Emmeran wrote:

Sorry but Fargo the Movie was awesome - why would I ever watch a knock off series?  And fuck y'all I think I'm the only one here to ever live up on the Bakken.

Three reasons. First two are these clowns.



Third reason is the writing is superb, credible fiction.

The second season's plotting took it entirely off the rails.

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Baywolfe wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

Sorry but Fargo the Movie was awesome - why would I ever watch a knock off series?  And fuck y'all I think I'm the only one here to ever live up on the Bakken.

As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.  I loved Fargo too but the TV Series is so fucking weird it makes Fargo look like National Lampoon's Brutal Murders.

Oh, and the Coen brothers are Executive Producers.

Of course I don't - I'm objecting on principle.  Fuckers need to come up with a new concept, tired of idea reruns. 

Yeah I feel for them, being creative is such a hard fucking thing to do - lazy pieces of shit.

Smudge wrote:

I also came clean about the fact that I'm infatuated with Rachel Keller

Aubrey Plaza is always fun to watch and made some serious hay from that role. She provided the only genuine jolts I experienced during the series.
Rachel Keller is like a goddamn force of nature.  I kept thinking she looked familiar while watching Legion, but it was several eps before it clicked that I had seen her in Fargo S2.  They're such completely different characters--yet she inhabits both so completely.  I have a feeling that you will have many future opportunities to indulge that infatuation.

George Orr wrote:

Smudge wrote:

I also came clean about the fact that I'm infatuated with Rachel Keller

Aubrey Plaza is always fun to watch and made some serious hay from that role. She provided the only genuine jolts I experienced during the series.
Rachel Keller is like a goddamn force of nature.  I kept thinking she looked familiar while watching Legion, but it was several eps before it clicked that I had seen her in Fargo S2.  They're such completely different characters--yet she inhabits both so completely.  I have a feeling that you will have many future opportunities to indulge that infatuation.

I guess I owe you a sum up (I watched the final episode last night). I'm ambivalent. There's a thin plot (and the plot is definitely the weak point) but...how critical can I be? It's a comic book story, and I knew that going in.

Some of it was really cheesy (I could have lived without the guy who lived in the ice cube altogether). But the production had moments of real creativity (like the Bollywood dance scene, or the later scene with Lenny dancing to Nina Simone, above). I might check out the new season; it depends on the what the competition is doing.

I'm a very opinionated person; I don't normally walk down the middle of the road. But in this case, I'm going to punt, and put off a final decision. I'd watch a couple more episodes to see if they are able to tighten it up; they earned that much commitment from me. I guess that means I liked it a bit more than you did.

Of course, having a crush on two separate actresses in the show makes it an easier choice.

Last edited by Smudge (2017-04-13 23:08:44)

I binge watched the second season of Fargo yesterday, finishing up the last couple of episodes this morning. What an awesome piece of story telling. The Coen Brothers hand was subtly visible throughout. The story had a lot in common with Blood Simple, the first Coen Brothers film, which I suspect a lot of people missed because they weren't well known yet when it was made. If you don't know Blood Simple, I recommend you find it and watch it.

I'll try again on the first season at some point. And I understand the third season is just about to begin airing.

Thanks for the tip, George.

No, I haven't watched Season 1 yet; I'm doing them out of sequence. Let's see if I can put it together later even though I watch them in reverse order.

Last edited by Smudge (2017-04-17 14:59:47)

Huh.  I had no idea.

Um...

De Nada.  I agree, if there were a international mystery competition Nero Wolfe is one of the ones we'd enter.

Now it's time to check out the Sherlock Holmes series by Grenada Television (1984 - 1994) starring the late, greats Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Dr. Watson.  Very faithful to the Conan Doyle stories.

I do too, although they just re-released them on Blu Ray and did a very nice clean up job on the prints.  They're in my "Hey family, buy me this shit" list on Amazon.

nfidelbastard wrote:

This-

Link to YouTube page

You have to use the embed tag.

Wow...never even heard of the Ellery Queen Mysteries. I'll see if I can hunt them down. Thanks, guys (both of the last two posts) for the tips. The trick isn't finding stuff to watch; It's in finding the occasional gems which lurk in the matrix of mediocrity.

Baywolfe wrote:

You have to use the embed tag.

Thanks for the info. I posted the old way and it seemed to work in the preview but now I'm better informed. Thank you Choad for repairing it.

Thanks for the tip, George. I've twice started the series, and gotten two or three episodes in, and then lost interest. I'm not sure what puts me off, but something does. I will say that there are very few Australian productions which I've enjoyed. There's something in their aesthetic which I find jarring, I think. But thanks for the tip anyway.

Let me give you a gift. Here's a site which I stumbled on a couple of years ago, and, well...if it were a book, the pages would be falling out. I've utilized it that much. I've been tempted to write the site owner just to let him know how much benefit I've received as a result of his efforts. He really has done a spectacular job of pulling a half century's worth of crime drama into a single spot.

http://timbarron.net/entertainment/brit … mysteries/

That's a best single source or catalog of British detective (and all of the related genres) that I've ever discovered, and I've probably seen at least a couple of episodes of between 80-90 percent of the shows, and in many cases, I've watched the whole run. I hope you are able to get some use out of it (and, obviously, everyone else who reads this as well).

