Line #13 Series/Lilyhammer


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Lilyhammer_2357.png]]
2	''Lilyhammer'' is a Norwegian-American co-production that describes exactly what happens [[JustForFun/XMeetsY when]] TheMafia meets NorseByNorsewest. After the death of [[TheDon his boss]], [[BigApplesauce New York]] mobster [[AntiHero Frank Tagliano]] is betrayed by his new Capo and nearly killed (unfortunately, [[KickTheDog his dog is not so lucky]]). [[DefectorFromDecadence Tired of the Mafia lifestyle]], Frank turns state's evidence and enters WitnessProtection. Deeming New York to be unsafe, Frank demands that the FBI send him to Lillehammer, whose beautiful surroundings he remembers from watching the [[UsefulNotes/OlympicGames 1994 Winter Olympics]] on TV.
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4	HilarityEnsues as Frank takes the identity of "Giovanni Henriksen" and travels to [[NorseByNorsewest Norway]]. Things quickly turn out differently than poor Frank intended: the system treats him as an immigrant on par with any Middle Easterner or African refugee, he has weeks of courses to pass before he can gain citizenship, and [[FelonyMisdemeanor the Feds "forgot" to set him up with a valid driver's license]]. And on top on that, he ends up [[DramaticIrony living next door to the local chief of police]]. Faced with all this, Frank quickly gets up to his [[TheMafia old tricks]] to bend the sleepy, freezing town to his will...
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6	Broadcast by NRK (the Norwegian equivalent of Creator/TheBBC) in Norway and available on {{Creator/Netflix}} in the United States, notably becoming the first-ever series exclusive to the platform, ''Lilyhammer'' is unabashedly and unashamedly ''Series/TheSopranos'' [[InSPACE in NORWAY!]]. ''Sopranos'' alumn Creator/StevenVanZandt more or less plays an expy of Silvio Dante, and much of the comedy comes from watching him tackle the totally unfamiliar landscape of rural Norway. The series has turned out to be a huge success in Norway, while garnering ... slightly less attention in the US. The second season saw the inclusion of more (famous) American actors, as well as a few British ones. The third season was released in November 2014.
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8	!!This series provides examples of:
9	* AntiHero: Frank. He's a career criminal who's using his talents to up-end a peaceful rural community, and we're cheering him on. Granted, he does toe the line of falling into full-time VillainProtagonist, but he's certainly LighterAndSofter than [[Series/TheSopranos Tony Soprano]].
10	* ApocalypseCult: Torgeir and Roar's mother joined one based in Sweden with her Swedish lover for ten years, and they both when the foretold doomsday doesn't happen. They move in with the two brothers.
11	* ArmoredClosetGay: [[spoiler: Jerry Delucci]] is implied to be one.
12	* ArtisticLicenseGunSafety[=/=]ArtisticLicenseLaw: In real life, toy guns are required by law in most countries to have some obvious way to show that they're a toy, and under [[http://www.udi.no/Norwegian-Directorate-of-Immigration/Central-topics/Protection/New-in-Norway/Knowing-the-law/#weapons Norwegian law]], it's illegal to carry a realistic looking one. That makes the police commissioner's reactions to Geir stopping the marathon due to seeing Frank with a realistic-looking toy gun a rather large example of this trope, particularly considering the then-recent [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks shooting and bombing]].
13	* AxCrazy: Duncan Hammer, an incredibly deranged gangster.
14	* BadBoss: Aldo Delucci, the mafia don rival to Frank.
15	* BestialityIsDepraved: Torgeir and Roar's mother's boyfriend, in a spree of carnal abandonment after years of sexual repression in a cult, eventually ended it by having sex with a farmer's sheep.
16	* BilingualBonus:
17	** In the season 3 opener, the Lithuanian gangster has a tattoo with Asian characters that means "tiger." The episode's title is "Tiger Boy" and tigers are a recurring motif in the episode.
18	* BilingualDialogue: Frank appears to understand Norwegian perfectly, yet cannot speak a word of it himself.
19	** More likely, he can speak it (badly) if he wants too, but seeing as practically every single Norwegian knows English, he chooses not to, as English is much easier to him.
20	* BlackmailBackfire: Frank and Jan collect photographic evidence to blackmail an immigration officer for keeping an undocumented Filipino maid, only for them to find out that she's actually his adopted daughter.
21	* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: Subverted. Frank's original attempt to bribe a government employee is couched in euphemisms to avoid the word "bribe", but the official is outraged by the insult and threatens to call the cops. When Frank later obtains pictures of the official engaging in sex acts with underaged girls, however, he says that the situation is "definitely" blackmail.
