Snowpiercer S1 Ep 1: First The Weather Changed

 from Vulture.com
https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/snowpiercer-series-premiere-recap-first-the-weather-changed.html

Snowpiercer S1 Ep 1:

First The Weather Changed

Snowpiercer Series-Premiere Recap: Murder on the Apocalypse Express
By Hillary Kelly


Photo: Justina Mintz/TNT

Watching Snowpiercer the show (on, of all places, TNT) versus Snowpiercer the Bong Joon Ho film, I couldn’t help but think of another little film Bong put out last year called Parasite. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. In his profile of the filmmaker, my colleague E. Alex Jung, the Bong whisperer, called Parasite “a black comedy about class differences well-suited to our season of scams”; it’s set in two homes so night-and-day different they present like a fairy tale made up by a Marxist interior designer. The Kim family lives in an infested basement apartment with one measly window overlooking a fetid alley. The Park family’s home, which the Kims essentially invade via a series of scams, is one massive window, a complex of clean lines and abundant glass so shiny they must need to employ someone to pick up all the dead, broken-necked birds. Without seeing one house, you wouldn’t recognize the true extremity of the other. The two create a sick kind of narrative balance, which Bong is asking you to want to destroy.

In the 2013 Snowpiercer film, which Bong released with Harvey Weinstein in the days of Me Too–yore, all we ever see of the titular train are the Tail, where a crew of revolutionary nonpaying customers have taken up residence and been confined, and the mechanical cars they make it through on their battle to correct the class disparity which has them locked up without daylight; sunshine is a big metaphor for Bong. (I won’t reveal what one character does see of the train in the end.) But in the series, after a brief explanation of exactly what Snowpiercer is — a train with 1,001 cars, built by the benevolent Mr. Wilford to circumnavigate the frozen Earth until it’s hypothetical thaw — and a scene depicting the Tailies storming the train at its departure, we move immediately up to first class.

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The effect is jarring and necessary. We meet the smooth and collected Melanie Cavill, the head of hospitality (played by Jennifer Connelly, whom I have adored since Labyrinth and find perfecto for this role) as she glides down a sleek white corridor, only slightly nudged by the rocking that sends the Tail’s inhabitants practically tumbling to the floor. Her surroundings are luminous, like an Orient Express designed by Jony Ive. Her hair is slicked into a neat bun, her turquoise uniform (of which she has about five exact replicas hanging in her closet) perfectly molded to her figure. Her voice, when it pours out over Snowpiercer’s PA system, is so velvety it’s practically disembodied. It’s -119 degrees Celsius, she informs everyone evenly, and they’ve been on board the train for six years, nine months, and 26 days.

The purpose of this first episode is twofold. First, to lay out the class disparity so starkly that you can’t help but want those orchid-swaddled pricks in first class to choke on their lobster. Tailies are given “rations” each day, black bars of gelatinous goo, like a “drink” my 3-year-old would concoct for me if she had access to ground-up horse hooves. Melanie carries a bento box of sushi freshly plucked from a luminous train-car lagoon. The Tailies bicker over when and how to revolt. The first class passengers complain to Melanie about how the Scandinavians have taken to nude sauna visits and won’t stop singing. And yes, these are all very big, flashing-light metaphors for our own extremely messed-up class system! Ding ding ding!

Second, this episode establishes the method by which the Tailies, first-class passengers, third-class sex fiends, and Snowpiercer’s employees will begin to mix in unlikely ways. Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs, who deserves an Emmy for that grilled cheese scene) is one of the Tail’s leaders, a former homicide detective who stormed Snowpiercer and took in Miles, a young boy whose father and sister didn’t make it onto the train and whose mother was thrown off just as it started moving. He’s dedicated to the Tail’s movement to equalize treatment on board. (Remember, Snowpiercer was advertised and people bought tickets, meaning those in the Tail know some of the wonders that might await them in other classes.) The Tailies are plotting another bloody rebellion, but Layton is slow to agree: he wants more time to find out exactly what awaits them up-train.

