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Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched
« on: September 24, 2015, 04:12:48 PM »
Seinfeld is filled with miraculous coincidence and happenstance. Usually the grand/final punchline to the episode is based entirely on a contrived coincidence combined with, or sparked by, completely unreasonable behavior. But the point of the show isn't to construct a convincing narrative about how such events could reasonably occur or explaining why anyone would behave so unreasonably. The show's purpose is different from that. Not everyone will love what they're trying to do, but labeling the writing as lazy for relying on such contrivances isn't really fair.
I don't think Fargo is a crime drama or police procedural, although I agree this would be a fair criticism if it were. I think Fargo is a parable. I think that's one of the reasons that so many characters end up telling a parable in the show. Fargo is a series of modern parables. Parables aren't about rationalist narratives and plot details. They use caricatures to tell moral tales. How each character gets from A-Z isn't the important part. In fact, getting bogged down in those details would detract from what the show is trying to do.
Also, my prior point wasn't that the hallmark of a Coen story is a lack of realism. My point was that it's the contrast of extreme elements: extreme tedium punctuated by brutal violence; exceptional genius in close-quarters with equally exceptional ineptness; gallows humor; larger-than-life events in a banal setting. The remarkableness of the coincidences and happenstances that occur to these small-town folk in their tiny locale is part of that contrast. It fits thematically with everything else in the show.
Maybe what I mean is that, like them or not, I don't think these coincidences were written like "fuck how do we make these two meet...whatever just have them run into each other because i'm hungry for lunch." I think that miraculous coincidence was an intentional feature of the story from the beginning, like "let's write a story about a completely unbelievable unfolding of events in a setting where that would be funny."
But these things all have a purpose. It's hardly laziness.
1. The whole plot of the story is based on a chance meeting between lawful good and chaotic evil (and the effect Malvo has on Lester simply by entering his life). That's the parable. There literally isn't a story if Lester can't coincidentally run into Malvo on the day Hess beats him up. This is sort of what I mean about a unbelievable unfolding of events. That's what's funny about it. Malvo rolls into this tiny town, get's mixed up with everyone and causes evil chaos, and this tiny little tundra town is shoved unwillingly into modernity.
2. The police are caricatures. Everyone is, but the police are especially so. As I mentioned, of course no police force would be so incompetent. Malvo obviously would have been caught years ago. That's the funny contrast: this tiny tundra town is basically out of time. They all live in this idyllic, isolated little village with no crime, and suddenly the most evil human alive drives through and decides to fuck around. Part of what makes it funny is how totally unprepared the police are to even understand what's happening to them. And also because if Malvo and Lester get caught in the second episode then the show would be over and there would be no parable.
3. Did you really not laugh at all when the dude got shot up by SWAT? Or during that Key and Peele scene? I mean, that was funny! The whole point was to be funny about how inattentive and bad at their jobs they were. Obviously it wasn't realistic. It's not meant to be. It's meant to be funny caricature. These two dudes are so bad at their jobs that they don't even notice that the building they're watching is getting shot up by Evil McSatan.
this got way longer than i meant it to be tbh tbh tbqh. it doesn't really matter to me if anyone else does or doesn't like fargo, i just think this particular criticism is odd. i don't think fargo was ever trying to be a show that is so fastidious about the plot. i think it's just trying to tell a funny story, and i think the kind of fastidiousness you're talking about would only make the story worse.
Another good example of what I mean is the final time Gus runs into Malvo. Sure, Gus just happens to drive by Malvo's place and see his car. But it isn't because of lazy writing. There's a point to it all. Part of the parable of Fargo is the effect that Malvo has on everyone and the qualities he brings out in them: Lester becomes evil, Vern dies, Molly becomes brilliant, Bill becomes irrelevant, etc. Gus becomes a predator. That was the symbolism of the wolf on the road: Gus turns a corner and realizes that he can't protect his family without becoming a predator like Malvo. They could have written their confrontation many different ways, but they chose to write it with Gus stalking Malvo, setting a trap, and hunting him. So, from the perspective of the writers, the point really isn't to come up with the most convincing way to have Gus find Malvo; it's just to make it happen at the right time in the story to show the transformation and resolve other parts of the plot.
I won't claim that Coen brothers movies are intended to be particularly realistic, but none of them have asked its audience to accept plot events nearly as contrived and unbelievable as the ones in this show. It's not their outlandishness that I take issue with; it's how lazily they're written. The writer clearly put a lot of effort into the dialogue and the specific setpieces, but he didn't seem to be interested in connecting all these scenes together into a cohesive overall story. Instead, we just got a lot of vague handwaving whenever a situation needed to be justified by any means other than quirky dialogue or brutal violence.
