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Semi-OT: "Bates Motel" and "Fargo, the TV Series"

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I have been catching up with "Fargo, the TV series." I always meant to get around to watching it, but it kept getting away from me and I didn't want to come in mid-stretch.

What Fargo the TV series is(I shall now call it TV Fargo vs Movie Fargo) is three self-contained seasons(thus far) which tell three separate story arcs, with different sets of actors in each arc.

Billy Bob Thornton anchored Season One. Kirsten Dunst anchored Season Two. Ewan MacGregor anchored Season Three. I started last year with Season Three. I have only recently gone back to watch Season One. I have not yet watched Season Two.

I'm astonished how long it took me to watch Season One, because it stars one of my absolute favorite actors of this era: Billy Bob Thornton. His gimmick role in "Sling Blade" put him on the map and in Oscar range, but he perfected "the ornery Billy Bob persona" in three successive movies: Bad Santa(2003), Bad News Bears(2005) and Ice Harvest(2005.) He also did a wonderfully smarmy cameo as the US President in England in Love Actually(2003.)

Love Actually was the only hit of that group -- though Bad Santa went "cult" and got a great remake two years ago. Billy Bob is rather "cult" himself -- his leading man movie career fizzled, so he dutifully trooped to cable for "Fargo" and now, "Goliath"(which I have not seen but ( will -- cuz I love me some Billy Bob.)

TV Fargo Season One actually re-unites Billy Bob with a Love Actually co-star: Martin Freeman, an elfin Brit(I believe) who in Love Actually played one of the two "professional naked body sex doubles" who comes to love his equally naked female business partner and to ask her on a date(successfully.) That whole subplot of Love Actually was actually quite cheeky -- it instantly made the movie an "R" because in every scene, two nude people were simulating all sorts of sex.

I remember thinking about that subplot when, on line for another movie, I saw a relative with her 8 year old on line for Love Actually and I said "oh, its really cute but...hey...there's nudity and sex in it." She figured her daughter could handle it, she'd heard this was a sweet love story movie. I said "OK," and went on my way.

Anyway, Billy Bob and Martin Freeman are really the TWO anchors of TV Fargo Season One(and Freeman is more famous for Lord of the Rings yet) and this is where the Coen Brothers roots of the show come in.

Billy Bob is essentially playing the Javier Bardem hit man character from "No Country for Old Men," and Martin Freeman is doing a letter-perfect verbal and visual impression of William H. Macy in Movie Fargo. Thus does TV Fargo reveal its intentions: to honor the Coen brothers by emulating them. Movie Fargo shows up the most in TV Fargo, but there were definite "lifted scenes and characters" from No Country for Old Men(in Season One) and The Big Lebowski(in Season Three) and....the whole homage bit is most enjoyable.

Which is where "Bates Motel" comes in. One realizes, watching Bates Motel and TV Fargo in proximity, that both shows have the same interest in mind: somehow carrying forth a classic movie in a "new form" that respects the original while going in other directions.

TV Fargo is much more successful in this regard than Bates Motel, but it has an edge. It isn't running one story for five seasons(said Billy Bob of his agreement to do Season One: "They told me ten episodes and I was out.") It runs "one long movie a season." And because of that , TV Fargo was able to attract much more stellar casts than Bates Motel.

TV Fargo Season 1 has Billy Bob and Martin Freeman as the main leads; Tom Hanks' son Colin Hanks (as a gentle cop who never wanted to be a cop, but took the job to support his daughter after the wife and mother died); Bob Odenkirk of "Better Call Saul" (as a bumbling and bossy police chief who turns out to be more sympathetic than we think) Big Oliver Platt as a supermarket king(Platt re-unites with Billy Bob after being in the great "Ice Harvest" together), Stephen Root(a Coen regular -- he was the guy who hires Woody Harrelson to kill Javier Bardem in No Country...and gets killed himself). And "Key and Peele," then (2014) YouTube kings who are a hilarious comedy duo (cast as ineffectual FBI guys.)

That's an all-star cast. Plus a woman I don't know in the Frances McDormand role(under another name) as the bright female cop who starts tracking the very, very, VERY dangerous Billy Bob after his murders. (And oh -- Keith frickin' Carradine -- the young love God of Nashville, Wild Bill Hickock on Deadwood as the female cop's doting ex-cop father, who now runs a diner in snowy small town Minnesota.)

I reel off all those actors and characters because they made TV Fargo Season 1 an easy, delightful watch -- they have great faces, great voices, great timing, great histories(Bad Santa for Billy Bob, Lord of the Rings for Freeman, Nashville and Deadwood for Carradine, etc.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

TV Fargo Season One emulates the key tonal aspect of Movie Fargo: It plays like a comedy -- what with all the funny "You betcha!" and "Oh, yah?" lines reappearing in those funny North Midwest accents(you have to laugh, like, ALL THE TIME) -- even as horrible, grim, bloody things happen -- and very innocent people get killed. That's exactly how it played out in Movie Fargo, and that's exactly how it plays out here. Though -- as the innocent people die along the way -- one has the same rooting interest one had for Frances McDormand(and her stamp-drawing hubby) to PLEASE survive the story. PLEASE.

It is worrisome, start to finish, in TV Fargo Season One that any of the innocents will survive. For Billy Bob -- as with Bardem before him -- is implacable, unstoppable, always able to kill those sent to kill him or trying to best him. And Billy Bob has a penchant for revenge when wronged. Its a great scary character -- but Billy Bob makes it his own. Whereas Bardem was foreign, exotic and dull-eyed; Billy Bob is...Billy Bob. He must have hired his "Bad Santa" writers to give him all manner of insults to say, this is a Scary Hit Man with great one liners. And Billy Bob delivers them (in TV Fargo Season One) with his usual biting, sly delivery -- though a bit toned down here.

TV Fargo Season One opens a bit like Strangers on a Train. Martin Freeman is an ineffectual insurance salesman in Bemidji Minnesota (real? I don't know -- Duluth figures a lot in the story, too) -- bedeviled by a wife who belittles him as a loser, a brother who is a winner(beauty queen wife, great house, great job), and a Big Bully from High School who elects to punch him in the nose on a city street - in front of the Bully's two bullying sons.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In the hospital ER, Martin meets Billy Bob(getting some injuries treated from a car crash involving a deer and the live man in the trunk of BB's car.) Billy Bob senses Martin as a loser, finds out about the Big Bully who hit him and -- eventually goes and kills the Big Bully as a favor to Martin Freeman(the Big Bully gets it with a knife in the head while having sex with a local stripper -- sex and violence mixed.)

You might say that Billy Bob is Bruno to Martin Freeman's Guy...except in this story, Guy becomes Bruno, too. Simply put -- just as with William H. Macy in Movie Fargo -- Martin's a funny-taking weasel with a real eye for criminal plotting. And murder on his own. Its as if Billy Bob's satanic Hit Man Helper creates a monster out of wimpy Freeman, and as everything suddenly goes right for Freeman(success at work, with women, against his brother) -- these two murderous villains spend the Season on a collision course. Billy Bob's merciless hit man versus Martin Freeman's murderous milquetoast -- who will win?

