In the middle of
seeing Fargo for the first time in 1996 Gene Siskel turned to Roger
Ebert and said: “This is why I love going to the movies.” I have felt the exact
same way every time Noah Hawley brings forth another version of the incredible TV
adaption of Fargo to FX; blessed that I am able to glory in his genius.
The first three
seasons were considered utter masterpieces by critics and audiences. For
reasons I have never truly comprehended the fourth season, set in 1950 Kansas City
with Chris Rock as the head of a black gang in the midst of an outrageous gang
war, was never anywhere near as highly regarded by either group. I didn’t feel
that way; I gave it five stars and ranked it as one of my ten best shows of 2020. It was, as the narration
told us, a history lesson not just for the America we were living in (in the
summer of 2020 when it was supposed to originally air it was more relevant) but
in the nature of the saga that we had spent the previous three seasons learning
about. While it might not have had the feel of the previous three seasons, it
certainly had the scope of a Coen Brothers film; I’m pretty sure we got
references to Miller’s Crossing and The Man Who Wasn’t There and
the ‘East/West’ episode ended with a reference right out of A Serious Man.
I was immensely disappointed when it went home empty handed not merely from the
Emmys, but almost every other awards show (though not the HCA, which was just
one of the reason it got on my good side right away.)
Hawley seemed to
imply at the end of Season 4 that was all we were going to get, and if it had
been that would have been more than
enough for me. But Hawley got inspired in the summer of 2022 and said he was
working on a fifth season. Now in the winter of 2023, we have been fortunate
enough to get Season 5 and order has been restored to the critical universe.
The raves for the fifth season have been universal across the board, not just
for the entire cast and crew but because it is close as we have gotten to the
original film since Hawley started writing version of it nearly a decade ago.
The Easter Eggs were obvious by far in the first two episodes. I’ve only gotten
through the first two episodes and what I have seen is magnificent.
The season
premiere started with a definition of Minnesota Nice, the term that Hawley has
used throughout the first three season and then immediately cut to a brawl in a
school board fight. We should not be truly shocked about this; in the most
recent chronological season (Season 3) Hawley wrote that we were witnessing the
end of Minnesota Nice and the real world had infiltrated it. We don’t truly
have to be told that this ‘true story’ is taking place in 2019; every aspect of
it is built to remind us that we are in the midst of the previous administration
even if we have yet to see anyone wearing a MAGA cap.
We are introduced
to Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) being hauled away by a state trooper after tasing one
of the teachers. “You don’t want to get between a mama lion and her cub,” she
tells the trooper who is Hindi, but Frances McDormand all the same. Dot is
booked and handcuffed but released thanks to her husband Steve, a man so much
of a milquetoast he makes William H. Macy’s character a he-man by comparison. Yes,
he is a car salesman with a rich family (and yes, in the second episode we see
him at his dealership complaining about the VIN numbers)
The Lyons all go
the mother’s mansion, where she is guarded by security, and has an attorney who
has an unexplained eye-patch (Dave Foley!) and where they all they take a
Christmas card photo (even though it isn’t even Halloween) carrying AK-47’s. The mother is played with great relish by
Jennifer Jason Leigh, clearly having the time of her life as a woman who looks
down on everybody and probably came lots of money to all the Republican Candidates
in the election but didn’t bother to vote (too plebian)
The next day,
when her husband takes her daughter off to school, two men in masks come to her
door. We know this set up, but it definitely doesn’t play the same. Dot’s
reaction is to begin to perform as if she were the female Kevin McCallister,
incinerating one of them with hairspray and a blowtorch. She manages to elude
them but it still captured. Her husband find the house broken into and calls
the police, thinking it’s a kidnapping. The mother is bemused by this.
The kidnappers
are clearly modeled after Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare, though the larger
one does speak more and is far more imposing. They are stopped by troopers on
the road, but in this scenario Dot manages to escape. One trooper is killed:
one wounded. Both Dot and the surviving trooper (Lamone Morris) get to a nearby
service station. Dot gets their first, and starts laying traps, in pure Home Alone
fashion, one of them is near a commode.
There is a shootout that unfolds, one hood dies, one walks aways. And
then Dot runs off saying: “This isn’t my first getaway.”
And then she
comes back home and tells her husband that nothing happened. She was just in a
mood, and she wants to forget all about it. That’s when we know we’re not in Fargo
any more.
