Fargo

“Whatcha got there, Margie?” seems like a strange choice for the most memorable line from the 1996 film, Fargo.  A lot of crime goes on in that story, all against the backdrop of the snowy Minnesota landscape, but it’s the charming local accents and the banal interest in what people are having for their meals that has stayed with me to this day.  That said, I only saw the film during my university years in the early 2000s, during a period in which I felt the best way to round out my terrible personality was to make sure I had seen all those classic films people talk about.  Back in the days of DVDs, Fargo was easily procured from a now-defunct online rental company, viewed on a laptop intended for academic support, and sat through with an attention span that now seems alien as these were also the days that predated smartphones and their irresistible whispers of distraction when you are trying to concentrate on absolutely anything at all.

Fast forward to 2014 and, a mere 18 years after the film’s release, a TV spin off emerges.  I’ve chosen the word spin off, as it really cheapens the programme, making it clear where the quality lies in this originator-progeny relationship.  Pah, I thought to myself, I shan’t ever be watching that.  But join me, if you will, in 2021.  More advanced in age, with greater maturity and self-assurance than my student self from decades before, I was no longer pursuing self-betterment through lists of must-see movies.  Oh no, I was looking at the IMDb list of top-rated television programmes.  And this is called growth.  There, at 38 (rankings may change over time) and with a score of 8.9/10, was the previously ignored Fargo TV series.  Well, this omission needed rectifying.  What kind of wildly successful TV blog would this be if, while having sat through the vast majority of top scorers (don’t worry, they’re all covered here, guys, from Rick & Morty to Our Planet) I allowed this oversight to continue?  And lo, thanks to Netflix, three quarters of my neglect has been rectified.

From my vantage point of having seen three of Fargo’s four seasons, I shall now offload all my thoughts and opinions for you to read.  Unfortunately the fourth series emerged while I was otherwise preoccupied and I haven’t been able to track it down on a platform, so we’ll just pretend we don’t care (though I truly do as it looks like a ripping period production with casting that finally offsets Fargo’s overwhelming whiteness).  But what I can say is that those first three outings of this boxset are cracking viewing to put in front of your face – how wrong I was about not expecting much from the TV version of a film.  What’s more, the stellar cast just goes to show how far TV has come in taking on cinema as the home of the big acting name or indeed of the quality production.

Each episode of Fargo is exquisitely crafted.  From the first frame, care and attention has been taken over every detail, as if all of it is a pilot that wants you to like it.  It’s how telly should be.  This is made all the more impressive by the fact that so much of it is shot in temperatures below freezing, as I can only imagine cameramen wanting to get out of the cold and therefore not really caring a toss.  I also like to think of everyone slipping over in the ice during the outtakes.  Not because I wish them ill, but because I am the sort of person that slips in ice, so I might as well assume it’s a universal quality.  One curious feature of our storytelling is that every instalment is preceded by a statement that the events are based on a true story, but that names have been changed to protect identities.  There’s no way of checking this as I simply cannot be bothered to type it into the internet, so again, we can just sit with it, wondering if we believe it, wondering if it matters, before moving on.

It’s pertinent, though, as the plots in Fargo are delightfully far-fetched.  To me, this is proof of veracity.  Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up.  Right?  Each series tracks over its ten episodes a wholly different storyline.  This means you’ll need to jettison an old cast and get to know a new one.  Gradually, hints of how these worlds and timelines connect are revealed, with series two’s seventies setting engendering an aftermath that plays back into the first series, which in turn has repercussions on the third.  May I one day know how this comes to bear on the fourth.

Playing out over the real towns of Minnesota and the Dakotas, our cast is often split into three camps.  We have heroes, often nice folk with above-average yet underappreciated ability in their jobs, normally law enforcement, who have to put up with the nonsense that swirls around them.  These are our Margies, carrying a torch of affection over from our original film.  Then we have our malcontents.  Their morals are often dubious, yet we can’t resist rooting for them.  They’ve faced hardship and come out stronger, but their drive and effort often lead to their own downfalls.  And then we have some great straight-up baddies, doling out evil willy nilly, creating the murderous rampages and bloodstains in the snow that are required to propel much of the plot forward.

