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Fargo 3: not until 2017


Baitac

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I liked the finale. Bookending the season with interrogation scenes was neat. Liked having another Gloria and Varga face to face. I was hoping Varga would get some justice. It was great to see him frazzled, and even frightened, this episode.

Wrench and Nikki were entertaining again. They and Varga were the best part of the season. I liked Wrench finishing Emmit for Nikki as well. He did kind of owe her ;) However, as much as I was entertained by Wrench and Nikki this season, their arc at the end required a little suspension of disbelief. Nikki, specifically. She suddenly had the upper hand in the conflict after her beating from Yuri and the other henchman. She went from seemingly out of her league to toying with Varga afterwards. It didn't ruin my enjoyment of the season, but had me questioning her success initially.

The Stussy brothers were a bit of a miss for me. I didn't care for either Emmit or Raymond very much.

Still an enjoyable season but a little dip in quality from 1 and 2.

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Well it seems like I'm the only one who didn't like the finale. I feel like the whole season has been a waste of time. The worst part, I guess, is that I knew I wouldn't like it when they announced that Ewan McGregor would play twins. 

 

I liked the team up with Nikki and Mr Wrench though. So there's that.

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36 minutes ago, The Unborn said:

Well it seems like I'm the only one who didn't like the finale. I feel like the whole season has been a waste of time. The worst part, I guess, is that I knew I wouldn't like it when they announced that Ewan McGregor would play twins. 

 

I liked the team up with Nikki and Mr Wrench though. So there's that.

I don't want to agree,  but I do. 90 percent of this season feels like a waste of time given how it all ended. Like,  seriously,  what point did the Stussy brothers or Sy have,   overall? Just a bunch of weak saps that got handled by the wolves? Yawn. 

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33 minutes ago, The Unborn said:

Well it seems like I'm the only one who didn't like the finale. I feel like the whole season has been a waste of time. The worst part, I guess, is that I knew I wouldn't like it when they announced that Ewan McGregor would play twins. 

 

I liked the team up with Nikki and Mr Wrench though. So there's that.

 

I did not like it either.  I didn't like most of what happened since episode 3 and almost nothing that happened in the last 3 episodes.

At some point in the middle of the season I was thinking "This is not as good as the previous seasons, but it's still good."  But now I'm thinking that was mostly due to goodwill carried from the previous seasons coloring my view.  And it did evolve to something different than Fargo in the last few episodes, which would have been fine if it was well executed, but it just wasn't.

Top to bottom, this season arguably had the best cast of all seasons on paper, but most of the performances either fell flat or failed to leave an impression as the writing / plot didn't really give them much to work with. Whereas in previous seasons, so many actors (even those who were unknown) gave memorable performances, even in limited screen time.

 

11 hours ago, Astromech said:

However, as much as I was entertained by Wrench and Nikki this season, their arc at the end required a little suspension of disbelief. Nikki, specifically. She suddenly had the upper hand in the conflict after her beating from Yuri and the other henchman. She went from seemingly out of her league to toying with Varga afterwards. It didn't ruin my enjoyment of the season, but had me questioning her success initially.

 

It required an incredible amount of suspension of disbelief.  And maybe suspension of disbelief is not even the right word. Seemed like they were intentionally playing up the improbability of those events and I guess this is somehow connected to the overall theme of "This is a [true] story" (together with a bunch of unexplained  / improbable / fantastical things that happened in the second half of the season), but to me, it's all disjointed and haphazard.  I feel that the creator is trying to make a point, but I have no idea what that is and honestly, the show did not capture my interest enough to think too deeply about it. 

 

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A quite unremarkable finale to finish up a very ordinary third season. 

Casting Ewan McGregor in two roles was a mistake, he excelled in neither. Shea Whigham's character was eye roll inducing. Apart from Varga who had a great screen presence there really wasn't much else to write home about.

A disappointing 6.5/10 overall

 

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For what it's worth I'm pretty sure Whigham's character was intentionally written that way. Part of the "ultimately those in power decide what's 'true' theme" Though in his case he wasn't doing it because he was an evil guy. He was just a very straightforward and stubborn cop who figures if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's probably a duck because what are the odds that someone would go to the trouble of faking a duck. 

Anyway even though this was the weakest season I'd still like to see more down the line. FX should try to get the Coen brothers to sit down with Hawley for a weekend and come up with ideas for season four, then let them get back to movies while Hawley develops the next season.

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58 minutes ago, RumHam said:

For what it's worth I'm pretty sure Whigham's character was intentionally written that way. Part of the "ultimately those in power decide what's 'true' theme" Though in his case he wasn't doing it because he was an evil guy. He was just a very straightforward and stubborn cop who figures if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's probably a duck because what are the odds that someone would go to the trouble of faking a duck. 

