The Watch - Breaking Down the Maximalist Violence in ‘Utopia’ and ‘Fargo’ Season 4

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Chris and Andy do a quick check-in about how much violence on TV they can stomach these days (1:33). Then, they break down the first season of Amazon’s violent conspiracy thriller ‘Utopia’ (15:21) and the long-awaited first two episodes of ‘Fargo’ Season 4 (33:31). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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which makes Heineken an all-season all-the-time kind of beer. another Heineken weekend for the kid. I'm not sure if my NFL fans listening know this, but the Eagles tied with the Cincinnati Bengals. And after that game came to a completion, I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, it's time for a Heineken. And then I had a great day because Heineken unlocked the rest of my day for me.

But, you know, a day on the couch, just hanging out, just kind of surfing the net, watching a little sports. But it's like, why not treat yourself? Treat yourself to a Heineken. Pick up a pack or have it delivered today and drink responsibly. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch.

My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line. It's Andy Greenwald. It's a bomb. It's so good to see you. It's good to see you too. We haven't seen each other physically in a while. True.

Well, there's been some stuff. I don't know if you've been reading the news. But I haven't been seeing a lot of people. Because you've been working on your tax audit? That's right. You know, as it turns out, you can deduct a lot of stuff. And I want to wish you, Chris, you know, there are two high holy days, so I want to wish you a happy one of them.

Big YK, yeah, that's right. I'm atoning today in a non-traditional way. I haven't seen you in a while, so I consider this atonement. That's nice. This time spent together with you. That's nice, man. We have a couple of new shows to talk about today. We have a batch of new shows.

So I don't want people to think that we are pivoting back to TV just because we did a podcast about a record list on Thursday. There's no ulterior motive here. It just is. I think TV is the base of this sauce, you know, that is our podcast. Always. But, you know, it's the fall, sort of, and there's a bunch of stuff. So we have, we're kind of actively watching three TV shows right now, and we're going to talk about at least two of them today. Yeah, at least.

Yeah. I, so I mean, I think we can start. So we have Fargo Utopia. We won't be talking about the boys. This is it today. I'm actually, I still have to catch up with the boys, but you can, you can feel free to share your thoughts. And then Thursday we'll probably do third day. And I have my conversation with Bill Lawrence, who's the executive producer, Ted Lassow, as we go into the Ted Lassos season finale.

Oh, so it's already the season finale. Has the midseason live theatrical event of Ted Lassow aired yet? Yes, that's right. That's only the third day. Ted Lassow protests restrictive COVID laws in England. I would watch that episode. So I want to ask you, Chris, you know, we are pop culture podcast. We're just two pals talking about recipes and special sauces and sometimes also television.

And yet the world is a moment. motherfucker and grinding us all to dust. And I guess I wanted to do a check-in with you and also share a little bit just in terms of how we're doing with all this. And what I mean is without making it too dark, because we want to talk about the merits of Fargo season four, which debuted last night on FX and is now available on FX on Hulu today, Monday, with the first two episodes, delayed episodes. This was supposed to premiere a while ago.

And then, of course, they were shut down. We're able to finish the season. and now the show is airing weekly on Sunday nights. And also the long-awaited American version of Utopia, which debuted last week. The whole season dropped on Amazon. So my TV intake over the last few days was two hours of Fargo, an hour of Utopia, and an hour of the boys.

Across those four hours, I would say conservatively the body count was 45 people. Maybe more. Probably more. And I want to, to... And that's just the first scene of Fargo. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. And so I kind of want to, I don't want to tip this one way or another and make it too heavy, but I struggled with it. I have to say that, and I want to, I wanted to say this at the top because I didn't want to make it,

I didn't want to necessarily, I guess you can't prejudge it if I've watched it. That's called judging it. But I didn't want my own, because I can be quite squeamish about violence. People listening to this podcast know that I was almost out on the boy. which is terrifically, in all senses, hyperviolent.

I was almost out on on the pilot and then kind of rebounded. So I don't want to... I'm very aware that sometimes I recoil so strongly, I recoil the television set right off. Yeah, and also I think we've mentioned before that you will become... I think you have a sliding scale. So like in novels, I think that you probably have

much more of an appetite for grotesque acts of violence. Whereas in TV and films, I think you get a little bit more touchy about it. It's true. I started reading the New York Review of Books, publishing in print that Chris and I adore, put out another translation of Jean-Patrick Manchette, a novel, French novelist that we both love,

a crime writer called No Room at the Morg, which is also my television viewing experience this weekend. And I'm just racing through it, despite, you know, Palestinian liberation fighters' hands being in vizes by, like, page 40. Like, that's my jam. guess. But yeah, so it was interesting to note. And I'm curious where you are with it, because I know that some people are able to be escapism all the time or separate, and I respect that. And I think that