I’d venture to describe Fargo as gently soothing, even though it’s awash in ultraviolence.  Somehow, the gruesome gore is easy to forgive, maybe because it’s framed in a higher art form.  We have a top-notch ratio of intrigue resolution to new curiosity establishment in each episode, as well as exemplary season finale crescendoing that resulted in my own patented viewing strategy: episodes nine and ten of each series had to be back-to-backed simply because I would get so excited (what a sad little life, Jane).  I typically only ever watch one instalment of a drama at a time so it doesn’t become wallpaper, but don’t worry if you have an alternative approach – it just means I am better than you.

So come all and feast upon this ensemble masterpiece.  You’ll revel at whatshisface off that film once and whoshername that used to be in thingy.  Not everyone masters the accent as successfully as others, and all the “oh yah”s and “ok then”s are a crucial part of our charm requirements, but each player has a great time with their character.  There’s bold storytelling as far as the eye can see, and dusting everything else in snow covers a variety of other flaws that I simply didn’t notice.  So take a trip via your screen of choice to this slice of the USA and treat yourself to some of the nicest murder stories ever known.

Last Chance U: Basketball

We’ll begin this week with apologies to an unknown neighbour of mine.  The flat on the other side of the wall to which my big telly is mounted has occupants unknown to me.  They have a different entrance and we’re therefore mostly happy in our separate lives.  Sure, one of them has a very loud voice and spends most evenings playing video games while shrieking into a headset, but I just turn up my own boxset volume to drown at a grown man shouting at people to “Kill him, kill him, KILL HIM!”  But oh how the tables were turned this week as I made my way through the final episodes of Last Chance U: Basketball.  These ball games were recorded over a year ago; they’re being broadcast as part of a documentary.  Yet, the excitement of the matches, the odds at stake, the significance to the players and the closeness of some of the scores, all these things had me jumping up and down, yelling at the screen and even clapping each time points hit the scoreboard.

Such is the power of Last Chance U as a franchise.  I’ve already posted about its progenitor format, following junior college teams playing American football for their last chance (clue’s in the name) at college scholarships.  The fifth season’s appearance was a welcome lockdown drop, standing out for having a coach that actually seemed completely decent, yet sadly tailing off as the pandemic came along to ruin young lives.  Well, this is more of the same outstanding drama, but make it basketball.  I’ve covered my dalliance in this sport already, having been very pleasantly surprised by the triumphant The Last Dance a few months back.  I’m basically an NBA expert now.  And so here we are, at a college in East Los Angeles (ELAC) following their basketball team’s dreams to improve their game, come together as a unit, win state and bag scholarships to unlock futures otherwise denied to them as young African-American men.

If you’re a sporting imbecile like me, you’ll find basketball is a much easier follow than the defence-offence-special teams confusion of American football.  For those still needing help, there’s a basket at each end and you’ve got to put your ball in there to score.  It helps if you’re six foot heading on seven, as these baskets aren’t built with anyone of less-than-average stature in mind.  You also can’t just carry the ball, but you can bounce it as much as you like.  There are also sometimes fouls, but I don’t know why these happen.

At the heart of any Last Chance U is the head coach.  Step forward John Mosley, a man you’ll come away desperate to be friends with.  He gets it.  He knows the odds are stacked against his kids, so he pours everything into getting them what they need.  He’s in no way camera shy, acting out some dramatic tirades when the team aren’t following his instructions or trying hard enough.  And this man can preach, taking his fervent Christian beliefs out at the slightest provocation to deliver heartfelt sermons in the locker room that are guaranteed to have uptight Brits cringing.  His team aren’t always appreciative of how much he pushes them, yet some of the best arcs within this first season document how they come to realise his significance in their paths to progress.  And there’s affection in the tension too.  When not clapping and yelling, I was also laughing my head off during the team’s cohesion trip to the Californian countryside where one evening’s activity was competitive impressions of their exuberant coach.  Mosley took their spot-in impersonations in his stride.

