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Jan

Jan Johansen, portrayed by Fridtjov Såheim, was initially a government employee at NAV, responsible for receiving and preparing immigrants for the job market in the city of Lilyhammer. He is manipulative and abuses his power frequently throughout the show while seldomly taking personal responsibility for it until he ends up losing his power. After losing his job, he usually opts for making the other person feel sorry for him. Jan worked for Frank for the majority of the show. Jan has a very distinctive high-pitched laughter and likes to play down certain situations with it.

Personality[]

Jan is a very realistic character but also a relatively simple character. He is neither a protagonist nor antagonist but comes across as unlikable in almost every way possible. Whether you're a Norwegian or an American (or from another country), you will most likely love to hate Jan, especially if you're a woman. Everything he says and does are comedically selfish and immoral, to the point where he becomes very predictable (in a good way). Jan is very fake, depicted by his constant and obviously fake laughs and his inability to do what he says he will do. Jan usually feels somewhat guilty after doing something horrible but continues to act rashly throughout the entire season. It's hard to tell if Jan feels remorse for what he does. Jan acts based off his emotions and his emotions only, which also causes him to lash out in rage. However, it's difficult to tell if his rage is real or not because he only lashes out when he is around women of higher status than him. It could be argued that he yells at women in order to intimidate them into doing what he wants.

On the other hand, Jan is extremely entitled and feels very sorry for himself. When Frank offers Jan a job as a dishwasher at the Flamingo when Jan is unemployed and desperate for a job (and after he had tried to make Frank look bad in front of Sigrid), Jan declines and asks if he can become a manager. Jan also protested against being fired from NAV, even though he took advantage of female refugees who depended on him in order to survive in Norway. Jan is very good at making people feel sorry for him, so even the audience will often find themselves feeling bad for him. A good example of this is when he celebrated his birthday alone in Season 3.

Season 1[]

His first appearance was in "Reality Check", when Frank Tagliano tries to bribe him to have a restaurant in the city in a quick time. Jan initially declines and threatens to call the police on Tagliano. Jan then makes Frank take a Norwegian cultural assimilation class, but gets upset when Frank makes a lighthearted joke.

Jan soon has to find out, that his dirty little secrets are not so secret anymore, when Frank discovers some unflattering photos of Jan with half-naked and obviously underaged girls partying. The girls in the photos were recognized by the Lien brothers as being from the immigrant program that Jan was in charge of. Frank tells Jan that if Jan doesn't give him a license to the Flamingo Bar, then Frank will leak these pictures, and so Jan complies. Later, when Frank opens up the bar, he asks Jan where he can find some attractive unemployed women (to work for the Flamingo). Although Frank gives the photos back to Jan after he got what he wanted (license for the bar), Jan tries to get Frank into trouble, and Frank finds this out. These photos thus cause trouble later in the show for Jan, which leads to his suspension from NAV.

Season 2[]

Jan is now jobless, but soon finds a "ny sjanse" with Frank and the crew. Jan meets Randi again, who is in charge of a refugee centre. She's addicted to Khat, which she got from African refugees, a situation, which is right away abused by Jan, who blackmails her to let Frank buy cheap shares of the refugee centre. Jan helps Frank to keep his new cook Balotelli. Randi breaks up with Jan, when she walks in on his "little birthday surprise" from Frank's men in the Flamingo Club. Randi files a report about the situation in the refugee centre and about her own personal failures, which makes the government shut down the centre. Jan tries to talk with Randi, pleading her to revoke the report. She refuses and both get into a fight, in which Jan pushes her, which makes Randi fall to her death. He then hides her corpse inside of the refugee centre's freezer.

Randi's remains are found by Frank's men in S2/E7: The Freezer, so Frank takes Jan aside for a talk about seeking asylum - far far away. Jan agrees and with his connections to people from the middle east, he acquires a fake iraqi identity.

Season 3[]

Jan, much to Franks annoyance, returns home to Lillehammer with his new Iraqi identity. Jan pretends to have converted to Islam and even took a new name: Muhammed Ali. Now, a completely new man, he wants to confess his murder, saying that he'll take full responsibility for it. Frank warns him not to drag anybody from his crew into this, and Jan swears he won't. Jan becomes imprisoned after his confession about Randi, but he has a difficult time making friends while he's in prison. The other inmates unload their hatred on him, since many of them were immigrants who recognized Jan as the uncompromising and apathetic man that worked at NAV. In the previous seasons, Jan would frequently sexually abuse female immigrants as well as bully male immigrants simply because he had the power to.

Later, Jan learns that Dag is now in a coma (because Dag tried to get rid of Randi's body and nearly drowned) which means that Dag is completely unable to defend himself. Jan undergoes hypnosis therapy in prison and fakes a story, in which actually - now comatose - Dag - was the murderer of Randi. His original confession is then revoked and Jan released from prison. However, Jan gets into trouble with real Muslims (their leader being Rashid) who, for some reason, want to kill Frank. Jan helps the Muslim gang with their plan by driving Frank to his cabin where Frank is supposed to be ambushed. Frank figures out what's going on and the Muslim gang die.

Jan is extremely upset that he is not immediately welcomed back into Norwegian society with open arms. Jan has been given decent opportunities to get back on his feet, but he expects the government to make friends and girlfriends for him. He blames his failures on the Norwegian government and seeks revenge. He's almost going mad and even plans to suicide bomb the NAV office, but then runs into Reidun, the woman who fired him, from NAV. She is touched by his fate and Jan even gets his job back at NAV. He soon starts a wild sexual affair with Ane Jacobsen, whom he knows from a NAV event meeting. While the couple is having sex during a car trip, they kill Sylfest Haugli in a hit and run accident. Ane can't cope with her guilt and leaves Jan and the country. Jan, who frequently visits Dag and also takes him to his apartment, doesn't believe in a recovery of Dag, and so he tells him all his little secrets, including the hit and run accident. He is later supposedly killed by Dag ordered by Frank as revenge for killing Sylfest Haugli and Randi.

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