Good grief, I did not recognise Ben at all, I thought he'd be more like his S1 self. Who knows what made him turn out that way? Maybe we'll find out in an episode or two.

I miss John Teti already. He at least researched a little into the show before he wrote his reviews…

So, yes, with that lingering shot of the lamp just above Betsy's head just a scene or two after someone talks about oval lights in the sky and the visitations always coming in threes…I'm pegging Mrs. Solverson as this season's Character Most Likely To Get Suddenly Abducted And Never Be Heard From Again.

I'm pretty sure I've seen him referred to as such in promotional materials. Maybe when he first got added to the cast. I mean, he can't just sit around in bingo halls all day.

Maybe they just had some bizarre legal hiccup that means they can't use that song in NZ.

Also, I think Peggy really *might* be latently gay, given the lengths she goes to avoid Ed's touch in Ep. 1. So we'll see how that plays into things.

'Course, I could be wrong - he could end up marrying the girl from the butchers shop and becoming the new owner and praying one more time before he goes to bed every night,

It feels like Ed the Butcher - like Ed the Barber - will be the one sponging up the sadness. Probably he'll be arrested not for offing Rye but for an entirely different crime he never committed.

That would explain why he looks and sounds the same as Ed Crane the Barber - the aliens are going around dropping Billy-Bobs here and there to experiment, observe and report.

Also THIS: what if Betsy or Hank is the one that gets abducted?! I believe there's small evidence for it being Betsy - partly in that the story about the oyster foreshadows it and partly that the strategic placing of the balloon seems to be a way of toying with her re: her cancer to see how she'd react.

Food is very much a symbol of power in crime dramas. Look at "The Godfather" - starts off with a man asking for a favour and accepting a cup of wine, and Don Corleone immediately asks why he's never been invited over for a cup of coffee - i.e., why should he do something for nothing?

I think the reviewer above is kinda right in that Peggy seems to be going to extremes to relieve the tedium of her small-town life.

Ultimately what Malvo represented was the opportunistic predator - i.e., the one who improvises with the tools he's given, be they the buried maniac in a humble insurance salesman, the jealousy and aggression in two poorly-raised brothers, or a shotgun someone carelessly left lying around.

I got the 'abusive household' thing as well, in pieces. There's the speech he has ready for the Supermarket King about the boy who lives in the woods, and the tidbits he gives to Lou about how no-one hangs photos of a kid with a black eye…plus the initial fascination in the opening episodes with disrupting…

It might just be the similarity in that they both intimidate using neckties. Malvo wouldn't need two other hombres backing him up, though.

And there was that overbearing arsehole sergeant in command of Gus who seemed to be all ego, and he's turning up in this season as well, younger and (if I recall Old Lou correctly) just as much of an arse then as now.

It's a kind of societal persecution complex - if everything everywhere is going crazy, then by pointing this out you imply that you're the one person above it all. "In the land of the blind the one-eye man is king".

Probably. I think she's a more decent person than Peggy (being a lech isn't a crime, and if it were it would probably be trumped by manipulating one's husband into murder and cannibalism). Not that such a scale would make her a shining saint.

Ah. My positronic brain had not conceived of that notion.

Wellll sorta - but that did impact on the plot in that she bonded over the recollection of it with Gus later, and had some symbolism in that the spiders in that guy's neck reflected on the icky pus-filled wound on Lester's hand.