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The typical season of “Fargo” begins with simmering heat. Thanks to the famous disclaimer at the beginning (“at the request of the survivors”; “out of respect for the dead”), borrowed largely from the Coen brothers’ original masterpiece, the audience knows that violence is imminent. In translating “Fargo” into an anthology series, an interpretive exercise that has now spanned five different installments over nearly a decade, creator Noah Hawley has stayed true to that structure. “Fargo” may hop across time, viewpoints and the Great Midwest, but Hawley uses a loose and shifting set of signatures to identify the franchise’s multiplying parts as part of a larger whole — the pace so far between them.
However, the latest “Fargo” story begins in media definition. It’s 2019 in suburban Minnesota, and a local school board meeting is in chaos. This is also not a record-scratch-freeze-frame situation; In the six episodes provided to critics in advance, Hawley doesn’t rewind to show us how a fight broke out at a fall festival planning meeting that included a mother and a math teacher arguing. The opening scene is meant to suggest an already frayed social order that’s on the verge of unraveling – that for once, this “Fargo” isn’t a slow burn. There is no waiting for the action; it is already here.
For season four, released in 2020, Hawley reached further into the past than ever before to stage an ambitious, if flawed, take on race, immigration, and the American national character. Season 5 reverses course and becomes the most modern “Fargo” entry yet, making it the first to be set during the Trump administration. (The previous record holder, Season 3, was set in 2010.) The 45th President himself even makes a cameo via the television set of primary antagonist Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm). Tillman is a Joe Arpaio-style lawless sheriff who loudly proclaims his love of the Constitution and his disdain for most other laws from his North Dakota ranch; Only his horseshoe-shaped nipple piercings suggest we’re still in the heightened, fairytale reality that’s “Fargo’s” home.
This topicality turns out to be a double-edged sword. Season 5 appears to be a sharp break from its predecessor, trading a “Godfather”-esque organized crime epic for housewife Dorothy “Dot” Lyon’s (Juno Temple) smaller struggle to escape her demons. (Dot is the aforementioned mother from the school board meeting; her arrest attracts Roy’s unwelcome attention and sets the season in motion.) But she plays with similarly broad, elemental themes. What Season 4 was to racial prejudice, Season 5 is to the battle of the sexes. Roy is introduced reprimanding a perpetrator, not for hitting his wife, but for doing so in a way that is inconsistent with Roy’s arbitrary justifications for violence against women. “Just a heads up,” he says in a flatter version of Hamm’s typical stern growl. “Never derive pleasure or satisfaction from the task.” No one says the phrase “toxic masculinity,” but you can tell it’s on the tip of Hawley’s tongue.
Such parallels make “Fargo” vulnerable to repeating some of its previous mistakes. Invoking contemporary culture wars may be a shortcut to urgency, but they also risk breaching the hermetic “Fargo” bubble — shadowy crime syndicates, primal evil, pure hearts in a cruel world — for material that is much less explicit and often exaggerated is. “Fargo” doesn’t even need the extra hook at first. Virtually the entire premiere is a set piece driven by Temple’s nervous panic, ranging from a school fight to a home invasion sequence to a gas station shootout over the course of nearly an hour. The season’s epigraph defines “Minnesota nice” as “an aggressively pleasant demeanor… no matter how bad things get,” and Temple’s Dot is a captivating poster girl. After her first encounter with Roy’s henchmen, she prepares pancakes for her daughter Bisquick on bloody, bare feet.
Dot’s connection to Roy is initially puzzling, but as they begin orbiting each other, Season 5 becomes more like a two-hander than the usual sprawling ensemble. Admittedly, there are still a cast of confident, quirky characters with the craziest names on TV: Danish Graves (Dave Foley), the obvious consigliere to debt queen Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh), also Dot’s mother-in-law; Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani), the latest heir to Frances McDormand’s Marge Gunderson; Ole Munch (Sam Spruell), a mysterious mercenary who always wears a kilt. Nevertheless, all of these players are used to support the central duo or to illuminate some aspect of it. Roy’s failed son Gator (Joe Keery) and Indira’s bloodsucking husband Lars (Lukas Gage) share the lawman’s sense of entitlement to women’s unconditional obedience, even if they lack his menacing nature.
This simplicity works well for “Fargo” early in the season. The first few episodes are an intriguing game of cat and mouse, with the possibility of a role reversal clearly foreshadowed. (“Fargo” hates subtlety almost as much as he loves metaphor-filled monologues, which is why Dot is called Lyon and repeatedly compared to a tiger. Now who’s the big cat?) A Halloween showdown pits Dot against a crew in scary masks “ The “Nightmare Before Christmas”; A hospital chase forces the cast into tight, fluorescent-lit rooms. But the momentum begins to wane as Hawley works for several hours to keep the tension going. As I watched the performances, I was sure the season was coming to an end and was surprised to learn that I was only halfway through.
This is when “Fargo” begins to focus on archetypes rather than individuals. Between the Tillman character and his recent appearance on “The Morning Show,” Hamm has been indulging in his plausible villainy lately. Like Roy’s lambskin-lined jacket, it suits him. But the more “Fargo” presents Roy and Dot as archetypes of a controlling man and his victim, the less interesting they are. In “Fargo” canon, Dot immediately stands out because she is compassionate without being guileless. In order to survive, she cannot be a model of virtue like other “Fargo” heroines. She’s more fierce and cunning, but “Fargo” risks turning her and Roy into victims and perpetrators as it tries to make a statement about the dark side of America’s cowboy conservatism fetish. A testament to the value of creativity within boundaries, “Fargo” transforms a 27-year-old film into a living text. It’s an experiment that works better when it doesn’t explicitly argue for its own ongoing relevance.
The first two episodes of “Fargo” season 5 will premiere September 20 at 10 p.m. ET on FX and stream the next day on Hulu, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Tuesdays.