Fargo, Season 4
Having a show that comes out once a week gives you something to look forward to, and you get to enjoy it over a longer period of time. True, you don’t get to binge it all at once but (and maybe I’m getting old here) there’s something comforting about a routine, especially now. At least up to a point. But we’ll get to that. Let me back up a bit.

Television adaptations of movies are usually bad. There have been too many to count and they’re 90% soulless cash grabs, only watched by the core fanboys who just can’t get enough of those particular characters in that particular universe. Never mind the fact that the A listers in the movie have been replaced with B listers for the show and the plot has little or nothing to do with the source material. 

So four years ago when I first heard that Fargo was being made into a TV series I felt a sickening bolt of fear in my gut, mitigated only slightly by the fact that this was supposedly going to happen on FX, a channel with an excellent track record for high end drama shows and had a cast headlined by Billy Bob Thornton. 

Fargo, like American Horror Story, is an anthology style series that has a new cast in a new location (and new time period) every year. I happen to love this format, because it keeps things fresh. Too many series get stale and overdrawn by stretching out a premise over way, way too many episodes and then leaving the audience twisting in the wind when they get canceled in between seasons.

Or worse, the show goes on for so long that people forget why they started watching in the first place. How on earth did The Big Bang Theory ever last for twelve seasons? It was good but it wasn’t that good. How I Met Your Mother lingered three seasons longer than it needed to and rubbed salt in the wound with a series finale that flipped the bird to the entire audience. But I’ve beaten this dead horse before so I won’t go off on that rant again. Suffice it to say that I am firmly of the opinion many, many TV shows go on far longer than they ought to and decline in quality while they’re at it.

But that can’t happen with Fargo. It’s a style rather than a franchise. New director, new location, new cast, and new time period each season; but always presented in the same chain-of-events story structure that pulls you in and keeps you there.

Chris Rock as a dramatic actor is a new concept for me. I didn’t doubt that he could do it, but I would never have expected him to do it so well. He linchpins a large ensemble cast that hits most of the right notes most of the time. The story itself suffers from being slightly bloated and slow moving, but it drags enough venom and violence along with it while building toward a twisty climax that it doesn’t drag things down. I would have liked to see a little more twistiness in the plot also. This years installment wasn’t as good as last years, although it more than earned its keep. Give this one an -A.

The Death of Stalin

A friend of mine recommended this to me. I’d seen it advertised (it came out in 2017) but never considered sitting down to watch it, until I was advised that it was not just funny, but hilarious. So I gave it a shot. Then I watched it again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything because I was laughing so hard at various points that I knew I must have missed some jokes while I was reeling from earlier ones.

The Death of Stalin covers the events surrounding the death of the long time soviet dictator and the rise of his replacement from within the ranks of the central committee. Steve Buscemi plays Nikita Khrushchev, a man who would assume control of the Soviet Union shortly after Stalin died. Jason Isaacs plays Marshal Gregory Zhukov, leader of the soviet army and…wow. Spoilers ahead, be aware.

This is dark, dark comedy. There’s a scene early on where Stalin has suffered a stroke and is on his death bed. None of the central committee members want to take responsibility for diagnosing his condition, but all of the competent doctors in Moscow have been rounded up and executed for anti-Soviet behavior, forcing the committee to (by their own admission) round up all of the bad doctors in the hope of getting one of them to do it.

Stalin dies and the process of installing his replacement begins. And while the dialogue is entirely invented by the writers of the film, the events that take place are what happened in real life. The leader of the soviet secret police, the NKVD, is a man named Beria. Beria’s main objective (just like everyone else) is to preserve or enlarge his power base now that Stalin has died. But in the process his men kill 1,500 unarmed civilians who were trying to get into the city to attend Stalin’s funeral. Sensing an opportunity to remove a thorn in his side, Khrushchev approaches Zhukov about using the slaughter as a pretext for a coup. Zhukov agrees, but only if Khrushchev can get the rest of the central committee on board.

But none of this matters. Oh, it all builds up to the end of the film, sure, but none of it matters. The dialogue is the tightest, snappiest, driest, most pitch black think you’ll ever hear in your life. Jason Isaacs steals the show without even trying. To describe Zhukov as a cocky, bombastic smart-alecky bulldog would be the understatement of the century. I cannot advocate in favor of this movie strongly enough, go watch it. A+

If Anything Happens, I Love You

I will not under any circumstances spoil a single moment of this masterpiece. It’s not very long, and you should watch it immediately; but be warned, this will not be an easy one to see. The title should be enough to tell you approximately what it is about. In the time that we’re living in, that sentence doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination. If Anything Happens is a 12-minute animated short. It will punch you in the heart and leave you sober, stunned, and unable to speak for probably longer than the movie itself. I cannot imagine the pain that went into making it. All I can do is stare blankly at my laptop monitor knowing that nothing I could ever write here would do it justice. This little short is what people mean when they say that movies are art and it will stand, quietly but unyieldingly, against any cold-hearted cynic who cares to argue that animation is not real filmmaking. I made the mistake of watching it alone. Don’t do this. Watch it with someone you love so that there’s someone you can hug when it’s over. You’re going to need it.