sandwichjohnfilms

TV Review: Fargo “Morton’s Fork” By: Brandon Wolfe Malvo on the loose is what ‘Fargo’ boils down to in its final hour. His resurgence sends a shockwave of fear through the entire town of Bemidji. Like Michael Myers in the ‘Halloween’ movies, he’s an unstoppable killing machine set loose on a small town that isn’t prepared to deal with things like him. All that’s missing is for Donald Pleasance to pop up and frantically tell Molly and Gus that evil has descended upon them. But Malvo’s return also means that old scores must be settled. While some, like the front desk clerk at the police station, are petrified that he’ll pop up out of the ether at a moment’s notice, there are others that have unfinished business with this monster that they set out to tie off. That Malvo does get taken down is not a huge surprise, I suppose. He is the show’s central villain, after all, and this is the finale. It is, however, a mild surprise that he CAN be taken down. He has seemed so otherworl...

TV Review: Fargo “A Fox, a Rabbit & A Cabbage” By: Brandon Wolfe We open in a dentist’s office where the dentist is a chatty, folksy sort. He tells long-winded stories and is full of good cheer. Then we follow this good ol’ boy back to his home to learn that he’s newly engaged to an attractive, adoring wife and has a decent assemblage of friends who think the world of him. This fellow is also prone to cornily exclaiming “Aces!” as an expression of approval. It’s almost a relief when we finally see this man sitting in a dark room listening to a self-made recording of a conversation between himself and another Lester-like schlep whose life he ruined by intervention because it allows our brains to officially register that this affable tooth wrangler is indeed Lorne Malvo. Our DVRs didn’t mistakenly record some obscure movie where Billy Bob Thornton played a friendly dentist; this is still ‘Fargo’. It’s on a trip to Vegas with his new friends (one of whom is played by the great ...

TV Review: Fargo “The Heap” By: Brandon Wolfe The time jump has become an increasingly popular trope for television shows to play around with, and it’s not difficult to see why. It basically affords a series the opportunity for a mid-course reboot, a way to shake off the staleness and bring in the new without scrapping everything or glacially building toward eventual change. By leaping forward in time, a familiar world suddenly becomes a strange new land where all bets are off, where all your favorite characters that you know so well now require catching up on. Shows usually pull this rabbit out of their hat for a season-finale cliffhanger, as NBC’s ‘Parks and Recreation’ did recently with its three-year fast-forward. That or they will introduce a shift in time between seasons, as ‘24’ always did. But ‘Fargo’ likes to go its own way, so when it drops a full-year leap ahead into its narrative, it does so halfway through the eighth episode of the season. Way to keep us on our toes. ...

TV Review: Fargo “Who Shaves the Barber?” By: Brandon Wolfe With only stray exceptions ( ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ ), TV shows based on films tend to be dire prospects, inspiration-bereft cash-grabs trading on name recognition and far too beholden to their source material to walk on their own two feet. The thought process often seems to be that since a popular film has already laid the groundwork for the story and characters, all a television adaptation needs to do is plug cheaper actors into the roles and churn out slightly varying permutations of the established premise. The rare successful dips into this well, like NBC’s ‘ Hannibal ’, merely take components from the films in the service of building their own unique world around them. FX’s ‘ Fargo ’ falls into this latter category. In fact, it goes one step further. It only borrows the title, setting, humor and sensibility from its parent film, not any of its characters or events. While the characters and situations ...