Anyway even though this was the weakest season I'd still like to see more down the line. FX should try to get the Coen brothers to sit down with Hawley for a weekend and come up with ideas for season four, then let them get back to movies while Hawley develops the next season.

I agree. His character ties in with the Kafkaesque theme of the season, i.e. the absurdity of bureaucracy.

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On 23/06/2017 at 6:14 PM, RumHam said:

Anyway even though this was the weakest season I'd still like to see more down the line. FX should try to get the Coen brothers to sit down with Hawley for a weekend and come up with ideas for season four, then let them get back to movies while Hawley develops the next season.

But the Coen brothers have nothing to do with the show... I don't think they even like it.

"Executive producers" just means they get the sweet money.

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9 hours ago, Pliskin said:

But the Coen brothers have nothing to do with the show... I don't think they even like it.

"Executive producers" just means they get the sweet money.

I know they don't, though I've never heard one way or another if they like it. I was just suggesting that they should as Hawley has said he does not yet have any ideas for season four. 

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I think the Coen bros are pretty much indifferent towards the show judging from these comments:

"We're just not very interested. I mean, we're perfectly happy with it. We have no problem with it. It just feels divorced from our film somehow."

"Here's the thing. We work short. Our longest movie is two hours two minutes. It's just not how we think about stories. I mean, after two hours with a character we feel we're pretty much done with them."

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Finally caught up on the last two eps.  The season finished with more energy as Nikki and Wrench went on a rampage but it also tainted the character of Nikki, who was my favorite. 

Her sudden leap to omniscient criminal mastermind was a ridiculous stretch.  Even simpler than that, her intent to shoot Emmit and then actually shoot an innocent cop cost her all moral high ground.  Emmit was part victim and part sleaze, but why should Nikki kill him?  Ray's death was an accident and caused by Ray as much as Emmit.  In the simple logic of TV, Emmit wasn't bad enough to earn a death sentence.  In fact, we had to see him five years later, smug and rich and patronizing Sy (who was really Emmit's biggest crime) to feel like his murder by Wrench was justified.  And why did Wrench suddenly pop up after five years to do this, when it could have been done any time?

 

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1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Finally caught up on the last two eps.  The season finished with more energy as Nikki and Wrench went on a rampage but it also tainted the character of Nikki, who was my favorite. 

Her sudden leap to omniscient criminal mastermind was a ridiculous stretch.  Even simpler than that, her intent to shoot Emmit and then actually shoot an innocent cop cost her all moral high ground.  Emmit was part victim and part sleaze, but why should Nikki kill him?  Ray's death was an accident and caused by Ray as much as Emmit.  In the simple logic of TV, Emmit wasn't bad enough to earn a death sentence.  In fact, we had to see him five years later, smug and rich and patronizing Sy (who was really Emmit's biggest crime) to feel like his murder by Wrench was justified.  And why did Wrench suddenly pop up after five years to do this, when it could have been done any time?

 

I don't think she was a criminal mastermind, but I thought it was clear early on that she was supposed to be a "strategist" as Varga put it.  All the bridge stuff and her killing of Maurice with the AC unit were meant to suggest as much, I think. I also put a lot of her increased success rate in the last three episodes down to Mr. Wrench's involvement. It's one thing to plan strategies about thing's you've only seen in movies. Having a "consultant" so to speak who has actually been in similar situations would make her a lot more effective. 

As for why Nikki would target Emmit, for one thing I'm pretty sure she never learned it was an accident. Plus she clearly shared and encouraged Ray's belief that Emmit robbed him of the stamps and that that was the root of all of Ray's problems

 

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6 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

 And why did Wrench suddenly pop up after five years to do this, when it could have been done any time?

In an interview Noah made it sound like the "5 years Later" bit was an arbitrary number that wasn't given much thought.  

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I binged S3 this weekend and, from the looks of things, liked it a lot more than a lot of people in here. I'll start with the phenomenal cast. Swango and Wrench need their own season. Ewan McGregor did a great job as the bird and the duck, both were really distinct performances. And Thewlis' work as Varga made his Ares in Wonder Woman look like a choir boy. And what a great character Sy Feltz was. Sy was a major part in two of the most disturbing scenes on TV this year, the infamous "Dad Mug" scene and Swango's beating by the Cossack, and neither involve and graphic violence being shown on camera. I thought the season worked well as one big allegory, a very prescient one at that. And that last shot of the series was just genius: will the good guys or bad guys win (slow zoom in of a ticking clock) only time can say. Loved it.

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