Palindrome
- Episode aired Dec 14, 2015
- TV-MA
- 54m
In the events following the motel massacre, Hanzee goes after Ed and Peggy.In the events following the motel massacre, Hanzee goes after Ed and Peggy.In the events following the motel massacre, Hanzee goes after Ed and Peggy.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe story Lou Patrick Wilson tells about the helicopter pilot in Vietnam actually happened and is depicted in the documentary Last Days in Vietnam (2014). The pilot was Ba Van Nguyen.
- GoofsWhen Peggy and Ed are in the meat locker, in the market, the inside latch has Canadian Robertson screws holding it in place. These screws would not be used in the US.
- Quotes
Noreen Vanderslice: Do you feel it?
Betsy Solverson: Feel what?
Noreen Vanderslice: My aunt lost her bosom to cancer. Said it felt like somebody took a hot poker and put it through her heart.
Betsy Solverson: No. Not like that. Not yet. You know how sometimes you get a peach from the bowl and one side is ripe and yellow and the other is black and moldy? That - that's the only way I can think to describe it.
Noreen Vanderslice: Camus says knowin' we're gonna die makes life absurd.
Betsy Solverson: Well, I don't know who that is. But I'm guessing he doesn't have a 6-year-old girl.
Noreen Vanderslice: He's French.
Betsy Solverson: Ugh, I don't care if he's from Mars. Nobody with any sense would say something that foolish. We're put on this earth to do a job. And each of us gets the time we get to do it. And when this life is over and you stand in front of the Lord... Well, you try tellin' him it was all some Frenchman's joke.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The 68th Primetime Emmy Awards (2016)
- SoundtracksWar Pigs
(uncredited)
Written by Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward
Performed by Black Sabbath
In a way, season 2 of this show, which takes place in 1979 and only in the smallest of tangential ways (actually through a dream that Betsy Solverson has, Lou's wife who has been suffering through cancer throughout these episode), is like to the Coen brothers what The Force Awakens is to Star Wars: it develops some new material and then happens to be so gigantically in love with the mythology and scenes and moments and character designs that one can't help but see how there's not only resemblances to scenes, sometimes there will be direction that straight-out copies it. In this episode in particular, as the aftermath of the climactic gun battle at the Sioux Falls motel unfolds, we get to see at least two or three direct references to No Country for Old Men; already the character Hanzee (Zahn McClarnon is terrific in the role, one should note), is an analog of Anton Chigurh - even the previous episode (or it may have been two before) where it's a lift from the gas station scene in 'No Country'.
I think that these references - and there's more, down to many soundtrack cues (and these may be the more clever references to the Coens oeuvre, as one can hear renditions of songs from O'Brother and Big Lebowski that are either from the 70's or redone to sound like they are) and even smaller things like, say, the UFO's as being a connection to uh, The Man Who Wasn't There I suppose (?) - wouldn't bother me so much if they were done without it being shoved in my face. Some may not care or even notice, especially if one hasn't seen their movies multiple times. But it's impossible to mistake a going-to-the-woods moment out of Miller's Crossing, or even the aforementioned dream being a lift out of Raising Arizona. More crucially it's because too what Hawley and his writers have crafted along with the director and team that *is* of its own world and of its original characters that it clashes with the references more-so.
It's worth watching season 2 - which you can do, pretty much, even if you haven't seen season 1 let alone the original movie, though it helps certainly - because everyone is cast in such a way that either lets us see sides we haven't before (Jesse Plemmons, in what I'd say is his first truly leading role, is a wonder because of what he *doesn't* do, how he just plays this average guy who works as a butcher and wants to maybe run the shop one day, and he simply IS that guy, is one, and Bokeem Woodbine, getting to be the kind of hit-man that should potentially be a writing nightmare, quoting this way and that like out of a bad Tarantino knock-off more than Coens, is another as he creates a wholly original killer), or are simply right for the roles they're in (Dunst, Wilson, Danson, Milioti, Jean Smart, the list goes on). And often the writing and how the story turns and some of the stylistic choices distinguish it that it is trying to be its own thing. Oh, sure, and there are some tics as well with that (Hawley *loves* his split-screen, to the point where De Palma might go, "Easy, fellas!")
But, again, those references, which sometimes are funny enough and other times seem like they're there for that dreaded (but true) term, going back to Star Wars, "Fan Service", kill what could have been as great a season as the first, or even one of the better crime sagas of this century. That scene in the cop car in this episode is an example of that, and there are many scenes that stick out as showing Hawley's genius as a writer and storyteller - and I do think he's a genius when he's on (see the first season of Legion for more on that) - but when he's trying too hard... it really shows.
- Quinoa1984
- Apr 18, 2017
Details
- Runtime54 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1