So when he is plucked from the Tail by Ruth (Alison Wright, forever beloved as poor Martha from The Americans, but here using the full range of her English accent to play an imperious hospitality goon) to investigate the murder of a limbless, dickless third-class passenger named Sean Wise, he’s given the perfect opportunity. As he explains late in the episode, Layton sees more of the train in one day than they’d ever imagined seeing in their lifetimes.

We don’t know much about the murder yet. We learn that Sean worked in agriculture and was a, ahem, particular friend of Zara, Layton’s wife who left the Tail at some earlier juncture to work in the mysterious “Night Car” and live in third. He was found stuffed in a compartment by a Breachman (yes, that’s how that is spelled), and the M.O. of his death matches a murder committed two years earlier, a murder for which a young woman named Nikki Genelt is already serving time in “the drawers,” a set of suspended-animation facilities manned by an exceptionally creepy, Philip Seymour Hoffman–esque doctor who tends a little too lovingly to the follicular needs of his detainees.

Playing hard to get, Layton is trying to weigh out the best route forward. If he accepts the assignment, Tailies might consider him a traitor. So he demands third-class food and lodgings for all Tailies, as well as an end to the forced female sterilization that has meant no new babies for five years, in exchange for his help solving the murder. (“I guess Mr. Wilford didn’t think rich people would murder each other,” he says with the maniacal laugh of someone who knows that the wealthy are always given free passes, even in the apocalypse!) We don’t learn his complete plan until the end of the episode, when he’s sent back to talk some sense into Pike, Strong Boy, and the other rebels who have bloodily stormed one car, left a pile of jackboot bodies on the floors, and taken Till, one of the Breachman, hostage. He’ll solve the murder, he explains to his friends, as long as it gives him access to the rest of the train, where he can plot out a method for them to overthrow the system.

Why is Mr. Wilford, the proverbial Elon Musk-cum-Wizard of Oz who runs this whole enterprise, so determined to solve this murder? As Melanie explains to Layton under swaying cherry-blossom branches in one of 130 botanical cars, “a murder could upset the entire balance” of Snowpiercer, and she doesn’t just mean metaphorically. This might be the moment of Snowpiercer I loved most (after that grilled cheese, I mean, that was really *eating* a grilled cheese, right?). It’s slightly campy, definitely too on the nose, but still satisfying? Melanie holds up that single strawberry after Layton protests that the passengers have all this abundance and they can’t even share it, and she launches into her little speech. “The strawberry’s place here is commensurate with its calories,” she says, without even an ounce of self-awareness. Like any good wheel-greaser she knows the ins and outs of the system — knows that kids back in the Tail eat congealed grease all day while the fools up in first swish Cabernet around their faux refined palettes. But she has a dogma, dammit, and her own place as head of hospitality depends upon keeping everyone in their place. The first classers can only feel special if they know they have more than anyone else. It’s capitalism, baby!

Except one minor, tiny, teeny detail could upend everything. She glides into the engine room at the end of the episode, sushi in hand, and assumes the driver’s seat. “You have the train, Mr. Wilford,” the conductor says with a little smirk. The man behind the curtain is really the woman in the uniform. And she’s just barely keeping it all together.

from EW.com
https://ew.com/recap/american-gods-season-1-finale/ 

American Gods S1 Ep 8: Come To Jesus

American Gods finale recap: 'Come to Jesus'

Kristin Chenoweth dons her Easter bonnet in a divine season finale

By Devan Coggan 

June 18, 2017 at 10:02 PM EDT

CREDIT: JAN THIJS/STARZ

American Gods

S1 E8

 

STARZ (Via Cable/Satellite Provider), Starz (Via Philo), STARZ, and 

American Gods is closing out its phenomenal first season as only American Gods can — by starting with a massive, ancient orgy and ending with a pastel Jesus party-turned-declaration of war.

There is a lot to unpack in this season finale, so let’s start with the orgy (which is not a sentence I expected to write when I first sat down to watch this episode). Shadow is still reeling from the recent decapitation of Vulcan, but Mr. Wednesday has already moved on to the next part of his plan. Apparently, that involves getting some super dope bespoke suits, custom made from spider silk by one Mr. Nancy. That’s right — we get our first modern-day look at everyone’s favorite spider trickster god, and you can’t have a Nancy scene without him trying to tell a story.

