Tony P vs. TV: Fargo’s Chaos & The Tourist’s Curveballs

Get your coffee machines ready, boil that kettle, get yourself a cup and sit down, because it's Television Times Podcast, but to bonus.

And this time, it's Tony P, back from the Pilar episode to discuss the fifth season of Fargo.

There's also a wee mention of The Tourist Season 2.

We ain't got a big clock, have we?

I don't know, speak for yourself.

Before you keep it in, see if you can get it in.

A new position.

Let's not make everything disgusting.

Right, so Tony P is back here again.

He's from the Pilar episode, for those who were the keen here.

I got him back in because we're both massive fans of Fargo and season five just finished.

Let's be honest about this.

I am free, I do this for coffee and biscuits.

Anyway, I just live over the road from Steve.

This is true.

What the hell?

I have moved significantly closer to Tony's house.

So I know, I didn't know until Tony came over on New Year's Day with his family and we chatted about a little bit about Fargo.

And I was like, all right, okay, he's as keen on this as I am, but I didn't know.

So I just wanted to chat about that and see what you thought now that we've both seen the finale, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Before we get into that though, I just want to ask you.

Go on.

What television program has got so much, so much ensconced into the very fabric of it?

What have you got?

You've got violence, you've got...

Revenge.

You've got assassins.

Supernatural, something going on with older Olai Munch.

And you've got one of my favorite savory snacks.

What's that?

Monster Munch.

Monster Munch.

I love that guy.

So this is the guy who's played by Sam Spraugh.

Yeah, he rocks a wicked Manchester Basin.

But I've seen him in loads of stuff.

I always call him the Bowie guy, because he's sort of got the same sort of teeth and face as David Bowie.

So for me, I'm like, oh, the Bowie guy's on the thing.

And at first, I didn't really recognize him.

He is a phenomenal actor.

And I really, I don't want to go straight to the end, but the thing that got me about the end of Season 5 was the last scene.

Yes, there was the, what's his name?

The husband.

He's great, the guy who plays that character.

Simple.

Yeah, I mean, I really liked him.

I'll have to get his name actually and pop it in.

David Ristal.

But he was a really good character and I liked his voice.

But in the end, there was just this intense scene.

This is massively spoiled by the way, so don't listen to this if you haven't seen Fargo 5, that would be insane.

And but the end is literally like some kind of two British actors pretending they're not going at each other in this insanely intimate, tense scene that has been like a popped balloon, isn't it?

All the anger and all the things that he's feeling that he can't understand with that line.

It says, a man frees a tiger so the tiger can finish her fight or whatever.

And he's doing all that.

I'm like, wow, this is like a Shakespearean thing going on here right now, even though I don't like Shakespeare and Juno Temple's character Dot.

It's just like, I've really warmed her, you know?

Anyone that can do that fucking accent, man, the Minnesota accent, you know?

Oh, I've got my respect, huge respect.

But it was really nice for Fargo to get back to its roots.

Yeah, it was like season one again.

You know, like the-

Without the comedy, without the comedy.

You know, the cold darkness of the whole place.

And of course, it was matched by certain characters' personas, but it was just like this underlying theme of, I got one of desolation because there were so many horrible things about that season five.

Yeah, well, just where she's held up at the end in what looks like a, what is it, like a shed.

She's shackled to a bed in a shed.

Yeah, the domestic violence, but that fuels the kind of, that makes you want revenge against John Hamm's character.

I just wanted to pull these nipple rings out.

Oh, they made me feel so fucking uncomfortable as soon as I saw them.

I couldn't take my eyes off them.

They were horrible.

How was it, the bath though?

It was horrible.

It was just gross.

Was he in the bath or was he in a?

I don't know.

Hot tub, hot tub.

He was in a hot tub with his nipple rings out.

A hot tub smoking a big stoge.

I mean, John Hamm, fucking hell.

I mean, he really pulled, I mean, that's incredible.