But -- amazingly -- this is just one of about four plots going on simultaneously in Fargo Season 1, and I guess I'll leave it at that.

Except to note a few things:

TV Fargo is on FX, where sex scenes are allowed(if no naughty bits are shown) and violence is off-the-charts allowed. The murders in TV Fargo Season One are pretty damn gory and I thought -- this IS what Psycho wrought all those decades ago. Murder in TV Fargo is bloody and brutal, as are the wounds that Billy Bob and Martin Freeman get along the way. It was all so gory that I smiled remembering how, in Psycho, that one slash to Martin Balsam's face seemed to be "the ultimate in forbidden blood" in its time. We've come a long way. That was NOTHING.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Unlike with Bates Motel -- which traced to a movie 50 years old by a long-dead director -- TV Fargo is produced by the Coen Brothers, populated with some of their actors(remember, Billy Bob was in The Man Who Wasn't There), and scored with the use of Carter Burwell's bizarre overly grand music (when the actual "credit music" of Movie Fargo rises up -- the nostalgia is palable.)

TV Fargo is also set in the snowy desolate climes of Movie Fargo and hence -- unlike the "totally moved to the forest near the ocean" of Bates Motel, a match for Movie Fargo. Think about it, "Bates Motel" has neither the setting nor the music of "Psycho" -- but "TV Fargo" has both from its source. it makes a BIG difference in connection.

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TV Fargo has a showrunner -- Noah Hawley - who made sure that TV Fargo Season One had both a great script(which I don't think Bates Motel has) and some incredibly cinematic scenes.

And Hitchcock looms over the best of them, IMHO. Billy Bob, out for vengeance with a machine gun, enters a building staffed by "Fargo North Dakota Mafia." He intends to kill all 22 of them, and he does. But we don't see it. Rather, from outside the building, the camera climbs up to the covered window above(ALL the windows are covered, you can't see anyone) and moves -- window by window by window -- left to right, then up, then right to left, then up, the left to right , as we HEAR each and every Mafia man screaming, fighting back, shooting back, getting shot, until the unseen Billy Bob reaches the Penthouse Office of the Big Man and kills him too -- whereupon one bodyguard crashes out through the window to the ground below, landing in front of hapless FBI men Key and Poole...who just miss capturing Billy Bob.

Its a great sequence, Hitchcock all the way much moreso than Coen Brothers -- and this Season One has at least three more of equal dazzle(like a shoot-out in a blinding whiteout blizzard, for another.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Having listened to Billy Bob's great dialogue and seen that "window by window massacre" -- I thought: "Hell, this better than most movies I've seen this year -- I would have PAID to see this."

And then I realized: Fargo Season One is from...2014. I'd let this gem slip by me for 4 years. And believe me, a lot has happened since 2014.

Briefly on Season Three: Ewan MacGregor plays twin brothers, and again we have the rich brother/poor brother angle(Fargo Season Three actually riffs on Fargo Season One! And that's not the only place. In each of the two seasons, a bumbling and bossy white male police chief keeps stopping his bright female deputy from investigating the case. Guess who comes out on top in both seasons?

Season Three has some top acting talent in David Thewlis(replacing Billy Bob's implacable hit man with an evil Mob Boss who ruins or kills anyone in his way) and Michael Stuhlbarg(from the Coen's A Serious Man) as Rich MacGregor's "You betcha" second in command(Rich MacGregor is "the parking lot king.") Season Three is also anchored by the young and beauteous Mary Elizabeth Winstead(not to be confused with the beauteous Evan Rachel Wood) as the Poor MacGregor's girlfriend (in real life, MacGregor and Winstead have become an item, though, oddly, MacGregor thanked BOTH Winstead AND his wife for their support, when he won his Golden Globe.)

Speaking of Golden Globe's , I saw Billy Bob win HIS Golden Globe for Fargo back in 2014(I said, "Hey I gotta watch that Fargo if Billy Bob was in it.") I remember Billy Bob's speech well; "I have found that if you say ANYTHING, it will be misquoted out of context, so all I'll say is thank you." And he walked.

I still have TV Fargo Season Two to watch. I've read that three seasons may be all that TV Fargo does. On the basis of the two seasons I saw...I hope not. I'd like to see more.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

For my exit:

An example of Billy Bob's dialogue:

He's trying to check into a snowy small town motel:

Female motel manager: Room's fifty dollars. Ten dollars more if you have a pet. You have a pet?
Billy Bob(after a beat): How about a fish?
Female Motel manager: What?
Billy Bob (after a beat): How...about...a ...FISH?

How he says that line(twice) is menacing, challenging, and funny, all at the same time.

I loves me some Billy Bob.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But this:

I note that Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman are re-united from Love Actually , here.

But they never had a scene together. They found this funny.

In addition, both Billy Bob Thornton and Oliver Platt were in The Ice Harvest, but THEY didn't share a scene together, though the story placed them in the same restaurant at the same time.

Compare this to Tony Perkins and Martin Balsam actually acting together three times -- Psycho, Catch 22, Murder on the Orient Express. THEY must have really felt the reunions.

Not so for Billy Bob, Martin, and Platt.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Billy Bob is essentially playing the Javier Bardem hit man character from "No Country for Old Men"

Thanks for the overview of TV Fargo ecarle. I'll get around to the first season soon (it's on Netflix where I am, which makes catching up easy).

A key Billy Bob (writing and acting) career point you don't mention that sounds like it foreshadows his Fargo role: One False Move (1992). Along with Reservoir Dogs and Unforgiven that year, I think it kind of set the violent/macho/brooding tone of the best American movies for the next few years.

Billy Bob was good in A Simple Plan and Primary Colors too (and he even makes the idiotic Armageddon watchable while he's on screen). From a movie-goer POV, BB was a guarantee of quality or at least watchability throughout the '90s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Thanks for the overview of TV Fargo ecarle.

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I enjoyed Season One immensely. Season Three less so - - though its got a straight out remake of a Movie Fargo scene and a great "new version" of a famous Big Lebowski scene.

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I'll get around to the first season soon (it's on Netflix where I am, which makes catching up easy).

--

OK...but my caveat is stolen from you: "Your mileage may vary." But for me, Billy Bob guaranteed enjoyment. He's what a star IS to me -- when he is NOT in parts of TV Fargo Season One...it drags somewhat(neither Martin Freeman nor the female cop protagonist played by Alison SOMETHING can compete.)

And this: TV Fargo Season One takes a famous scene from Movie Fargo....and pays it off, years later, like a sequel. Pretty clever what they do.

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A key Billy Bob (writing and acting) career point you don't mention that sounds like it foreshadows his Fargo role: One False Move (1992). Along with Reservoir Dogs and Unforgiven that year, I think it kind of set the violent/macho/brooding tone of the best American movies for the next few years.

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Absolutely. I sometimes around here note that what Hitchcock kept "below the frame" in Psycho -- Mother's final stabs into Arbogast (his chest? his heart? his stomach? his THROAT? Who knows...) -- became all too graphic in modern movies. Saving Private Ryan for one.