Nancy proceeds to tell the tale of the Queen of Sheba in the Temple of Bar’an, circa 864 B.C. We, of course, recognize her as Bilquis, and the goddess of love and devotion is in rare form, all golden and glowing and surrounded by an entire army of worshipers. She’s never been more powerful, and that, Nancy tells us, makes her a target. But Bilquis treats her lovers and haters equally, consuming them until they dissolve into a strange, glittery black liquid and disappear into her. “Kings didn’t like that,” Nancy recounts. “Kings came one after another to knock her off her throne. They didn’t last long.” From what we’ve seen of Bilquis so far, she’s clearly a powerful deity, but this is her at the height of her strength. She’s regal and terrifying, all at once.

Over the years, Bilquis proves to be fairly adaptable, moving from ancient temples to ‘70s discos, but eventually, she begins to face too much persecution. So, she decides to turn her attention elsewhere — to America. “But America, too, can take issue with a woman of power,” Nancy tells us, and before long, she’s losing friends and lovers to AIDS and spending her nights on the streets. By the time 2013 rolls around, she’s a barely recognizable shell of her former self, pushing a shopping cart and watching helplessly as ISIS militants on the other side of the globe destroy her ancient temples.

She finds an unexpected savior, however, in the form of Technical Boy, who approaches her on the street one night. “I hear they blew up your altar,” he tells her, smirking. “I have a new one to offer you.” And so he hands her a cell phone, introducing her to the world of online dating and sex on demand. He’s created a dating app in her name — Sheba, instead of Tinder — and now, every time someone swipes right, they’re directly worshiping her. If Wednesday is a holdout who refuses to partner with the New Gods, Bilquis is an example of what can happen when you do agree to what Media calls “a merger.” It’s clear that Bilquis isn’t eager to trust Technical Boy, but she doesn’t have much of a choice. She’s still a long way from moonlit orgies and scores of worshipers, but at least with the internet at her fingertips, she can survive.

When we see her next, she’s refreshed and rejuvenated, but she still finds herself wandering through old museums, revisiting her old relics and the fragments of her temples. Eventually, Technical Boy tracks her down, informing her that he’s here to cash in that favor she owes him. There’s a great, brief moment where she turns her charm in his direction, and as she leans in close to him, he recoils. It’s a few seconds in an action-packed episode, but it reveals a lot about who Technical Boy is: He may talk a big game, but he still can’t relate to — and is possibly even scared of — intimacy.

We don’t overhear the exact details of what Technical Boy’s favor is, but we can sort of piece it together. The last shot of Bilquis comes at the very, very end of the episode, as she’s shown taking a bus to Wisconsin. We know that Wisconsin — specifically the House on the Rock — is where Wednesday and a whole pantheon of gods are planning to gather, soon. If Bilquis is allied with Technical Boy and the New Gods (however reluctantly), that’s pretty bad news for Wednesday.

We’ll talk a little bit more about the House on the Rock later, but for now, let’s head to Kentucky…
(Recap continues on page 2)

Wednesday has one more powerful ally he’d like to recruit before heading to Wisconsin, so he and Shadow set out for Kentucky. So far, their road trip has mostly taken them to dingy Chicago apartments, crusty Midwestern motels, a terrifying small town in Virginia… but Kentucky is pure joy and magic, all flowers and bunnies and sunshine. When they finally reach their destination, a beautiful house overlooking a lake, Shadow and Wednesday walk into the most luxurious Easter party either of them has ever seen.

And so they meet Easter, a.k.a. Eostre, a.k.a. Ostara. She’s played by longtime Bryan Fuller favorite and Pushing Daisies alum Kristin Chenoweth, who brings a cheery radiance to the goddess of the spring. Long before Jesus rose from the dead, Easter was her holiday, as ancient Germanic people held a festival in her name to celebrate the end of winter and herald the arrival of spring. As Wednesday puts it: “When you see children dipping eggs in vinegar the colors of their favorite toys, or when you see the nation’s youth fleeing south for copulation, or when they spread their seed over the sinking mass that is the great state of Florida, they all, without realizing it, do it in her name: Ostara.”

