Fargo S1E9 [Open spoilers]

Cafe Society
161

I didn’t look too closely at them other than to notice that they were (all? mostly?) long guns. At least in the midwest that’s a pretty common sight. Most hunters I know have several shotguns or rifles. He had a pretty elaborate safe, but the guns themselves, most people would just look at them and think he’s a hunter and not think too much else.

Other than that one gun in the back of course, I’m just saying, based on what he saw, living in the midwest, having a handful (say, less then 10) long guns wouldn’t get you called a ‘gun freak’ as long as you’re a hunter. Come to think of it, I believe he was established as a hunter. I think Chaz invited him out to go hunting but his wife said that wouldn’t be a good idea.

162

Malvo would have to have killed them all anyway as they were loose ends. If he met with the guy in WITSEC that he was trying to kill, he couldn’t risk anybody going back and saying that they remembered this fake dentist. Lester simply moved Malvo’s schedule forward too quickly.

What I have a problem with is Malvo going after Lester so quickly. He already knows that Lester is a predictable dimwit. Why rush after him when if he waited another year or so, he could simply drive into town and dispose of him at will? After all, Lester is stupid enough to still live in the same town where he murdered his wife; why would he take any logical steps to save himself?

I know that series’ narrative requires it.
I just don’t think that it made much sense.

163

It was actually Jay-Z.
Big difference.

164

I mentioned this briefly maybe in this thread. I’m not convinced Malvo didn’t intend to kill Lester’s wife - you could argue putting on the window light in the office was a sign to Lester of Malvo’s presence i.e. again Malvo was presenting Lester with another diemma.

Lester’s response was to offer his wife, basically as a sacrifice - which Malvo accepted.

As Malvo left, he looked across the street to the car. You could argue, by then, the price had been paid which is why Malvo didn’t go after Lester.

RE the coat, it seems a bit odd to think Malvo would mistake the body shape and body movement of an oriental Asian woman for Lester, but maybe the idea was to convey to the audience just how premeditated Lester is (from the basement).

165

Wow, this is the first “didn’t seem realistic” that hit you? I suggest you might enjoy the series more if you rethink this. There’s always been a huge element of borderline-fantasy. I’m not sure what the literary analysis term is, it’s not really “fantasy” because everything is physically possible (we don’t have people flying or changing pumpkins to carriages) but there’s been lots and lots and lots that’s highly improbable. I’m going to use the term “non-realistic.” And most of those things involved really dark humor.

There are lots of subtle examples, I’ll just point out a few obvious and grotesque examples:
[ul]
[li]Malvo trying to reproduce biblical plagues, by buying up all the crickets at all the nearby pet stores? And this psychs out a “grocery store king” – and a coincidental rain of fish by coincidence kills his son. [/li][li]Gus’s neighbor having a Jewish item delivery cart (in Duluth?) [/li][li]The way that Malvo just nastily stirs up small-time troubles. A hit man who calls attention to himself? [/li][li]Malvo’s alias/identity as a small-town pastor – I mean, c’mon, of all things he might be, a pastor – which immediately averts suspicion? [/li][li]The FBI agents don’t notice the guy walking in with an automatic weapon, and are punished by being stuck in a filing room, where they spend their time throwing a ball against a wall and discussing logic paradoxes?[/li][li]The incredible stupidity of most people – you’re thinking GET SMART, I’m thinking the Three Stooges[/li][li] Etc, etc. [/li][/ul] The fact that we’ve been having a discussion for several weeks about whether Malvo is really a devil, or just a metaphoric/allegoric devil bolsters my point. We’re on the border of fantasy here, but we remain (however narrowly) on the side of “highly improbable but possible.” And dark humor interwoven with all of it.

Yet another example of the “non-realism” – possible but highly improbable. PastTense has pointed out the “logical” (inside the show) explanation that most of the people at HQ were not fighters but accountants and clerks. Another “logic” is that they weren’t expecting such an attack, and were all taken by surprise – even if you’re a contract killer or a security guard, you sit there in the office all day long with nothing happening, and you get bored and let your attention drift and… BLAM!

But there’s also the dramatic (outside the show) explanation: this is a riff on the usual action movie, where the Good Guys have no problem single-handedly defeating 20 bad-guy henchmen. We buy that, alla time, in everything from Indiana Jones movies to this year’s AGENTS OF SHIELD, ARROW, etc etc The Coen Bros are doing a dark-humor reversal joke – if the Good Guys can do it, then let’s have the Really Baaaad Guy do the same. It’s both dark humor and “non-realism.”

