He isn’t the one with the tattoo on his wrist, that was his accomplice who posed as a policeman and tried to kill Nikki in the previous episode and got decapitated in this one.
When the two of them are staking out Nikki and Mr. Wrench, Yuri notices the tattoo on the other guy’s wrist and says “I knew a Helga once, all she did was talk”.
In the opening scene of the first episode, a man is being interrogated about the murder of a woman named Helga Albracht. We learn that she was murdered by 22 year-old Ukrainian, Yuri Gurka, who has obviously fled leaving the new tenant of his apartment to take the fall.
Then, in the scene at the bowling alley Ray Wise’s character calls him Yuri Gurka and says he’s got a message for him from Helga Albracht.
So our “goon” is the same Yuri who the Stasi was looking for in that opening scene.
Didn’t the scene in the first episode take place like 30 years before this? that cannot be the same Yuri. In fact didn’t Ray Wise tell him it was his grand father?
He’s also way to young to have participated in the Massacre of Uman in 1768, but he still gets called on it in the bowling alley ;). Yuri has talked about his Cossack ancestors before and it could be he is something of a mystical avatar, continuing a line of goons stretching back centuries. Which would sorta fit in the surreal quasi-mystical Coen-Hawley universe with UFOs and our decapitated goon( the great D.J. Qualls ), who was listed in the credits simply as ‘Golem.’
Yeah, he does seem a bit young- Yuri Gurka would be 52 or so in 2010.
I do recall him saying “Cossack and grandchild of the wolves of hundred” but somehow didn’t take that to mean his actual grandfather, more like a descendant of the Wolves if that makes sense.
Idk, the ages do seem a little inconsistent in general. Like Ennis Stussy being Thaddeus Mobley- he looked like he was in his eighties in 2010 and the girl who conned him who looked about his age in the 70s was so much younger-looking in 2010.
I don’t think the argument here is about why the couple didn’t call.
The argument is about why the bad guys didn’t assume that it was a strong possibility that they would call, and why the bad guys didn’t get the hell out of dodge based on that assumption.
Well, they did. The one guy killed those two and the other two thugs hied off into the forest.
You are out in the Middle of Nowhere, it might take a cop 30 minutes to respond. And even if there is a random patrol car with one cop nearby those guys have made it clear they are not afraid of the local cops.
If the East Berlin scene was in 1988, and Yuri was 22 at the time, then he would be 44 in 2010, wouldn’t he? The character still looks younger than that to me, but it’s more plausible than 52.
I agree that the apparent age of Ennis Stussey was older that you would expect it to be.
The lost souls were the people who were massacred and couldn’t find a new body. (Though with population constantly growing exponentially, there must be an awful lot of new souls being created if there’s any kind of body shortage!)
I do think it’s implied that Yuri was responsible for the massacre of Uman in a previous life. He could have murdered Helga Albrecht in a previous life, in which case he is younger than he looks, but he remembers Helga (at least a Helga) and has the same name in this life as his last (like Ray). He could also have murdered Helga in this life, in which case he’s older than he looks. I read the actor is something like 36, so about halfway between the ages of someone born shortly after Albrecht’s death, and someone in his early 20s when Albrecht died.
It was a pretty desolate stretch of road. It would make perfect sense for the criminals to have chosen that spot partly because they knew it didn’t have any cell service.
I didn’t see this episode until last night. And I’m wondering about the bowling alley scene. Was that just a bowling alley in the middle of nowhere? Or was it meant to be something like purgatory with Ray Wise as a devil, angel or such thing?
And now episode 3 has more meaning. I don’t know what to make of his talk about bills of divorce in LA, only to have Gloria sign hers at the end of this episode.
Nice touch that the kitten’s name was also his real-life name (in addition to the obvious reason why he named him Ray).
BTW, when I saw DJ Qualls get his head cut off by a chain, I thought it was absurd and unbelievable. It wasn’t totally out of place in the slightly fantastical Hawley-Coen universe, especially when they’ve been playing more and more with the oral-history conceit that the show is based on a book, which is presumably based on interviews with people based on their memories, which are based (perhaps loosely) on the facts.
But then I read that the character is listed in the credits only as “Golem.” A golem is a being in Jewish folklore made of clay or mud and then brought to life by magic. At first, I thought it unlikely that the antisemetic Varga would use kabbalistic magic, but if he’s actually a demon from Jewish folklore (or aligned with them) it makes sense that he would despise the chosen people of God while practicing Jewish magic. It’s no different that a demon in Christian fantasy stories attributing magical properties to holy water or the Host.
So does that explain why his head was cut off so easily? Was he really made of soft clay?
Is it also likely that Ray Wise just happens to be a guy named Paul Marrane? The Coens’ movies and this show (this episode especially) are fairly steeped in Judaica. There is no way the name (which I’ve never heard of for an actual person) is just a coincidence. The only question is whether it’s meant to be literal. In a show with UFOs, karmic coincidences, a hitman who might be Satan, mystical bowling alleys and reincarnated thugs, I think that’s an open question.
