I quite liked it. Sorry to see Nikki go, but she set herself up karmically and not just by offing an innocent cop. That biblical line was surely intended for Varga, not Emmit. Vengeance clouded her choice of targets.
But Winstead’s line-reading about Ray being a kitten now was just about perfect.
I don’t think there is a right answer.
However…I do think there is a clue. And that is the fact that Varga lies prodigiously. “I hate waste.” Pfft - right. With his bulimia that man is a veritable avatar of waste. If you wanted to take the more optimistic view, that’s the clue I’d hang my hat on.
I seem to recall.the IRS man telling Burgle that he felt like he was being blocked in his investigation (I can’t double check at the moment because the latest episode isn’t available in On Demand yet.)
If so, that may mean that there are powerful people in the U.S. government protecting Varga. In which case, it may very well be that he’ll be walking free in 5 minutes.
All of the hints about Russian involvement combined with the idea of powerful people in government could relate to current events, except that the story takes place in 2010 - 2011.
Of course, Varga, et al gathering resources could be a prelude to 2016 election interference.
Regarding the relationship between Varga and Goldfarb; it’s not really clear who works for who or if they may even be equal partners. Although a partnership seems unlikely given Varga’s claimed hatred and distrust of Jews.
I just had a thought. We’re assuming that Varga’s fate is being left unresolved. That’s probably the correct asaumption but what if it’s not?
We’re making the assumption because this show’s pattern to date has been one entire story arc per season. What if that’s no longer the case? What if this is a traditional “to be continued” cliffhanger?
Or maybe we’re being left to think of it as unresolved, a seemingly new story will start next season, and Varga will unexpectedly pop up in the middle of the story.
I guess I’d have to say this last episode was a disappointment, because my immediate impression is that what stands out most to me is the annoying things about it, rather than the story.
How did Emmit get his car to start right up when he left? Even if Nikki somehow used a remote kill switch to disable it, she wouldn’t have reactivated it while he was sitting in the car. And how did he leave without running over one or both of the bodies? And how did the cops not find his phone and connect him with the shootings?
Why did Wrench wait five years to kill Emmit, and why do it when there was a house full of people in the next room? That would be the worst possible scenario for a deaf man to commit a murder — someone could have come in behind him and he would never know it.
If he had already waited five years, surely he could taken another few hours and caught him alone. I suppose there might have been an element of making Emmit’s newly found happiness come crashing down, except he didn’t — he shot him in the back of the head, without Emmit even knowing that he was there, so that Emmit died at possibly the happiest moment of his life, and painlessly. Hard to think of a better way to die.
And for the love of god, when are writers going to stop putting roof hatches in elevators, or stop having people rack shotguns that already have a round in the chamber?
Varga was definitely working with Goldfarb. They couldn’t have been more obvious about that. He doesn’t hate Jews. He just said those things to fuck with Feltz.
The dead car thing bothered me also, as well as the roof hatch in the elevator. Plus, Varga doesn’t seem like the most athletic type of guy to be able to escape that way. Plus, was that a ridiculously slow elevator or what? Also, even though the warehouse was abandoned, it apparently still had working security cameras? Yeah, there was plenty of stuff in this finale that didn’t make sense.
He said that someone in D.C. squashed the previous investigation. Hawley said in an interview that the text to Varga came from a very high up person at the IRS.
Of the main characters in the show there was one who was pure good, Burgle, and one who was pure bad, Varga. The rest were shades of gray. Does good or evil triumph. Varga certainly thought that he was correct. The only time we saw him sweat was when he got that text. My thought was that Varga gets away. Maybe that says more about me.
I agree with the annoyance factors mentioned so far–the stopped/startable car; the escape through elevator hatch; the working cameras in an abandoned warehouse; the deaf assassin choosing a houseful-of-people party as the time to kill Emmit, etc.
Overall, I have to say that the third season was much less satisfying than the first two, because the ‘everyman antiheroes’ were simply guilty of much less-serious violations than was the case with the everyman antiheroes of seasons one and two. Those characters (Martin Freeman’s Lester Nygaard and Kirsten Dunst’s Peggy Blumquist) actually killed someone. Emmit (and Sy) merely failed to adequately investigate a potential investor. The karmic stakes seemed “off.”
To put it another way: the outcomes for Nygaard in season one and Blumquist in season two set the moral universe straight; that was satisfying. Seeing Sy turned into a semi-vegetable and Emmit gunned down was not satisfying. They’d been foolish and greedy: sure. And later, after all the karma had already come down on them, Emmit accidentally killed his brother. But the story-construction was muddy as compared with the clear self-made downfalls we witnessed in the two earlier seasons.
That said, this season certainly held my interest and I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates quality long-form filmed entertainment. I’ll be happy to give season four a fair chance.
