Fargo: The Gift of the Magi
November 10, 2015 8:27 AM - Season 2, Episode 5 - Subscribe
Floyd takes action and Charlie tries to prove himself; Peggy and Ed disagree about what to do next; Lou finds himself sidelined during Ronald Reagan's campaign tour.
A.V. Club - Zack Handlen:
A.V. Club - Zack Handlen:
There’s a scene three quarters of the way through “The Gift Of The Magi” that sums up Fargo’s peculiar strengths and weaknesses. Lou is in a men’s room with presidential candidate Ronald Reagan (Bruce Campbell), and the two men get to talking about the state of the world. Lou flat out says (after some stammering) that he’s worried the awfulness of everything has manifested itself in his wife as a cancer, and it’s the sort of overly direct, overly metaphorical kind of dialogue writing that’s hard not to cringe at. Patrick Wilson does his best to sell the line, but I’m not convinced that Lou would be this open with someone he barely knows, or that he’d think of his wife’s sickness in such oddly contrived terms.
But then Reagan does his best to console him, telling him that there’s no problem an American can’t solve, and when Lou says, “How?” the soon-to-be president smiles half shrugs, and walks away. It’s a perfect encapsulation both of Reagan’s charm and the limitations of his shtick: reassurance without content, confidence without justification. Lou’s question may have been overly contrived, but it leads to a moment that feels like the core of the season: the misguided notion that just believing in something hard enough will be enough to fix everything. Fargo can be heavy-handed in getting some of its points across, but that heavy-handedness often leads to sublime absurdity.
I love this show, but ugh, the flashy editing. That inlay dream-o-vision? Yuck.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:51 AM on November 10, 2015
posted by Sys Rq at 8:51 AM on November 10, 2015
Yeah, I felt like that bathroom scene was oddly out-of-character for Lou, as well. It was such an odd inclusion that sort of felt dropped-in after the fact. Still, Bruce Campbell on-screen is always good, and he plays a pretty convincing Ronnie.
After the slaughter in the woods, I was really afraid Noreen was going to be put-down without a second thought, right there at the counter of the butcher shop. Happily, she survived.
The two guys with the shotguns in the woods sure looked like both Kitchen brothers, yet we find out later that only one brother was there in the woods. It kind of threw me.
............
I love this show, but ugh, the flashy editing. That inlay dream-o-vision? Yuck.
But, it's the 70's!
posted by Thorzdad at 8:55 AM on November 10, 2015
After the slaughter in the woods, I was really afraid Noreen was going to be put-down without a second thought, right there at the counter of the butcher shop. Happily, she survived.
The two guys with the shotguns in the woods sure looked like both Kitchen brothers, yet we find out later that only one brother was there in the woods. It kind of threw me.
............
I love this show, but ugh, the flashy editing. That inlay dream-o-vision? Yuck.
But, it's the 70's!
posted by Thorzdad at 8:55 AM on November 10, 2015
Always love a good head in a box.
I liked that we just saw his hair; a callback to the shampoo conversation.
I rather like the split-screening and other editing trickery; it feels deliberately dated. There's one transition I noticed this episode that I think they've done at least once before: holding on Lou's profile and then dissolving to a landscape with a tree that almost exactly matches him.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:56 AM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
I liked that we just saw his hair; a callback to the shampoo conversation.
I rather like the split-screening and other editing trickery; it feels deliberately dated. There's one transition I noticed this episode that I think they've done at least once before: holding on Lou's profile and then dissolving to a landscape with a tree that almost exactly matches him.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:56 AM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Sepinwall's review is a bit scattered, but does raise a good question: why did Hanzee leave one Kitchen Brother alive?
So Dodd sending Charlie to kill the butcher isn't going to help the Dodd/Bear tension set up in that porch scene: "There's gonna be a reckoning one day, brother."
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:07 AM on November 10, 2015
So Dodd sending Charlie to kill the butcher isn't going to help the Dodd/Bear tension set up in that porch scene: "There's gonna be a reckoning one day, brother."
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 9:07 AM on November 10, 2015
Did I get it right? Did Floyd not fall for Dodd's line about the "the Butcher of Luverne"? She appeared to at first, but then later she said they needed to get that butcher from Luverne, meaning Ed.
