Category Archives: Reviews

Deja Viewed: Fargo, Season II

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One reason that Fargo the TV series is not more popular is because people think that it’s the small-screen version of Fargo the movie.

The error is understandable. Television has made a cottage industry out of taking films and stretching them into longer (more profitable) home entertainment. Think Snowpiercer, Watchmen, Friday Night Lights. Movies, but with commercials.

Fargo is not a movie with commercials. Fargo is a Coen Brothers trivia game with commercials. No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Miller’s Crossing and just about every movie Joel and Ethan Coen ever made are referenced in the series, which has spanned four seasons (so far), a half-century of ”true” crime stories and one zealous Coen Bros. fanboy, show runner Noah Hawley. If you play a Coens-reference drinking game, you are hospital-drunk by the half hour mark of any episode.

Hawley pays homage to the Coens the way Paul Thomas Anderson kneels at the altar of Stanley Kubrick: with an awe, reverence and an attention to the master’s style that cannot help but mimic brilliance, thus producing its own.

And nowhere is that more evident than in the second season, in 2015, perhaps the greatest 10-part crime story ever told. Which makes sense, since it’s a sly take on the greatest one-part crime story ever told: The Book of Job.

The Coens (who serve as executive producers) and Hawley have never said as much, and the season’s symbolism — particularly the neon blue UFO that plays such a critical role — is debated even now.

But the Coen Brothers have made careers out of religious parables, and Hawley has likewise chocked the series with biblical references. And season two is Sunday school with action sequences.

Consider these divine parallels with the bible and Fargo’s 1979 ”true crime” story about a couple that stumbles into a massacre at a Minnesota diner (spoilers abound):

  • The series begins when the target of the killing (Joan Cusack) tells a cautionary tale about Job’s plight to her murderer.
  • The hero, Trooper Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) is a man of unwavering virtue seemingly cursed by evil. Criminals menace him, cowards undercut him, his wife has cancer and his entire family faces existential uncertainty.
  • The villain, O’Hanzee Dent (Zahn McClarnon), pursues our hapless couple with a devilish determination — with flames as his licking backdrop.
  • The series ends with a cryptic conversation between the Devil (Hanzee) and an unnamed character known only as ”The Book.” The Book explains that the outcome of the ordeal was never in doubt. Is that you, God?

The story of Job seems tailor-made for the Coens, because no one has ever known quite what to make of Job.

The title character of the Book of Job is a confounding figure for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and those of any faith who have tried to incorporate the story over millennia. The tale goes like this: Job is a perfectly righteous and God-fearing man whose good deeds have brought him prosperity—children, an estate, good health. But then God enters a wager with Satan, who claims he can make even goodly Job curse the deity. Soon, Job’s servants are killed. His children are killed. He is afflicted with painful boil. His life is a waking nightmare. But he refuses to curse God for what has befallen him. When he is at death’s door, God mysteriously spares him.

Similarly, Solverson refuses to surrender his belief in the good of people or the rule of law. He, too, is brought to death’s door until a mysterious savior: the Close Encounters-style UFO. In a literal Deus Ex Machina, the orb distracts a killer, allowing the hero to shoot himself out of an impossible pickle.

Much has been made of the UFO, its message, and Fargo’s larger statement about humankind’s treatment of each other.

But, like Barton Fink, Blood Simple and No Country, bafflements may be the point. The Coens love bafflements. Apparently, so does Hawley.

And, for the record, this is not a true story. Just a timeless one.

https://youtu.be/D5HDbBm6doU

Pam, Tommy and Ted Lasso: The Lyrical Arts


The pandemic has become the Black Plague to film. But it sure does love good TV.

Witness the latest television shows to dominate not only America’s nightly ratings, but its nightly chatter on social media (perhaps a more vital audience): Ted Lasso, Pam & Tommy and The Beatles: Get Back.

They seem starkly unique in audience, tone and subject matter. Lasso is a wonderful comedy that imagines Ned Flanders managing The Bad News Bears. Pam & Tommy is what a Paul Thomas Anderson TV show would look like: emotional depth drenched in Southern California sunshine. And Get Back is simply a nine hour jam session with the biggest band ever.

But all share a single chord: All are lyrical art.

Lyrical art has a breezy, wispy feel to it, which is why it is found most often in comedy — and more than ever on the small screen. The Beatles are obvious, but Lasso and Pamela underscore how television, particularly, flourishes as nearly every other form of entertainment falters during COVID.

Pam & Tommy lures audiences with a promise of details behind the homemade porn tape that became a household porn name. But it’s really about the death of the glam ’80’s and rise of the grunge 90’s, as told through the prism of pop music and culture. From Primal Scream to Nine Inch Nails to Dusty Springfield, the Hulu series employs needle drops as deft as Anderson’s Boogie Nights, which the show cannily resembles only three episodes in.

Lasso, meanwhile, has already won over audiences. critics and awards circles after only two seasons. And while it’s a great Apple show, it’s also clear why NBC gets a creative credit before every episode: It’s based on NBC Sports show characters — and is a lyrical larceny of the great show Community.

In the second episode of that series, the show used Aimee Mann’s heartbreaking lamentation Give Up to black comedy perfection. A decade later, Lasso uses the same song to make a scene shatteringly heartfelt.

And that’s the key to lyrical art: It understands the fluidity of music — particularly older music. Directors are buying classic music rights like Jeff Bezos buys phallic rocket ships. Look at the soundtracks to today’s comic book movies: Marvel Studios is the best thing to happen to album rockers since FM radio. Guardians of the Galaxy became known for its 80’s mix tape. Iron Man didn’t fly in a metal suit, but on Ozzy Osbourne’s metal voice.

Of course, un-lyricsizing your art has the opposite effect, and no one knows lyrics like the Coen Brothers. No Country for Old Men has no soundtrack, making the violence more squeamish. They went diametrically with O’ Brother Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis. They are Beatles-level lyrical. They are the walrus.

It’s hard to define lyrical art. Harold and Maude and The Graduate are lyrical. Blade Runner has great music, but is not is not lyrical. Quentin Tarantino is a lyrical director. Christopher Nolan is not. All are outstanding.

Perhaps lyrical art meets the porn definition; You can’t put it into words, but you know rhythm when you see it. And it goes like this: