#oceanic mob boss extraordinaire

[honourablejester]

D&D Deity Spotlight: Umberlee

No community that lives by the sea can ignore the influence of Umberlee, the furious goddess whose tempestuous nature reflects and is reflected by the waters of the deep. Any such community makes sure to host festivals to propitiate the Wavemother and seek her favor. Although mercurial in temperament, she can be generous to those who do her honor, as is any great queen.

The Bitch Queen is worshiped out of fear instead of adoration, and ship crews offer her gems, tossed over the side, to calm storm-tossed waters. As her most common moniker suggests, she is viewed as capricious and cruel with no firm ethical outlook; the sea is a savage place, and those who travel it had best be willing to pay the price of challenging her domain.

There is little in the way of an organized clergy of Umberlee. Her priests roam coastal cities, warning of doom and demanding free passage on ships in return for ensuring the goddess's pleasure. Often they wear the colors of waves and storms, and they decorate themselves with items that remind others of the sea's dangerous nature - a necklace of shark teeth, seaweed wrapped about a human bone, and so on. The preserved hand of a drowned person is thought to be a particularly holy object, and some of her few clerics use such severed hands as holy symbols. Umberlee does have a large number of shrines in the coastal cities, and sailors often leave flowers or small candies at them in hopes that she will spare them on their next voyage. Both Waterdeep and Baldur's Gate have true temples dedicated to Umberlee, staffed largely by the widows of sailors lost at sea.

--- Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide (2015)

You’ve got to love a deity who’s earned the epithet of ‘the Bitch Queen’, huh? But I actually quite like Umberlee in and of herself, even if I chafe at her being one of the only options for a tempest cleric, because it’s hard to be a cleric of Umberlee and not be an asshole.

Umberlee is very much the goddess of the sea at its most capricious and destructive. She is vicious, she is cruel, she is greedy, she is petty. Like Talona, she’s a goddess that people pray to for survival’s sake, bribing her so that she doesn’t kill them, and in Umberlee’s case, the bribery is extremely literal too. Prayers alone will not suffice, she wants gems, offerings, a nice good shiny reason why she shouldn’t drown you where you stand. And I have to admit that I kind of love that her priesthood are essentially there to run a protection racket on her behalf? They are there to go around and remind people that the sea is fucking deadly, and have you kept your payments up to date, and wouldn’t it be a real shame if this nice shiny new ship of yours was smashed to flinders on some rocks on its next voyage? That’d be a real shame. You know what would make the sea really happy? A nice shiny fistful of sapphires thrown overboard on leaving port. And, incidentally, if you grant me free passage, I’ll make sure to put in a good word for you upon delivering payment.

She’s so blunt. She’s so straightforward. She is essentially a divine oceanic mob boss running a vast protection racket and holding trade routes hostage. And honestly I kind of love that for her? And she has a killer aesthetic about it too. She has a priesthood that goes around carrying the severed hands of drowning victims as a pointed reminded of the consequences of not making her happy. If you’re playing a cleric of Umberlee, right, forget about priests, the mindset you need to get into is the dockside enforcer of a lovecraftian mob boss. Boost charisma. Put some swagger in. Your goddess holds whole kingdoms in her stranglehold, trade and naval power in the palm of her hand. Dress yourself like a fucking beachside tramp, have a necklace of drowning pearls and the severed hand of a drowned admiral on your belt, and walk into the highest-powered rooms in the city like you have every goddamn right to be there. You are the spectre at the ball, the prophet of destruction, the drowned and ragged harbinger of the storm. You’re there to tell them to pay up or else.

Knowing all the while, of course, that one wrong whim and she’ll smash you just as easily. You mouth off wrong to the boss, well, you’re sleeping with the fishes, ain’t ya. You’ll be rotting in the deep and it’ll be your hand on one of your colleague’s belts.

I also kinda like the little detail that her few official temples, in the big coastal cities, are staffed by widows of her victims. Hey sweetie. Your husband pissed me off, and that’s unfortunate, but you’re gonna make me happy, right? I swear she’s just a mob boss in my head. Lovecraftian aesthetic, full Innsmouth, and then the demeanour and the behaviour of your stereotypical mob boss. Give her a Jersey accent. She’s running a racket, but she’s got the power to back it up, and she’s raking it in. There’s even the detail that she’s generous if she’s happy with you. She’s all glitz and glamour and charm, if she likes you, but just underneath that paper-thin veneer, there’s a truth that’s vicious and petty and blunt as the face of a hammer, and everybody knows it.