And "One False Move" for another. Billy Bob is part of a two-man psycho criminal team. HE's the hair-trigger scary one, but the OTHER guy is scarier: a bookish, bespectacled and calm African American who --- in mid conversation with somebody -- pulls a knife and stabs the man as violently as possible(full view) in the heart -- and then returns to bespectacled calmness. Billy Bob and the Calm Black Killer also wipe out an entire family, mainly with knives, in full view early on. Its grisly stuff. No Arbogastian restraint in the stabbings.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And of course, in One False Move , the murderous Billy Bob/Calm Black Stabber team are making their way from LA to a sleepy Arkansas town where the only law is amiable Bill Paxton...and one dreads the collision. (There's a pretty lady and a little boy involved, too.)

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Billy Bob was good in A Simple Plan and Primary Colors too (and he even makes the idiotic Armageddon watchable while he's on screen). From a movie-goer POV, BB was a guarantee of quality or at least watchability throughout the '90s.

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I have to say here that my "Control Star" -- Richard Boone -- is a fairly on-point analogy to Billy Bob, though Billy Bob ended up with more prestige movies "up front."

I suggest this:

Paladin aside, the first 10 years or so of Richard Boone's movie career were dead serious, he leaned on his deep voice but had little humor or personality or "offbeat charisma." Somewhere around 1964, Boone CHANGED HIS PERSONA. Added a lot of flamboyance, humor(didn't one of our posters say Boone "added whipped cream to his voice") and suddenly became a hugely entertaining ...character star. Rio Conchos. Hombre. The Night of the Following Day. The Kremlin Letter. Big Jake. The Shootist. Boone entertains grandly in all of 'em.

Billy Bob: movies like One False Move(where Billy Bob is the real deal in crooks and killers: mean and dumb and merciless), A Simple Plan(where he is sad, kinda slow man), and the rest -- he's a good actor, respected and respectable.

But it took Bad Santa for Billy Bob to "find his Richard Boone." He added a big dose of humor(on the one hand) and sex appeal(on the other) and suddenly Billy Bob Thornton was a movie star, not just an actor. Bad News Bears, The Ice Harvest, Bad Santa II...the deed was done. And somewhere in there, he did TV Fargo Season I and THAT killer --funny and charismatic -- is a far stretch from the sickeningly real and cruel killer in "One False Move."

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But maybe Billy Bob sold out...just a little...in hugging this Bad Santa persona. (Hey, if Al Pacino can do it, why not Billy Bob?)

Billy Bob put out a book a few years ago. I bought it and I love it. Its called "The Billy Bob Thornton Tapes" or something and it ends before TV Fargo. Lots of great anecdotes. A forward by Angelina Jolie(remember when she was MARRIED to Billy Bob? The guy's a ladykiller -- runs a rock band, too.)

Two anecdotes:

ONE: Billy Bob was waitering some Hollywood function. Billy Wilder chatted him up: "Do you want to be an actor?" Yes. "You're too handsome to be a character man and too ugly to be a leading man. Become a writer instead. Actors are a dime a dozen. Hollywood needs writers. Write yourself a movie to star in."

Result: Sling Blade. Billy Bob told this story to the LA Times, Billy Wilder read it and called Billy Bob up "Billy to Billy," to come to Wilder's little Beverly Hills office. Billy Bob came over. Billy Wilder said "I read your story about me mentoring you. I have to tell you , I don't remember any of that at all. But your story moved me, so I wanted to meet you." And Billy Bob has the photo(in his book) to prove it.

TWO: Billy Bob is supportive of "Armageddon" and big friends with its star, Bruce Willis. Some years later, Willis asked Billy Bob to be in a movie called "Bandits." Billy Bob got real sick(he tends to starve himself.) Hospitalized. Willis told the studio "we will wait as long as it takes" for Billy Bob to recover, and Willis refused to replace Billy Bob.

Friends for life.

Those can be good.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A little follow up, odds and ends:

The TV Fargo Season One "Mafia Massacre From Window to Window" scene is on YouTube. (Natch.) Order up Fargo Season One, Episode 7, Billy Bob Thornton shoots mobsters or something like that.

I looked at it again and the Hitchcock movie it is really homaging is...wait for it.. Frenzy. The scene where the secretary goes into the building and we just IMAGINE her finding Brenda's body and we wait for the scream. That's a funny thing about Frenzy: its a movie that is as much about its "non-violent cinematic flourishes"(like this "finding Brenda's body" scene; and the "Farewell to Babs" staircase backtrack; and Rusk's "Got a place to stay" moment) as much as about its grisly content.

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Colin Hanks. He's carved out a nice career for himself. He did some episodes of Mad Men.

But as Fargo proves, he's rather a limpid and colorless facsimile of his famous father. Michael Douglas and Jeff Bridges had looks to match THEIR famous fathers. But Colin Hanks just doesn't have it. Tom Hanks has been trying to hold onto his looks as his 60s come -- but he was a heartthrob back in the 80's.

I recently saw Tom Hanks in The Post and I felt that he was carrying the movie with his heavy store of goodwill for 35 years as a star. He doesn't much look like a movie star, but he is one. And you have to squint to remember that the back-to-back Philadelphia/Forrest Gump Oscars made him THE superstar of the 90s(with Tom Cruise neck and neck but Oscarless.)

You know, Forrest Gump takes its lumps, but back in the summer of 1994, it was a mega-blockbuster without any "action CGI" beyond those weird images of Hanks with JFK and LBJ, etc. The movie earned its big bucks from Baby Boomer nostalgia -- and Hanks wonderfully constructed character with the funny Deep South voice, the slow mind, and the big heart(and , when necessary, the big fists -- he was no wimp when it came to defending Jenny.) Philadelphia was the Oscar bait; Gump was the iconic role.

And poor Colin Hanks just won't ever get a chance to do that. So he's on TV Fargo Season I acting up a storm just to make an impresson. Good news: he does.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Somewhere up there, I said that TV Fargo Season 1 had a better script than "Bates Motel." That's not quite true. In fact, I can say that the final episodes of "Bates Motel" matched the final episodes of TV Fargo Season 1 pretty well in maintaining that great "accelerating" climactic suspense that you find in movies like "Psycho" and practically any good novel where you are turning the pages as fast as you can to get to the end. Still, I think the Fargo script is a bit more creative and higher level than what got wrote for Bates Motel.

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About that suspense. Maybe the over-hyped excitements of my "Psycho" youth are long behind me -- endless playground chats and sleepless nights, etc --- but I can STILL find my pulse pounding while watching a series like TV Fargo when the storyteller tells the story good. The Sopranos(long ago), Fargo (recently) -- the suspense mechanism still WORKS on me -- I still hate truly evil villains, I still root for truly nice people to survive.

They can't take that away from me. No matter what age I am.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Well, I have just completed viewing Fargo, Season Two.

My hopes were not high. Billy Bob Thornton had anchored Season One(which was great.)

