Fargo: East/West

November 16, 2020 9:39 AM - Season 4, Episode 9

Rabbi and Satchel hit the road.

Hope no one minds me posting this.

Slow and sad and strange, in some ways the most Coenesque episode of this story, in the way of the melancholy non sequiteurs of Buster Scruggs - part of me registers the formal purpose of the episode (a hiatus away from the gathering pace of the main plot before we're pitched back into it for the last two episodes), most of me just appreciates the oddness and the aesthetics. I presume the transition into colour is a Wizard of Oz thing, as is the small dog, but that's as thinky as I want to get.

Is the dog actually called Rabbit, or is there a sign around its neck pointing out that it's rabid?

posted by Grangousier (24 comments total)

It's frustrating that I can't avoid spoilers and explain why I loved this episode so much except Rabbi/Rabbit made me smile.
posted by kingless at 2:26 PM on November 16, 2020

The siblings with the appliance store were almost what one could call kitchen brothers.
posted by snofoam at 5:28 PM on November 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

Ah, boarding houses.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 5:20 AM on November 17, 2020

"The future is what?"

"How's that?"

"What's it going to say?"

"Wait till it's finished. Then you'll see."

"Well... finish the damned thing already."

"Moment I finish it, I'm out of a job. Plus, what do you care? It's just a sign."

"It's the principle, making people live with uncertainty. It ain't right."

"Send a letter to your congressman, you're so irate."
posted by Catblack at 7:26 AM on November 17, 2020 [8 favorites]

It's frustrating that I can't avoid spoilers and explain why I loved this episode so much except Rabbi/Rabbit made me smile.

Do you already know something about the last 2 episodes? Because if not, anything that has happened up to and including this episode are fair game.
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:00 AM on November 17, 2020

(I never do this, but I had to put up the two short scenes with 'billboard guy'. I don't think it will spoil anything, the whole episode just rolls along like this, but this guy made us laugh pretty hard.)

The Future Is What / The Future Is Now
posted by Catblack at 9:17 AM on November 17, 2020

Do you already know something about the last 2 episodes? Because if not, anything that has happened up to and including this episode are fair game.

Thanks, LizBoBiz, wasn't sure about the rules. I know nothing about the future. (Hey Rabbi, living with uncertainty is what we all do.)

Clyde Tombaugh gets credit for discovering Pluto. In the Tombaugh article, Wikipedia says

To better test his telescope mirrors, Tombaugh, with just a pick and shovel, dug a pit 24 feet long, 8 feet deep, and 7 feet wide. This provided a constant air temperature, free of air currents, and was also used by the family as a root cellar and emergency shelter.

Obscure, so it's probably a stretch to call stopping by his plaque foreshadowing the tornado. Besides, black & white, Kansas, not having a tornado would've been a disappointment.

The opening gas station scene, especially painting the station, was Omie at his best. Really hated seeing him go at the end of the episode. That boarding house. Yes, Catblack, the billboard scenes were funny. The traveling salesman with the Dale Carnegie fixation was fun. (Unrelated: it's striking how similar the techniques in How to Win Friends and Influence People are to the ones I'm urged to use to talk politics nowadays.) I guess I'm not 100% sure what's to become of Rabbi and Constant. How reliable are those accounts I've seen of cows and whatnot being set down unharmed by tornadoes? And finally, Satchel gets away with Rabbit. Nice seeing one of the kids take charge.
posted by kingless at 10:02 AM on November 17, 2020

The bandaged man was Ira Amyx, who played Milligan's father in episode one, and his teen helper was Aaron Lamm who played Ari Moskowitz. IMDB also lists Andrew Rothenberg. another Moskowitz. So more ghosts, then.
posted by Grangousier at 1:02 PM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Enjoyed the slower pacing of this episode, there was constant escalation of tension but it'd blow off a little, but it kept slowly ratcheting up like the inevitable storm.

Loved the shot down the middle of the staircase.