I don't think Fargo is a crime drama or police procedural, although I agree this would be a fair criticism if it were. I think Fargo is a parable. I think that's one of the reasons that so many characters end up telling a parable in the show. Fargo is a series of modern parables. Parables aren't about rationalist narratives and plot details. They use caricatures to tell moral tales. How each character gets from A-Z isn't the important part. In fact, getting bogged down in those details would detract from what the show is trying to do.
Also, my prior point wasn't that the hallmark of a Coen story is a lack of realism. My point was that it's the contrast of extreme elements: extreme tedium punctuated by brutal violence; exceptional genius in close-quarters with equally exceptional ineptness; gallows humor; larger-than-life events in a banal setting. The remarkableness of the coincidences and happenstances that occur to these small-town folk in their tiny locale is part of that contrast. It fits thematically with everything else in the show.
Maybe what I mean is that, like them or not, I don't think these coincidences were written like "fuck how do we make these two meet...whatever just have them run into each other because i'm hungry for lunch." I think that miraculous coincidence was an intentional feature of the story from the beginning, like "let's write a story about a completely unbelievable unfolding of events in a setting where that would be funny."
I mentioned before all the miraculous coincidences - Lester coincidentally runs into Malvo twice, Gus coincidentally runs into him three times, Molly manages to interrupt Lester when he's about to do or in the middle of doing something bad multiple times, etc. And another annoying example is the police being extremely inattentive whenever its convenient to the plot - not merely dumb or incompetent, but inattentive to the degree that you'd wonder if they even have functioning eyes and ears. Nobody in the police station notices Lester shrieking and thrashing about in his cell when Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers torture him. Nobody in the SWAT team is even a little suspicious that the guy they just shot is gagged and bound to a chair and an unloaded gun. And my personal favorite, Key and Peele don't notice the giant fucking shootout happening just across the street from them. I guess their witty banter drowned all the gunfire out?
But these things all have a purpose. It's hardly laziness.
1. The whole plot of the story is based on a chance meeting between lawful good and chaotic evil (and the effect Malvo has on Lester simply by entering his life). That's the parable. There literally isn't a story if Lester can't coincidentally run into Malvo on the day Hess beats him up. This is sort of what I mean about a unbelievable unfolding of events. That's what's funny about it. Malvo rolls into this tiny town, get's mixed up with everyone and causes evil chaos, and this tiny little tundra town is shoved unwillingly into modernity.
2. The police are caricatures. Everyone is, but the police are especially so. As I mentioned, of course no police force would be so incompetent. Malvo obviously would have been caught years ago. That's the funny contrast: this tiny tundra town is basically out of time. They all live in this idyllic, isolated little village with no crime, and suddenly the most evil human alive drives through and decides to fuck around. Part of what makes it funny is how totally unprepared the police are to even understand what's happening to them. And also because if Malvo and Lester get caught in the second episode then the show would be over and there would be no parable.
3. Did you really not laugh at all when the dude got shot up by SWAT? Or during that Key and Peele scene? I mean, that was funny! The whole point was to be funny about how inattentive and bad at their jobs they were. Obviously it wasn't realistic. It's not meant to be. It's meant to be funny caricature. These two dudes are so bad at their jobs that they don't even notice that the building they're watching is getting shot up by Evil McSatan.
this got way longer than i meant it to be tbh tbh tbqh. it doesn't really matter to me if anyone else does or doesn't like fargo, i just think this particular criticism is odd. i don't think fargo was ever trying to be a show that is so fastidious about the plot. i think it's just trying to tell a funny story, and i think the kind of fastidiousness you're talking about would only make the story worse.
Another good example of what I mean is the final time Gus runs into Malvo. Sure, Gus just happens to drive by Malvo's place and see his car. But it isn't because of lazy writing. There's a point to it all. Part of the parable of Fargo is the effect that Malvo has on everyone and the qualities he brings out in them: Lester becomes evil, Vern dies, Molly becomes brilliant, Bill becomes irrelevant, etc. Gus becomes a predator. That was the symbolism of the wolf on the road: Gus turns a corner and realizes that he can't protect his family without becoming a predator like Malvo. They could have written their confrontation many different ways, but they chose to write it with Gus stalking Malvo, setting a trap, and hunting him. So, from the perspective of the writers, the point really isn't to come up with the most convincing way to have Gus find Malvo; it's just to make it happen at the right time in the story to show the transformation and resolve other parts of the plot.