I love the opening quote about how this is a true story. Paraphasing: “The names have been changed to protect the innocent and the facts are unchanged to honor the dead.” I mean, really? These facts “honor” the dead? Most of the dead are killed in ways that make them appear to be extremely stupid, from the very first murder – Hess is killed while fucking a prostitute? This “honors” him? So my wife and I were on to the dark humor and improbabilities from the very start.

166

I find a lot of resemblance between the two guys, but everyone else in the family says I’m wacky.

Sean Murray is #2 guy on NCIS, DiNozzo’s buddy.

They’ve had Hanks on NCIS and even then, while I’m wondering if they are brothers, wifey says “are you crazy? They don’t look anything alike!”

167

I agree with you, crucible. I can see the resemblance (now that you mention it.)

168

I thought one of the more blatant examples was when Malvo dragged that accountant out of his office by his necktie, in full view of his co-workers. No attempt at disguise or concealment.

169

Many small businesses leave a light on at night so the patrolling police or passersby can see that nothing is amiss. That may or may not have been the case here.

170

I expect he was planning to kill them eventually anyway, after he met and took out the target. And I agree that a mere $100k seems low for the amount of time and effort this operation was taking. Heck, what did it cost to rent that house where the party took place?

Malvo isn’t necessarily a good fake dentist, though. The one patient of his that we see (Lorne Cardinal of Corner Gas, interestingly) complains that his procedure was particularly painful.

Anyway, the passports shouldn’t be an issue. Lester sees Malvo leaving the insurance office. He just has to wait five or ten minutes to steady his nerves and be confident Malvo isn’t coming back and he can step over his wife’s corpse to get them, assuming they were there in the first place.

171

First time I recal Malvo smoking was coming out of Lester’s office, it kind of adds to the thought he’d done the job he wanted.

Also, that scene in the diner between Malvo and Maggie’s dad was interesting for a whole number of reasons, one was Malvo asking about the wedding photo on the wall “Is that your son?” - talking about the man he would have killed had Gus chosen Option B. No sense he recognised him, but I guess he wouldn’t have given that away anyway.

172

If we accept that Malvo has incredible eyesight and got a good look at both people in the picture, he acquired some vital information. Now, when Malvo meets Molly, he’ll know exactly who he has to hurt in order to control her - Gus, his daughter, and her dad. This also works in reverse for Gus.

For the finale, I’m predicting/hoping that Lester will face justice and Malvo will get away - preferably, the last scene implying a partnership with Wrench. I’ll be very happy with anything that manages to bring together the storylines and tie them up neatly, though.

About the Malvo as devil thing - it’s actually mentioned by Martin Freeman in this article. They (Freeman and Thornton) seem to imply that Malvo has no real “backstory” - he is who he is.

173

It’s possible that the masterplan is to let Malvo get away. But I can’t help wondering what that would imply for future seasons. Viewers will be expecting Malvo to show up–and the character, popular as he is, creates plotting problems. Whether he’s supernatural or not, he definitely is the Grinning Sadist Who Always Succeeds. How many stories can there be about the GSWAS, that vary enough to keep our interest?

Anyway, the Right Hand (of the Master) said I could repost this here:

We’re two days away from the end of the season, and I’m fascinated by the question of where showrunner Noah Hawley is going with this.

The movie that inspired the series was “about” (speaking only of my own opinion, of course) a man who turned out to be a very, very bad man, but who hadn’t been a professional bad man, so to speak. He decided to purchase a kidnapping (that he couldn’t be sure wouldn’t turn into murder) to solve his money problems–which certainly had arisen through what you might call bad conduct. But, he wasn’t a killer, himself. The criminals he hired were certainly bad people, but they were also sort of…bumblers.

In the series, we have, again, a man who’d been living fairly quietly–though like Jerry from the movie, Lester was probably never what you’d call a good person. Both characters are, essentially solipsists. They don’t have any genuine feeling for anyone but themselves. Both characters choose aggression against others as their path to what they expect to be happiness.

Lester gets to go a lot further in Being Bad than did Jerry–through the temptations provided him by his story’s hitman. This hitman differs from the focused-on-the-moment bad guys of the movie; he actually puts himself out in order to cause pain in others, which he clearly relishes. And he seems to take an interest in Lester that verges on the unnatural.

