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Today, viewers of FX’s adaptation-prequel-sequel to Fargo are much less likely to be fooled, even though the new season offers another mesmerizing crime story in the frigid plains of Minnesota.
You’re still writing the story in the editing room. Evil and darkly goofy humor seep in and out of Fargo as easily as an out-of-towner checking in to a seedy motel. Season two expands and deepens a fiendishly complex world. It was not. Strong performances by Allison Tolman (Molly Solverson), Billy Bob Thornton (Lorne Malvo) and Colin Hanks (Gus Grimly) made us overlook most of the flaws in the quirky (though slightly meandering and overly-violent) storyline, and overall, the season was a big victor.
The “something small” that happens in the first episode – the triple-murder that was actually the result of a bungled blackmail attempt – leads us to the Gerhardts of Fargo, North Dakota, a Midwest Mafia family controlling the trucking and distribution in that part of the country. As is so often the case in epic literature, the only one with any real insight is the eccentric drunk and jester whose warnings go dismissed as the musings of a conspiracy nut.
Ted Danson as Hank Larsson, Patrick Wilson as Lou Solverson. As in “Fargo’s” first season, the various stories are in no hurry to converge, but we know that they will, and there will be blood. Ted Danson of “Cheers” plays Lou’s father-in-law, the town sheriff. It’s all laid out in syndicate middle manager Joe Bulo’s (Brad Garrett) handy slide projection titled “Kansas City Northern Expansion Strategy”, which he put together with the “boys in research”. They know just what’s at stake and they aren’t afraid to react in their own best interests. But almost all of the supporting characters are played by actors whose most well-known characters would likely soil themselves were they to meet their Fargo counterparts.
It’s not that I disagree with the claims of contemporary resonance, exactly. His goal is to threaten her into reversing a ruling that threatens his business plans, but it turns out she’s a lot tougher and scarier than he is.
ANN CUSACK: (As character) No.
“That’s something that I loved about Lou-when he does let it loose, you’ll see it. But a lot of it is about stillness.”
I don’t know about you, but where I am right now I’m desperate for colder weather.
CULKIN: (As Rye Gerhardt) Or you’ll find out, is what. “I went online and bought a bunch of clothes made in New York”, she said. After a highly popular and well-received season one, the men behind the FX drama have their work cut out for them. “If we had more time I’d make more fun of him and make more jokes, but he’s fantastic. Probably, if you stacked ’em high, could’ve climbed to the second floor”, Lou said. So the devil begins. This idea [of] this tortured demon hunter who’s the only one who’s fit to solve these cases because he’s been down that road and can put himself into the mind of the killer and that destroys his life. While my distaste for supernatural happenings in a realistic (though clearly hyperbolic at times) dark comedy may be a bias of my own, I can’t help but shake my head when any non-sci-fi show introduces a UFO in its first episode.
“And then, Molly, that’s when the man started up his wood chipper…” The guys who look like they don’t do anything. And because this is a season-long anthology series, every character, minor or major, risks not surviving a tense confrontation.
Even after seeing only the first two episodes of the new season, Peggy [Dunst’s character] seems like one of the show’s most interesting figures, style-wise. The dialogue is polite, but the sense of danger is palpable. Dunst said of her bubbly self-improvement-obsessed character, Peggy, “I think she would think that sounded cool”. You know, we’re not going to do the melodrama pitch. We’re just back from the war. Here are a few reasons you should already be obsessed with this show.
WOODBINE: (As Mike Milligan) Now that is a truly odd question.
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The first episode, “Waiting for Dutch,” opens with a snippet of the black-and-white film Massacre at Sioux Falls, starring Ronald Reagan (who should be showing up at a few point looking a lot like Bruce Campbell). It furthered the original film’s notions of the ethical rot and simple heroism that can exist just beneath the surface of a social permafrost known as “Minnesota nice”. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, the story of a right-wing religious zealot and the leader he assassinated. In the garage he finds the bloodied auto, and soon after, an angry Rye, who Ed has to stab. Ephron served as the Jerusalem bureau chief for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. You don’t have any of those things built in.
