303 - The Law of Non-Contradiction
A_Ron_Hubbard
Cincinnati, OH
in Fargo
Director: John Cameron
Writer: Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi
Writer: Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi
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I also feel like there's a melancholy to this season that's not present in others. Loss and grief are being explored here, which surprisingly hasn't been dealt with much with all the death in the series. I don't like Gloria as much as Molly, but I'm starting to warm up to her and understand the character as she investigates copes with familial loss.
And Mac. Oh Mac. Great job FX, Hawley and everybody who made that happen.
Observations:
1. That guy from Always Sunny is here. Oh, he's a jerk. Okay.
2. That guy from Twin Peaks in here. Oh, he's okay. Okay.
3. Gloria on the beach is just like the picture in Barton Fink (also about coming to LA)
4. The BOX reminds me of of the movie Kiss Me Deadly. Also has glowing box and also set in LA.
5. Wait, who's shoes were they in the closet?
6. That guy that plays Mac in the Mac vs. PC ads is here. Oh, he's not. Are you sure?
7. Did Arby's pay for airtime or are they're just being colloquial? Either way, I'm off to get some curly fries.
Now Zimmerman, so he obviously scammed Thad, but was he ever a movie producer? He's got all these posters on the wall and you have the impression he actually makes movies, so who does he scam and who does he produce? Or does he produce nothing and is a pure scam artist ?
It's not an exact parallel by any means, but the robot vaguely reminded me of Hitchbot. If you're unfamiliar with Hitchbot, he was a Canadian built robot that was left on the side of the road on the East coast of Canada and was given the goal to hitch-hike his way across Canada to the West coast. It wasn't overly sophisticated, but it could perform basic functions ("I can help!"), talk, compose and post its own tweets etc.
After first going across Canada (I think it took about a month), it then went across Europe too. Unfortunately, they tried to have him cross America and it got destroyed in Philadelphia. Seeing the harmless Fargo robot getting beating by people in the cartoon sequence made me think of Hitchbot.
@CretanBull i learned about Hitchbot (and his fate) from @Wahl_e in the old Personal Arrogants podcast. Bloody Philadelphia. :-(
I also wanted to note that I feel a throwback to some David Lynch. In particular, the contradiction machine; It cant be turned on. No matter what you do, the outcome is the same. Fate has determined the box must be turned off. It may be related to technology not working for her, I doubt it. But something about the way that box is portrayed is somewhat creepy. The shoes behind the curtain, the randomness of those and the box, creepy. David Lynch creepy, not outright frightening, just weird and creepy.
Including Ray Wise from Twin Peaks for what seemed like a mostly pointless part seemed to nod that way as well.
Zimmerman's post accident voice box monologue also seemed somewhat David Lynchish.
Secondly, I wonder if Ennis, Thad, committed suicide. That would be ironic. Imagine that if he had just, or was in process of, committing suicide when Maurice broke in, and the murder of Maurice then was ultimately unnecessary. In the event that becomes true, Ray is currently the only murderer.
"Of course you do. Because you're not a cold hearted killer."
I appreciate the Hitchiker's comments above, but myself was picking up more of a Kurt Vonnegut vibe.
so I think that subplot of the movie occurs in the late sixties to mid seventies right? I mean you would represent yourself as being older because if you're starting anew under a new fictional identity life is still eaiser with a birth certificate, and my understanding it prior to 90s getting a BC or a social security card issued new was much easier at the time, so you'd represent yourself being born in 1928 in some rural logging town that no longer functionally exists, home birth of course, and the mother and midwife are long dead, hell if you're really crafty you could go through the 1910 census pick some woman living alone who's name matches an obituary, claim her as your mother (and you're an illegitimate child) and have a birth certificate issued. That's my thought, because assuming a false identity, born in the 1920s, well in 1980 (the year they reference Ennis moving to Eden Prarie ) you could easily pass yourself off, especially if dealing with the health department through the mail, as someone who's simply lived a simply life off the records and now needs one and get issued a birth certificate, once you have one you can get Identity documents issued in the new name, and live under that. but see every year more recent is a year greater in chance you get caught, so you would lie and make yourself as old as possible.
It could go either way. The Ennis we saw as an older man was a pretty sharp contrast to the one we saw in his youth. We could have been seeing him playing a part, or perhaps just as likely a changed man. If he left LA believing that he'd killed someone, maybe he found God...maybe believing that his liberal ways lead him into drug use and murder, he went in the opposite direction to atone?
His old-age bitterness could be part of a character that he created to hide from the law, or could be a man jaded from being scammed and living with the guilt of (thinking that he'd) murdered someone.
As an unrelated note, I do wonder in the 1970s if he would've even seen that much prison time, it wasn't until the crack wars that sentencing was really increased. even murder unless it was especially heinous (like killing a police officer or a sexual assault, or a mass killing or in the south, racially charged) wasn't that big a deal, murderers until the 80s routinely paroled out of prisons after 5-10-15 years. An unrelated story, a friend of mine worked at a gun shop for several years, and in the mid 1990s a guy comes in to purchase a gun, and so he fills out the form and one of the questions on the form you fill out to buy a gun from a licensed store is "have you ever been convicted of a felony" so he wrote yes then in the details section gave a full statement, the court, date, sentence, charge, etc. He had been convicted of murder in... some southern state I can't remember which, in the mid 1970s and was paroled after 8 years and sentence cleared after 10 and was given a certificate saying his rights were restored. he delayed the purchase and contacted the ATF who verified, yes he was convicted of murder, yes his rights were restored in the 80s, he could make the sale.
today that beating, at least in Washington would've been a minimum of 5 years, and a death would be 15 before parole is even considered.