Kirsten Dunst was anchoring Season Two.

But..surprise for me..Season Two was better than Season One. The best of the three seasons to date. A very exciting and sometimes touching entertainment, which carried forth the traditions of Movie Fargo and the Coens(we get an extended Miller's Crossing homage in this season), AND other influences: Hitchcock, QT(the ultra-violence) and even Brian DePalma(this season is set in 1979, and thus many sequences are filmed in DePalma's split screen techniques from Sisters, Carrie, and Dressed to Kill.)

TV Fargo Season Two uses the "Family Plot device": two disparate plots and stories come together as one -- though in this case, we see the link early on:

STORY ONE: A 1979 mid-Western gang war. The Kansas City Mafia(Irish, not Italian, I believe) announces its desire to take over Dakota/Minnesota territories run by a mean German-American family of killlers. Trucking is the main "front." As the story opens, the patriarch of the German crime family has had a stroke; the matriarch(Jean Smart, stripped of make-up and very severe looking) seems to be Michael Coreleone when Vito died: powerless. Wrong. She's got three mean sons, one VERY mean Native American killer, and the money to hire many, MANY soldiers to fight back against Kansas City.

STORY TWO: A ditzy Minnesota hair stylist (Kirsten Dunst) runs over a guy who runs in front of her car. She throws him in the trunk and drives him home to her blank-faced, doughy husband(Jesse Plemons), a butcher's assistant who hopes to buy the store from his boss. The victim comes to life, attacks the husband, is stabbed to death in return and...on urging of the wife(Dunst), the husband elects to run the victim through his meat slicer at work in the dead of night.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

So you end up with two stories -- one an ultra-violent mob war tale, and the other an ultra-violent "twisted love story" about a married couple who do unspeakable things, even while the husband is a pretty nice guy(the wife is a bit too matter of fact about murder, but...she surprises with her later humanity.)

In between are a couple of Nice Cops with a Sad Bond: Patrick Wilson is a young local police officer (and a Vietnam Vet.) Ted Danson is an aged state police officer(and WWII vet). Together, they will investigate the Kirsten Dunst murder and face off against BOTH sides in the gang war -- and they are our heroes. The Sad Bond? Wilson's nice wife is Danson's nice daughter -- and she is fighting a downhill battle with cancer. TV Fargo Season Two uses this thread through the entire 10 episodes: even as cops Wilson and Danson risk their lives against all the baddies, the shared wife and daughter of each man is at risk of death from another cause.

A nice dramatic twist: Though Wilson loves his wife very much, and she may die soon, she's a Cops Wife...and she urges him to keep travelling to investigate -- for days, in other states -- even as she is at death's door. The story makes the point: a man's gotta do what he's gotta do. The ailing wife is left alone with a couple of helpers. And as always with Fargo -- we DESPERATELY want the good guys to survive(even as "collateral damage" nice people are brutally killed along the way.)

Truth be told, I'd say that Patrick Wilson(a rather dull looking fellow whose movie career fizzled after Phantom of the Opera and Watchmen) and Ted Danson are the "true" anchors of TV Fargo Season Two. Danson is an Old Familiar Face, and Wilson is playing a cop at once True Blue and Brave(he will draw a gun on multiple Mafia baddies with total confidence in his ability to win.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But there are a smattering of other great actors in TV Fargo Season Two, all as delightful to recognize as the folks in Billy Bob's season:

Brad Garrett(the sonorous older brother on Everybody Loves Raymond) is the Kansas City Mafia's emissary to the German killers in Dakota. Its pretty funny to watch Raymond's brother face off with one of the Designing Women(Jean Smart) over a bloodbath threat, but he makes it: "Take our offer to buy out your territory or we will kill every last one of your family."

Nick Offerman-- the mustachoed funny man from "Parks and Recreation" here drops the moustache and adds an Ahab beard to play a drunken, over-articulate lawyer who proves to be a real hero, with great heart. (He's going to help everybody.)

"Burn Notice Reunion." Jeffrey Donovan, the once-young star of Burn Notice(a fun cable buddy spy show of long ago), plays the meanest of Jean Smart's gangster sons. His older Burn Notice buddy -- the Great Bruce Campbell(The Evil Dead) -- plays none other than Ronald Reagan, barnstorming his way through the snowy Midwest in his 1979 Presidential run-up to 1980.

Adam Arkin(Alan's son, now a cable series veteran) is the bean-counting corporate head of the Kansas City Mafia.

But the best of all, the true standout of Fargo Season Two is a surprise: a black actor named Bokeem Woodbine, who I can trace all the way back to a 2000 movie with Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell about a Vegas heist pulled off by guys dressed like Elvis.

Well, its a lot of years later, and Bokeem Woodbine has matured into a very handsome man with a soothing, over-articulate voice -- and pretty much the best lines to say in all of Fargo Season Two. He's on the Kansas City side of the gang war, but subject to switching sides and playing ALL sides. Its a great performance, charismatic and commanding, with just enough compassion in his actions to make you care about him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

As with Fargo Season One, the idea is to take all these very interesting actors and throw them into a plot of great suspense(the Family Plot device of everybody misunderstanding the motives of everybody else is strong), great action (unlike as in The Godfather, where the "gang war" is a series of ambushes, in this story, its real WAR, with real BATTLES), great dialogue(Bokeem Woodbine gets speeches of Oscar-level profundity and length) and...

...real heart. For the story of the young wife and mother with cancer touches our heart at all times. (She's played by the same woman who played Leo's victimized first wife in Wolf of Wall Street, and her utter niceness of face melts our hearts in both films.) And it turns out that her story actually has something to do with Fargo Season One...

And oh, I forgot to mention: UFOs play a big part in this one. Yep, it goes SciFi at key moments.

Hey, why not, eh?

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I've determined that unlike committing to the multi-year arcs of shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men, I'm getting very comfortable with these "ten episode self-contained arcs" of the three individual Fargo seasons and...recently...Big Little Lies. 10 episodes is just right. I binge them, and I get caught up in the rising excitement of the tale just like reading a good thriller novel. I race through the episodes of Fargo Season Two as I race through the last pages of an exciting novel.

But this about Fargo Season Two: when the time comes to run the victim's body through the meat slicer, the gore is stomach-churning to the max. The scene references The Sopranos, the original Fargo(the wood chipper), Sweeney Todd and even the recent Kingsmen II(a man is turned into a hamburger and then another man has to eat it.) But this "TV Fargo" version is so graphic that it feels like Herschel Gordon Walker took the helm. Honestly, I can take most gore, but I turned away here.

And I wondered: whose idea was it to take "Fargo" far beyond its original bloody but tasteful roots into THIS gore-fest? Its really the only truly sick moment in a 10 episode arc that is otherwise bloody but tasteful, itself.

I checked some internet reviews of Fargo Season One and Season Two and it looks like a lot of TV critics felt it was the best series of each year it was on(2014 and 2015/2016.) How'd I miss it? I dunno...I can only watch so much TV. I realize how many OTHER great series I've missed. I'll have to go looking.