The tornado scene recalls to me the story of William Rankin.
posted by porpoise at 6:13 PM on November 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I don't think it will spoil anything

Again, you are not spoiling by posting clips or talking about things that happened in the episode and any that came before

Spoilers in FanFare are only for future events that have not aired, next week's preview, info from books if its a show-only thread, etc. It is totally fine to discuss this episode in this episode's thread.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:43 AM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

I've now been wondering about the other [ghost/dream] couple - older man and woman, folding a flag that may be a confederate stars-and-bars or a Betsy Ross stars and stripes.
posted by Grangousier at 4:16 AM on November 18, 2020

I really enjoyed the color hotel scene. That had a very Barton Fink vibe (but how could you do a Coen brother's TV show with a scene in a weird hotel and not do Barton Fink??)

Now that I think about it, this entire episode had more of a Coen Brothers vibe than the rest of the season, and even last season. The weirdness throughout the whole thing was just perfect.
posted by LizBoBiz at 4:22 AM on November 18, 2020

LizBoBiz, you did notice that the hotel was the Barton Arms?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:46 AM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

I did not but that's awesome!
posted by LizBoBiz at 7:10 AM on November 18, 2020 [1 favorite]

>I'm not 100% sure what's to become of Rabbi

His fate is foretold in the very beginning, in the page from "The History Of True Crime in the Mid West" by Brixby that's fluttering in the (years-old?) tornado wreckage of the gas station.

CHAPTER 7
LIBERAL, KANSAS - 1950

WHO SHOT WILLY BUPOR?

Two African Americans, two Italians, and an Irishman walk into an outlaying gas station. Sounds like this could be the beginning of a tasteless joke, but you would be mistaken to think so. What it is, dear reader, is the set up for perhaps one of the most puzzling entries in this compendium of midwestern crimes. It is a case that had investigators scratching their heads for years. Five dead, at least four from gunshot woulnds, and the bodies scattered in some cases miles from on another. No suspects. No arrests. And no widely accepted theories as to what transpired. Here we turn our attention to Liberal, Kansas, 1950 and what is today believed to be the convergence point for this mysterious act of violence, the Em and Henry Filling Station situated outside the city limits.

The majority of the facts in this case, scant as they may be, were gathered in an investigation conducted by Seward County Sheriff, Dink Toltam. As a result, Toltam found most success in piecing together a narrative of events. In his report, Sheriff Toltam recounts a storm occurring on the same day an African American man in his sixties was shot in the head. This man has been identified as Willy Bupor who, by all accounts, was an upstanding citizen in the small town of Liberal.

posted by Catblack at 9:31 AM on November 18, 2020 [5 favorites]

His fate is foretold in the very beginning

Thanks!
posted by kingless at 9:37 AM on November 18, 2020

the Em and Henry Filling Station

Oh!
posted by eckeric at 12:23 PM on November 18, 2020 [2 favorites]

The "Mellon Mounds" plaque outside of the Barton Arms is a fictionalized reference to the Bloody Benders.
posted by jason_steakums at 2:41 PM on November 22, 2020

Did anyone notice that the police officer in Liberty was played by Jack White of the White Stripes?
posted by Jaymzifer at 6:29 PM on November 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Did anyone notice that the police officer in Liberty was played by Jack White of the White Stripes?

Are you sure about that? I don't think that was Jack White.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 6:25 PM on December 2, 2020

Anyone else think everyone in the hotel was some kind of children's fictional/ nursery rhyme character? I can't quite get there with some of them and I don't want to google to see if anyone else thought so too (in case this is a stupid theory) but they did mention Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and then there was the Wizard of OZ, obvs. Was the bandaged guy Humpty Dumpty?? He had to be? And the older woman and her husband were Jack Sprat and his wife? The hotel had an east and a west and there was a good sis and a bad sis, like WoO.