Within the team itself, we are directed to focus on four key players.  Each will win your heart, from Joe Hampton’s palpable frustration at referee persecution to Deshaun Highler’s unrivalled grit and tenacity in getting where he needs to be in the face of personal tragedy.  Around this core, the rest of the team is just as engaging and you’ll find yourself wanting to know more about all of them. You’ll laugh along at team jokes like you’re a fellow player.  In fact, it’s a privilege to be able to have such a nose around in their lives and team dynamics, which leads me to the most apt term for Last Chance U’s style of observation: unflinching.  We look away from nothing.  From the captain spewing up his guts to various locker-punching tantrums, we’re with it all the way, even after we’d prefer not to be.  Signature to this series are long face-on shots of key characters, part-brooding, part-defiance, all haunting.  It breaks the otherwise sacrosanct rule of nobody looking directly down the lenses of the cameras that are thrust in their faces.  They see us, watching them.  This intensity elevates.  The only thing missing is the syncopated drumbeat of a typical Last Chance U opening sequence.

I’ve recommended Last Chance U: Basketball to anyone that will listen, and to even more people that won’t.  It will get you in its grip till you miss it when it’s over.  This series is perhaps one of the bittersweetest what with the 2019/20 season running into something just over a year ago that we’re still dealing with to this very day.  But, in time, you’ll remember the hope it has given you.  The next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself, ask yourself what the players of the East Los Angeles College basketball team would do.

Top Of The Lake

 

There I was, the other day, struck by the thought that I hadn’t had Elisabeth Moss’s face in front of me on a big screen in a long time.  Mad Men was ages ago, and we are a while off another season of Handmaid’s Tale, though the memory of the excellence of series three is still a tingling sensation.  With recent government curbs on demonstration and their response to violence against women, we are another step closer to Gilead anyway, so we’ll all be blessing the fruit in no time.  Under his eye, indeed.  This brought me to click on Top Of The Lake on Netflix, a Moss-fronted drama that aired on the BBC back in 2013.  It looked rainy and gritty, promising some crimes perpetrated against a backdrop of luscious scenery and I felt safe in the knowledge I would have a strong performance from such a gifted actor in the lead role.

The first series is set in New Zealand, which is something I had somehow missed.  This isn’t Yorkshire (I was imagining Happy Valley vibes) but Lake Wakatipu at the bottom of South Island.  You can imagine my surprise, then, when Moss whips out a Kiwi accent.  It sounds decent to me, but from my perspective on the other side of the world, I realise I have no credibility to judge.  Moss plays Robin Griffin, returning to her home community from Sydney (which nicely covers an irregular vowel sounds anyway).  She’s in the police, sort of coming and going in a role to do with sexual assaults.  It’s hard to be sure if she’s on a working trip or not.  Her mum is unwell, but she almost ignores her to re-tread the paths of her own traumatic youth there, making it clear that she left for a very firm reason.  In a bit of a busman’s holiday, a local girl goes missing, and there are many suspicions of foul play, so Moss is in her element as the strong female and only capable police officer, dealing with an avalanche of male incompetence and insouciance as she tries to right the wrongs in her own community.

Before long, every character is a suspect, and this is because everyone is awful.  Unlikeable characters loom as large throughout as the spectacular scenery, but we are drawn in as Moss dashes in the drizzle from riddle to riddle.  There’s even a strange women’s commune set up beside the lake in shipping containers, riling some of the local populace but mostly sitting about drinking tea.  The climax gripped me with not only its gruesomeness, but its plausibility among a group of lakeside settlements who treat the most vulnerable in their society as expendable commodities.

Come 2017, the standalone conclusion is overturned as a second season appears.  The action has moved to Sydney, so our only point of continuity is Robin Griffin herself.  Still carrying the (additional) trauma of her previous lake-based experience, she now has new vulnerable girls to protect.  There are the South East Asian young women working in the licensed sex industry, branching out into further ways of selling their bodies.  There’s also the now-teenage daughter that Robin had given up for adoption.  She’s mixed up in these brothels, it turns out, rebelling against her adoptive parents (including a Nicole Kidman with little to do but have distracting hair) by pursuing a relationship with a vile German man who specialises in looking after stray cats better than he treats his sex workers.

Being strange throughout, Game Of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie is our cop partner, clashing with Robin in various ways, while we sort of wobble through a sequence of events to our climax.  The unlikability of everyone far exceeds series one’s motley crew of characters, and this made it a bit of a slog to get through.  Everything was gross, but not quite grotesque enough to be a reason to be compelled.  I stuck with it for the sake of dear Elisabeth, covering for patchier performances.  On many an evening, clicking next episode felt like more of a duty than a treat, especially in a world of so much else to watch (bonjour, Lupin).