As long as they stick to 10 episodes...start middle finish....I'm there.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Billy Bob Thornton in GOLIATH:

Having enjoyed Billy Bob immensely in Fargo Season One, I located his new series "Goliath" on Amazon Prime(I'm trying to get into these applications.)

The limited series is, to put it lightly, my first real disappointment with Billy Bob.

Oh, he's great in it. The series proves that the man does have star power -- both in terms of how he acts(his persona) and in his history on screen for over 20 years now(One False Movie, the one-off Sling Blade, in which he neither looks nor sounds like Billy Bob, A Simple Plan, Monster's Ball..and the persona-creating trifecta of Bad Santa, Bad News Bears, and The Ice Harvest.)

But...but...but...Billy Bob is now in: a lawyer show. A pretty generic lawyer show. With passable but not great dialogue, and a passable but not great plot.

What is disappointing is to see Billy Bob in something other actors could have done. His lawyer is an alcoholic whose main office is a bar; with a sympathetic and hot ex-wife(Maria Bello) and a rebellious but loving teenage daughter. And he has a call girl for an office assistant.

The show is from David Kelley(LA Law, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal), who used to be hot stuff on broadcast TV but soon looked like a formula guy when cable came along(though I must admit I liked Boston Legal for the cast and the quips.) What he's got in "Goliath" is just one of his old broadcast lawyer shows, but with everybody saying the "F" word all the time and lots of sex scenes (but with no nudity, just like Fargo -- is this how it has to be done?)

I'm a few episodes into Season One. Season Two is coming soon. I suppose I'll stick it out...I've gotten used to Billy Bob in a formula entertainment and I am a fan. But...geez. I guess he needs the money to support his rock band and lifestyle.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Noteable is the casting: "Goliath" has four "star names" in its cast:

Billy Bob.

William Hurt -- a Best Actor winner, an eighties star(Body Heat, Broadcast News), now an older character actor with a great voice. Be reminded that William Hurt turned down movies like The Untouchables and Jurassic Park and kind of threw his star career away(by choice.) So now he's a "cable TV guy." Hurt plays an evil lawyer who lives in his dark penthouse office -- and has a mottled face of burned flesh. He's hard to look at(I picture Hurt in the make-up chair for hours) and definitely the villain of the piece. (And wait, Hurt DID do a nude scene in this series, showing off a male member of great girth that is probably a prosthetic but who knows, maybe Hurt is that well endowed?)

Maria Bello: I always had a thing for this actress in the 90's and 00's. She's very , very sexy, and showed that off in "A History of Violence"(sex scenes with Viggo Mortensen) and "The Cooler"(sex scenes with William H. Macy.) She does sex scenes on "Gollath," too -- but also plays a rather stock lawyer character -- the "good woman" in a firm full of sharks(led by Hurt.)

Molly Parker: An actress with a great , edgy face. She made her mark in "Deadwood," but I hear she works all the time. Here she's the aging beyotch second-in-command evil lawyer behind William Hurt -- and hurting as younger female lawyers start to catch Hurt's eye.

So...Billy Bob(an Oscar winning writer), William Hurt(a Best Actor), Maria Bello(an indie movie siren) and Molly Parker(a cable series veteran.) All of whom act in this mediocre lawyer show and remind you of the great work they've already done. Just goes to show you, there are more good actors in Hollywood than good scripts for them to do.

Its just...disappointing. But made better because those people are in the roles.

That's why we have stars, I guess.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Molly Parker: An actress with a great , edgy face.

She's been in all sorts of things - almost always very good. Not even her playing the mom on the new Lost In Space on Netflix, however, could make that watchable.

I encoutered her first on a great '90s, Canadian, absurdist comedy 'Twitch City'. Premise: Parker is the female half of a couple, the male half of which never leaves their apartment preferring to watch TV all day. All eps are on youtube. This one is a fave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoUO4ybWAMk

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Molly Parker: An actress with a great , edgy face.

---
She's been in all sorts of things - almost always very good. Not even her playing the mom on the new Lost In Space on Netflix, however, could make that watchable.

--

I looked at her imdb list, and it seems she's the hardest working woman in show business -- a "working actress," kind of like Vera Miles was on TV and movies back in the day.

From Deadwood to some show about swingers in the 70s to House of Cards and on and on, with a stopover for now at "Goliath."

I find her face to be quite interesting -- it is a severe face in some ways; a child-like face in other ways. Her villain on "Goliath" is notable for wearing skintight outfits to show off a taut, thin, muscled body -- the body of a professional shark. Whereas her Deadwood lady was all prim and proper and churchmarmish -- until that episode where she had hot sex with the handsome local sheriff.

Years ago, Molly Parker played opposite Peter Skarsgaard in a film based on the real-life Silicon Valley phenomenon of young computer whizs who are so mega-rich, all they can do is hook up with escorts rather than establish real relationships with women. The catch: Parker's escort -- a stripper, actually -- would accompany the young brain to Vegas as a literal escort but, no sex. I can't remember the name of that movie, but it was fraught with pent-up eroticism, and Parker ran the show.

Parker is older now, and "Goliath" makes the point of saying she's still gorgeous, incredibly fit but...older. Age is the inevitable confrontation for everyone.

I'll take a look at that Twitch City.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

PS. I'm reminded, watching Billy Bob, William Hurt, Maria Bello, and Molly Parker on "Goliath," that our "actors who make it" --whether as stars or working actors -- usually have something special going on. Maria Bello and Molly Parker are beauties(required of most actresses), but with very specific, unique faces. Billy Bob made it by the means of his Southern accent and ornery-with-a-heart-of-gold persona.

As for William Hurt, in the beginning I think it was his distinctive deep voice and soulful manner than made him a star(and, in Body Heat, a pretty good naked body), but as the 80's moved on, Hurt proved a rather mannered and off-putting screen presence. It is as if he KNEW he should NOT be a leading man, and he moved himself into the supporting ranks. He also had a reputation for moodiness on set(Lee Marvin almost punched him out on the set of Gorky Park.)

A movie I recommend with two "Goliath" stars in it, is "A History of Violence," where Maria Bello is Viggo Mortensen's sexy wife, and William Hurt is his pure-evil Philadelphia gangster brother, who tells Viggo "I should have strangled you in the crib when I had the chance," and MEANS it. A tough little movie from David Cronenberg about a nice, mild-mannered husband and father(Viggo) who turns out to be a mob killer of extraordinary ferocity...but still a nice guy. The early scene where diner owner Viggo takes out two truly creepy killers terrorizing his diner, with great skill, is a real crowd-pleaser.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Which is where "Bates Motel" comes in.