And that absolutely incredible.

And you really hate him.

And it's hard to see a famous person's face like someone so well known and believe they're that character.

But I did quite quickly actually.

Yeah, I switched it all off.

And it is a Western, obviously it's a Western as well, as Western themes.

But that dynamic as well between the son, Gator, and like after, I mean, what a horrible parent he was.

You know, and he did, his son was doing all that for his father's love or whatever.

And in the end, he needs a cuddle from the one he was literally victimized.

I mean, he had that moment in that shed where Gator had a chance, didn't he, to let her go.

But he chose not to and he said, I hope you fucking die or whatever, and left.

And he ends up in her arms at the end needing a cuddle because his big spoiler has no eyes.

One of the things I found to be really sad was that Dot lied to Gator right at the end.

Oh, right, yeah.

You know, he says, did you really see my mom?

And she thought about it.

And she said, no.

Yeah, she didn't give him that.

She was just a, was it an angelic vision?

It was quite sad because would that have given him any solace at all?

Would it have given him any closure?

Because obviously he was planning after a mother figure.

There wasn't a mother figure.

Yeah, that's who she was, right?

Even though she was 15 apparently at the time.

At the time she was very young.

And then you've got being thrown into the mix is this cult came out of nowhere.

I mean, the cult of Linda's.

I know that this might sound strange, but I heard a woman the other day at work and she said, oh yes, I'll talk to Linda.

And of course Linda, that brought me right back to Fargo and it brought me back to Dot's visualization, you know, where she was play acting her story and why she should be allowed to take the original Linda away to help her fight, of course, John Hamm's character.

Yeah.

And I think now, every time I hear the word Linda, I think of Punch and Judy.

Oh really?

Yeah, because you know, the puppets that she was using and they were encouraged to build and you know, invest all of their emotions into these puppets, into these...

Carve them for a day or more than a day.

Yeah.

That was hard to watch, man.

That was, you know, I mean, to go on a serious note, I really do struggle with the wife beaters of the world and I immediately want to, I think I said to my wife after the end, I said a really weird line.

I said, oh man, if I could come back as another person, maybe I'd like to come back as a woman who has been beaten by their husband so I could fucking kill him, do you know what I mean?

Because it was like, I really, really want to call to harm to those people.

I really do, I really, really do.

It's hard to watch, obviously, but it's just, yeah.

I don't like that and it's in a lot of things and a lot of shows at the moment, a lot of tropes.

We just watched The Tourist, it's in that too, you know?

So I don't enjoy that, if I'm honest, then who does?

But it was a revenge.

I would say Fargo Series 5, there was that movie, what was the whole, what was that movie with Jodie Foster, where she got attacked in Central Parliament.

The film's all about her getting revenge on her attackers and it's great and you're with her and you're like, yeah, fucking do that, you know?

Proper like, get her own back.

And I felt like that watching Fargo, the same thing.

I remember at first date, I think it wasn't the first date, it was the second date, we were babysitting for this girl's sister and I decided to pick up a VHS cassette.

And I mistakenly chose, I spit on your grave.

Jesus Christ, I spit on your grave is a video, Marcy, from the 1980s that was banned on the Thatcherite government at the time because it was deemed too dangerous for young people to watch.

And I think it wasn't even allowed to be sold or distributed by anyone, right?

It was an undergammer.

I might as well get my hands on a copy.

Is that what you went in for?

I don't think you got that wrong.

I spit on my dead and I spit on your grave.

Maybe it was the first one.

That was an interesting movie since, actually.

Yeah, I don't remember that.

I remember there was a period of time where I worked, we're getting off of peace, a period of time where I worked in a tool shop in London and one of the guys there was really into that kind of movie and V for Vendetta comics and stuff like that.

He tried to sort of get me into some of that and it never really took.

I remember him lending me Driller Killer, that's all I remember seeing.