An example of what I mean: the instant that Lester put himself on Malvo’s hitlist–the moment in the elevator when Lester wouldn’t back down–is the same moment that Malvo could have checked off that very list-item. Bam! But Malvo chose not to do that. He chose to give Lester the chance to damn himself further by offering the wife as decoy.

What I’m getting at is that the Malvo character threatens to overshadow what I take to be the theme of both movie and television series: the choices we make, to be selfish and murderous (Jerry and Lester), or to be connected to people, as part of the community and its justice (Marge and Molly). Even if Malvo is ultimately explained as a person (rather than as a supernatural entity), his gleeful sadism…doesn’t seem to fit. It unbalances the story.

But maybe Hawley will surprise me and in the end it will all seem to fit. Either way, I can hardly wait until Tuesday night!
(edited a bit to reflect a correction from Accidental Martyr.)

174

I just caught up so I’ll make some comments on the series as a whole. Definitely loving it for the most part, the themes, the feel, the actors, and the characters.

I think I missed a few things though, maybe y’all could remind me…

First, what was with the rain of fish? I had the impression at the time that somehow Malvo was responsible though I couldn’t see how, but posters are saying it was a coincidental natural event. That seems just a little too far fetched to me though, not only were the fish a plague, part of Malvo’s MO, but so was the death of the first born son. I didn’t understand it thematically either, if the King returned the money, why was he still punished?

Also, how did Lester know Malvo was at the hotel? The original one where he called him after he killed his wife that is.

And, I had trouble following the story of the black kid. The chief was going to adopt him, but he got lost at the airport and then found later? What was the point of all that?

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the character of Malvo a lot, but the one weak point for me was when he told the janitor he missed a spot. That just seemed a little too petty and juvenile, and well, unclever.

Until Lester’s new wife showed up I thought they were going to pair him up with his sister in law. That would have led to a nice moment where she says, like his first wife, “maybe I married the wrong brother”. Although I guess the kid would have gotten in the way.

I watched Training Day right before this episode and saw some interesting parallels. In both, we have one character corrupting another slowly, and part of the fun is deciding at what point the character crosses the line of no longer being root able for. For me, I could forgive Lester killing his wife, and even framing his brother, but when he sent his new wife off to be murdered that crossed the point of no return for me.

175

Refresh my memory, why was Malvo in the hospital waiting room in Episode 1?

176

He had been injured in the car accident in the very first scene of the series. It allowed the accountant to escape from the trunk of the car, but he was later found dead from exposure.

177

Right. Thanks.

178

Yep, I’m going to agree with myself and go for redemption for Gus, and I guess redemption also for Maggie (for her conviction and pursuit of Malvo). I don’t know how she might nail him.

Also, the police chief will resign/be sacked for incompetence over the wrongful prosecution and conviction, which would make Maggie chief and dad proud.

Finally … that bear trap, in the box of ‘Chazz’s hunting gear’. Hmm. Combined with Malvo’s chat about a bear biting its leg off, and also the woods around Lester’s house … It really would be in keeping for the trap to be set, sprung, and yet there be no sign of Malvo. Or it could be a tease …

179

There’s a line in the next episode about a tornado picked up the fish with the water, so it’s a “coincidental natural event.” The Coen brothers love coincidences, the whole show is a series of coincidences, some more plausible than others. As I said above, it’s somewhere between “absurdism” and “non-realism” – always possible, but highly improbable.

I don’t think we know the point yet. It was either a random coincidence (some things just happen), or it will have some significance in the finale.

Malvo does LOTS of petty little nastinesses – telling the one brother that he was out of the will, telling the kids there was a murder in the house. There’ve been a bunch. It’s his character – as a devil-symbol, he’s not just involved in huge great Evils like murders, but he’s also involved in petty little nasty bits.

180

Actually, honestly, Molly has very little on Lester. Her big evidence is someone *maybe overhearing a conversation with someone who could *be Malvo. Her idea that Lester hired Malvo is ridiculous as Lester had no funds with which to do so, and no doubt Molly or someone had a forensic accountant (my speciality) check and verify there were no suspicious funds movement nor any funds to move. True, she did have a great flash of intuition there, but she has ZERO hard evidence against Lester.

She has some good evidence about Malvo otherwise, but she keeps going back to Lester so her theories are correctly thought as off the wall. If she dropped his fixation with Lester and concentrated on Malvo (which would solve that other kidnapping/killing there at the start) people would listen.

As it is, altho we know she’s somewhat right, her evidence against Lester is so very weak they are right to dismiss it.