I thought Floyd did fall for it, but Bear seems to know that Dodd was lying; he said something to Hanzee about "If this isn't true, you should say so now" (paraphrasing, of course). I liked that Bear is apparently a bit smarter than he's been letting on.
posted by holborne at 9:25 AM on November 10, 2015
I thought Floyd did fall for it, but Bear seems to know that Dodd was lying; he said something to Hanzee about "If this isn't true, you should say so now" (paraphrasing, of course). I liked that Bear is apparently a bit smarter than he's been letting on.
posted by holborne at 9:25 AM on November 10, 2015
why did Hanzee leave one Kitchen Brother alive?
Someone had to deliver Joe's head, I guess.
But, see, I was really confused, too. Those two guys with shotguns looked like both Kitchen brothers. And, they both sure looked dead, lying on the ground with their throats cut and all. But, then we see the other Kitchen brother back at Mike's apartment. And, I could have sworn Mike said something about the one brother not being at the woods. So, either there are three brothers or one of them survived to deliver the head.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:42 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Someone had to deliver Joe's head, I guess.
But, see, I was really confused, too. Those two guys with shotguns looked like both Kitchen brothers. And, they both sure looked dead, lying on the ground with their throats cut and all. But, then we see the other Kitchen brother back at Mike's apartment. And, I could have sworn Mike said something about the one brother not being at the woods. So, either there are three brothers or one of them survived to deliver the head.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:42 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I thought the surviving Kitchen Brother looked a little beat up, and assumed he survived by playing dead and didn't actually have his throat slit.
Charlie looks an awful lot like Hanzee. I'm thinking he's actually his son.
posted by QuakerMel at 9:53 AM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Charlie looks an awful lot like Hanzee. I'm thinking he's actually his son.
posted by QuakerMel at 9:53 AM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Charlie looks an awful lot like Hanzee. I'm thinking he's actually his son.
Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. It makes the Bear-Hanzee "you're family"/"are you being straight with me" talk all the more pointed.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:05 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing. It makes the Bear-Hanzee "you're family"/"are you being straight with me" talk all the more pointed.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:05 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Very nice (and subtle) No Country for Old Men and Coen Brothers callback in general, to see someone standing in front of a Mike Zoss store.
posted by komara at 10:29 AM on November 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by komara at 10:29 AM on November 10, 2015 [4 favorites]
I noted that the ending credits featured yet another track from Billy Thorpe's Children of the Sun. The first episode prominently featured the title track. I can't recall any other tracks in other episodes. Then again, it's been decades since I listened to the album (yes...I'll admit it...I have the original vinyl)
posted by Thorzdad at 10:43 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 10:43 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Another nice, if anachronistic*, callback to the Fargo movie: "Let's Find Each Other Tonight" by José Feliciano plays on the radio while Peggy packs her bags.
*Romance in the Night, the album that contains "Let's Find Each Other Tonight," was released in 1983. I've looked around to see if there was an earlier single that might have had radio play in 1979, but I haven't found anything yet. Still, a nice little callback.
posted by bakerina at 11:22 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
*Romance in the Night, the album that contains "Let's Find Each Other Tonight," was released in 1983. I've looked around to see if there was an earlier single that might have had radio play in 1979, but I haven't found anything yet. Still, a nice little callback.
posted by bakerina at 11:22 AM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I could have sworn Mike said something about the one brother not being at the woods.
Not according to this transcript (which I believe is a dump of the closed captions):
Charlie looks an awful lot like Hanzee. I'm thinking he's actually his son.
Oh, hmm. I was just thinking that Bear's arm in plaster vs. Charlie's deformed hand is maybe a little too pointed a connection.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:20 PM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
Not according to this transcript (which I believe is a dump of the closed captions):
I see Thing One. Where's Thing Two?Maybe it was simply "leave one man alive but incapacitated to deliver the message."
Dead. Your Indian killed him. Killed a lot of people.
Charlie looks an awful lot like Hanzee. I'm thinking he's actually his son.
Oh, hmm. I was just thinking that Bear's arm in plaster vs. Charlie's deformed hand is maybe a little too pointed a connection.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:20 PM on November 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
I loved Ronnie's talk about how tough "the war" was for him.