22	* BribeBackfire:
23	** Frank attempts to bribe Jan at the NAV office, only for Jan to threaten to phone the authorities. Frank has more success with {{Blackmail}}.
24	* TheBusCameBack: Minor characters who appeared in one or two episodes in the first two seasons return to the third season, like Svein the midwife and Per the repressed house husband. A more notable one is Laila Hovland, the former chief of police, who is now a detective for a private insurance company. Jan also took a very short bus ride to Iraq at the end of Season 2 and returns to Lillehammer in Season 3.
25	* ButtMonkey: Geir, Jan.
26	* BuyThemOff: Frank's modus operandi for dealing with anything.
27	* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Julius is the only main charcter of Season 1 not to return in Season 2.
28	* CityMouse: Frank spent most of his life in New York, so most of of the series is him attempting to adapt to the more rural town of Lillehammer.
29	* CowboyCop: Geir. Bonus points for being an ElvisImpersonator who spatters his speech with American cop lingo. [[spoiler: Also, TheMafia kills him in Episode 5.]]
30	* DaChief: [[SubvertedTrope This isn't exactly]] the way to describe [[BenevolentBoss Laila]], the chief of police. Commissioner Østli, on the other hand...
31	** When he first meets Laila, Frank thinks she's working for the Postal Service.
32	* DeconstructorFleet: To ''the entirety of Norwegian political correctness''. Frank cheerfully punches his way through all manner government bureaucracy and social norms.
33	* DidntThinkThisThrough: Dag's Christmas tree transportation business doesn't take, so he crashes the car into a lake and tries to claim the insurance. The policeman and the insurance company investigate his claim and find evidence of fraud quite quickly.
34	* DisproportionateRetribution: Uncle Sal tries to have a former friend assassinated... [[spoiler:[[SeriousBusiness because that friend had published a cookbook using recipes that were his Nonna's]]!]]
35	* DudeNotFunny: The InUniverse reaction to Jan's lighthearted attempts at jokes ranges from generic apathy to this.
36	* DumbMuscle: Arne, the biker turned bouncer and erstwhile babysitter for Frank.
37	* EpicFail: Anything Geir sets out to do. [[spoiler:Including trying to find the New York mob--it [[KilledOffForReal ends badly]].]]
38	** The three British gangsters' attempt to execute Roar turn out to be this, as the "remote" location they keep picking is full of cross-country skiers.
39	* {{Expy}}: Frank Tagliano is just [[Series/TheSopranos Silvio Dante]] with a different name. He even acts exactly like Silvio.
40	* FaceHeelTurn: [[spoiler:Roar, [[HeelFaceTurn briefly]], defects to Tommy's crew after Frank gets together with his LoveInterest and has been kicked out of the house by Torgeir.]]
41	* FanDisservice: Chris, Sigrid's new boyfriend, is quite handsome and charming... until you find out that he has a penchant fetish for breastfeeding. Exaggerated when he tries to surprise her in the bathtub naked... and the bath's full of milk. Even Sigrid is clearly frightened by this.
42	* GranolaGirl: Some of the more liberal townsfolk and their lifestyle choices qualify.
43	** The Haukenes family from season 1, who had relocated from Oslo to pursue a simpler life on a farm. They son gives Jonas a back scratch "fashioned" from a small branch as a birthday present. Deconstructed, though, as they become quite unhappy and eventually sell their land to Frank after some intimidation.
44	** The Greenpeace protesters in season 3 who urge the government to free a beached whale rather than kill it.
45	* HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday: Torgeir, on occasion. Even [[InvokedTrope invoked]] with his [[IconicItem signature hat]], which says "I ♥ GIRLS."
46	* HeroicBSOD: Geir, after [[spoiler:getting suspended]].
47	* Hypocrite: Despite Frank's disdain for and outright rejection of immigrants who "leach off the national wealth," as indicated by his rewrite of Jonas's speech for National Day, Frank (an immigrant to Norway himself) happily accepts one of Jan's schemes to defraud the Norwegian government out of 500,000 kroner (about $60,000) for Frank's business.
48	* IdiotHoudini: Roar Lien, who in spite of being incredibly thickheaded, survived an attempted execution at the hands of some British gangsters and fights in a Brazilian prison while serving time for cocaine trafficking.
49	* ImportantHaircut: Played for [[spoiler:Drama/Tragedy. Julius shaves off most of his newly converted Muslim son Olav's beard while he's asleep. When Olav wakes up, he runs away from home.]]