I generally am, even though utopia kind of has some, like, viral stuff in all senses, I don't think that it was like triggering anything in particular. There was just a relentlessness to the death, honestly, that just I didn't, I don't know if I had the stomach for it at this particular moment in time. Yeah, I think that there's something interesting about your reaction to visual violence, violence on screen, where if it doesn't feel like it, because even when it's serious and it grapples with the consequences, I think it has a tendency to drift into the, well, this is really just punishing. You know, I feel like I'm putting myself through some sort of, not torture porn or anything, but you're basically engaging with this, the darkest parts of the human experience to watch something when it's like incredibly realistic. And then when it's comic booky or it is satirical or it's arch or it's held at a distance, I think you feel often that you are watching these

grotesque things happen, but being asked to laugh or smirk or. Yeah. enjoy it. Now, personally, I don't really get offended by movies or TV anymore. And I don't really ever get, I never find myself squeamish. I never find myself with my noseband out of joint about it. I think a lot of that has to do with just how much I enjoy being overblown, like just completely bold over sensory wise by stuff. And also, I watch a lot of horror. So, I mean, the violence in Fargo is hardly, as hardly is like a drop in the bucket. of blood compared to some of the horror films that I watched recently. So I take your point, I think each show has its own rules. I found myself, took a second to get used to the

worldview of utopia or the reality of utopia, which is just an incredible body count. I've finished the season and we should say at the top that you and I have, it seems weird to say a pre-existing relationship, but we're friends with somebody who worked on the show in a relationship that goes all the way back to our days in New York with two people who worked on the show. Jenny Raftery, who's one of the associate producers on the show and worked in the writer's room and is a wonderful person. So it's a little bit complicated talking about this, but it's obviously a big Amazon show and it's in our wheelhouse.

We wanted to talk about it. I really enjoyed this season, but I think that I've been sensitive. It's interesting because both Utopia and Fargo have its defenders. and also have a lot of critics. And so it's been an interesting weekend of checking my reaction to things versus what, say, Alan Sephamwell might say, or one of the folks at Volture might say. I think that's a great point to make.

And one thing, you know, in this, and I mean this really sincerely, like in the spirit of shared humanity, which is more important now than ever, I think that I've noticed in the reviews that I've read of these shows, or maybe it's just reviews that I'm reading or things that I'm reading in general at the moment. everyone is in a different place and everybody is going through some stuff

and which isn't to say that the purpose of a piece of criticism is for a mental health check-in with the writer that I don't, nor would I presume to know anything about people's lives who I'm not actually, you know, they're not actually in their lives. However, like Matt Sites, great writer, great critic, really good guy, wrote a review of Fargo season four on Vulture

where he was basically like, F this S forever. Like it was, for some, who has been a fan of Noah's work before and someone who is, I think, generally more measured. He wrote, it was just an all-out pan, you know. And what I took from reading that review was he doesn't want this right now. He just doesn't want this right now. And I can relate to that.

And I feel like Alan Seppenwall, who didn't, also a great guy, also a great writer, who didn't review Utopia but tweeted why he wasn't, it felt pretty visceral why he didn't want to be a part of it. So I think it might be worth remembering that as well, that people are at different levels. I think for the purposes of our conversation, let's table Fargo momentarily. And let's use this as a chance to talk about Utopia briefly. Because as we said, we're great supporters of our friends and excited for her. And also, as I said last week, I'm very intrigued by this entire thing because I've been hearing about this property for a really long time. The UK version was obsessed over and celebrated.

and it had kind of a circuitous path to being on American TV. I mean, originally with Fincher, yeah. It was set up at HBO with Gillian Flynn writing and David Fincher directing, and it kind of fell apart of her budgetary issues, and Fincher left. And then it was resurrected with Gillian fully in charge at Amazon. And so because you've watched all of it, and I don't want to, and I'm going to keep watching more, I guess the first, the, first thing that you said that I really responded to was, I didn't know how to watch this show.

And partly is it pilot fatigue, something we've talked about a lot, where we are jumping from, not just from project to project, but literally from headspace to headspace, where certain things mean different things. And whereas the boys, again, this is not a spoiler. This is anyone who's ever heard of the show will know this. early on in this week's episode of the boys, a soup, almost casually leans his superpowered palm on a bad guy's head

and, you know, the sound effects guys get to go nuts doing a Gallagher smash of a watermelon. That's just what they do. That's what happens. And yeah, it's telling us something about that superhero

and the bleak world that they live in. I was very confused by Utopia, which is not necessarily a bad thing. And that partly might have been, because I intentionally didn't learn anything about it. And so then when I tried to learn a little bit more, just like, oh, what is this like the UK version? All the articles were like, this U.S. version is a cuck version of the UK version,

which is just like nonstop torture from beginning to end, not for the audience, but like torturing of people. And then there were other pieces being like, oh, no, don't worry, it's actually just as hyperviolent. So I didn't know what I was getting into. This is a show that's not just about conspiracies and comic books. it is about almost wildly aggressive ultraviolence played often for kind of almost like 90s-esque comedy. Not 90s-comedy like Friends, but like Tarantino, like they're talking about Madonna while they're shooting something in the face.

