Sometimes The Bear Eats Itself: The Metatextual, Metaphysical Monster That Is FARGO’S Third Season

The line connecting Fargo, the Coen Brothers’ 1996 opus, to Fargo, FX’s 2014 reimagining, was never quite a straight and obvious one. Various parts quasi-adaptation, tribute, sequel, and general Coen-stravaganza (among other things), Fargo-The-Show operates in practically its own world of pastiche and parallel, retooling the images, themes, and overall vibe of its filmic forebear to tell a series of mostly-new-but-still-sorta-not-quite stories—while also manifesting familiar character types and tropes from across the entire Coen spectrum. Just looking at Season 1, Molly Solverson is analogous to Marge from the film, Lester Nygaard a spin on Jerry Lundegaard… yet Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo feels like something else entirely, a creature drawn more from the world of Cormac McCarthy and No Country For Old Men than anything in the original Fargo. And that’s just the beginning: by “Year Two” the show was fully its own beast, pulling in almost equal measure from the likes of No Country as much as from Fargo—as well as just about any other Coen film you could spin a bowling ball at.

Affluence, Power, and SUCCESSION’S Window Into the Pathology of Wealth

As the merry-go-round of Succession finishes its final circuit, the Roy siblings seem to be readying their knives for each other’s backs one last time… and it makes you wonder: what, if anything, have these people learned over the course of four seasons? Practically to a man they remain flawed and despicable human beings in spite of—mostly because of—their vast fortune. Not that any of the other millionaires, billionaires, executives, hanger-ons, and/or miscellaneous power brokers featured in the show seem to be much better (see: Lukas Musk Mattson)… but that’s always been a big part of the appeal of Succession—these are strange people, and watching them bumble and pratfall ad nauseam dispels most notions of extreme wealth being tied to intelligence or greater human value. More so, hyper-capitalism inevitably creates these types of figures, so wrapped up in whatever ephemera they’re chasing (business/political dominance, a father’s approval, the Almighty Dollar) that they’re left deficient in practically every other area of their lives.

From “Northwest Passage” to Return: TWIN PEAKS’ Long, Strange, 25-Year Journey

(This piece presumes its reader has at least some—if not full—knowledge of Twin Peaks. So obligatory SPOILER warning for it and any and all of its incarnations, spinoffs, and derivatives.)

Where do you even begin with Twin Peaks? David Lynch and Mark Frost’s mishmash of supernatural mystery and prime time soap opera remains a work of nigh-unmatched chutzpah and creativity—and a seminal piece of visual fiction as a whole. Even spread across decades, mediums, and styles, the hunt for Laura Palmer’s killer (and beyond) feels almost as fresh today as it did in 1990… maybe even more so, considering the story finally has some degree of closure via 2017’s The Return, the show’s much-anticipated third season. Whether 25 years late or right on time, the road to a conclusion was a strange one, fraught with ups, downs, cliffhangers, and high expectations—but ultimately forming the whole of an experience well-deserving of its pop culture legacy.

A Decade of THE MASTER

It’s been ten whole years since theater screens were graced (in gorgeous 70mm!) with Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2012 opus, The Master. Existential, psychological, vaguely romantic… the closer one examines it, the more the film seems to shift and writhe away from any singular interpretation or easy classification. To its detractors, this is proof that it’s just a meandering, half-baked waste of time and celluloid… but for the viewer bold enough to approach it in good faith, that’s precisely the beauty of the film: The Master has layers upon layers to peel back and read into, with just enough ambiguity in just the right places to speak uniquely to a variety of cinema lovers. Like the kaleidoscopic blue design of the film’s poster or the Rorschach adorning its DVD cover, one can almost see what they want to see in The Master; and like “Master” Lancaster Dodd’s Cause itself, the right-minded moviegoer consents to having themselves immersed—if not haunted outright—by the film, almost as much through their own efforts as Paul Thomas Anderson’s.

Journey, Interrupted: DUNE, STAR WARS, and the Tyranny of Joseph Campbell

Massive SPOILER WARNING for the BULK OF THE ENTIRE DUNE SERIES! If you’re waiting for the follow-up to Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation, this essay contains SPOILERS for both the second half of the original novel and its sequels!

From ancient mythology to Arthurian legend, all the way down through modern franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter (among innumerable others), the classic Hero’s Journey—most popularly outlined by Joseph Campbell in his 1949 opus The Hero with a Thousand Faces—has been influential on modern popular media and culture almost beyond measure. Distilled down to a linear, step-by-step progression, Campbell purports to capture something universally inherent in practically all stories throughout all time… Sure thing, man; in truth, Hero with a Thousand Faces is a dated relic of an era valuing transcendence through conformity above all else, managing to squash and shave thousands of distinct cultures, traditions, and morals down into one flat grey blob of quasi-mysticism and bland ubiquity (to say nothing of its casual racism and sexism amongst a whole host of other Issues).

Pitfalls of a Golden Age: The Strange Prestige Allure of BOARDWALK EMPIRE

As usual, indiscriminate spoilers for all five seasons of Boardwalk Empire to follow

Boardwalk Empire is an odd bird: simultaneously overrated, underrated, and rated precisely as well as it deserved; both a victim and a perpetrator of the great Antihero Flood that in part defined TV’s Second Golden Age, it’s a series almost at war with itself, with its contemporaries and the expectations derived thereof—namely the modern-day mobster stylings of quasi-predecessor The Sopranos and similarly lush period trappings of Mad Men. In a tidy way, Boardwalk’s central dilemma is one shared in large part with its central character, Enoch “Nucky” Thompson: that of an identity crisis.

A Decade of A SERIOUS MAN: Meditations on Judaism, the Coen Brothers, and Our Moment in Time

“Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you”

It’s been about a decade since a 17-year-old Jewish kid stared into the cosmos of the Coen Brothers’ then-latest opus and saw himself reflected back; that’s a decade of questions without answers, a few answers without questions, and—in the mind of this white millennial Jew—one of cinema’s most penetrating looks at the philosophies, foibles, and hypocrisies of Judaism and secular Jewish life.

Lynch to the Past: The Surreal Lineage of the ZELDA/TWIN PEAKS Connection

Indiscriminate SPOILERS for Link’s Awakening. If you’ve somehow managed to avoid the game’s main “twist” for 26 years and want to experience the remake totally fresh, turn back.

September 20th marks the release of the Switch remake of Link’s Awakening, a perennial fan-favorite entry in the Legend of Zelda series: and for good reason! Almost everything—from its characters to its soundtrack, dungeons and puzzles—contributes to an oblique, totally individual charm. In the scope of the larger Zelda canon, Awakening is an enormously influential title, one of the first to defy some cardinal traditions in setting, tone, theme, etc.

On Shticks, INTERSTELLAR, and the Problem with Christopher Nolan

It was that damn IPCC report that got me to actually rewatch Interstellar. The night the thing came out, I had nightmares recalling details reminiscent of Nolan’s attempt at a space epic (namely crop failures, a farmer-centric future, etc). Lucky for us all, when the world begins its final descent in 12 years, it’ll probably be nothing like the film; not from a lack of trying, but more a lack of imagination on Nolan’s part.

Two Years Out: On Things Left Unsaid, Things Left Unfinished, and METAL GEAR SOLID V

As usual, indiscriminate spoilers for the entire Metal Gear Solid series, with special warning given for Metal Gear Solid V, a particularly spoiler-heavy entry. Proceed at one’s own risk.

Metal Gear Solid is indisputably a landmark franchise for video games. The PS One original was an explosive combination of stealth-action gameplay with a cinema-quality narrative, the likes of which would inform a whole new generation of video game storytelling.