We see hints in
much of the first episode of who Dot’s terrified of. In the next episode we
meet him: Roy, the sheriff of a North Dakota town who says he is the judge of
what is right and what is wrong. He says
he has been elected to defend the laws of the Constitution, but by that point
we know the only part is uniformly in favor of is the second Amendment and that
he’s more fond of the Ten Commandments and probably Old Testament justice. Roy
wants Dot back, saying she’s his wife. By this point Roy had remarried and has
a son, Gator who is his (this may be the Strangest role Joe Kerry’s
played yet) a man who is an incel in the making. You get the feeling watching
Roy that he would have no problem with polygamy, considering we see he believes
a woman must be dominated by a man in every respect. The problem is, he also
thinks because he is the law he does not need to share any details with those beneath
him, which is everybody else. When Wrench
(the survivor) returns to after being beaten, he is enraged that he wasn’t
given proper information and Roy and Gator feel he is unworthy because a woman
disposed of him. Roy clearly equates being the law as being God and he doesn’t
seem capable of understanding how people can just escape his wrath, something
that Wrench does over four people who try to kill him the first time and then
later in the second episode where he does so yet again.
After nearly
fifteen years of just playing antiheroes Jon Hamm is clearly relishing getting
to play someone who is pure evil incarnate. He doesn’t chew scenery (it’s not
something he’s capable of) but he sure
as hell licks it every time he says dialogue.
And he still looks good. “Does my discussing law in nude repose bother
you?” he tells a female FBI agent while bathing in a hot tub. Roy is capable of violence but not rage; I’d
love to see how this turns out.
This is another
glorious season and among other glories it is the first installment where a female
antihero is at the center of the action. We’ve seen great versions throughout
the series of course; Jean Smart’s matriarchal crime boss; Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s
blackmailer; Jessie Buckley’s poisoner but Juno Temple’s Dot is unlike any we’ve
seen before. Dot is clearly a survivor and she’s also a powerhouse hiding
behind a soccer mom appearance; she has the perfectly natural Minnesota nice
accent but is capable of calling her mother-in-law a bitch when she thinks she’s
being threatened. She wants to protect her family, but she wants to keep her
secret as long as possible. Right now, Wayne is so clearly in love with her
(and so utterly easy to manipulate) that he seems willing to go along with everything
she does and says, which can take some real leaps. “Why is there a sledgehammer
in our hallway?” he asks justifiably at the end of the last episode and is so
easily mowed under by Dot’s explanation. Dot has already proven herself up to the
challenging of escaping from the outlaws; the question is can she from the in-law.
Wayne’s mother is rich and powerful and does not trust her (justifiably to be
sure) and it’s pretty clear that she’d be willing to sacrifice her son to keep
herself safe. (“Slap him,” she tells her attorney over the speakerphone at one
point, something he’s more than willing to do and not gently.)
I know Fargo well
enough to know that there will be a lot of blood, but there has been already;
at last count six people have been killed in two episodes; three by Wrench
alone. And like so many episodes of Fargo, good might be able to triumph
primarily because evil is dumb; certainly Gator is and it doesn’t look like
many of Roy’s deputies are much brighter. They have a lot of firepower and they’re
definitely stronger in weaponry and number, but anyone who remembers Sioux
Falls knows all that might mean is a lot of people will end up dead along the
way. The question is whether the few forces of good, which are right now these
two troopers, can prevail or even survive.
I also want to
know what the link between this story and the ones we have previously witnessed
will be. The final moments of Season 4 revealed that the entire series is not
just an anthology but a long interlocking story spread across decades. We’ve
already received lots of Easter eggs for the movie; I want to see one for previous
seasons.
I actually got
better news even before the fifth season of Fargo debuted; Noah Hawley
who once thought that the third season would be its last, now says he has idea
for several more ‘true stories’ then he did. If any of them are even just a
hint as good as this one is proven to be – or indeed any of the previous four –
we might be in for years more of travails in Minnesota. Perhaps Hawley and his
crew will get their share of Emmy nominations and maybe even some awards this
time around. Fargo has not received nearly the love it deserves from the
Emmys over the years (though to be fair Seasons 2 and 3 had to go up against People
V. O.J. Simpson and Big Little Lies, respectively). It does seem
that everybody’s glad that we got another version of it and hopefully ‘out of
respect for the dead’, this show can get a lot of love from its fellow organizations
in the months to come. In an era of uncertainty for the medium Fargo is
why we love television in the first place.
My score: 5
stars.
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