Yeah, I think like a kind of a John Wick headshot kind of, you know, a proclivity for those kinds of gun battles and and stabbings and any number of kills. brought into this world of comics and conspiracy theories. I guess what I would say is that each show, Fargo, Boys, Utopia, are responsible for creating their own separate reality. And it's the same thing that I would say for 0-000, which is an incredibly violent show that you and I adored. Yeah, that's true. And features some of the most brutal moments,

including one that I still can't believe you made it through where there is a shootout at a child's birthday party. and, you know, any number of horrifying things are visited upon people in that show. Not to be clear, but, you know, I just miss birthday parties. And so for me, I was just like, you know, at least they got to be outside and have balloons for a little while with their friends. You're right.

And this was at the beginning of the pandemic. And I, for whatever reason, I remember coming on this podcast and talking to you and being like, I'm finding this show absorbing, meditative, and really, really satisfying, even in the midst of this deeply uncertain unsettling time. So everyone's mileage literally varies. So I think your description of it being kind of Tarantino-esque, I would also say John Wick-esque, I would also say it has a little bit of the slapstick ultraviolence

of 90s action films, 80s and 90s action films where there will be like a really violent conversation and then like a comic moment right after that. Is that something that you've ever liked, or was it something that you are like, the older you get, you're kind of growing out of it. Great question. I don't...

Like, do you like true amance? I guess it would be a question. I don't know anymore. I did at the time. I mean, we are of the generation where, like, seeing anything Tarantino was like the world switching from black and white to color, right? And it was not just like, I love this movie or I think this part's funny. It was a completely othering visceral experience that changed how we watched things and

what we cared about. I do think that now may be removed from both whatever levels of hormones exist in teenagers and the glow of my Tarantino obsession has faded. I bet I would have a lot harder of a time with it. I do have a hard time with extreme violence with a wink. Right. Because I do think that on some level it's trying to have it both ways. But I want to speak, and again, to be, let's focus on Utopia for a second.

And I think maybe you might need you to set the scene a little bit better. Sure. A little bit better than I have. But one of the things that I thought was striking, and again, I've not seen the UK version, I apologize. I have not either. I watched one or two episodes of the UK version, but on an illegal stream back when it was sort of out. But one thing that I know about it is that it was directed by Mark Mundin, who has been directing the third day, a show that we are completely taken with. and his directorial style, which I've now learned from the third day, is so wildly immersive.

It is so, I'm going to say the word visceral again because it is. It puts you right inside of it in this almost hyper real kineticism. And I wonder if that is kind of what I was missing a little bit from this first episode of the U.S. version, which was directed by Toby Haynes. It is by no means poorly directed. I did not even mean to suggest that. But what it was was setting some stuff up, showing us this, showing us that. Kind of like a TV pilot. And it wasn't until the end with its outrageously high body count where I was like, okay, here we go.

And I think I guess on some level I was both surprised at how violent it got, but also how much of a pilot it truly was. And maybe it's allowed to be a pilot like that because it's for Amazon and the next one's right there. Because this did have the, we're going to get this group together. It was actually really hard. So Gillian's like ability to synthesize all this, I mean, that's really kind of impressive. We're going to introduce this concept. We're going to introduce this world. We're going to introduce these people who then have to introduce themselves to each other.

And then also there's maybe a second layer of reality on top of it. And there are several significant characters who barely, if it all, make appearances in the first episode. The two most famous actors in the project, John Cusack and Rayne Wilson are not in the first episode. Right, right. So it is, it's asking a lot of its audience. And so maybe I'm, maybe I'm answering my own question here, that my own... I can only imagine what it was like to watch the first episode of Utopia and the first two episodes of Fargo and taking in... I think that might have been upwards of 18 to 20 characters that you meet for the first time.

Absolutely. So that is one of those things. So here's how I did at Utopia. I had screeners. I watched the first two. I enjoyed them, but was sort of equally to you, I don't think squeamish, but confused about the tone. and then found the three through the end of the season pretty much breakneck in terms of how I consume them.

And part of that is like sometimes you just get a show and it's the weekend and you just get into it and you're like, why not watch another? Why not watch another? Especially now when you're like, well, I can do nothing or I can watch another utopia. It doesn't really matter. What am I saving myself for you here?

And that was definitely the case. And as it gets into the mid-season and as all the characters are kind of rather than being introduced to one another are now united in a quest, it just becomes a lot more propulsive. I can't really speak to the comparisons between the U.S. and the U.K. version, but I do agree with you that in some ways, I don't want to step on it, I almost feel like Fargo suffers from over certainty where Utopia felt uncertain about certain things. Totally. Well, you know, before we make the pivot,

I guess what we're going to leave Utopia is I am equal parts appalled and intrigued. You know, and there's, there's, the cast already is really engaging. And I'm, yeah, I'm very, I'm very curious. I want to ask you a broader question because I thought Alan's reaction to the show is pretty interesting. So this is, I guess, it's very difficult to talk about you, Toby. I don't try it to be circumspect, but there's a lot of it is fueled by some of the twists in the show. And I really am, I don't want to ruin it for anybody. But Alan talks about, um, a particular moment of extreme violence that happens.