"Come to think of it, I don't think we made it out of that one."
I thought there was more than a whiff of current-day Mitt Romney in Bruce Campbell's Reagan.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:25 PM on November 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
"Come to think of it, I don't think we made it out of that one."
I thought there was more than a whiff of current-day Mitt Romney in Bruce Campbell's Reagan.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:25 PM on November 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
'Fargo' Guest Bruce Campbell on the "Terror" of Playing Ronald Reagan, Shared B-Movie Background - Daniel Fienberg, Hollywood Reporter
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 12:57 PM on November 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 12:57 PM on November 10, 2015 [5 favorites]
I don't mind the spit screen and other editing techniques because like Breaking Bad and Deutschland 83 (and others), I place Fargo Season 2 firmly in the live action graphic novel category, if I were to categorize it.
posted by juiceCake at 2:16 PM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by juiceCake at 2:16 PM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Rewatching the fight Hanzee slits one brother's throat but punches out the other one. First time around I had assumed they were both dead but I guess it was 'leave one alive'/'take back this message' kinda thing (and leaving one twin alive is damn cold) or the other brother recovered and got away while Hanzee was dealing with the boss (though that seems unlikely)
Glad to see Chekhov's Camus came out.
Half way through and nice to see things shaken up. A lot.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:30 PM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Glad to see Chekhov's Camus came out.
Half way through and nice to see things shaken up. A lot.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:30 PM on November 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
It goes without saying that the suspense was the standout feature of this episode. Yet what I took away was feeling sympathetic for Peggy as she sold her car and took the bus. Shambala was playing and all I could think was "Sure, I'm no killer (or kleptomaniac or hoarder) but I definitely have gotten in over my head and flailed around when I try to make it right."
posted by Monochrome at 6:21 PM on November 11, 2015
posted by Monochrome at 6:21 PM on November 11, 2015
Man, the scene in the kitchen with her father saying that he's all thumbs--it got a little dusty in here.
posted by blueberry at 9:38 AM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by blueberry at 9:38 AM on November 12, 2015 [3 favorites]
God, this show is so good.
"I liked that Bear is apparently a bit smarter than he's been letting on."
I think that Bear is three times as smart and twice the killer that Dodd is, but Dodd has no clue because all he can see is himself.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:46 PM on November 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
"I liked that Bear is apparently a bit smarter than he's been letting on."
I think that Bear is three times as smart and twice the killer that Dodd is, but Dodd has no clue because all he can see is himself.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:46 PM on November 12, 2015 [5 favorites]
I did notice Bear has stopped eating in every scene he's in. Things have got serious.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:17 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:17 AM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm kind of obsessed with the styling and colors. The blues and the rusts. Everything, everywhere.
Except Betsy's house. No one wears blue, and there is nothing blue in the house. Everything is brown or rust except for a few accent pieces in green. A green dish rack in the kitchen, a green vase, a green plant, the green accent stripe in an afghan that is thrown over a chair. She wears brown. Her father wears brown. The green is perhaps a nod to the toxicity or poison of either the cancer or the drug she's taking. I'm so used to seeing the blues that the absence of blue is jarring in the scene where she is home and her father comes to visit. There is a blue plush toy on the floor and it sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of brown.
posted by the webmistress at 8:27 PM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Except Betsy's house. No one wears blue, and there is nothing blue in the house. Everything is brown or rust except for a few accent pieces in green. A green dish rack in the kitchen, a green vase, a green plant, the green accent stripe in an afghan that is thrown over a chair. She wears brown. Her father wears brown. The green is perhaps a nod to the toxicity or poison of either the cancer or the drug she's taking. I'm so used to seeing the blues that the absence of blue is jarring in the scene where she is home and her father comes to visit. There is a blue plush toy on the floor and it sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of brown.
posted by the webmistress at 8:27 PM on November 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
webmistress: Avclub has a recent video feature talking about colors in Fargo, although they discuss Peggy instead of Betsy.
posted by KMB at 1:54 AM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by KMB at 1:54 AM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm working on making a color visualization strip for one (or more) episodes of Fargo such as this guys makes for some films. I've first had to figure out how to do it with the tools I have available, and then it's going to take a while just for it to be done, largely automated though it will be.