And that was about a guy that literally went around and just drilled holes in people's heads and killed them with a paquita or something.

And it was like, what the fuck is that?

I don't like gore and I don't like people dying.

See, the text is right about Fargo.

So Lamorne Morris, his character, Deputy Whit, him getting killed at the end, I hated that.

It was like, don't kill him.

Nobody wants him to die.

Everything he did was good.

Yeah, it was for other people, not for himself.

When he went into the tunnel, I was like, don't go in there, you know there's a monster under the bed.

Yeah, he's a monster.

And also, you know, I mean, we're jumping towards the end, but I mean, there was massive, I don't know what you think about this, because we have slightly different political views, I think, but when that siege was going on or about to go on, I thought, oh, this is like, this is what's coming.

This is what?

This is like November 2024, mate.

This is what we're looking at.

Fucking militias and sheriffs who believe they're, you know, well, see, he believes he was handed the rule of law from God.

That was his whole thing, right?

So he didn't rec, he said he didn't recognize FBI law enforcement when they're at the beginning, at the gates of his ranch and things like that.

I can see stuff like that coming.

Let's get back to the thing about Tally.

Yeah, I did, I loved his character so much.

I didn't like, he was Welsh apparently, right?

That was the whole thing in the beginning.

He was in the Middle Ages.

He was in Wales anyway.

He was in Wales because he came originally from what I understood to be Northern Europe, like Scandinavian.

So what was he in your opinion?

What was he?

He was a Viking demigod.

Right.

And he was, I don't know, maybe like American gods, you know, where you had all of these, you had the old gods fighting the new gods.

I gave up on that show quite early, but yeah, I know.

I thoroughly enjoyed it because it was mindless watch.

You could put it on when you are pissed.

If you forgot everything about it, it didn't really matter.

I think he's like a Iskander hooligan god or demigod or vested with some kind of, of course, this is all bullshit.

It's open to everyone's own interpretation.

But that's soliloquy at the end.

When Munch was expressing 500 years of history, is it his history?

Is it his lineage?

Is it magic?

Is it mythology?

Is it...

Is it generational or whatever?

Is it he's like the last in the line of the Munches?

I mean, the scream Munch.

And that's the great thing about watching a program like Fargo.

I've said it before, if you ask me specific details of movies and series, television series that I've watched before, I say, well, as soon as I finish watching them...

Yeah, me too.

I forget about it.

It's gone.

It's gone.

Not this one, then.

Not that my missus can remember every last fucking minuscule detail of every movie she's watched, and I've lost quite a few bets about that over the years.

I mean, I recently become smart.

I just didn't know when she started going...

It's more catalyst because that's going to get you in trouble.

She's not going to listen to this shit.

So anyway, where was I?

Oh, yeah, so going back to a series and watching it over again, like a person with some kind of, can I say, a mental dysphoria?

Not like the Alzheimer's approach, but I forget about everything.

I watch it again and I think, oh, this is really good.

Yeah, you can watch stuff that's light new, isn't it?

That's the reason why I've watched Breaking Bad three times.

My second rewatch of The Succession was only two years later and I didn't remember any of it.

But that's great because it means that you've never, you're never short of something to watch.

You know, there's shows I've watched, even shows I've loved last year like Beef, but I can't remember any of it now.

And like, you know, it all sort of just merges together in some kind of Netflix glue.

And I can't really distinguish, like we watched a movie last night called The Kitchen.

And it's like a dystopian London set in 2044.

And there's a housing estate, the police are trying.

It was just like, and they had the same guy in it that was in Top Boy, which I love Top Boy.

But like, this was like Top Boy 2044.

It's like, why have they done this?

Almost the same fucking storyline.

It was like, why am I watching this?

And an hour in, I said to my wife, you know, should we stop watching this?

Because this has no story.

You know, nothing is happening really, you know?

And then after that, we watched The Tourist.

So actually, let's swerve into The Tourist because you've got views on this, right?