50	* ImprovisedWeapon: Torgeir uses a pair of knitting needles to kill Duncan the British ganster.
51	* INeverSaidItWasPoison: [[spoiler: "How did you know he was interested in Elvis?"]]
52	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Frank. Despite being a career criminal, he has his standards and morals.
53	* KillingInSelfDefense: In a reconciliation gone wrong, [[spoiler:Sigrid]] ends up killing [[spoiler:Chris]] in a hilarious/horrifying manner when the latter suddenly turns violent.
54	* MadeOfIron: Roy. It's amazing how much physical abuse he suffers and ultimately overcomes.
55	* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: In season 3, Torgeir has recurring visions of Duncan, the British gangster [[spoiler:whom he killed with knitting needles]], and for the longest time it isn't clear if it's AllJustADream or YourMindMakesItReal. [[spoiler:Turns out Torgeir has had a blood clot in his brain which gets removed just in time before it became serious, although that doesn't explain the appearance of Terrence afterward...]]
56	* MeaningfulName:
57	** In-universe, Julius's son Olav takes the name Olav Abdulkarim to signify his conversion to Islam.
58	** When Jan returns from Iraq in Season 3, he has converted to Islam and has taken up the name Muhammad Ali. Of course, after he gets his old job back at NAV, he reverts to his birth name.
59	* TheNicknamer: Frank. Julius becomes Julie. Utsi [a Sami name] becomes ''Tootsie''.
60	* NorseByNorsewest: Norway's politics and society are explored in all their baffling detail - to be tackled head-on by Frank.
61	* OutOfFocus: Sigrid after her relationship with Frank doesn't work out, although in an interesting case, despite less screen time, there are more scenes where she is the focus rather than her relationship with Frank.
62	* PoliceAreUseless: Everyone except for Laila and her team, and even they're stretching it. So you've got a guy with possible terrorist connections at a marathon where the police commissioner and justice minister are competing, and he's holding a realistic looking toy gun in a country where that would both be illegal and where there had recently been a mass shooting. So what do you do to the officer that tackles him and delays the race? Suspend him, of course! So you've got [[spoiler: two Americans]] in custody wanted for a variety of assaults, not to mention theft of petrol from a gas station where they'd surely have video surveillance footage of both them and the car they drive, so what do you do? Release them!
63	* PrecisionFStrike: Frank does this all the time, but most impressively when it's revealed that [[spoiler:Sigrid is pregnant with twins]].
64	-->'''Frank''': Oh, ''fuck me''.
65	* PutOnABus: Laila quits her job after becoming a author of crime fiction early in Season 2 and is not heard from again until Season 3, where she has taken up detective work for an insurance company.
66	* SadClown: Jan Johansen, full stop.
67	* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Frank in a nutshell.
68	* ShoutOut:
69	** The Season 2 finale has several to Series/TheSopranos:
70	*** The episode opens with Torgeir singing Don't Stop Beliving for an audition.
71	*** When in New York the guys put on the Sopranos theme song on the car stereo.
72	*** Series/TheSopranos actors Tony Sirico and Maureen van Zandt appears.
73	*** Viswanathan uses the words Bada Bing as an expression.
74	** In one season 3 episode, an elderly man with dementia at the hospital calls Frank "Silvio."
75	%%* SilverVixen: Torgeir's reaction to Arne's mother.
76	* TurnInYourBadge: After [[spoiler:inadvertently stopping the Minister of Justice from completing the Birkebeinerrittet ski race, Geir]] is put on a six month probation.
77	* ThemeTwinNaming: Frank and Sigrid's children are christened Bjørg and Bjørn (instead of ''Asbjørg'' and ''Asbjørn'', or what Frank called those names, Ass-bjorg and Ass-bjorn).
78	* VillainWithGoodPublicity: Frank, in the "criminal" sense.
79	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Rosemary, the British gangster moll, disappears after she seduces and then induces an allergic reaction in the police officer who's sniffing too close on their trail.
80	* WrongGenreSavvy: Geir. If he were in a serious cop drama about terrorism, some of his earlier actions would be in the right, such as taking security at the race seriously and [[spoiler:calling a code red when he saw Frank with the (toy) gun to keep the Minister of Justice away from the finish line.]]
81	* YourDaysAreNumbered: [[spoiler:Julius]] gets cancer. [[spoiler:[[AvertedTrope Then it turns out he jumped to conclusions based on some worrying signs - in fact, he's perfectly healthy]].]]

Context Series / Lilyhammer