For anyone interested, I think I'll be able to do this using just Premiere Pro and Photoshop. (Well, I did have to transcode an episode to something Premiere can import, and I converted it to a lower resolution since that won't make any difference to the result and it will make everything else faster.)
Premiere Pro (or Adobe Media Encoder) can convert a clip to a series of frames as individual image files. Then I've made an action run as a batch across those files that uses the filter blur -> average to convert the image to its average color, then I just resize the whole image to one by twenty pixels. All that was the easy part. The difficult part is assembling all the resulting image files into a strip. I found a script that will do this, it will be slightly slower to run than the previous part, and I'm certain that I will have to break it up into groups of a couple thousand files at a time and then either assemble those by hand, or just run the script on them.
If I use all the frames from my source (this episode), which is 23.976fps, that will result in 79,300 frames, more or less, and so this would generate a strip that is 79,300 pixels wide. Which would be, um, unwieldy. I don't want to drop any of the frames earlier in the processing, even though that would save a lot of time, but the end result will need to be reduced in size. I think I'll make two different end images -- a much reduced strip about 2,000 pixels wide that will provide a good overview, and then another one that is a stacked series of strips, each representing some length of time (such as five minutes). I'll try several things and see what works best. What I'd like to do is to create a presentation that includes a representative still frame from the source for some selected scenes, such as one within Betsy and Lou's house. We'll see.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:38 AM on November 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
For anyone interested, I think I'll be able to do this using just Premiere Pro and Photoshop. (Well, I did have to transcode an episode to something Premiere can import, and I converted it to a lower resolution since that won't make any difference to the result and it will make everything else faster.)
Premiere Pro (or Adobe Media Encoder) can convert a clip to a series of frames as individual image files. Then I've made an action run as a batch across those files that uses the filter blur -> average to convert the image to its average color, then I just resize the whole image to one by twenty pixels. All that was the easy part. The difficult part is assembling all the resulting image files into a strip. I found a script that will do this, it will be slightly slower to run than the previous part, and I'm certain that I will have to break it up into groups of a couple thousand files at a time and then either assemble those by hand, or just run the script on them.
If I use all the frames from my source (this episode), which is 23.976fps, that will result in 79,300 frames, more or less, and so this would generate a strip that is 79,300 pixels wide. Which would be, um, unwieldy. I don't want to drop any of the frames earlier in the processing, even though that would save a lot of time, but the end result will need to be reduced in size. I think I'll make two different end images -- a much reduced strip about 2,000 pixels wide that will provide a good overview, and then another one that is a stacked series of strips, each representing some length of time (such as five minutes). I'll try several things and see what works best. What I'd like to do is to create a presentation that includes a representative still frame from the source for some selected scenes, such as one within Betsy and Lou's house. We'll see.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:38 AM on November 14, 2015 [4 favorites]
Have you seen moviebarcode?.... Here's the original film
I did a post on it a while back and someone came up with a method of producing them, make be of help
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:06 AM on November 14, 2015
I did a post on it a while back and someone came up with a method of producing them, make be of help
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:06 AM on November 14, 2015
Please link to it when completed, Ivan F - I would LOVE to see it. I did not know these color codes existed. SO great.
Also, I'm entranced by some Fargo recaps I've read today at TLo. This one in particular talks quite a bit about the colors, and Peggy's red accents. It's just fascinating. This one talks about the shift of color palette in Dazzle (the salon), and at the bottom, a screen capture of Hank in the salon which might blow your mind. It did mine. And not mentioned but immediately noticed by me is that the way he's positioned, he and the mirrors form ovaries. Or maybe that's just me ;P
posted by the webmistress at 10:36 AM on November 14, 2015
Also, I'm entranced by some Fargo recaps I've read today at TLo. This one in particular talks quite a bit about the colors, and Peggy's red accents. It's just fascinating. This one talks about the shift of color palette in Dazzle (the salon), and at the bottom, a screen capture of Hank in the salon which might blow your mind. It did mine. And not mentioned but immediately noticed by me is that the way he's positioned, he and the mirrors form ovaries. Or maybe that's just me ;P
posted by the webmistress at 10:36 AM on November 14, 2015
Yeah, alby's steps are what I'm doing, but with different tools. Although alby, like the moviebarcode person, isn't averaging the frames, but just shrinking the width, partly preserving some of the information across the height. I prefer to just go ahead and average the colors of the entire frame, since I'm most interested in the color information and while sort of interesting, I don't really want the vertical differentiation.