So we can make it Fargo and The Tourist.

Do you have views on The Tourist Season 2?

Do I have views?

Well, did you like The Tourist Season 2?

Or did you feel that after seeing him on Graham Norton saying he only did Season 2 because it located to Ireland for Season 2, that he actually agreed to do it?

Was it written for written sake?

Or was it, do you know what I mean?

Have you seen it all?

I have seen it all.

And I finished watching it about two weeks ago.

So it's bordering on its place.

It's already on its way over the edge of the waterfall.

Well, talking things going over the edge.

It didn't piss me off.

Yeah, that's the thing I'm talking about.

Is that his girlfriend and talking about a boyfriend who lost his memory and I, she was getting on my nerves.

Oh really?

You know who got on my nerves was the ex-boyfriend who actually ended up being quite funny.

Yeah mate, I've come over all the way from Australia and I've just got to...

He was so annoying and there were certain points where he was actually very funny in the end and my wife had to remind me that he's supposed to be that annoying.

Like even his beard annoyed me.

That fucking stuck on brillo pad of a beard.

I want to slap it off his face.

He was just inviting a good slap across the face.

I think that's just the whole point, right?

But there's a bit, so massive spoilers for Tourist Season 2.

I think it is the last season.

They won't do another one of them.

Jamie Dornan finds out that one of the...

Basically Capulets and Montague's story, right?

Two families and then...

And he finds out that he can't remember his life, but he finds out that one of the younger members of the opposite family that hates his, is his son.

And at one point his son, it wasn't very clear how he gets a bag full of syntax in a fucking hold all, gets in a car with him and then...

But the old flat nose fucking want to slap him too.

He's a lovely guy, I've met him once.

But the point that really annoyed me was where the car went over.

They were being chased and apparently they just jumped out and the car goes on flips and there's no bodies in it obviously.

It doesn't blow up, it's not American.

But then the son still got the fucking bag.

It's like he's jumped out of a car at high speed, right?

And he's still got it.

Oh no, he didn't have it.

Did he not have the bomb in there?

He changed it.

I'm talking bollocks.

Anyway, the fact that he grabbed the bag anyway seems insane to me because he would have grabbed the bag to get out and jump out.

It just seems stupid to me.

How did he get that bag?

I have problems with people jumping out of cars and surviving.

I don't mean jumping out of cars.

Like American films where they just walk out.

Right in the beginning, Dornan's jumping out of a fucking van and rolls.

He's fine, gets up, runs off.

That doesn't happen.

He's the hero.

He's the man.

Yes, I know, but it's ridiculous.

The whole thing was ridiculous.

You can't remember how he can do that, how he acquired that skill.

Because right at the end, right at the end, it turns out that in the file that he doesn't read, he's some kind of hyper suba tuba international.

Ballerina.

And not only is he a ballerina, but he's a secret agent.

But also, if he's a ballerina, yeah, but like if he's a ballerina, then at least, like that wasn't Jamie Dornan doing the ballet.

It wasn't, because I'm telling you what, there was an episode, a really beautiful episode finale of One of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where Rob McElhaney does this dancing.

It's incredible.

It would move you to tears.

And it wasn't that.

I felt that they were trying to lift from that slightly.

I don't know.

Anyway, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but it was an enormous waste of my time.

The first season, Fargo.

I love the first season.

Absolutely my favorite until recently.

Billy Bobbio.

Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman.

Fuck me, fuck me.

And the comedy of season one, like the first death, the comedy of it.

I mean, I can't wait to re-watch it.

Do you know what I mean?

What's his name?

Adam Goldberg?

Crazy Eddie from France?

He's in it.

He's fucking brilliant.

I love that guy.

He's a lunatic.

Then the second one was...

Jesse...

Jesse, yes.

Jesse Plemons, isn't it?

Jesse Plemons and...

Kirsten Dunst.

I thought they were fantastic as Bonnie & Clyde characters.

