Jolt Country

(The TV show, not the movie.)

I turned it off halfway through the first episode, because it just seemed like what I was afraid of, a cheap remake of the movie, relying on nostalgia to keep us interested.

A couple months later, we were bored so went back to finish the first episode. After that I was hooked.

What Fargo is, is a love letter to the Coen Bros. Of course its heaviest inspiration is its movie namesake, and it absolutely nails the feel of that brilliance, but for the true Coen Bros. fan there is also much fun to be had seeing all of the other references, some subtle, some right in your face, to the rest of Joel & Ethan's oeuvre.

Oh also it's incredibly well made and spectacularly well-acted. I was never a Billy Bob fan, and now I'll see anything he does. And as for Martin Freeman (echoing William H. Macy), I'm not sure who would win in a deviant-brain-fight, Lester Nygaard or Walter White.

Like True Detective, it's going to have a second season with all new cast/story. Like True Detective, I wish it wouldn't.

Fargo ("season 1"? I wish we didn't have to say that...) is the third greatest TV show of all time behind Breaking Bad and True Detective.

And Bob Odenkirk's in two of them, so I guess he's the best actor of all time??

pinback wrote:And Bob Odenkirk's in two of them, so I guess he's the best actor of all time??

Oh please, I'd put (and rate) Richard Burton or even <s>Sir</s> Lord Lawrence Olivier much higher on that lofty platform.

Let Odenkirk perform a movie all in flashbacks (because someone bashed his brains in with a statue), and when he wakes up, he can't move his body because he's in bandages and is able to wreak havok through telepathy, as Burton did in The Medusa Touch, and make you believe he really can do this, and do the whole performance with nothing more than moving his eyes while lying flat on his back in a hospital bed, then you can claim he's the greatest actor of all time.

Until then I'm sticking with Burton.

Tdarcos wrote:Oh please, I'd put (and rate) Richard Burton or even <s>Sir</s> Lord Lawrence Olivier much higher on that lofty platform.

I see your grasp of irony has not improved during your absence.

Rumors of another statue bashing have been greatly exaggerated.

9/13, keep hope alive.

I'm watching the first episode and it's really great. Like Pinner, I never really liked Billy Bob Thornton, but he's great in this!