the second episode, and the reaction of a character being basically glad that he is, more glad that he has been proven right about a conspiracy theory that he had than he is sad about the torture he has just endured. And I think Allen was just like, fuck this. I can't, I can't deal with it. And I thought it was interesting because in the same way you're discussing, like, you know, Matt, Zollersight's not liking Fargo, but clearly because, like, you felt like he was saying, like, this is not the thing I want right now. Yeah. It's really, interesting when people have that kind of gut reaction to a piece of pop culture. I remember I rarely have that where I'm like, fuck this. But I do remember, and it's a director I love and it's a film

I've grown to love, when I saw traffic, I was like, fuck traffic. This movie got the drug war wrong. And I was really angry about it. I was really angry about the view of specifically like cities in America that it gave and the sort of the only prism through which you can view, the drug war was if it affects Michael Douglas's daughter, that means it's really important. I had like a really, really visceral political

reaction to that. And I really think it's almost random when that comes up on the wheel of fortune of takes. You know, when you're just like, nope, I have decided this is an appalling piece of shit. And it's like, well, no, I mean like, this obviously has a lot of value. Traffic is an incredible movie.

Yeah, but there's a difference between saying what you're talking about, I'll use the word the third time for people drinking along at home, but there's a visceral type of criticism where you feel personally enraged or upset. And it's often worth, when you have that feeling, it's worth investigating it if you're willing to do so. But we, 100%, maybe less and less, but I think for a long time in the culture industry, and I mean that, you know, seriously, discount people's just where they're at when they watch something, you know. And I think that the best of the best, and I think that's why I was surprised to see Alan.

reaction to that. One of the things that makes him such a superlative critic is that he is almost uniformly the same person at the start of every review, you know, no matter where he is in his own life or what he liked that day or whatever, he does seem to treat it, you know, he's just like a jurist on the highest court of the land, Chris. He calls the balls and strikes. Sure. You know, that's all I want out of people wearing the robes. But, you know, I'm happy we're going down this road a little bit because that's something that I was definitely guilty of when I was a critic full-time. And, you know, can I quote you?

What was your reaction to traffic 20 years ago when you saw it? I thought it was like, it was bullshit. It was a terrible, like, it was a terrible look at the drug war in America and the effects the drug war. I believe you said, fuck this just now. And I'd like to quote you because that was, you know, in many ways my reaction to a, a little scene HBO crime serial called True Detective. Yeah.

Which, you know. That one got away from you a little. Well, I was angry at everything I had been watching, and I felt that not just that show was just the zenith of that type of thing, of the sort of brooding, ultra-violent, ultra-male, self-serious prestige television show of the moment. But, yeah, the continued lionization of it was pissing me off, too. So in a way, that piece was angry at the show. and angry at the world that made the show,

the industry that created the show, and then the think pieces that overly praised it. And I don't regret it, but I think it's worth, it is worth putting that little, it's not an asterisk, it's a little, maybe instead of dotting, dotting the eyes with hearts, right? I was in a weird place, back,

this take has the, I was in a weird place, asterix. No, I mean, look, who among us? hasn't carved figures out of beer cans while being interrogated in a police department. No, it's just that it wasn't in a vacuum, my reaction to it, I guess what I want to say. Not just in terms of my own life, but in terms of the other shows that were around it. And so, yeah, so full circle to Utopia, the thing that I wanted to say before we pivot to Fargo is it's very interesting to watch this generation of shows this summer and this fall, shows that were conceived of. greenlit and made are almost entirely made in one world and are being released into another.

And sometimes when that happens and the examples we've used in the past were like that last tribe called Quest album that was released right after the 2016 election, but obviously made well before it, or even I May Destroy You All Summer, suddenly these things feel imbued with superpowers. Like how are they suddenly alive with the electricity of this moment that they weren't even made for, or they were totally made for, but they weren't made under those conditions? One huge thing is that they are actually about this moment and not like an altered fantasy reality of the moment, which is increasingly what we deal with. Whether it's Ted Lassow or whether it's Utopia, whether it's Fargo, it's like we have to take six steps to the left or right here to actually address anything thematically resonant in the show because they're not actually. I think one of the reasons why we reacted to I May Destroy You is that it felt like something that literally could be happening outside your door.

Yeah, yes, and was so, I mean, the further we get from that show, the thing that I remain blown away by isn't its willingness to tussle with every hot button issue, which is such a reductive way to call hugely important things in our life and our society. But it's not just its willingness to engage in them. It was the deeply human and moral and thoughtful way it addressed all of them. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't reactionary in any way. And so the thing about utopia is that it's both doubly fascinating that, you know, this comic book, this, that suddenly comes, is discovered, you know, potentially, at least according to the true believers that were introduced to in the first episode, is predicting global events, particularly global pandemics or almost pandemics, viral flare-ups. And that there are cabals of dark powers. chasing after it basically. It's just that it feels there's no, there's just a, there's a bump, as we say, when we read

scripts, right? There's a little bit of a bump when one of the characters shows her insight and her fanaticism when she's like, this leaf is Uganda and this is how many people died when this happened in Uganda. And I'm like, okay, you know, I have some room. I have plenty of room in my heart for the people of Uganda, but also many people are dying all the time over the world over this thing now. And it's hard to project into their fantasy at the moment when I'm already on high alert.