The young girl and her Uncle was a real mindfuck for me. I couldn't get my head out of the "he's a pedo" gutter long enough to come up with who they might be in nursery rhyme land.
posted by the webmistress at 3:49 PM on December 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

On second thought, the old woman was maybe Mother Hubbard. She did say "Call me Mother" when introduced at the dinner table. And that dog did come out of a cupboard...
posted by the webmistress at 9:21 PM on December 4, 2020

Most episodes this season have stayed further away from direct Coen Brothers references than previous seasons have, in my opinion. I mean aside from the general Miller's Crossing vibe, what with this season and it both being "a handsome [movie] about men in hats."

"That had a very Barton Fink vibe"

Totally. If you listen closely in the scene where Satchel closes himself in the room once the Rabbi doesn't come back you'll hear the air pressure sound as the door closes, same as happened every time Barton opened or closed doors in the hotel.

"you did notice that the hotel was the Barton Arms?"

Fun fact that you probably already know: the Coen Brothers were writing Miller's Crossing, a spiderweb movie of double-crosses and plot entaglements. They developed writer's block during the scripting so they put it aside and wrote a movie about a New Yorker moving to Hollywood and dealing with writer's block (our aforementioned friend Barton Fink). Once they had that out of the way they returned to Miller's Crossing. The protagonist Tom Regan's apartment in Miller's Crossing is named The Barton Arms because of this.

So as long as we're in the discussion of this episode having the pile of Coen tributes: it opens with the true Fargo-the-movie theme, a Carter Burwell adaptation of a Norwegian folk tune called 'The Lost Sheep'. During the first season of Fargo I felt like the showrunners had instructed the music folks to write something as close to the Fargo theme as possible without actually touching it, and to me it was maddening, like an itch I couldn't scratch. So in the final episode of S01 when their homage finally resolved itself into the real Fargo theme it was truly cathartic (for me). I felt similarly when I saw this episode and heard that they were really using the tune. So it had me thinking of the Coen Brothers the whole time.

"The young girl and her Uncle was a real mindfuck for me. I couldn't get my head out of the "he's a pedo" gutter long enough to come up with who they might be in nursery rhyme land."

My thoughts went to their adaptation of True Grit where a grizzled older fellow with an eye patch looking out for a younger lady. In the movie Rooster refers to Maddie as 'sister' so I assume they went with niece here so as to keep it from being too on-the-nose.

"The bandaged man was Ira Amyx, who played Milligan's father in episode one, and his teen helper was Aaron Lamm who played Ari Moskowitz."

This one's tenuous but the scene did remind me of parts of Intolerable Cruelty where George Clooney's lawyer character Miles Massey has to visit his firm's senior partner who is ancient, all tied up to tubes and looking horrible [clip]. Okay maybe it's a stretch.

And aside from the very clear Wizard of Oz reference I thought the end also echoed A Serious Man. Rabbi's question to the sign man "Hey! What the heck does that even mean?!" Sign man: "Could be a statement as to the underlying unreliability of time. Or! A testimony along the lines of 'Seize the day!' ... they don't pay me to write 'em" is just about A Serious Man in a nutshell, what with its exploration of Shrodinger's Cat and "Please. Accept the mystery" from Clive's (the student's) father. And then the end with a tornado coming down as if God himself is saying "who are you to question how this is all going to play out, or what it was all about in the first place?"

anyway those are the references that popped into my head while I was watching it. I really really enjoyed this episode.
posted by komara at 7:36 PM on December 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

This is a theme that the Coen Bros do A LOT, this person-who-is-an-agent-of-God. There are these (apparently) supernatural antagonists in Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy, No Country for Old Men. There's the tornado at the end of A Serious Man. Often they get written off at the end, as NOT supernatural, but that is almost always from the POV of some character who just Doesn't Get It.

The tornado in this ep is absolutely a stand-in for god, giving people what they deserve. Whether we think it's "fair" or not, says more about us than anything else.
posted by nushustu at 4:57 PM on January 25, 2021