On this slenderest of hook, I thought I'd hang the observation that a Bates Motel cast member recently made the semi-big-time. Olivia Cooke who played Emma, the wife of Norman's half-brother, Dylan was the female lead in Spielberg's intermittently fun but mostly vapid and confused Ready Player One. [Who's it for really? it seems mostly aimed at young gamers who won't get half the jokes - lots of Shining and Chucky plot-points all way over the age-range of most young kid audience members. It's simply not appropriate for my game-mad, 10 year old nephew.]
Much of RP1 takes place in a virtual game world and the whole idea is that in the real world the charismatic, ultra-glamorous avatars are homely, charisma-free misfits. This whole strategy has a built in problem since Cooke and male lead Tye Sheridan aren't especially homely... and yet they *are* strikingly charisma-free... all the scenes with Cooke and Sheridan remind one of outtakes from Back To The Future w/ Eric Stoltz. These guys *can't* carry a movie - they don't stick visually in our minds- they're *not* stars (or even close) for a reason, and they're not vivid character actors either. I therefore don't see RP1 doing much for Cooke's career.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Ready Player One rather advances "the Spielberg problem," I think.

I haven't seen it...but I saw the trailer...which seemed to take CGI madness to a new level OF madness...and my feeling was that Spielberg's heart really wasn't in it. That the film evidently is steeped deep in 80's nostalgia -- remember, Lucas/Spielberg pretty much WAS the 80's as a popular template -- would seem to help Spielberg re-establish his "genre cred," but it just looks wrong to me.

But...I haven't seen it.

And...it made significant money -- not MCU/Star Wars money but, thanks to worldwide distribution, a lot. Putting Spielberg over 1 billion or 2 billion or 3 billion or something, as the most successful filmmaker ever. (Hitch left way in the dust, but maybe Hitch's canon is stronger, I think.)

Meanwhile, I HAVE seen The Post -- the movie that Spielberg set aside work on RP1 to make quick-like and...and...eh. It seemed to me that they were setting up a "false challenge" in the Post and Katherine Graham(Meryl Streep) deciding "to publish or not to publish." I watched this with a female companion who, late in the game, said, "I get it -- they can't decide whether or not to publish," with irony. And when the time came for Streep to say those words I was sort of giggling.

Streep's "precise" older women are starting to feel a lot alike to me, be they Thatcher or a bad singer or Katherine Graham. But I know she has her fans.

I say the guys took this one -- Tom Hanks, creating his own rock-em-sock-em version of Ben Bradlee(Jason Robards WAS tough; Tom PLAYS tough) and Bob Odenkirk steals the whole thing as a quiet, deadpan little man who manages to move the game forward quigte a bit.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

On a check backwards check, I'm thinking that Lincoln is Spielberg's best film of the past ten years, but I may have forgotten one. Oh, yeah, Bridge of Spies, very good -- for one viewing. Spielberg is, as someone noted, carving out a career as historian while keeping his hand in with genre (he SWEARS he's making one more Indy Jones, with crusty ol' Harrison Ford in the lead.)

Meanwhile, swanstep, back at your main point:

---
This whole strategy has a built in problem since Cooke and male lead Tye Sheridan aren't especially homely... and yet they *are* strikingly charisma-free... all the scenes with Cooke and Sheridan remind one of outtakes from Back To The Future w/ Eric Stoltz. These guys *can't* carry a movie - they don't stick visually in our minds- they're *not* stars (or even close) for a reason, and they're not vivid character actors either. I therefore don't see RP1 doing much for Cooke's career.

---

I'm reminded that Spielberg was really "hit or miss" with his child and teen actors in the 80's, and even some of his adults. Dee Wallace in ET, for instance. Idea being: Spielberg was so busy being a dazzling director, that there wasn't much room for his actors to register. Cooke and Sheridan will soon find out that they can be in a blockbuster by Spielberg and...go nowhere. The days when Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss could all become big stars outta one Spielberg movie....are over.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I finished "the first season" of Billy Bob Thornton's lawyer show "Goliath" and I must admit, it picked up speed and suspense and got SOMEWHAT more intelligent as the various legal traps were sprung in the courtroom near the end.

I tend to watch these "binge" series(where all the episodes are available immediately) like I read a mystery novel: slowly at first, and then as fast as I can at the end. I never look at the end of mystery novels, but I will burn through the final 50 pages at top speed as I feel the story accelerating into climax. I watched the end of Goliath the same way -- the final three hours back-to-back to back.

The show is called "Goliath" because Billy Bob's small team(two lawyers -- one of whom is a real estate agent most of the time -- and some staff, including a call girl) are the David taking on the Goliath of the giant hundred person firm(with staff to do all research and computer work) in the courtroom.

The end paid off because the bad guys were REALLY bad -- William Hurt and Molly Parker as arrogant, rich cheat-to-win superlawyers. Its no real spoiler to say that they lose, and Billy Bob wins. This ain't Chinatown. (A bonus bad guy is Billy Bob's real life pal, Dwight Yoakum, having fun playing an ultrarich weapons maker while looking exactly like the long haired country singer he used to be.)

A new Goliath season starts on June 15th. I guess I'll watch it. New story arc, new guest stars (I assume Hurt and Parker are gone, maybe Maria Bello sticks around as BB's ex-wife.)

As with the better Fargo seasons I watched recently, I am personally happy to see that basic storytelling still engages me -- I hate cheating bad guys, I love to see the good guy flip the tables and "overcome." Basic human rooting interest never goes away, I guess.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And this about Billy Bob Thornton...and some other actors:

In Fargo, Thornton played an evil hit man who killed innocents as well as crooks -- and I strongly rooted for him to die, to get killed, to be stopped permanently before he could kill anymore good people.

In Goliath, Thornton played the good guy -- and I strongly rooted for him to defeat (in court, not mortally) the arrogant villains arrayed against him.

Same actor. Same MAN. But I hated him in one story, loved him in the other.

That's acting, right? The role CHANGES the actor -- you hate him, or you love him, depends on the role.

Except a lot of actors can't play that "switch." A lot of hero actors (Cary Grant, James Stewart, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen) could NOT play villains. And a few villains could not play good guys(I can't think of them, but they were there.)

Billy Bob, since he's willing to PLAY villains, joins such "good guy/bad guy" switch hitters as Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, John Travolta and, back in the day, Richard Boone.

And this: Boone and Billy Bob share this: the ability to take the same basic, "entertainingly ornery" personality and to FIT it to their villain or their hero. Thus, in "Fargo" Billy Bob is hateable, but fun to watch, funny, and sometimes he kills the RIGHT people. Thus, in "Goliath," Billy Bob is the hero, but a drinker with a temper who sometimes unleashes on his own team. Its a matter of degree -- play the bad guy like a good guy; play the good guy like the bad guy. Richard Boone and Billy Bob Thornton BOTH do this.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'm afraid my double-dose of Billy Bob series has devalued the return (for a third season) of a summer series called "Animal Kingdom." I got into this series(based on an Australian movie) with a companion because we both liked the premise and it is filmed in beach towns I frequented as a youth in LA. And it has an "anchor star" in Ellen Barkin(not Burstyn), as a "female Tony Soprano" who runs a perverse and incestuous family of beach guys(her sons by different men, plus a teenaged orphaned grandson) who run dubious crime capers all over the Southern California beach town community(a dubious premise because, its a pretty small area to allow for all those crimes.)

