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Jun. 15th, 2017 11:36 pmAnother good Fargo episode. Amazing how much of everything depends on the trust not being lost, though. We don't just want you to not bore us or insult our intelligence, we want to never have reason to suspect you're about to.
David Lynch gets away with things as ridiculous as Hawley's worst Fargo 3 and Legion lapses because we know he's - in effect - crazy and Hawley is not. Crazy retains cred, it still feels like it might get us somewhere. (There's a limit even with that, of course, one Lynch appears to be pushing at the moment.) Hawley has known this from the start and has actually tried faking crazy a few times, but fake crazy fools no one ... so comes across as dumb.
But anyway, the present series has a couple entirely good episodes, a partly great one (L.A.), and some decent bits here and there in the others. The anti-simulacrum argument is fine. Seems like the real problem has been padding, and desperate attempts to make padding not seem like padding. Even being derivative is often fine if you leave us no time to think about it.
I've long assumed that this several-series overlap period would prove instructive. Haven't caught up on everything else yet but Fargo and Better Call Saul we've been watching weekly, and they started at about the same time and will both be ending next week. They're also the most similar, generically, of the present dramas. I haven't been trying to contrast them, it's just been impossible to miss. Fargo's a show that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. Better Call Saul's a show failure doesn't seem to know how to touch.
David Lynch gets away with things as ridiculous as Hawley's worst Fargo 3 and Legion lapses because we know he's - in effect - crazy and Hawley is not. Crazy retains cred, it still feels like it might get us somewhere. (There's a limit even with that, of course, one Lynch appears to be pushing at the moment.) Hawley has known this from the start and has actually tried faking crazy a few times, but fake crazy fools no one ... so comes across as dumb.
But anyway, the present series has a couple entirely good episodes, a partly great one (L.A.), and some decent bits here and there in the others. The anti-simulacrum argument is fine. Seems like the real problem has been padding, and desperate attempts to make padding not seem like padding. Even being derivative is often fine if you leave us no time to think about it.
I've long assumed that this several-series overlap period would prove instructive. Haven't caught up on everything else yet but Fargo and Better Call Saul we've been watching weekly, and they started at about the same time and will both be ending next week. They're also the most similar, generically, of the present dramas. I haven't been trying to contrast them, it's just been impossible to miss. Fargo's a show that sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. Better Call Saul's a show failure doesn't seem to know how to touch.