But although the holiday originated in her name, Easter has since evolved to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And as Shadow looks around this lovely spring brunch, he suddenly realizes that several of the guests seem familiar. There’s a beautiful woman, beatifically smiling down at a cherubic baby at her breast. There’s a tall man with bloody holes in his hand. And when a long-haired man wearing sandals and a robe greets him by name, he realizes: Practically every attendee at this party is a version of Jesus Christ. Suddenly, he gets it: They’re all gods.

And so, everything clicks into place. Shadow, like the average American, isn’t necessarily familiar with Czernobog or Odin or Anansi, but it’s hard for him to miss the telltale signs of Jesus. So far, he’s chalked up everything he’s seen so far to magic or dreams, but now, he realizes that everything he’s experienced has been not magical, but divine.

All things considered, Shadow takes this news rather well, although the blow is probably softened by the peaceful party atmosphere and the free-flowing champagne. When he and Wednesday finally greet their host, Easter is not exactly thrilled to see Wednesday, but she’s totally charmed with Shadow. “I deal in sugar, sugar, and you’re the sweetest damn thing I’ve ever seen,” she tells him, grinning. (Find someone who looks at you the way Ricky Whittle looks at Kristin Chenoweth in this scene — with pure joy and adoration.)

Party aside, Wednesday is there to talk business, and he’s eager to recruit Easter to his cause. She, of course, brushes him off, arguing that she’s not like him — people haven’t forgotten her. There’s a whole multimillion-dollar industry revolving around chocolate rabbits and egg dye, and unlike some of their less fortunate colleagues, people sure as hell know her name. Wednesday, however, reminds her that people may be celebrating her day, but they don’t do it in her name, and as he says this, he gestures at one of the many Jesuses surrounding them. “You’re as forgotten and unloved and as unremembered as any of us,” he tells her. (The Jesuses, for what it’s worth, tell Easter that they feel very guilty for co-opting her day. Jesuses are nothing if not polite and thoughtful.)

Jesus, plural or otherwise, doesn’t make an appearance in the final draft of Neil Gaiman’s novel, the assumption being that he’s got more important things to do than take a side in the squabble between the New Gods and the Old. But the Easter party, as dreamed up by showrunners Bryan Fuller and Michael Green, is kind of brilliant. Throughout the season, Wednesday has hinted at the existence of multiple Jesuses, and we’ve even met one of them, but here, we see every incarnation, all nibbling at jellybeans and chocolate bunnies. Wednesday dismisses the Jesuses as sons of gods, not actual gods, but even though they’re presumably some of the most powerful figures we’ve met so far, they don’t seem like they would be particularly interested in Wednesday’s war, anyway.

While Wednesday and Easter are arguing, Shadow comes upon a particular Jesus, perhaps the most stereotypical incarnation, who is played with beatific brilliance by Jeremy Davies. He’s sitting on Easter’s pool — yes, on — and there’s a great moment where he’s turning water into wine, and he drops his glass. It sinks to the bottom of the pool as he whispers, “God damn it.” As the light creates a subtle halo effect around his head, he and Shadow have a heart-to-heart about belief. Even with all of the things that Shadow has seen so far, he’s not sure he can believe in all of this — and Jesus tells him that that’s okay.

“Even if you don’t believe, you cannot travel in any other way than the road your senses show you,” Jesus tells him. “And you must walk that road to the end.” (It’s a line paraphrased from Gaiman’s novel.) If only we all had Jeremy Davies Jesus to offer us advice when we needed it most.

Meanwhile, a very sad and damaged ice cream truck pulls up to the Kentucky party, and Easter is not thrilled. (Multiple times in this episode, she leans in to listen to a white rabbit relaying information, before declaring, “Oh s—.” It’s glorious. Kristin Chenoweth is glorious.) Apparently, Easter doesn’t particularly like Mad Sweeney, and she’s not exactly thrilled to have an angry leprechaun and a dead girl crashing her party. Bryan Fuller sure loves to write Kristin Chenoweth characters who are annoyed by dead girls. But for whatever reason, Easter owes Sweeney a favor, and she agrees to bring Laura back. After all, who is more associated with resurrection than the goddess of spring, who brings the entire Earth back to life after every winter? But as she moves to examine Laura, she recoils, before apologizing and telling her that she can’t resurrect someone who was killed by a god. Which is when Laura turns to Sweeney and angrily asks, “Which f—ing god?”