I mean, brilliant.

Brilliant.

I enjoyed it.

And they got a higher rating overall than the first season.

More viewers, that's all.

The third one was Orby 1 Kenobi.

The third one is so forgettable.

So forgettable.

Great cast.

Orby 1 Kenobi was in that.

Yeah, yeah.

Here in his brother.

You and me, Gregor.

Orby 2 Kenobi.

The guy that I really like who's in a lot of other things as well.

He was in it.

Michael Staubach.

I forget season 3 even happened because I go straight to season 4, which I hated.

Absolutely fucking hated.

When season 5 began, it was like a roller coaster from like...

It was just a ride, wasn't it?

From like minute one, it was like, Oh my God, this is the best it's ever been.

And I was like, I'd be honest with you, I avoided it for the first few weeks, which is great because it meant I had a lot to watch at once.

But I avoided it because I was just like...

Because they weren't going to make anymore, right?

And then suddenly, I don't remember even reading about it.

And then suddenly it's here.

It kind of like pops up, you know, like you get the notifications.

All I can say is thank God for that algorithm that Amazon has.

Very pro Amazon episode this one.

Amazon, you can sponsor me.

We'll get them as a sponsor.

I mean, you're a fourth emergency service.

Is there a fourth one?

Maybe there's already a fourth one.

Oh, I don't know.

I'll get them on my right, thank you.

Hello.

One, four, one.

Hi, is that Jeff Bezos?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got three of your drones has arrived at my house.

Not drones.

What are they called?

Alexa's.

Echo Dot.

That's it.

Yes.

Refurbished.

Much cheaper.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, you're very kind.

Should I sponsor the podcast?

No?

Okay, go fuck yourself.

I'm all matters of music, you bastard.

He says no.

Try later.

And on that note, we will finish.

Have you got any other recommended, quick recommendation?

Just let you say one last thing on Season 5.

Oh, yes.

It was the first time in a long time that I have held my breath for seven days, waiting for the next episode.

They would have been ruined by just doing the Netflix drop.

If they had done a drop where you could binge watch.

I would have binged it in a day and I wouldn't remember it.

Yeah.

But the way that it's been played out over ten weeks of our lives.

Peacemill works on really good, well written, gripping drama like that.

It really does.

If it reels you in.

I mean, I knew what day it was on.

I don't know what day other things were on.

I was like, it's Wednesday, it's Fargo today.

It was like that.

Yeah.

And I really liked Traitors.

And when Traitors was on, when I turned it off, Traitors was on, I went, oh, Traitors is on.

How weird?

I forgot about that.

Didn't forget about Fargo though, did I?

You know what I mean?

I'd call it event TV almost for those who like it.

It was all in all a very satisfying watch.

And I'm going to go back and watch Billy Bob Thorne again.

I do want to watch season one again just for Martin Freeman's accent.

Hey, right.

What we're going to do is we are going to sit down and we're going to watch season one together and we'll do a Gogglebox episode.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Well, you watch it in your house and I watch it in mine.

Or we'll actually sit down and physically watch it.

I've never watched Gogglebox, by the way.

We can have a watch party on Amazon.

When you sign up to a watch party, it's like a little...

Whoops, I just hit the mic.

You just hit the mic with a science pirate.

It's better than dropping it on my ankle bone.

I've never done that.

You can do a watch party where you both click the button and you get into the room at the same time.

Really?

Yes.

Oh, Jeff, you're doing good work.

Let me ring him up again.

It's like a mutual remote masturbation.

Is that Jeff Bezos?

I've heard about this thing called a watch party.

Yeah, I'm warming to you.

Just lose the penis rockets and I think we'll be good.

Maybe pay people back.

Yeah, you have let me return things.

It's very kind of you.

Because all of them have been faulty.

Anyway, thank you very much.

Eight o'clock delivery is not for me, though.

Thanks for coming around.

Excellent.