While this might not sound like the strongest recommendation, Top Of The Lake is still important viewing.  As a slagger-off of TV despite never having produced any, I should confess I am deep in the Introduction To Screenwriting term of a part-time Creative Writing MA I am doing.  I think we can all agree the quality of my prose needs professional help.  I also have a new-found respect for anyone who writes anything on telly.  A fellow course-member (on Teams of course – I have never met these people) pointed out to us that Top Of The Lake is a great example of a female story structure.  I think this is part of feminist literary theory, but our hero’s treatment within the show follows a different arc to what we see in the hegemonic male stories of our culture.  This is all a bit academic so let’s focus on the easy bits.  This is a strong female character, leading storylines that make us question how women are viewed and treated by our societies.  It’s not pretty, but it’s more relevant than ever.

Lupin (Lupin, Dans L’Ombre D’Arsène)

Due to a dreadful administrative error, it’s taken me until this 190^th post to include any boxsets in the French language within my ramblings here.  Désolé, everybody.  This has not been intentional.  Rest assured we’ve had plenty of Spanish (Money Heist and Elite), some German (Dark) and even some Korean (Kingdom) but I’ve been very remiss by omitting la Francophonie.  Most particularly, my guilt comes from my own possession of a French degree (or half of one, really).  There was a time I could pursue conversation with almost any citoyen, wielding the imperfect subjunctive and having at my disposal vast reams of memorised vocabulary in obscure areas (for some reason, I once knew all the garden birds).  I vowed I would never become one of those adults who lost the language skills of their degree, but here I am.  The truth is, I spent nine months in Germany for my university-mandated year abroad, but only nine days in France.  I haemorrhaged money in Paris during a summer heatwave trying to find a job/set up a whole life before I called it quits and brexited myself.  The oral part of my final French exam was abominable, so let’s acknowledge my trauma with the language before we go any further.

This did not stop me jumping on board the Lupin train in recent weeks.  Yeah it’s got subtitles, and yeah, even after twenty grand of student debt got paid off for that French degree, I still needed them to stand a chance of understanding a word of what was going on.  I’m of the ability where I can read the onscreen transcription really quickly and then compare it to the words the cast utter, using the text as a clue, and then making pointless comments to myself such as: hmm, that was an interesting approach to rendering that expression idiomatically in English.  Worse still, given the UK’s international pointlessness, we’re rendering things into American English.  But this is boring for everyone and doesn’t matter; Lupin is a great watch.  Just don’t destroy it by plumping for the dreadful dubbed versions that Netflix offers.

Our hero is actually Assane Diop, the son of a Senegalese man who came to France with big dreams.  Our star, therefore, is Omar Sy.  Not a household name in the UK, and I had only ever seen him in Jurassic World doing not much besides caressing a velociraptor while Chris Pratt pulled all the expressions.  I have a problem with watching that film over and over and Sy is consistently one of the most compelling parts, alongside my obsession with any storyline that involves things going wrong at a theme park.  Nevertheless, Lupin is the Omar Sy show and people of all linguistic bents should gather around and be drawn in.  You might be wondering where the Lupin bit comes in then.  Well, Arsène Lupin is actually the 1900s literary creation of Maurice Leblanc.  A bit like our Sherlock Holmes only with a different signature hat and a career on the other side of the law, Arsène Lupin’s gentlemanly thefts still inspire imaginations to this day, none more so than Diop’s.

In present-day Paris, Sy’s character enacts a thrilling series of heists under the noses of many a member of the snooty elite.  As a black man, he’s often able to exploit racial prejudice to his advantage, dressing as a cleaner in the opening episode and therefore becoming invisible to anyone with money.  At first, you might just think he’s a bit of a Jacques the lad with sticky fingers.  But no, this all ladders up to a life’s mission to avenge the death of his father.  Cue flashbacks to Diop’s youth.  His pa works for the high-net-worth Pellegrini family but they’re clearly bad news because the patriarch shouts a lot (proving money doesn’t buy happiness).  Finding himself in the care system, Diop’s only comfort becomes the gentleman thief and his stories, and thus a modern-day Lupin is born.

