Strongly disliked. It’s as if they made a version of the movie with less compelling and unbelievable, characters, a worse story, and what’s almost certain to be unnecessarily long.
I loved the movie and I can’t view the show as anything but an insult to everything that the movie did so well–and that’s despite the creator’s blessing.
I’ll give it at least one more episode to be sure, but I am not happy with what I’ve seen thus far.
I had no idea this was coming. I saw a (very positive) review of it in the paper yesterday and decided to watch. I didn’t think it was so bad. I haven’t seen the movie in years so rather than comparing it to the movie I just see it as another story taking place in the “Fargo” universe. It took me a while to get used to Martin Freeman speaking in a Minnesota accent though.
I know it’s in the “universe”, I know the Coen brothers were involved in it, I know that the speech and mannerisms are based off (some sort of) reality…
…but it still felt like a second-rate knock off of Fargo. I wasn’t especially impressed but I’ll probably give it one more before writing it off.
Is that what he was trying to do? It was hard to tell.
Wow you guys are harsh. I sure enjoyed it all to heck. You betcha!
Agreed.
I enjoyed it too. It’s a first episode, so it’s setting up a lot of stuff, but it kept me interested. It started off a little slow but really picked up about halfway through. I liked a lot of the actors. It made me happy to see Bob Odenkirk as one of the cops.
I really liked Billy Bob Thorton’s character. He does some bad things for his job or out of necessity, and some just for fun.
I wonder if he killed Hess just because of Lester (Martin Freeman) said, or if he already knew about Hess and his criminal dealings and had some other reason for wanting him dead.
I’ll definitely be sticking with it and recommending it to friends who might enjoy this sort of show.
I liked it a lot. There were some changes to the characters of course but I thought Martin Freeman and Billy Bob were both super. I expected the story line to go towards the movie’s kidnapping and thought the twist on that was well done.
His accent sounded fine, though the woman and boy at the motel sounded Irish to me.
Anyway, I didn’t think the show was trying to ape the movie, so much as use it for inspiration - though there are some obvious parallels. I really liked it and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
Oh don’t get me wrong. I thought Freeman did a good job with the accent. It’s just not what I expect to hear coming out of his mouth. (Kind of like Hugh Laurie and his real voice vs “House”.)
Discussion thread from before the series premiere: Fargo, the TV show, has the Coen Bros.'s blessing - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
I liked the episode overall, although it was a bit too slow-paced at times. Billy Bob was great; Freeman’s accent was subpar. The female cop has potential.
Questions:
Why was Lester looking at the wound on his hand so much?
Were his fingers a little webbed, too?
How did Billy Bob’s character silently get in the house and take the shotgun from the bathroom, and then disappear from the basement?
I assume it’s because it will tie him to being upstairs when the gun was fired (it was a pellet that injured him), instead of being downstairs knocked out.
He’s magical! I thought maybe he’d do a Shawshank Redemption thing and disappear in the hole in the wall behind the fish poster.
Lester had a buckshot wound which would have placed him at the murder of the cop. Or at least given him something to answer for and messed up his likely story of “My wife and I were attacked in the base, I don’t know about the cop he must have been killed by the same guy when he came over”.
Edit: Lester put two shells in his shirt pocket before he went downstairs. Suppose those were discovered when he was getting medical assistance?
And I’m assuming there is a bag of bloody clothes somewhere in the house that he hadn’t had a chance yet to dispose of properly?
Based on how the movie turned out, I think it should be pretty clear here that this is not going to work out well for Lester at all.
Billy Bob Thornton would be wise to steer clear of a wood chipper too.
I just saw the first episode today and loved it. It’s really not fair to compare it to the movie, but it’s easily better than most TV shows.
At first I thought the show made a mistake with Molly, but by the end of the episode she was my favorite character.
It’s the same creative minds directly capitalizing off the success of the film by the same name so it seems fair enough to me. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way either like they’re coasting or cheating, just that if the same guys are using the same “universe” and being very explicit about that via the show’s name, I don’t see what’s unfair about comparing the two.
I don’t see how comparing two things, one of which is based on the other, share the exact same title, and many of the same themes, isn’t fair.
Billy Bob’s character’s behaviour strikes me as a bit odd for what I assume is an itinerant assassin. I can understand going to Hess’s business to get a look at him and size him up, but to be deliberately antagonistic just makes him more memorable to potential witnesses.