The Australian movie only had two hours to posit ITS criminal mother as capable of nudging one of her sons to kill the other son's nice girlfriend who knows too much. Animal Kingdom has been "streeeetcching" that premise for three seasons now, with diminishing returns.

But I guess I'll still watch it. I like the beach town scenes. Nostalgia.

And I note that, by next episode, they'll be adding Denis Leary to the cast. Leary started as a stand-up with a couple of hilarious HBO specials that I played on audio in my car. He parlayed his stand-up and good looks into one great dark comedy(The Ref, with Kevin Spacey and , ah, some famous actress) and a bunch of cable TV series.

Looks like "Animal Kingdom" put up the bucks to add Leary's cable star power to the show. It needs him. He's almost Billy Bob-ish in his irasicible cynicism on record.

Meanwhile: back at Ellen Barkin(not Burstyn). In the 80's as a young woman, Barkin's smashed, irregular face(coupled with a tight body) made her a "sex star with a difference" in movies like Diner, The Big Easy(especially), and Buckeroo Banzai. Along the way, she married and divorced a billionaire, so she doesn't need to act for money.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Well, Ellen Barkin is older now, and that smashed face has twisted itself into a scary mask -- her mouth droops down to the side in a permanent scowl, her eyes are slits. Scary.

But she DOES have star power. Her Beach Mama crime boss, like Tony Soprano, keeps outwitting other criminals AND the police, and "Animal Kingdom" has had her having to put down rebellion amongst her sons against her. Its a good star role but it lacks what Tony Soprano -- and Billy Bob -- have: humor. The poor woman just isn't FUNNY. Only evil. But she bakes great pies for "all the boys." (Its inferred that by keeping these grown men as psychological children, she controls them. With food , a lot.)

For the record, the "boys" are an interesting bunch: a very handsome son named Dax; a scary son, just out of prison and gang rapes and with a face like the Michael Myers Halloween mask; a matched pair of brunette and blond long-haired hippie sons(one is a stud with all the women; the other is a closet gay)...and the teenaged grandson who is growing up fast.

As Season Three begins, one of the above sons is dead -- which thickens the plot(Who shot JR? For real this time) and makes room for Leary.

I'll be watching. Maybe not reporting. And damn, its not as good as Fargo. And not as funny as Goliath.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

And a few villains could not play good guys

Lorre? Lugosi? (who always fancied himself as a dapper, romantic leading man). A lot of people never accepted Mitchum in non-villain roles. Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch of the West.

Greatest switch hitters of my lifetime are also my fave actors: Caine, Hackman, Sam Jackson, Kathy Bates, Isabelle Huppert, Anjelica Huston, Theron, Swinton...

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Lorre? Lugosi? (who always fancied himself as a dapper, romantic leading man). A lot of people never accepted Mitchum in non-villain roles. Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch of the West.

---

There you go. I was stumped, myself. The interesting one is Mitchum, who was leading man material for his entire career, slipped in some horrific villains(Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear)...and seemed to maintain that "Cape Fear" menace forever after, in his good guy roles(indeed, he's the killer yet one more time -- and a preacher -- in the so-so Western mystery "Five Card Stud" with Dino in '68.)

I expect that Lorre and Lugosi -- and Karloff -- were so typecast in the beginning that it just wasn't going to happen on the good guy roles from them. Lugosi, I think -- never (though he was killed by Karloff in The Body Snatchers, i think he was a henchman type.) As I recall, Lorre broke through to some sympathetic support roles in the sixties -- Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Five Weeks in a Balloon -- but he was never leading man material.

Getting back to Richard Boone, though he was a hero on Have Gun Will Travel, many of his movie roles were villain parts -- Hombre, Big Jake, The Shootist, and The Kremlin Letter(though he wavers there, for awhile.) I expect that Boone knew he was always marketable as a bad guy because movies NEED bad guys, but oddly enough, he drew the line at The Sting, refusing the Doyle Lonnigan part that went to Robert Shaw(another switch hitter: baddie in The Sting and Pelham 123, good guy in Black Sunday and The Deep and...I say...something in between as Quint in Jaws -- he smashes that rescue radio...)

----

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Greatest switch hitters of my lifetime are also my fave actors: Caine, Hackman, Sam Jackson, Kathy Bates, Isabelle Huppert, Anjelica Huston, Theron, Swinton...

---

There you go. An actor or actress who is willing to take hero AND villain parts may get relegated to character stardom, but it is very interesting stardom. Caine, Hackman and Jackson made the big bucks because they were willing to play bad sometimes. (And sometimes, an interesting MIX: Caine is the psychopathic hit man HERO of Get Carter; Hackman's evil sheriff in Unforgiven operates from a position of self-professed morality, etc.)

And yet: Caine turned down Rusk in Frenzy(that was TOO evil a villain -- Caine feared he'd never recover his career) and Hackman turned down Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Frankly, of three "names" who turned down Lecter -- Hackman, Duvall and Nicholson -- I can never even CONCEIVE of crisp-talking all-Americans Hackman and Duvall as Lecter. Nicholson, yeah, easy -- he likely turned it down because it was too gruesome(a cannibal) but he would have roared in the role.

---

Some SPOILERS here: A few star actors tried -- just once -- to play villains and though I say it worked fine, they seemed very uncomfortable doing it: Harrison Ford(What Lies Beneath), Robert Redford(Captain America)...Dean Martin(Rough Night in Jerico). Tom Hanks rather "got away" with playing a man who was willing to kill an old black woman(in The Ladykillers) and supported other murders -- but somehow never really came off as a villain.

I don't think John Wayne ever could have played a villain. Nor Gary Cooper. Nor Clark Gable.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Now, Cary Grant? Well, as we know, he was SUPPOSED to be the villain in Suspicion, and he's rather villainous in the film, but the movie cops out. Reportedly, Grant wanted the Ray Milland role in Dial M...but Jack Warner wouldn't give it to him. I don't think Grant tried very hard to get it, though. And that man WAS a villain. The double-cruelty of Tony Wendice -- first subjecting his wife to a grueling strangling that fails, then trying to frame her for killing the killer -- that was EVIL. I wonder if Grant really wanted that role. I wonder how he would have been in it...

One more impressive "good guy playing bad": Tom Cruise.

First in a non-murderous part: as the misogynistic anti-woman guru in Magnolia; also as the fully-disguised movie mogul in "Tropic Thunder"(its Harvey Weinstein and about ten other Hollywood wretches, yes?) but mainly...

...as the gray-haired, gray-suited hitman in "Collateral," hijacking cabbie Jamie Foxx into a night of murders. What I love about Cruise in Collateral is that it feels like his entire career was playing the wrong parts(the good guy) and that Collateral revealed the REAL Cruise: cold, controlling, arrogant, uncaring. Its just a vibe I get from the guy.

And how about this one: Anthony Perkins. He'd been the good guy for many films in the fifties, the SWEET nice, beautiful young man. And then...Norman Bates. And amazingly...we didn't hate him, didn't want him killed.

He's like a heroic villain. Or a villainous hero....