I love her. If you want dockside spooks and mobsters, Umberlee’s great. Excellent goddess. She’s petty, vicious, whimsical, but she’s got excellent business sense, and enough of a strong arm that yeah. If you want your ship to survive the voyage, if you want your nation to have functional trade routes, if you want to be able to safely live within ten miles of the coast, then you’d better damn pay up. She’s a mob boss. She’s a lot of fun if you want to play on the darker side of the moral line, and have some cool drowned aesthetics while you’re at it. Heh.

[geekade]

Welcome to the F.C.U. (The Fargo Cinematic Universe)

In 1996, Joel & Ethan Coen created what many feel is their masterwork film, the murder mystery, crime drama, sociological regional study we lovingly know as Fargo. Near the end of the film, the only remaining living suspect, Gaear Grimsrud, is found stuffing the foot of his former partner in crime into a wood chipper near a cabin on a pristine frozen lake in the dead of winter. When the true hero of the film, pregnant law enforcement officer Marge Gunderson, stumbles across the crime scene, she shoots the eerily vacant-eyed psychopath in the leg as he tries to escape across the lake. As she transports him back across that frozen white tundra, she tries to make sense of the inconceivable tragedy which has unfolded.

“So, that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there,” says Gunderson. “And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper.  And those three people in Brainerd.  And for what? For a little bit of money? There's more to life than a little money, you know.  Don'tcha know that?  And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day.  Well.  I just don't understand it.”

It was an amazingly well-crafted moment and perfectly captured our feeling of revulsion and bewilderment.  Why would anyone commit those horrific acts on another human being?  What could happen in anyone’s life that would allow him or her to think that this was any way to behave?  Fargo would go on to win two Academy Awards – one for Frances McDormand for Best Actress and one for the Coen brothers for Best Screenplay.  

I’ll be the first to admit that when FX announced it was doing a television version of Fargo, I was very skeptical.  I mean, how could FX top the movie?  Without the Coen brothers? 

Well, the third season of showrunner-extraordinaire Noah Hawley’s expansion of that world is now underway on the FX network.  What began as a sparse, tightly written 98 minute film has now spawned two (going on three) seasons of gripping crime drama with a healthy dose of absurdist humor and a sprinkle of supernatural goings-on.   So what’s the secret?  How was Hawley and his team of writers able to so brilliantly capture the magic?  Not since M*A*S*H has there been such a critically renowned film that’s been turned into an unforgettable television program. 

So here, then, are the ingredients for what I think you need to create what I think is the most imaginative program on television.

Strong female lead characters

It is a tired old trope, but with very few exceptions, crime dramas generally tend to have far more testosterone.  Fargo, I can happily report, is the exception to the rule.  Following in the film’s footsteps, the lead female characters are strong-willed, capable women who can take care of themselves, thank you very much.  Molly Solverson (played by Allison Tolman) in season one and Carrie Coon’s character Gloria Burgle in season three are both dedicated, heroic police officers who innately can sense when something is amiss.  And Cristin Miliotti’s portrayal of Molly Solverson’s cancer inflicted mother Betsy in the time jump in season two is a testament to her acting ability and the level of writing on the show.

Even better, the women on the other side of the law are all well-drawn, motivated characters.  Jean Smart’s portrayal of the Gerhardt family matriarch was Emmy-worthy in season 2, as was Kirsten Dunst’s performance as hairdresser turned criminal Peggy Blumquist.  And my favorite femme fatale so far is season three’s stupendously-named Nikki Swango, wonderfully played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.  Every time Nikki Swango is on screen you can almost hear Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” playing in your mind.  You know she’s in charge, and her manipulation of Ray Stussy so far has been wondrous to behold.  The women in Fargo are every bit as heroic, villainous, dedicated and savage as the men, if not more so.

Quirky Secondary Characters

Maybe it’s the accents.  Maybe it’s the names.  Whatever it is, the secondary characters in Fargo are so cleverly created.  Every character has a significant purpose in the plot and every character seems to have personality quirks which draw us in.   Bokeem Woodbine’s Mike Milligan, the philosophizing hit man.  Brad Garrett’s Joe Bulo, an almost bureaucratic mob boss.  Nick Offerman’s hilarious portrayal of Karl Weathers, an alcoholic libertarian lawyer.  Ted Danson’s gentle Sheriff Hank Larsson who is trying to create a new language to foster greater understanding between people.  And my favorite, the always reliable Oliver Platt and his portrayal of supermarket king Stavros Milos, whose discovery of a certain briefcase full of cash on a lone, desolate highway connects the television Fargo with the movie.     