Also, alby, at least, is taking only every ninety frames. I'm going to have to discard some of that information, anyway, but I prefer to retain all the frames all the way until I decide to reduce the very wide resulting strip. Either if I were to explicitly blur and thus blending adjacent frames, or implicitly in a image reduction, some of the information of all those frames will be retained, kept as part of the average across an interval of time. Discarding whole blocks of frames, especially 90 frames, in the initial process means that you could lose entirely the color information of several seconds of the source for every frame generated. That may or not create a misrepresentation, depending upon how the source was edited and just random chance. My way, every frame of the source will be represented in some fashion in the result.
I've got Media Encoder generating all the frames from this episode right now; it's running close to the running time of the episode, taking about forty minutes to do. I noticed last night that the Photoshop action which averages and resizes the frames is quite slow, managing on my PC to complete about one image a second. So that's going to take a day. And then another day to create the strip. Probably alby's tools would be much faster, being much more lightweight than these Adobe apps. But it's not as if there's some deadline.
"Please link to it when completed, Ivan F - I would LOVE to see it."
Well, I'm partly doing it for you. :) Okay, your comment motivated me to do it because I'm curious and I've actually wanted to do this ever since I first learned of this method of analysing the use of color in a film. Maybe fearfulsymmetry's post, or something earlier. But, anyway, the whole point is to share it with everyone here.
I mean, I actually made that clip for last week's episode thread about Hanzee possibly losing two hours when he saw lights outside the diner. I don't know if anyone looked at that clip to check what people were saying in the thread. I put it on a throwaway YT account just in case it generated a copyright issue. But it's just a clip of that one scene. (Which I could also host on a web page. Oh, heck, here it is.)
Anyway, after doing the other stuff, it won't be much more trouble to actually make a web page that includes what I mentioned earlier -- where it also has some stills from representative scenes, maybe above and along the strip, connecting the color averages for a region with some of the scenes that they originated from. That sort of thing.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:58 AM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also, alby, at least, is taking only every ninety frames. I'm going to have to discard some of that information, anyway, but I prefer to retain all the frames all the way until I decide to reduce the very wide resulting strip. Either if I were to explicitly blur and thus blending adjacent frames, or implicitly in a image reduction, some of the information of all those frames will be retained, kept as part of the average across an interval of time. Discarding whole blocks of frames, especially 90 frames, in the initial process means that you could lose entirely the color information of several seconds of the source for every frame generated. That may or not create a misrepresentation, depending upon how the source was edited and just random chance. My way, every frame of the source will be represented in some fashion in the result.
I've got Media Encoder generating all the frames from this episode right now; it's running close to the running time of the episode, taking about forty minutes to do. I noticed last night that the Photoshop action which averages and resizes the frames is quite slow, managing on my PC to complete about one image a second. So that's going to take a day. And then another day to create the strip. Probably alby's tools would be much faster, being much more lightweight than these Adobe apps. But it's not as if there's some deadline.
"Please link to it when completed, Ivan F - I would LOVE to see it."
Well, I'm partly doing it for you. :) Okay, your comment motivated me to do it because I'm curious and I've actually wanted to do this ever since I first learned of this method of analysing the use of color in a film. Maybe fearfulsymmetry's post, or something earlier. But, anyway, the whole point is to share it with everyone here.
I mean, I actually made that clip for last week's episode thread about Hanzee possibly losing two hours when he saw lights outside the diner. I don't know if anyone looked at that clip to check what people were saying in the thread. I put it on a throwaway YT account just in case it generated a copyright issue. But it's just a clip of that one scene. (Which I could also host on a web page. Oh, heck, here it is.)