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

I tend to watch these "binge" series(where all the episodes are available immediately) like I read a mystery novel: slowly at first, and then as fast as I can at the end. I never look at the end of mystery novels, but I will burn through the final 50 pages at top speed as I feel the story accelerating into climax. I watched the end of Goliath the same way -- the final three hours back-to-back to back.

I think that this is a very common pattern: if a novel's good enough, compelling enough to finish then you'll generally read the second half faster than the first half. The main upside of all-eps-released-at-once formats is that you can conform TV viewing to this speeding up pattern.

For the final season of The Americans this year, since I was feeling already overwhelmed by various commitments, I decided to let the 10 ep. season finish and then watch it all this week in a bingable way. Just 4 eps left for me now: it's incredibly tense and gripping,*great*! The Americans got into a bit of an ultra-realistic dawdle in Season 5, but Season 6's end-game has it again staking its claim to be one of the best ever TV shows.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

OK, I've finished The Americans now, and I've gotta say that that was pretty amazing. haunting, chilling, I'll be thinking about this finale and final cluster of eps for a long time.

While there's no point in my going into details here, I would just say that The Americans (about ultra-long term undercover Soviet spies living in DC in the '80s) was always primed to have a great downward-spiralling ending. Eventually the FBI was always going to find them, the cold war was going to wind down, the Soviet Union was going to start to fall apart at home, every human relaltionship being built on lies of various sorts... The series whole anti-hero allure was that we're effectively cheering on these people doing terrible things for years.... but we always knew that eventually they'd lose on every conceivable level. So unlike sone great shows that have problems with their endings, in some sense The Americans always was end-focussed and arguably almost couldn't screw it up. So it delivers - "I was hoping to make it home for dinner, but things are very topsy turvy at the office” is a line I'm going to be using forever! - and in such a compelling way that I genuinely feel like rewatching from the beginning soon-ish (6 seasons - 75 eps). First season lines and scenes that i barely remember now were paid off in the finale in unsettling ways... Amazing.

In sum, a great series, and a worthy addition to the top table of post-Sopranos Peak TV. As I mentioned in my previous post, Season 5 felt a little becalmed to me, but it's really the calm before the storm of the final season.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

There are some comparisons to be made with Mad Men. MM could have ended on a very high note at the end of Season 5 ('Are you Alone?' and You Only Live Twice strings). The Americans' counterpart is the end of Season 4. That's the show at its most fully realized; it's near perfect up to that point. The final two seasons of MM were a little more variable and arguably tarnished things a bit notwithstanding various highlights, and The Americans is the same way. Watch its Seasons 1-4 for perfect capering and domestic drama-ing (you think *your* marriage and family is hard work!), stay for the slightly less perfect final 2 seasons armed with the knowledge that the final season delivers.

A final comparison: it became clear by the end of The Americans that the core, tragic, anti-hero monster of the series was Elizabeth Jennings. She's Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Walter White, and so on. The whole meta-genre of peak TV tragic anti-heroes has been widely moaned about for at least a decade as being too male/exclusively male. The Americans and Keri Russell's Elizabeth is the definitive counterexample to that line of complaint.
Sour Note: the show on FX never hit as big as those others and Russell hasn't received nearly the acclaim or cultural cachet that Gandolfini, Hamm, Cranston got... She's not become hero or role model for some the way Tony Soprano or Don Draper did that's for sure. And she's not suddenly A-listed for everything, indeed it's her excellent co-lead Matthew Rhys (who was Daniel Ellsberg for Spielberg in The Post) who's got the most career bounce so far.
Sweet note: Russell and Rhys got together while making The Americans, now have kids, and are apparently very happy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmL-4if_Kdo

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Rewatching bits of The Americans Season 1 after the Series finale, I'd kind of forgotten how dense that first season was with incident and information. It also clarified how The Americans followed The Sopranos/Mad Men game-plan almost exactly: The Americans' Pilot is a near-perfect encapsulation of the show and could stand by itself. Similarly, Season 1 as a whole could stand by itself as a near-perfect unit. This structural, hooky perfection never quite kicked the show over to mass success but it did get critics in its corner from the beginning, whose hype allowed enough viewers (me included - I started watching Season 1 just before Season 2) to find the show and jump on board so it could run for six full seasons, and to completeness.

Psycho Connection: pretty tenuous! but The Americans has lots of clean-up scenes, and two body-disposal scenes for the ages in particular.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A brief note of the new Second Season of "Goliath" -- the Billy Bob Thornton lawyer show.

I'm a coupla episodes in, and in the first one, we find Billy Bob alone in his apartment watching a movie on his computer, on the couch.

Its North by Northwest. We see two shots from the crop duster scene -- the famous one with Grant running at us as the plane dives in behind him; and then the great moving camera shot of Grant running(damn fast and athletic for 55) in profile to the cornfield. The two shots are in superclear HD and -- they make NXNW look new and exciting.

And Billy Bob smiles watching it.

Its a real throwaway moment but you wonder what it means: this once-great, now dissolute lawyer is such a good guy because he likes good Hitchcock movies?

A funny bit: Billy Bob won the Season One case and made $50 million personally off of it(1/3 contingency fee.) But he still drinks hard and lives in a crummy apartment(even as he bought his daughter a HOUSE, ala Tom Cassidy.) Still, all through episodes one and two, he keeps trying to offer his hard-up friends some of his money -- and no one will take it. "Goliath" posits a VERY nice Billy Bob(no Bad Santa this time) , surrounded by very nice people -- versus powerful scum.

Its a great hook for a series.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Meanwhile, on the basis of swanstep's coverage, I looked at the pilot episode of The Americans. I think I'm hooked on that one, too.

It harkens forward to this year's "Red Sparrow"(which I haven't seen yet) and my favorite moldie oldie The Kremlin Letter(which I own) in positing spy work as requiring the personal destruction of one's love life and the idea of romantic love "in service to country." Truth be told, this goes all the way back to Hitchcock's Notorious, doesn't it? The powers-that-be don't CARE about love, they force (in The Americans) a couple to get married and have children as part of their cover -- even as they force the woman in the couple to have sex with other men to get information -- with the "husband" knowing about it. In Notorious, Cary Grant famously had to push HIS love, Ingrid Bergman, into the bed of another man(Claude Rains) to get information.

Everything old is new again. But with more depth in The Americans.

I'll report back as I keep catching up with it. 6 seasons is a long ways to go.

[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

@ecarle. Glad to hear you're giving The Amercians a go. One on-line resource I've found useful and occasionally contributed to is The Vulture's [NY mag's online culture section] recapping of the show:
http://www.vulture.com/tv/the-americans/
The recaps themselves are mostly great and the comments are often excellent too. Vulture's commenting system has recently changed and then broken down entirely, but all the comments sections for the first 5 seasons are preserved.

Online communities fully *dissolving* is a real problem as we IMDb refugees know only too well, but so is the kind of befuddling *decay* that's currently afflicting The Vulture and that, in a more advanced form, has made the Onion's AVClub completely unreadable (I *never* go there any more; this after having been an active participant there for at least a decade).