This only ran for one season, so it obviously didn't grab the public's imagination. But I found it to be an absolutely riveting spy drama. If you like the genre, check out Rubicon. Top of the stack production values throughout the series:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389371/

(I found and downloaded the series using bit torrent. I don't know where else you would be likely to find this somewhat obscure series.)

I have now watched seasons one and two of Fargo in their entirety, and have started watching season three. It's a very well done TV program, based on the very well done Coen Brother's film of the same name.

I was curious about a plot aspect of season two (won't say what, because spoilers, but it involves something overhead in the sky during several scenes) and I learned that NONE of the stories are actually based on real crimes.

Maybe this is well known to others, and I'm just slow to get the message, but I feel like a guy who's just learned that there is no Santa Clause. If you weren't aware about Santa being fake, sorry to have spoiled it for you.

http://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/201 … true-story

Emmeran wrote:

I'm more interested in what you're reading.

And you are looking for this in a thread titled "What Are You Watching?"

-----

I can't remember the last time I picked up and read an actual physical book (you know, made of pulp, with covers, etc.). I had a job where I drove a lot for a while, and I listened to audio books while I drove. I used to muse to myself about whether there is something special about running your eyes over the words on a page, or whether listening to them was just as good. And is it okay to say "I read that," when you, in fact, only listened to it? I never came to any firm conclusions on those philosophical points. But I absorbed hundreds of books in that fashion.

The last book I can remember reading in physical form was "Guns, Germs and Steel", which I've read several times, and which I originally received as a gift. It broadly explores the questions of why Europeans were the first of earth's many populations to gain enough advantage over everyone else that they could colonize the world. The answer, if I were to sum it up in my own words, was "geography becomes destiny". Not all land masses are equal, and it's not even close.

Most of the books I read/listened to were mysteries and spy novels. Most complex topics, unless I found them personally fascinating and gripping, were simply too hard to follow, integrate and remember, with some large part of my mind focused on driving. But I did enjoy a number of scholastic oriented "books" which were actually the lectures from college courses recorded and bundled into an audio book format (The Great Learning Series, or something like that. I found an open directory that had hundreds of courses, and I listened to lots of them until one day it suddenly shut down). The one which I enjoyed the most was about the history of the English language. There was another where a prize winning physicist explained what we knew about energy, and solar, and global warming, and I found it to be as interesting or thrilling as any mystery.

I took in all of Agatha Christie's mysteries, and all of Rex Stout's. I "read" every single John LeCarre novel (although many of those I own in book form as well). Robert Ludlum, Daniel Silve, Graham Greene, etc.

I read more these days than I have ever done at any time in the past I'm quite sure, but it is done almost entirely on line. I suspect I spend eight hours a day or more reading. I am a generalist by nature, so my subject matter covers the range. I realize I'm opening myself up to criticism here, because, if I read that much I have no legitimate excuse for my ignorance. All I can say is "You have no idea where I was when I started, so you can't see the progress."

Last edited by Smudge (2017-06-16 15:50:11)

Baywolfe wrote:

Smudge wrote:

Maybe this is well known to others, and I'm just slow to get the message, but I feel like a guy who's just learned that there is no Santa Clause. If you weren't aware about Santa being fake, sorry to have spoiled it for you.

http://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/201 … true-story

There was a lady from China, I believe, that froze to death looking for the money from the original film.  Quite excellent that they tied that money to the TV series.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter
Kumiko is a Japanese office lady.  She's a bit off. She is obsessed with the film Fargo, and watches it over and over to get clues for finding the film's treasure.  She needles points a treasure map based on her findings and heads to the upper mid west. Even though Kumiko is presented as a documentary, it probably not as accurate as the film makers claim.  I thought it was a decent film, and I have seen it a couple of times.

She was a denizen of the Heartbreak Hotel California

Smudge wrote:

Baywolfe wrote:

There was a lady from China, I believe, that froze to death looking for the money from the original film.  Quite excellent that they tied that money to the TV series.

Yes. I thought that was a nice touch too. And it also explained another mystery; why the guy had a framed ice scraper on his wall.

The references between various episodes and the original film were many. I'm sure I spotted at least a dozen, many of them quite subtle.

There are overlaps of characters between series; there were quite a few from S1 in S2.  (Side note:  I have never loved Ted Danson more.)  A S1 character just showed up in S3 a few weeks ago, and has become an integral part of the plot.

choad wrote:

George Orr wrote:

A S1 character just showed up in S3 a few weeks ago, and has become an integral part of the plot.

He's easy to miss without the chainsaw.

I have racked my brain, but I'll be damned if I can remember anybody with a chainsaw in season one. I've only watched four episodes of season three, so I don't think I've seen the mystery player yet, but maybe...

Last edited by Smudge (2017-06-19 14:40:42)

LOL...

Well I do, in fact, remember one of those.

Okay, I finished season 3 of Fargo, and now I have to admit I'm a solid and committed fan. Count me among the group that's lobbying for a season 4.

Season 3 was my favorite of the bunch. The Coen Brothers influence (subtle in the first couple of seasons) was clearly visible in season 3. I expect that there were numerous Old Testament references and allusions which I missed because I lack the requisite knowledge. Did everyone here see "A Serious Man".

I can't be alone in noticing that the scene in the bowling alley (the guy with the kitten) was an homage to a very similar scene from The Big Lebowski?

Complex, murky, philosophical and ambivalent; Jewish mysticism meets Reservoir Dogs.

I'd say more, but, spoilers.