The new series of Fargo is marvelously terrible. It's mortal grievous. It's so bad it should be proverbial. It's a simpering, dainty thing like the saccharine Garrison Keillor dreamt it up after one of his midnight snacks of whoopee pie, johnny cake and fiddle-faddle. I recently wrote to a dear old friend in the old country, who actually said that the new season of Fargo was of the same high calibre as the first. I said:
I sat watching the first two episodes with wife, exploded: "Was this written by fifteen year olds?" Every five minutes the number, the age of the showrunner, would go down –– by the end of the first episode I was attributing it to a long table of eleven-year-olds. Not even precocious ones. Vapid, unrealistic, childish stuff! I prefer to watch I Zombie. It's not Shakespere but it is a d___ sight better than the execrable Fargo (or, as it's known Farce-go, or, as it's known, True Detective Season Two in All Its Lurid Bad Awfulness Deluxe 2.0.)
There are elements of the supremely bad Wes "Park Slope McSweeneys" Anderson in it –– I was waiting for Bill "If I Came Any More Overrated I'd Be in Sonic Youth" Murray to come limping on set and do one of his gnomic turns–– and there are bits baldly redolent of Quentin, the Mule-Faced Woman. Bad preceptors!
You shall not read ill of it, though. I have lately realised that bad reviews are now routinely buried by multinational corporations. They hire people to do it. It's an actual job people do. The other day I tried one of the new three-fingered Kit-Kats. It was bad to have. Garbage in the mouth. Like eating Fargo Season Two in fact. I couldn't believe Kit-Kat had so willingly pissed away their advantage in the game of chocolatiers! I couldn't believe they had whored out their good name and the delicate and exquisite memories we had of Kit-Kats as children. I googled "THE ALL-NEW KIT-KAT IS HORRIBLE" looking for support from the hoi polloi and amazingly nothing came up.
It wasn't like when I was hating Matt Jackson on Jeopardy and that was (apparently) simply me being cussed and negative. (I looked on Survivor Sucks, where one finds trolls congregating to seethe, to see if anybody else hated Matt Jackson. No such dice.) I knew that other people must hate this new inferior Kit-Kat, so where were they? Answer is, the Kit-Kat people hired "Reputation.com" or some equivalent to kill or hide all the bad reviews, to throw them to p.9999 of any Google search, those back pages where my works are usually to be found (or rather are not to be found –– ever) –– and to glut the first hunnerd fifty, two hunnerd pages with empty boring puffs.
Believe the same thing has happened with Season Two of Fargo, because it's execrable and nobody says so. I have to believe that not everybody is that critically compromised.
We all know about the new Golden Age of Television, it is by now a critical cliche, and it doesn't mean that everything that comes out under that aegis is actually any good.
Folks, I give you Fargo Season Two.
This episode, the discussion about shampoo (MOTIF: GANGSTERS TALK ABOUT TRIVIA), the gangsters' niece talking all tough (MOTIF: GANGSTER WOMEN ARE WITTY) while the silent redskin gutted a rabbit (MOTIF: GANGSTERS ARE COLORFUL AND OFF-BEAT), the hackneyed 1970s clothes (MOTIF: THE SEVENTIES WERE INTRINSICALLY AMUSING). Afros, knit sweaters, Dundreary sideburns. Ugh. Tired routines were being shamelessly egested and swatted about the soundstage. Old lees and curds sold as new stock.
"The top of the pot is popped off with the froth."
I'd like to have been a fly on the wall when that acclaimed genius the "showrunner" had pitched this one. "Gents, have I got an idea for you. Idea's this. The movie Fargo."
"You want us to make the movie Fargo."
"I want you to make it again, but with less-talented actors and without the Coen brothers."
"Kid how could it fail."
The best thing on this episode was the commercials. They had a new Norm MacDonald KFC one.
Maybe I ought to go over to FX and make a pitch.
"Fellers, let's make a TV show based on Norm MacDonald pretending he is Colonel Sanders."
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