That said, the part that feels super of the moment in a possibly disturbing way is what you're saying about what happens in episode two, something I haven't seen yet. But this idea that people would be willing to go to any means just to feel heard or seen, you know, that their extreme beliefs are true. I mean, look, you know, I don't order from Comet Pizza anymore, you know, because I, first of all, the pizza wasn't that good. And second, you know, I don't know what's going on. Right. People are talking. So that's all really well, and it's interesting. Yeah.

Utopia ends with an incredibly violent moment. And the first episode of Utopia ends with this really, really violent moment. And it's a mass shooting at a comic convention. And it goes on for quite a while. and it is, I would say, hyper-styled, and there's a bit of, like, not ironic distance, but I think there are some things played for comedic effect,

even though many people are getting assassinated in their hotel rooms. I'm no longer interested in people casually snacking while others are killed. I feel like I'm ready to move on from that. So, you know, you read, like, William Goldman books about movies, and he'll be really perceptive about the way a movie star is situated within a film.

and how it unlocked something for the movie or he'll be so smart about like, oh, and then we put this scene here. We had this character say this one extra thing because the audience, people who make films and television understand their relationship to their audience and understand

what needs to happen and what can't happen and what they want to have happen. And that was such a choice to do that shooting at the end of the first episode. But for you, when you're confronted with that on a real, Beat by Beat moment.

How does it compare to say a city getting destroyed in an Avengers movie or a DC movie or a planet getting destroyed in a Star Wars movie? And then the characters in the show or the movie quickly moving past that genocide and whatever happened, you know, to just go back to bantering and saving the day. I have a really hard time with it. And, you know, full disclosure, like, I went into making my show being like, we're going to have almost no body count because I don't want to kill people. And I believe there's one episode of Briar Patch where someone doesn't die. So, I am.

It was like really cool cameo from Ultron. I thought so, too, but he really, you know, his bloodlust really snuck up on me. Setting the show in Sikovia was not what Ross Thomas. this intended. So I, you know, so I'm fully open to have that debate and conversation or to be hypocritical about it. But I do think that while everyone is different, there is a, there's a very delicate scale, right? And it's do you, I think you have to honor even red shirts to some degree to make it feel like something. And I think that, you know, the thing that those giant scale like Zach Snyder movies do that draw

disapproval from me, although not necessarily from large numbers of movie audiences or future HBO Mac subscribers, the Snyder cut coming soon, is the idea that you can make someone evil by having something be

referenced off-screen. Well, look how bad this guy is because he just killed 100 million people on a planet we didn't show, right? And that was kind of the Rise of Skywalker thing, too, that one of the things that has me off about that movie. The flip side of that is, I think, what made me, gave me some pause in this episode was the show did take some time to introduce a cavalcade of fanboys and types, like Comic-Con

types, you know, people who are cosplaying or who are super protective of their stuff or, you know, not welcoming to women, um, types based on some, you know, there, there are people like that in the comic cons of the world. And just enough so that we know the guy who's dressed this way or the person in the bunny suit, but not enough to know them outside of their quirks or the things that we might laugh at before they get a really squelchy Gallagher-esque watermelon bullet to the brain. Damn, two Gallagher drops from you today. It's that same sound.

They're using it all over the place. Yeah. Maybe that's not a watermelon. I think the soup, squash is more. watermelon. These are more like small peaches. But regardless, for me, it was on the line because I didn't know them well enough, but I guess that was the moment where we're supposed to pivot to comedy a little bit because of who the victims were. And I was, I was struggling with it, you know? Like, I guess I have a hard time and then we can move on to Fargo, but, and I, and I truly

am curious. Instead of, in addition to many gifts of calling the Wambulence on our Facebook group in regards to me, I wonder where other people's lines are. I genuinely am curious about that because in Utopia at the very beginning, we're introduced to like a very, you know, earnest and scrubbedub-dub, like young couple who find this comic book and then they're going to sell it and make some money. And they're sort of treated as comic relief. And then they are treated like garbash, you know, and killed. And so I'm going to keep watching because I'm curious what the blowback is or what the stakes are,

what world we're in. But I was very unsure of what world I was in, which is what's led me to do this performative Heming and Hawing for the last 10 minutes. Almost every TV show now has a, you got to give it blank. It's pretty rare. I mean, I think Destroy You is an example. Normal people is an example. I mean, there's a few this year that, you know, you come up with where you're like,

at first scene, I just knew that this was, I'm in, I'm in incredible hands right now, and this is a really special TV show. Even, even Zero, Zero, Zero. zero. I mean, to be candid, like, it's a little bit of a slog in the Gabriel Byrne sections. But I think that... Not too many of those sections. Spoilerly. Personally, I was, I was really along for the ride on Utopia once we got into episode two and beyond. So I would recommend that anybody who's like, I'm curious if a little

bit squeamish, give it one more episode and see where you're at least. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. And when we come back, we'll talk about Fargo. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Heineken. would like to remind you that it's time for seasonal beers again. That's right. If you thought a cold, crisp summer Heineken with something, just wait until you taste the Heineken Fall lineup, or Autumn, depending on your zip code. Now, is this a new product? Many people are asking, no. It's just the same great tasting lager that's perfect for any season. And now that it is fall, you know, I don't know if I would call us getting, it's not foliage season in Los Angeles,