Star Power

The ever expanding list of top flight actors who appear in Fargo is truly mindboggling.  The shorter shooting seasons which have now become the norm in television dramas has allowed an influx of a-team talent to lend the very capable writers a never ending parade of remarkable performances.  When your program can list the names above as well as Billy Bob Thornton, Bob Odenkirk, Keith Carradine, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Stephen Root, Adam Goldberg, Patrick Wilson, Jesse Plemons, Adam Arkin and David Thewlis, you’re doing something right.

Family Rivalries

Each season seems to focus, at least partially, on a rivalry between family members.  Whether it’s desperate bad guy wannabe Lester Nygaard (played by Martin Freeman ditching his British accent) sneaking out of the hospital in the middle of the night to plant evidence to frame his brother Chazz for murder, or the season long war between the crime family Gerhardt brothers in season two, Fargo excels at capturing the out and out animosity that can (and frequently does) exist between siblings.  Season three’s stunt casting of Ewan MacGregor playing both Ray and Emmit Stussy, brothers in conflict over a rare stamp and a decrepit Corvette Stingray, continues the almost biblical family battles we have seen to date.

Unfathomable Pinhead-ery and the Inevitability of Fate

When Nikki describes the official cause of death of drug addict Maurice LeFay, a parolee who was crushed by a two-hundred pound air conditioner pushed out of a window by Swango and her lover Ray Stussy after accidentally killing the wrong victim at the wrong address, as “unfathomable pinhead-ery,” you know you’ve struck gold.  Many of the plot complications on Fargo are not the result of a master criminal carrying out a complicated, Ocean’s Eleven-type scheme.  Inevitably, the crimes committed in Fargo are of the purely accidental variety and are the worst possible idea anyone could ever have in their short, strange lives.  The ideas never work, but the randomness of the crimes lead to a far greater ripple effect of violence and bloodshed.  Those ripples always begin as diminutive pebbles thrown into the frozen waters in this series.  But those ripples always grow exponentially into destructive waves. 

The fact that we know almost certainly that certain characters will meet their end is something we always see coming from the beginning.  But what is remarkable is how the characters meet their ends.  After Lester spends the better part of ten episodes wiggling out of one jam after another following the mutually agreed upon murder of his wife by supernova of evil Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), Lester finally dies by falling into a hole in the ice trying to evade the police, echoing the previous accidental death of a man mistaken for Lorne Malvo.  Whether the death is by a plummeting air conditioner, the sudden random savagery of murdering twenty-two people in an office building, being hit by a car after murdering everyone in a diner or a car accident caused by a mysterious rainstorm of fish, the inevitable fate met by Fargo’s characters is probably one of the most satisfying and inventive aspects of Fargo.

Beautiful and Inventive Cinematography

I could spend pages just writing about the camera work done on this series.  So many moments of stark beauty, creative storytelling and flat out kick ass cinematography.  Case in point.  The P.O.V. camera on the air conditioner falling in free flight.  Or how about the final shot of the season opening pre-title sequence in East Berlin that slow zooms into a picture on the wall of what will become the Stussy backyard looking at rows of frosted trees in what is now the traditional Fargo title sequence.  Gorgeous and forlorn horizontal lines of tundra and snow.  The camera work on Fargo challenges the standard bearer Breaking Bad on creative placement and use of cameras.

Unspeakably evil characters with little to no compunction of any sense of morality

And…

Morally ambivalent characters who find themselves tempted to commit crimes either by accident or the temptation of a better life

In Fargo, these two categories go hand in hand.  The absolute evil of Lorne Malvo and his ingenious yet devious means of eliminating his targets is an example of the first category from season one.  As is the hilarious savagery of David Thewlis as the mobster/money launderer V. M. Varga in season three.  The truly evil characters in Fargo don’t care a whit about life or the morality of protecting it.   Inevitably, there is a huge chemical reaction when the truly evil meet the morally ambivalent.  (spoiler alert – evil always wins due to a failure to recognize that evil doesn’t care about a “no rough stuff type of deal.”)  The moments where the morally ambivalent see the true depths of depravity that humans are capable of recalls what Marge Gunderson was commenting on in that police cruiser.

What’s most remarkable about both the film and the television show is that writing never stoops to condescension; the plots and characters in Fargo are not being written in a fashion seeking to humiliate the people who live in the northern Midwest “flyover states.”  Instead, the world Fargo inhabits is simply the setting of a grand drama, like Elsinore, Verona or Athens.  The characters may have funny accents we’re not used to hearing, but they are fully developed three dimensional characters who only enliven and enrich what is arguably the best program on television.