Sweeney admits to running her off the road, but Laura knows he’s not a true god, just a leprechaun. Laura was killed by a god, a real god, and if Sweeney doesn’t tell her which one, she vows to kill him. “I swear to Jesus,” she hisses. “He’s right outside.” Which is when Sweeney tells her the truth: It was Wednesday.

The last episode hinted at Wednesday’s involvement, but here, Sweeney spells it out a little clearer. Turns out that Wednesday set everything up, going back years — from Shadow going to jail to Laura’s death. “You weren’t murdered,” Sweeney tells Laura. “You were sacrificed.” For whatever reason, Shadow was the man Wednesday wanted at his side, and in order to get Shadow to sign on, he needed him in a place of desperation.

“He needed your man,” Sweeney continues. “He needed him to be in a place where he had nothing left in the world, nothing to lose because he’d already lost everything.”

To which Laura replies: “What does Wednesday have to lose?”
(Recap continues on page 3)

As if things weren’t complicated enough, guess who else has an invitation to this Easter party: Judy Garland in full Easter Parade regalia, as played by Gillian Anderson. (And accompanied by a bunch of the New Gods’ faceless goons, dressed like Fred Astaire.) After all, who is more responsible for the popularity of Easter than Media? “We popularized the pagan,” Media-slash-Judy says cheerily. “We practically invented brunch!”

 from Ready Steady Cut:
https://readysteadycut.com/2019/11/22/recap-the-feed-season-1-episode-6-amazon-series/

The Feed S1 Ep 6

The Feed Recap: Saving The
World
This recap of Amazon Series The Feed Season 1, Episode 6 contains significant spoilers. You can
read the recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.

---

The breach in The Feed is spreading and Gil (Chris Reilly) is brought in for questioning by the hub, arrested briefly by the ISCA. Another 30 potential hackers are brought in. Ben has set up Gil for good.

Evelyn and Max are hostages after a mysterious man entered their home in the last episode. Before intending to leave the country for good, Kate goes to visit Max and Evelyn, and senses danger after seeing blood. Tom shows up and suspects it is linked to The Feed.

These two just do not know how to leave the country.

Gil is questioned, but he is adamant that he did not download the illegal app. Ben tries convincing Meredith that Gil is guilty, but she believes him, irritating Ben further.

Ben then decides to visit his father Lawrence, but Lawrence is only interested in turning on Ben’s feed. Lawrence finds out about the illegal app that won’t go away in Ben’s feed. The two end up arguing and Lawrence says, “you are not my son, you’ve done nothing to earn my name”.

Ouch, and he said it in such a way that Ben may have not understood the double meaning. Meanwhile, Tom and Kate continue to look for Max and Evelyn.

To turn the tables, Lawrences invites a journalist into his home. He claims to be smarter than most people, stating that his brain works faster and is more expansive than most and he is part of an exclusive group of two hundred people. Lawrence further claims he is saving the world like the geniuses before him and asks if he can be reinstated so they all can be saved. While Lawrence delivers his public speech with the journalist, Tom and Kate find a severed head in a wardrobe in an employee’s house.

We soon learn that the man who has captured Evelyn and Max is a man named Eric, and he heads to the hub with them.

Lawrence is called in by Sue and after a brief conversation, she orders his arrest by security personnel — she refuses to reinstate him. Eric sneaks into the hub with Max and Evelyn and just as Tom and Kate show up during Lawrence’s arrest, Eric tries attacking them. Tom accidentally kills him. It is revealed that Eric killed his wife, and her head was in the wardrobe.

The Feed Season 1, Episode 6 ends with Ben analyzing a feed of one of the hackers but it is absorbing all the data — corruption flashes up on the screen. Max suddenly stabs Lawrence from behind multiple times, killing him. Max is shot dead.

 from ew.com
https://ew.com/recap/fargo-season-2-episode-6/

Fargo S2 Ep 6: Rhinoceros

The Gerhardts almost go full-'Assault on Precinct 13' in Luverne.