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a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. All right, Andy. Let's time hop through 20th century crime and talk a little bit about season four of Fargo.

Like you mentioned, much delayed. Noah Hawley has returned. Does he write and direct every one of these? No, he did not direct all. of them. He directed the first two. He probably, I don't think they've released information about who directed the back half of the season, but I'd be very surprised if he didn't come back to direct the finale. And I think he has a credit on most of the episodes or a co-write credit. And, you know, as people know, because I did work with Noah in the past, like, he takes a very

active hand in the right. Yeah, yeah. Regardless of who he's working with. So let's talk a little bit about what we've got. A tapestry of characters. Absolutely widescreen. You could barely fit them in a room together, amount of characters, all of which seem to get introduced, but actually not, not all of which, but many of which get introduced in a jam-packed expository yet also incredibly stylish, opening, what would you say, like 25 minutes before that opening? Almost 30 minutes, yeah. Yeah, of kind of like an essay about American crime in Kansas City in the first 50 years of the century. leading up to finally this meeting between the Italian mafia and Chris Rock's Black Crime Family,

the Cannons, and this custom of sun swapping that goes on between these two mobs. But along with that, a lot of the episode is narrated by a teenage girl named Ethel Rita, who is a mixed-race parentage and lives in a funeral home in Kansas City and is very, very bright. but also having discipline problems at school and is giving some sort of book report or some sort of presentation. And it's just kind of riffing on the immigrant experience

and race relations in America. And there's just a lot going on. If you can tell, I'm zigzagging, so is the show. There is a lot happening. If you take out all of the plot and all of the characters that you are meeting,

almost every scene is a takeout set piece of filmmaking. So almost every single scene has some ratcheted up stylistic quirk or flourish, whether it is a tracking shot that goes from Ethelreda's room to a nurse played by Jesse Buckley across the street, and it goes across the street and up into the other person's room. Or every angle is sort of incredibly stylishly framed

or switching from black and white archival footage to contemporary cinematography. He's flying all over the place. It's just everything gets dumped out on the table and we're kind of sorting through it. And it can make for, I think, a bit of an exhausting experience. Although, I kind of want to say this. I was pretty into this, these two episodes of Fargo.

I kind of just wish you would do less and play it a little bit more. straight, even though I'm the king of shots. I love a good shot. If you give me too many shots, they start to kind of all feel like normal setups. As people who listened to last Thursday's podcast know, if you give Chris too many shots, he gets carried out of his 23rd birthday party by his friends. This is, and again, you know, I worked with Noah on the project that never got made and also on the first season of Legion, but I'm not bringing any of my personal experience with him to bear when I make this observation. I think this is, I struggle to think of any comparisons for this. I think it's almost

unprecedented. The journey that not just he has taken, but that this show has taken. You know, there's the famous phrase, the critic Harold Bloom originated, the anxiety of influence. He was talking about poets, but I'm going to steal it. And it's hard to think of a modern project that was more rightly so anxious about its influence. Not Noah itself, but the entire project when this debuted however many years ago, five or six years ago. Yeah, no one doesn't seem that bothered by it, even in making the show,

but everybody is still talking about it as like it's handcuffed to Fargo the movie. Well, and the first season, whether it was some of the choices that Noah made in terms of connecting it in terms of plot, connecting it in terms of style to the beloved film Fargo, to certainly the reaction where everyone was like, Is he going to mess with my beautiful, favorite, sweet thing in just a relatively short amount of time to take the same, I know it changes every season, blah, blah, but ostensibly the same project to have it go from something that is so, so anxious about its influence to something that is completely the work of one person who had nothing to do with the original source material is wild. And I salute it and I applaud it. Noah, we know now. And again, speaking purely from the work that he's put out since that first season of Fargo,

whether it was, whether it was Legion or whether it was the movie he made last year, he is a maximalist. That is not what the Cohen brothers are. You know, they used a lot of maximum yucks with some of the accents and some of the beats in the film Fargo. Like, they go for stuff. But he likes all of it. He likes all the characters, all the words, all the setups and shots. all of it.

