(no subject)
Julie on Fargo 3.8: I feel both challenged and disappointed.
That nails it for me. It's not in True Detective 2 territory but the point where one feels the need to type "It's not in True Detective 2 territory" is way too close. The masks made one realize just how close. A lot of mistakes along that line have been made, in fact: the incessant and unasked-for Coens-looting, a character named Ermentraub, the hiring of Wise and Coons (didn't True Detective 2 feature the Andrea actress from Breaking Bad in a small role? Yeesh. Oh yeah - and Qualls played the cop who arrests Badger.). It was cute when Community did stuff like that, but a show needs to be distinct if it's in the exact same genre. Hard to say whether it's worse to highlight your show's deep resemblances to bad entries in the same genre or its superficial resemblances to good ones.
3 falls apart to a new degree, but seeing the seams makes it clearer where they were in earlier seasons - the problems aren't new, and even 2's complex argument and nonstop who-will-die sequences just obscure rather than cure. Hawley is not in the Coens/Lynch/Gilligan league, or even the Fuller/Lindelof one, but for some reason feels he needs to try to be. Effort's clearly starting to burn him out even as a pasticheur, the way it incinerated Pizzolatto. Feels like Fuller and Lindelof have learned to not borrow what they couldn't have made themselves, letting them stay masters of their domains if not of the universe. Their premises and aesthetics were sufficiently individuated - interestingly not a matter of originality (they're adapting others' books, after all, though they wander pretty far off-page). Presumably it boils down to confidence. The Coens' untrue story is theirs because they claim it as theirs, true because they think of it as true. Hawley fears his untrue story is someone else's, which keeps it false all through.
The Leftovers never failed that casting test despite Theroux, just like Lost got away with hiring, what, three of his Mulholland Drive costars. Homage versus desperate vampirism, seems like. Maybe we can say strong artists steal for a purpose, weaker ones steal in search of one? 3.8 was stitched together out of bits of The Fugitive, The Defiant Ones, The Big Lebowski, the Fargo film, You're Next, No Country for Old Men ... and I guess the pogrom ghost stuff must be based on a truly dire misreading of A Serious Man? Bits quite overtly borrowed in most cases, but upfrontness about its own sources does nothing important for a story. With so much stitching and stitch-labeling we're left with too many mixed modes and levels. Nothing feels coherent. Hawley has a theme, he has ideas, scenes. But he needs a world. You can't borrow another's world, even if you can take its name.
That nails it for me. It's not in True Detective 2 territory but the point where one feels the need to type "It's not in True Detective 2 territory" is way too close. The masks made one realize just how close. A lot of mistakes along that line have been made, in fact: the incessant and unasked-for Coens-looting, a character named Ermentraub, the hiring of Wise and Coons (didn't True Detective 2 feature the Andrea actress from Breaking Bad in a small role? Yeesh. Oh yeah - and Qualls played the cop who arrests Badger.). It was cute when Community did stuff like that, but a show needs to be distinct if it's in the exact same genre. Hard to say whether it's worse to highlight your show's deep resemblances to bad entries in the same genre or its superficial resemblances to good ones.
3 falls apart to a new degree, but seeing the seams makes it clearer where they were in earlier seasons - the problems aren't new, and even 2's complex argument and nonstop who-will-die sequences just obscure rather than cure. Hawley is not in the Coens/Lynch/Gilligan league, or even the Fuller/Lindelof one, but for some reason feels he needs to try to be. Effort's clearly starting to burn him out even as a pasticheur, the way it incinerated Pizzolatto. Feels like Fuller and Lindelof have learned to not borrow what they couldn't have made themselves, letting them stay masters of their domains if not of the universe. Their premises and aesthetics were sufficiently individuated - interestingly not a matter of originality (they're adapting others' books, after all, though they wander pretty far off-page). Presumably it boils down to confidence. The Coens' untrue story is theirs because they claim it as theirs, true because they think of it as true. Hawley fears his untrue story is someone else's, which keeps it false all through.
The Leftovers never failed that casting test despite Theroux, just like Lost got away with hiring, what, three of his Mulholland Drive costars. Homage versus desperate vampirism, seems like. Maybe we can say strong artists steal for a purpose, weaker ones steal in search of one? 3.8 was stitched together out of bits of The Fugitive, The Defiant Ones, The Big Lebowski, the Fargo film, You're Next, No Country for Old Men ... and I guess the pogrom ghost stuff must be based on a truly dire misreading of A Serious Man? Bits quite overtly borrowed in most cases, but upfrontness about its own sources does nothing important for a story. With so much stitching and stitch-labeling we're left with too many mixed modes and levels. Nothing feels coherent. Hawley has a theme, he has ideas, scenes. But he needs a world. You can't borrow another's world, even if you can take its name.