You’ve got Paris at its best and worst, some mixed-ability policemen on his trail (I believe these are what the French call “les incompétents”), the rich being dreadful towards the poor, racial injustice, family scenes where a super cool thief has to work hard to impress his teenage son, and enough French in which to bathe your ears that it’s like a GCSE listening exercise only you don’t have to write down any answers for the teacher to mark.  Sy immediately charms you into rooting for our hero, and the plot in both its episodic and series-long arcs picks up the pace and the jeopardy until you’re keen to race through with considerable vitesse.  Shame, then, that we only get five bits to kick us off with, but Netflix is following up with the next part soon and I, pour un, will be locked down in my flat ready to watch it and be inspired for my own ambitions to become a gentleman thief.  Ok then, maybe just a thief.

The Simpsons (Seasons One To Five)

For those that know me in real life, you’ll have noticed a significant and glaring omission from these posts over the last 188 entries.  There’s a certain animated sitcom that influences my speech every day, that I have spent whole ski trips reciting (“Stupid, sexy Flanders”), whose songs I have butchered to the irritation of other passengers on trains in Germany (“Oh please won’t you see my vest?”) and that probably represents to me the first time I saw the status of masterpiece achieved in TV: The Simpsons.  It’s now been running almost as long as I have, but we’re going to go back to the very start and giving its early years the respect they deserve.  Therefore, its voluminous canon will be split into chunks and we shall begin with the first five seasons.  The classics, if you will.  It’s a well-documented and popular opinion held these days that America’s favourite yellow family is far past its peak.  Now that I have plumped for access to Disney+ (see crucial explanatory post on my life admin decisions here: The Mandalorian), I’ve decided to go back and see for myself.  But let’s be generous – at no point will I be denying the ongoing cultural impact of one family from 742 Evergreen Terrace.  In fact, they may even be victims of their own success.

For a long time I had no real idea what this Simpsonite phenomenon was.  In the UK, the show originally only went out on Sky One (which my parents wouldn’t pay for), and, in the days before the internet, my single route to any further information was an on-pack promotion with Shreddies.  This cereal occasionally appeared in the line-up for breakfast in my early 90s childhood.  My dad, who worked nights, would be asleep upstairs while my mum would quietly prepare my sister and me for school.  A selection of cereal boxes would be laid out on the table in the breakfast room (yes, I know) the night before, so we could serve ourselves on waking up, munching along in time to Mr Motivator on GMTV.  These days, Shreddies would cause me severe digestive discomfort, but in my youth I seemed happy to risk a code brown in order to keep hunger locked up till lunch.  In place of toys, the promotional packs contained Simpsons trivia cards.  I devoured these, desperate to know more about this collection of people who were, to me, at the time, little more than a spiky haired boy, a bald man, a lady with a blue head bush, and an indeterminate number of star-headed woman, all with bulging eyes and yellow skin.  One question then posed still lives with me: who is Bart Simpson’s hero?  I remember you had to slide out a little piece of paper to confirm the multiple-choice answer: Krusty the Clown.  I was torn.  Thrilled to have learned something about these intriguing characters, Krusty sounded like a weird name for a clown.  I also hated, and still hate, clowns.  I was left broadly concerned and very much unsatiated when it came to the world of these yellow cartoon strangers.  What was all the fuss about?

In a rare use of the license fee not to promote Tory politics, the BBC finally acquired the license to broadcast old Simpsons series in the later nineties.  It was the dawning of a new age for my sister and me.  This was years before culture was simulcast on both sides of the Atlantic.  Primitive dwellers of Blighty had to wait months and sometimes years to access Hollywood films.  Thus, only seven years after its American debut, The Simpsons came to British terrestrial telly in 1996.  Life would never be the same again.  In an act of severe trolling, its initial slot was something like 5.25pm on a Saturday afternoon (though it may have been Sunday).  This was before catch-up services and during an epoch throughout which my dad didn’t know how to set the timer on the VCR (which actually extends into present day as he has never learned), so the appointment to view was without compromise.  The show was paired with the TV spin-off of Clueless, so, for the best part of an hour, we would bathe in the contrasting genres of glamorous, sunshine-drenched, high school-based light entertainment that we didn’t understand, and a riot of colourful animation that we simply had to have in our lives.