And it is a pretty staggering transformation because this show so far debuted with two hours that could feel like a lot because the episodes themselves are 60 minutes, full 60 minutes. So with commercials it was a heavy lift. Probably the right move though because, yeah, like the story he wants to tell here

required at least to tell the way he wanted to tell it. required a 30-minute prologue. You're absolutely right, too, though, because not only is it maximalist in the ways you're talking about, but one of the reasons that these episodes feel long, and while they feel long, they certainly are really, really high quality, I would say that. And that is separate from whether or not I was, like, loving it or whatever, but, like, you can just see one of the reasons why it feels long is that almost every scene starts

out with here is an authentic 78 RPM record playing on a beautiful Victorola record player. And as I pan across this room, I'm going to show you all these era-specific knickknacks and chotchkes and pieces of cutlery and dishes. The production design is breathtaking. I mean, they shot the show in Chicago and they recreated this fever dream version of 1950s, Kansas City, every location, from the rich hospital to the poorer hospital, to slaughterhouse to the funeral home. I mean, it's astonishing.

It's beautiful work. And you understand why people want to, why he filmmaker wants to hang out there. There are also flourishes. And this is also true of someone who is fully anuteur. I mean, you know, I would love to poke holes in that theory whenever possible and say that even the most singular visions are often collaborations beneath the surface. I'm not sure if that's the case with a show like this because there are flexes. and then there are things like the cast list for the show, which is a flex on the one level of like,

look who we can get, including just like these phenomenal Italian actors who show up to get gunned down in the first episode or importing the dude from Gomorrah for his first American role. Or saying like, one of the finest actors America has ever produced, Glyn Turman,

here's one of the best parts you've ever had, Loki in the background. Or Ben Wischaw, who is considered probably the greatest stage actor in England at the moment and is phenomenal in every, everything he does. So far, very little to do other than be outstanding in the background. Yeah. But it also leads to decisions like for the crucial role of Ethelreda's father,

I'm going to cast cult folk musician Andrew Bird. Yeah. Who brings an energy that I can only describe as cult folk musician to the role. That's the kind of, that's a decision he made, and we're going to see why he made it. And that is not group think, you know, and that's what you're in for. It is really impressive, but you also get the feeling like Noah is a bandleader. Noah Holly is a bandleader, and he's looking out on this orchestra, and he goes, everybody's solo. Right? Because every single person, is that Jack Houston who plays the cop in this? Yes. Every single person, Jack Houston, Jason Schwartzman, rock, all these guys, they all got their bits. They all have flourishes and quirks. And you all,

almost get the feeling. I texted you this yesterday when we were watching it. I get the feeling like you could do a straight version of this and then there is someone comes in, I assume Noah, says, why did you add a nervous tick? Add this. Do this with the cigarette lighter. Do this with the bennies that Jesse Buckley's character is giving you. Say this. Do this with a switchblade. It's so much all of the time for a show that's pretty stately and serene in its presentation. And this is the thing that's giving me pause, and it is really the only criticism I have from the first salvo of the season. This is a show that at its best, and I think uniformly everyone agrees with me that the best is, I'm not the first one to say. It's not all agreeing with me, but I think we are generally in agreement that the second season of the show is a masterpiece.

I can't abide by the third season because it broke Ryan's rule of having the same actor played identical. Twins. Oh, also it left the planet with a cartoon robot in episode three. And you're full up on that, I know. So Ryan's Rules is really more of a pamphlet these days. It's swelling. This is a show that this season, I guess what I want to say is by nature of what it is and what the movie kind of was, the idea that it would say something to us about America, that's baked in. I'm not saying that it's suddenly reaching for relevance. I mean, this is a show that had Ronald Reagan as a supporting character in the rightfully celebrated second season.

But this year, it feels like it really, really wants to teach us something. And that might be because he has, and again, I commend this. He wanted to wade into matters of race, not just matters of class, which is predominantly what the show has been interested in in the past. And I commend him for doing that. I think that's great, but it does, at least in the early going, add a very, very, it adds a heaviness to a show that I think with its ticks and with its quirky dialogue and characters has always wanted to be a little bit lighter or has succeeded at its best when it has found. Actually, this looks kind of as like our conversation about Utopia. It found a very, very challenging but successful sweet spot of whimsy and WTF, you know, where,

both were possible. And this one is a lot, it started to get heavier in the third season, and this feels a lot heavier. Yeah, and it's also very, it's explicit. I think one of the reasons why people reacted so passionately to the first two seasons of Fargo, I think the first one, it was a degree of like, I can't believe he pulled it off. That was pretty good. And then the second one was, Jesus, this might be the best show on television. Yeah.

Both of those seasons were primarily concerned with the story that they were telling. And then they let their viewers and the critics and everybody else take the lessons from the show. And I've read some fucking astonishing scholarship, essentially, on Fargo about what people think Fargo is about the first two seasons. We will have no such scholarship about the third season, the fourth season, because he's telling us. He's telling us exactly what the show is about. And he is telling us exactly what is at stake as these different immigrant groups represented by their underworlds clash. and what the story it's trying to tell about America in the 20th century.