By Kevin P. Sullivan 

November 16, 2015 at 11:29 PM EST

CREDIT: CHRIS LARGE/FX

Fargo

S2 E6

TYPE

• TV Show

NETWORK

• FX

GENRE

• Drama
 
• Crime
 
• Anthology

I hope everyone took the week to consider how they are like Sisyphus, struggling to push that boulder up the mountain, only to realize that no matter how you struggle you still have to wait a week in between episodes of Fargo.

That last part might not be right.

But that’s okay, because the latest hour of Fargo, “Rhinoceros,” ditched some of the heavier Camus for some classic Carpenter, as Lou, Ed, Bear, Hanzee, Charlie, and Karl Weathers (with a K) reenact a politer version of Assault on Precinct 13.

For there to be a siege on the police station, however, there need to be some prisoners to bust out. With Charlie Gerhardt already in custody, the authorities inevitably came for Ed to ask him some questions about just what happened in the back room of the butcher shop. Namely, how did that meat cleaver end up in Virgil’s head. As Ed is taken away in cuffs, he is already beginning his reaction to Noreen’s quandaries from the previous episode. What is he doing with his life? What does it all mean if he’s going to die? Ed saw his previous answer going up in flames with the butcher shop, so he knows that’s no longer it. And to be honest, it probably never was that. Suffice it to say that he has some things to consider as he waits for Lou to come in to question him.

In the other cell, there’s Charlie, who appears to be in better health than when we last saw him, so at least he has his health. That doesn’t much matter in his case though, because he was supposed to be the Gerhardt that escaped, the one who didn’t have to live in the world of violent men and outdated rule. Charlie’s dad, Bear, is unique because while he is an active participant in that system, he’s also self-aware enough to take a step back and see that nothing good can come of this life. His son was supposed to break away. Now he’s in a jail cell. That’s as good as dead to Bear, who still mourns the death of his eldest brother, Elron, the true heir to the Gerhardt family name.

The remembrance of Elron more or less made a confrontation between Bear and Dodd, the false heir, inevitable. The already-lain fuel is lit when Bear receives Charlie’s call from jail. Dodd was busy managing a parental problem of his own with Simone, whose failure is a product of her father’s own shortcomings, and unlike Bear, he’s only continuing to make matters worse, talking about the “life of a whore.” Before his lesson can advance too far, Bear comes storming out of the house, ready to take his brother down for the ultimate betrayal, the destruction of his life’s work. Unfortunately for Bear though, he doesn’t have a faithful right-hand man like Hanzee to pull out a shotgun on his enemies, like Dodd does. The reversal puts Dodd in a position to deliver the most patriarchal of punishments: the belt. This is the one rule of order that Dodd understands, and it’s the one that everyone around him — from Floyd and Bear to Simone and Charlie — is fighting against.

Floyd is able to break up the bro-fest before things go too far, however, and she has a simple order. Bring Charlie home, and kill the Butcher of Luverne. The directive sends most of the Gerhardt men away from the farm, leaving the women at home — where Dodd would argue they belong, no doubt. The men may be gone, but they’ve left their mark. Simone is feeling particularly put off after being called a “whore” by her father, so who does she call? Mike Milligan, of course.

“He called me a whore,” she tells her lover.

“Technically…” he replies, trailing off.

She tells him that Dodd and the boys went to Luverne to take care of the Butcher, giving Mike the opportunity to take out her dad once and for all. Her final words to her father — or at least the ones she plans for him — are perfectly pop culture-informed for 1979. “Kiss my grits,” Simone tells Mike, quoting Flo from Alice, a waitress, appropriately enough for the season.

NEXT: Who wants to talk about poetry?!… Anyone?

As Milligan and the remaining Kitchen twin gear up, the loquacious man from Kansas City delivers a few stanzas of poetry that are sure to confuse anyone who isn’t familiar with Lewis Carroll’s 1871 classic, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. “Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem that Carroll included in his Alice in Wonderland sequel that tells the story of a ferocious beast and the brave, young man who confronts it.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe

Did you notice how a lot of those words are complete and utter nonsense? You didn’t? Did you actually read the poem? It’s short. Go back, and read it. I’ll wait here.

Now that you’ve read “Jabberwocky,” you see that despite being comprised mostly of words invented by Carroll — a few of the words, like “chortled,” are used in normal speech today — the story of the poem is more or less clear.