There was a moment when doubt entered Burgle’s eyes. (Brilliant acting, btw) When her “place in the world” rang true, and her confidence shook. That’s the payoff for Varga. No matter the situation, he knows that his money and connections will be there for him. He trusts Mrs. Goldfarb completely, and is certain she’ll take care of him, much the same way Meemo trusted him.
I’m not clear on how Emmit drove away. Did he siphon gas from one of the other vehicles? Or what?
I was aching for a quick glimpse of two kittens joyfully playing together.
“Very generous of you!”
The relationship between Wrench and The Swango ™ was intriguing. I got the impression that there was friendship and deep loyalty, without romance. His desire to fulfill her final wish touched me, even as I recoiled from the act.
When Swango said she knew a boss when she saw one, I thought she must be wrong. Because bingeing and purging is a disease of people who are desperate for a mote of control in their lives.
Also, when the person on the phone (Meemo?) told Varga he was moving into Phase 5, he seemed to be passing on orders/updates, not requesting permission or seeking approval.
Security cameras are generally hooked to the emergency power. They’d be one of the easiest things to get going in an abandoned warehouse, much easier than the elevators. Once you’ve got power they should come back on. Elevators have motion detectors on the doors and the brakes, and other weird places that are never the same twice. And if any of them is blocked or disconnected the safety system will default to “stop.” . . .And about ten other things I won’t bore you with.
Freight elevators are always slow. You don’t want the pile of boxes on your dolly (or forklift) gaining too much momentum in any direction, especially in an enclosed space when you can’t jump out of the way. , and that was a storage building, not an office space. Which makes me wonder, how many sides was Goldfarb on? Could she have provided the venue for the final game?
As a season overall, I didn’t love it as much as the first two seasons, but it’s still better than most shows on TV.
I also wondered how Emmitt got away, and how Varga got up through the elevator. And I wondered if Nikki purposely left the cameras going so the cops would catch Varga but she also planned for him to be dead, so I don’t know.
There might not be another season at all. The end is definitely not a cliffhanger, it’s to contrast Varga and Burgle.
The change in haircut might also be to show that she’s more with the times now, as opposed to early when she was stuck in the past in some ways.
Emmitt killed Ray by accident with the framed stamp, but his confession last week was about how he basically killed Ray when they were younger by tricking him into taking the car instead of the stamps. Also last season Peggy Blumquist was the person who started the chaos, but she was just arrested, her husband Ed only tried to protect himself and his wife and he died because of it. I didn’t see that as resetting the karmic scales.
This season is a bit more chaotic than the others, especially with the ambiguous ending, but all of them include uncertainty and don’t assure us that everything is set back right, merely that there are some good people who are trying to do their best.
When the Miski story was mentioned by Gloria last week, I wondered if she would have an ending like it, but there was also the Peter and the Wolf theme throughout. I noticed the music more in this episode. In that story, Peter (Gloria) is victorious over the wolf (Varga), who is paraded through town captive, wearing a noose. I’m choosing to believe that is the outcome.
Maybe I should have steered clear of online discussions this time, because I really enjoyed it-- but I can’t rebut any of the complaints you guys raised.
Interesting that earbuds dude was still Varga’s top guy after Nikki and Wrench got the drop on him twice, and total amateur Emmitt got his gun.
People’s mileage may vary, but for me, one kid taking advantage of a younger brother–while certainly not admirable–doesn’t fall to the moral depths of ‘murdering a wife’ or ‘hiding the guy you just hit with your car in your garage.’
It’s true that I did use the phrase “set the moral universe straight,” but I’d edit it if I could, given its misleading implications. In fact I don’t see the purpose of the stories in Fargo as the provision of absolute assurances of ultimate justice–or anything close to that. Instead I’d posit a general moral viewpoint along the lines of ‘unpredictable things do happen and temptations do present themselves, but more often than not, the choice to renounce solipsistic greed and self-preservation will stand you in better stead than will the choice to embrace egocentrism.’ Or something like that.
Peggy’s arrest and the likely consequences seem not out-of-line with the offense she committed: she didn’t intend violence against the man she hit, but she failed to try to help him, leading to his death. And that may be seen by many as an act (or failure to act) that merits arrest, conviction, and imprisonment. Her husband’s fate, by contrast, seems in the what-we-expect-of-fiction sense to be morally in line with the fact that he consciously committed murder. Again, mileage may vary.
My argument is that season three’s outcomes diverged more discordantly from our expectations-of-fiction about the consequences of an initial bad act, than was true of seasons one and two.
This is certainly not decisive, but it may be a clue: Varga is depending on higher-ups in DHS or elsewhere protecting him. But the other DHS guy mentioned to Gloria that they caught him using facial recognition software. If he was being protected, wouldn’t his face have been purged from the files?