And so on one hand, I guess that's pretty cool and that's pretty interesting. On the other hand, I think it's doing a little bit more work for the viewer than he has in the past. I agree. And I don't,

and I want to be very clear that I think, I hope it's possible to critique the message while still commending the messenger because I really appreciate that someone with Noah's talent and stature and clout is like, I'm going to pivot my show and I'm going to make a show about race, even though that's not necessarily what the show has been. That's not necessarily been my forte.

I think that that's what a lot of people who are asking themselves tougher questions ought to be doing these days, not making everything about race, but thinking about it, asking themselves questions, pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and the work that they do. That said, and without having seen the subsequent, I guess, eight episodes or more, still to come.

I would love a world in which Chris Rock's character gets to see a UFO like Patrick Wilson did. You know what I mean? That where it's not just the, you know, lived experience struggle of the black characters in the show or the, I need to show you something that's true nature of, and I'll use the eye statement, that I feel as an earnest white person wanting to talk about race, does that rob the show understandably but maybe unfairly

of some of the more poetic, more suggestive whimsy that made it what was so interesting about it in the first place. I don't know. Boy, now I am really starting to sound like, I'm really starting to sound like QAnon here. I'm just asking the questions. But...

Green anon. But it's something to wonder about. And, you know, if we're lucky enough to still be doing this podcast, in a bunch of years and we're still lucky enough to live in a functioning democracy or maybe for the first time

living in one. Going back and looking at this generation's fumbling, if hopefully, well-intentioned attempts to talk about race and to combine things

that have never been spoken about with things that are often spoken about. I put Lovecraft Country into that conversation. Sure. The show that we've gotten away from just, I think, I just really struggled with it.

But again, if we're talking about things that are messy but yet feel like they're certainly alive with a conversation of the moment, it would be cool if we discover Fargo wants in on that conversation too. I just hope this season of Fargo. So far, it's very mannered and it's very, it's very well done. It's very mannered and it's very stage managed. Like everybody has kind of got these, you can just feel the puppeteer string. kind of controlling everything. The seasons that we love of Fargo allowed their characters to have a soul. Like it allowed Allison Tolman to inhabit that character

and just be a person. And that's what I hope happens in this season. Even though I can tell there's like, and fuck, I love like the old gangster movies. Like I love the 40s and 50s

classic crime films and the 30s, 40s and 50s classic crime films. So I understand wanting to have that banter. And, you know, he's not fully free of the Cohen brothers. The title is an homage to raising Arizona. I felt like the first 30 minutes felt very much like Miller's Crossing.

Obviously, there's like... It's funny. He's four seasons into doing Fargo, but he's really only wants to do Miller's Crossing. Right? Yeah. Like, this is the second mob war season out of four. You know, OlaFant shows up at the end of the second episode. There's still obviously, like, shoes to drop.

I think hopefully we get, you know, a bigger Wishaw episode. episode, we get, you know, more time for these different characters that he's introduced. I adore Schwarzenman on this show. Yeah, I like Schwartzman on the show, too. I think that's, I should have, I met, that was kind of the caper I was going to say on that idea of, like, flexing with casting. Yeah. Nobody else has the confidence to do that.

And guess what? It kind of works. Two other things about casting. You're absolutely right that this show, I think the secret sauce has been that it needs a, a physical embodiment of a soul, right? Whether there was Alison Tolman in the first season or Ted Danson in the second season. And so far it seems like it's Wishaw in this season. I hope that it is. I think that would be exciting and hopefully that means we get to see more of him. Last thing, for me, one of the reasons why you cast comedians in anything, but particularly like in acting, capital A,

acting parts, is because comedians can touch the third rail of life in their performance and in their presence, they usually carry something with them that is like untameable and exciting. And then too often when they are given dramatic roles, the response to prove that they're acting is to damp it down. And I love watching Chris Rock do anything. But I want to, I don't want him to beat Chris Rock. I just want him to bring the thing that makes him Chris Rock, right? And so, again, two very throat clearing hours isn't enough time to see where it's going to go.

But so far, he does seem like, it seems similar to like the Jonah Hill thing where it's just like, I am a world-class performer and I'm going to do this performance in a Harry Houdini straitjacket. Yeah. Why don't we save boys for Thursday? Because I feel like this is a good place to end their conversation since they sort of went hand in hand. It is all I'll say about this is, it's good that we're going to punt on the boys' conversation because I would just use the word maximalist again. And I've been repeating myself too much. but this is an episode that's like, why not do all of the things? And it's pretty intense.

So we'll do boys. We'll do Ted Lassau and we'll do third day on Thursday. Thanks for joining us today. Andy, thanks for joining me. Thanks for talking to me about my issues, Chris. I'm going to go practice some self-care. And I'll come back with a renewed commitment to skull smashing on Thursday. Get maximal.

I try. Get maximal or die trying, Branskys. It's Mushrooms with me, Maddie Matheson. You know what's better than thinking about dinner too hard? Not stop that and just choose mushrooms five minutes done dinner's that easy and you feel like a genius It's not magic it's mushrooms stop stressing at mushroom council.com