Viewed in the present day, the episodes of that first season are charmingly rough around the edges.  The drawings threaten to melt at any moment.  Characters take on almost liquid form, and there is a very loose approach to ethnicity, with some racial identities taking a while to settle (and even adjusting in the same episode).  But this is part of the fun, and, either way, the tight tight storytelling distracts from any sketchy sketching to a significant degree.  Each instalment is a masterclass in screenwriting, combining biting satire with comforting heart, acidic wit with sweetness, genuine emotion with slapstick silliness.  The balance of contrasts is remarkable and something that, as modern detractors would argue, hasn’t stayed with the show through subsequent series.  At one point, Homer attempts suicide.  Lisa has depression.  But these aren’t played for laughs – they are taken on to reflect modern life.  Homer, in particular, is a different man.  Sure, he likes is food and is often outsmarted, but he is much more short-tempered, snapping often at Bart, and even at one point the driving force for his family to improve.

As I re-watched, I became fixated on the evolution of our paterfamilias.  Season one Homer has depth, but by season three he is almost fully dumb, and as season five settles in he is stupid beyond all reason.  Reflecting now, this strikes me as the main feature whose loss affects the quality of The Simpsons.  We go from masterpiece to (only!) still better than most things.  A tough judgment for something so lasting and popular but it’s my blog and there’s nobody to stop me venting my bugbears.  Homer shouldn’t matter so much as I’ve always preferred the rest of the family.  Storylines focusing on the children hold more fascination, with Bart channelling my impulse to do anything for the laughs, and Lisa a kindred spirit to my intellectual snobbery.  Often, the best line is simply Maggie’s dummy-sucking.  Marge, in fact, feels more relevant than ever as a manifestation of the invisible mental burden carried by female members of most modern hetero households.  As we progress, a whole town population of Springfielders is generated around the family and a perk of sitting through some episodes for what must be the twentieth time is tracking their first appearances and subsequent developments.

By season two, The Simpsons has perfected (from a high base) the art of the 22-minute story, carrying this right through to most of season five, which is what made me separate this quintuplet off for its own post.  A blessing and a curse comes in the form of the fact that each episode must end with the world unchanged.  The characters don’t age (imagine being eight since 1989).  All plot must be wrapped up and resolved.  When played for laughs, such as with the ongoing joke that Mr Burns can never remember who Homer is (“one of the carbon blobs from Sector 7G”) despite significant intertwining of their lives, this feels appropriately self-conscious.  But as time goes on, the increasing extremity of what happens in each episode gradually chips away at the family’s everyman status.  By the time Homer has gone to space, I start to feel a certain amount of turning off.  While an incredibly witty episode that puts Lisa’s morals front and centre, Whacking Day’s plot hinges on snake activity that is so unrealistic that the suspension of disbelief barely clings on (even though everyone is yellow and only has three fingers).

But who am I to nit-pick?  The show remains enormously comforting.  Even after its UK repetition ad-nauseum in the 6pm weekday slot on BBC2 and then Channel 4, I somehow stumbled across real gems in season four that I had potentially only seen once.  Season five in places represents a pinnacle in perfect sitcomery.  From my more advanced years, I can appreciate the wealth of references, both high- and lowbrow, that pepper proceedings: Edgar Allan Poe, The Grinch, Hitchcock and more.  From season two, there exists a wildcard Treehouse Of Horrors episode that serves to let the writers really shake things out.  As a cartoon, ultraviolence has fewer repercussions, and I always laugh whenever there’s an unnecessary explosion.

The Simpsons’ first seasons set an impossibly high standard.  They spawned a whole new world of animation for adults, begetting an array of entertainment that could often go further with offensive humour and push the boundaries of taste (South Park, American Dad!).  As such, The Simpsons in later years began to look safe and pedestrian.  Like Facebook, it risked acquiring a role as something embarrassing only your parents go on.  But, going back to its classics has been the perfect background comfort while pottering around my flat in lockdown 523, gaining a new and meaningful appreciation of its importance.  To imagine a world where it never existed is to imagine a duller, sadder way of thinking and being.  The inequalities it parodies are still with us so we can conclude that vintage Simpsons is as evergreen as the terrace where the eponymous family still live, all these decades later.