly written and directed Academy Award Nominated Film.
It’s tight as a drum.
I don’t know how people have say and waiting 7 days between these episodes, the waiting would drive me mad…to quote Ed.
I also don’t know how the network executives don’t see by now that what audiences crave are long-format episodic series to sink there teeth into.
One massive, involved, complex and intricate story that unfolds hourly over a season.
You need writers man.
Anyway. I digress.
I’ll be back in touch as soon as I watch the final 3.
UPDATE:
It was fucking awesome.
Fargo Trailers
Fargo Posters