As Milligan began to recite a 19th-century poem without any warning, I chortled a bit myself and wondered if Fargo had taken things a step too far, breaking more of the “true story” illusion than it usually does. How quickly I forget that every other episode hinted at UFO sightings! Looking back on the poem, it’s clear that Fargo has just found its lyrical twin. “Jabberwocky” makes sense because its basic shape is a story that’s been told for centuries. A young warrior triumphs over a monster. What Carroll is doing is simultaneously parodying those tales in a form that mirrors them almost exactly, except that the entire work is absolutely ridiculous.

In the same way, Fargo, as a franchise, is a story that we’ve heard and know so well that the absurdities — like Carroll’s words in “Jabberwocky” — are the key component. All of the proceedings are so serious, deadly even, and yet there is a knowing delight within every beat of it. Fargo, the first season in particular, is as close to an updated, 10-hour television adaptation of “Jabberwocky” as we’ll ever get.

NEXT: No more poetry, I promise.

Last week, I wrote about how every new episode this season becomes my pick for the best episode yet. While that’s not quite true anymore — “The Gift of the Magi” is currently the hour to beat — a different pattern is emerging. After every hour, I’m at a loss to say which actor has impressed me the most this season. Bokeem Woodbine held the title for a while, as did Jean Smart. Brad Garrett’s work as Joe Bulo (may he rest in a hat box) was a revelation. And I think it’s time the universe recognized just how damn good Patrick Wilson is. (An Emmy would do.) But after “Rhinoceros,” you could make a solid argument for both Kirsten Dunst and Nick Offerman.

The former has done uniformly stellar work as Peggy, but as Mrs. Ed Blumquist got her big moment, Dunst has never been better. After her husband is taken away by Lou Solverson, Peggy is left to entertain Frank Larsson and answer a few questions. Specifically, why didn’t she stop the car after hitting Rye Gerhardt? Literally everything that Peggy says in her scenes with Frank is fascinating and deserves a recap unto itself. What’s clear from her responses, confused as they may be, is that in searching for a better reality, she has completely disconnected from the one in front of her. “You’re a little touched, aren’t ya?” Frank asks, but it’s not that simple.

Peggy has become the by-product of her husband’s false dream. Ed believed deeply that their future contained nothing more than the butcher shop and their kids, growing up in the same house he did. He never once paused to consider his wife’s interior life, which has now manifested as seemingly endless stacks of magazines. It’s only when Ed is facing a life-altering set of circumstances that he sees what he should have been struggling for the entire time. “It doesn’t matter what they throw at me,” he tells Lou back at the station. “I’m going to take care of what’s mine.”

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The snag in that plan is that Peggy is still at the house, having to take care of herself as Dodd and the Gerhardts roll up and Hanzee lays out Frank with a swift blow to the head. In the end, it’s Peggy’s magazines, the nuisance that Ed once complained about, that save her when the Gerhardts pursue her in the basement. It also felt fitting that Dodd is undone, at least temporarily, by his cattle prod. (A decidedly phallic choice of weapon, I might add.)

Meanwhile, Karl Weathers, “slightly inebriated,” has matters under control at the police station. As the legal counsel for both Ed Blumquist and Charlie Gerhardt, he is the unlucky hinge in this Old West standoff, but fortunately for us, that position is the perfect showcase for Nick Offerman, who is so much more than Ron Swanson. (Though I will concede that his best co-star is usually his facial hair.) There might be some overlap between Karl and the head of Pawnee parks and recreation, but the lawyer for Luverne’s criminal element is such a unique creation and Offerman has done quite the wonderful job rendering him. The moment outside the station, when Karl faces down the Bear to calmly explain that what’s best for Charlie is the more civilized route, should have been the moment everyone realized that they underestimated Offerman.

Even though the episode ends without much incident — thanks to Karl’s fortitude — there are still a number of very loose threads by the conclusion. Mike, despite being instructed by Simone to go to Luverne to take out Dodd, ended up gunning for Floyd in Fargo instead. Ed, rather pathetically, is on the lam, looking to continue his struggle. And ever vigilant, Hanzee is on his trail.