You probably hate cover songs too, huh? 
I’m loving this season. Plus it’s not really fair to compare it to seasons you’ve are ready seen resolved. I’m sure this season will resolve itself with a new outro.
Same here but…
Varga has already “adjusted” the books and the business has probably made a pretty big jump financially. I’m guessing it looked suspicious enough to take a peek at.
Actually a CTR triggers nothing. Millions and millions filed.
But yes, 9999 triggers SAR, which triggers a investigation at some level.
$2000 a week,* maybe. *
I want to say that with the new programs there is no safe amount for long term laundering of cash.
If say, you did get $15000 from selling your car private party, just deposit the whole $15000. Dont worry about a CTR.
Here’s more: Currency transaction report - Wikipedia
Well, I didn’t see that coming…
helluva episode.
Oh, no, we lost Ewan McGregor! Thank heavens we still have Ewan McGregor.
Aside from that: is there any reason to believe Hawley deliberately gave Varga a name that’s so close to “Fargo”…?
I figured someone else was going to have to die soon, but he was fairly low down on my list of likely corpses.
The wife and I are loving the show again this season, all the more since we also enjoyed Legion and are coming to appreciate Hawley’s style and range more.
We are both totally grooving on all the delightful little details and mind-bendy twists that are so very Cohenesque (but of course some are very Hawley). It’s a fun game for us to try and catch stuff - I’m sure we’ve missed plenty but so far I haven’t noticed anything mentioned in this thread that we didn’t catch for ourselves - quite a coup for us, because it’s a first for us to be able to hold our again against the collective might of the 'Dope.
One thing we noted that may or may not be an intentional homage is the narrated (by Malvo, etc) moral tales. They really remind me of PT Anderson’s magnolia, where Ricky Jay narrated similar tales in the beginning of the movie. Of course these tales also come off a bit like the tale of the dybbuk in A Serious Man, so these may simply owe their heritage to that.
One thing we caught on to right away, which other 'Dopers have come close to guessing the same thing: Chief Gloria Burgle is a ghost. Kinda. It’s metaphorical!
She’s in Limbo, in more ways than one. Everything about her job is in Limbo, of course, and there’s the invisibility to technology thing, and perhaps somehow playing into it is her sort of step father whose name isn’t his real name. Then there’s the weird statement by Varga to Stussy, something about how “I might not even be here”, but he was talking about himself and not the Chief. I look forward to seeing how Hawley plays with this going forward. It might just be a fun quirk, but I’m hoping the story will bring in more elements to support this idea… to put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.
I loved Varga trying to research Chief Burgle …
Burgle’s boss, fellow officers and son all see and react to her, so I doubt she’s a ghost.
RIP Ray! Should’ve just graciously taken the stamp he’d wanted so long, but no, he had to get pissy about it.
So Varga quotes Lenin, has a picture of Stalin on his wall, and thinks the Moon landing was a hoax. I foresee a senior White House job in his future.
Having the previously-silent Asian assassin arrange his notepad, pens and calculator just so, then spout off tax law and drive the IRS agent out, was funny.
A UFO descends over the Massacre at Sioux Falls, but it’s a stretch she’s a ghost?
Fictional ghosts aren’t usually seen in daylight by so many folks under circumstances that make it seem like they’re entirely real and mortal.
I realize it may have seemed like I was making a strict claim that Burgle is dead and her spirit is walking the earth when I said
But I did follow that statement immediately with
To be clear, I don’t believe that Hawley is planning on revealing that Burgle is an actual unwitting spirit a la The Sixth Sense or The Others. Rather, her “undead” characteristic of being invisible to technology is used a metaphor to highlight that her life (at least as far as her career is concerned) is, metaphorically speaking, in limbo.
I am curious to see other elements Hawley may choose to include in this theme, should he choose to pursue it. Certainly there should be some sort of resolution (a la Chekhov) to the non-metaphorical (i.e. actual) aspect of her apparent invisibility to technology, but he could just decide to leave it as a quirk with no further depth than it currently has.
I alluded to it above - but Varga’s attempt to research Burgle fits right in - she doesn’t ‘exist’ to technology.
Are we going to find out how the opening scene of episode 1 fits in?
Is it somehow a literal part of the story, or was it simply an example of the results of extreme mindless bureaucracy? If it’s simply an example of bureaucracy , does it relate to the county takeover of local law enforcement?
It bothered me a bit that the pens etc. weren’t just arranged identically to the IRS agent’s obsessive-compulsive layout—but that they were identical pens. How did Varga’s guy manage that?
It was funny, though. And smart, to have Varga remove that particular obstacle by something other than violence or the threat of violence. Mixes it up, so to speak.
—davidm: good point about the season’s first scene. Could have been mere setting up of the theme, but then again, who knows? Varga, though played by an Englishman, does seem to have Soviet Bloc affiliation of some kind or other.
Here’s another aspect I thought of regarding this: In the main story the wrong man suffers, because of having the same name as someone at a different address.
In that opening scene in Germany, the wrong man suffers because of living at the same (previous) address as someone with a different name; sort of the opposite of the main story.
Surely that’s not a coincidence and must have been done deliberately by the writers.
"Minsky"was itching my brain, and I finally found time to look it up today. It led to this:
I feel better now. 