Anyway, after doing the other stuff, it won't be much more trouble to actually make a web page that includes what I mentioned earlier -- where it also has some stills from representative scenes, maybe above and along the strip, connecting the color averages for a region with some of the scenes that they originated from. That sort of thing.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:58 AM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]
Looks like Photoshop is going to take 15 hours to do its part. So a bit faster than one frame a second -- it's managing 81 frames a minute. There are 74,532 frames for this episode. I cut off the "previously" section at the beginning and the end credits at the end.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:07 AM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 11:07 AM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]
Here's an initial strip for this episode. This is reduced, but it's still pretty wide. This gives you a good idea of the palette they're using -- all earth tones, interiors and exteriors. I'm not seeing much difference between the Gerhardt, Blumquist, and Solverson homes -- but the differences you noticed are probably going to be overwhelmed by everything else. What they're not doing is changing the color balance in post-production. Well, they are, of course, but nothing very overt. That one bit of yellow-orange late in the episode is the fire in the butchershop.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:38 PM on November 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:38 PM on November 22, 2015 [3 favorites]
Gah it's sooo awesome! That one slice of yellow! I'm going to watch it again and match up the colors. I want to see what's going on where that giant block of brown is towards the beginning. This is the best.
posted by the webmistress at 9:59 PM on November 22, 2015
posted by the webmistress at 9:59 PM on November 22, 2015
Monochrome: It goes without saying that the suspense was the standout feature of this episode. Yet what I took away was feeling sympathetic for Peggy as she sold her car and took the bus.
I actually cringed a bit because they pulled a plot right from that old O Henry story with Ed and Peggy -- she sold her car to buy the shop, he (inadvertently) burned down the shop and decided to run away with her. But then I remembered that the old O Henry story was called The Gift of the Magi and I'm an idiot.
Also, Bruce Campbell was an absolutely inspired choice to play Reagan and he snuck enough of a Reagan impression into his voice that I wasn't sure who it was until they showed his face.
I didn't see any clocks, but did Betsy lose some time like Hanzee did? She was sitting and looking at the kid's drawing of a UFO and suddenly her father was in the house and she didn't hear him come in...
Of course that could be the cancer or the drugs. I love all of the UFO references and the fact that every one is ambiguous.
posted by mmoncur at 12:38 AM on December 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
I actually cringed a bit because they pulled a plot right from that old O Henry story with Ed and Peggy -- she sold her car to buy the shop, he (inadvertently) burned down the shop and decided to run away with her. But then I remembered that the old O Henry story was called The Gift of the Magi and I'm an idiot.
Also, Bruce Campbell was an absolutely inspired choice to play Reagan and he snuck enough of a Reagan impression into his voice that I wasn't sure who it was until they showed his face.
I didn't see any clocks, but did Betsy lose some time like Hanzee did? She was sitting and looking at the kid's drawing of a UFO and suddenly her father was in the house and she didn't hear him come in...
Of course that could be the cancer or the drugs. I love all of the UFO references and the fact that every one is ambiguous.
posted by mmoncur at 12:38 AM on December 7, 2015 [2 favorites]
When Peggy was walking around all the magazines, I was convinced their house is going to burn at some point. Well, we did end up getting a fire.
posted by drezdn at 6:47 PM on November 27, 2017
posted by drezdn at 6:47 PM on November 27, 2017
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This show is wonderful at building tension. The two attempts in the butcher shop were done perfectly. I was so worried that girl was going to get it. I'm fine when gangsters get their heads blown apart but I have trouble when innocent people get killed.
I don't know where the UFO thing is going, I hope nowhere, but I'm loving how there's a small hint of it in every episode.
I loved Ronnie's talk about how tough "the war" was for him. So perfectly Reagan.
I'm glad Ed didn't get killed and I wonder now if he'll be given a pass by the Gerehardts for saving the kid's life. Of course now the police have shown up at his door so maybe it won't matter.
Did I get it right? Did Floyd not fall for Dodd's line about the "the Butcher of Luverne"? She appeared to at first, but then later she said they needed to get that butcher from Luverne, meaning Ed.
Thing One and Thing Two are perfect names for the Kitchen Brothers.
Always love a good head in a box.
I'm hoping Mike Mulligan survives somehow and Dodd ends up with a bullet in his head. This show isn't going to go the way I want it to, though, and that's a good thing.
Mike Mulligan should have his own show.
I love this show so goddamn much.
posted by bondcliff at 8:47 AM on November 10, 2015 [5 favorites]