There’s something to be said for the way Fargo throws its perfection in your face. The second season of FX’s anthology drama, loosely adapted from the Coen Brothers’ eponymous classic film, arguably boasts the best performances, the most assured camerawork and the most intricately-plotted narrative of any television show this year. It’s witty but serious, knowing but original – it’s the rare homage that beautifully pays tribute to its source material while thriving as an independent piece all the same. And it builds impeccably: creator Noah Hawley doesn’t run into any dead-ends, or try something that doesn’t pan out. Without question, Fargo season two is the most complete and polished television package of 2015.
And yet that cool sense of excellence projected by Fargo this year kept me somewhat at bay. Right to the finale, between a Raising Arizona-inspired dream sequence early-on and a shot to end things that so closely echoed the Fargo film’s final shot, I sat in respectful admiration, appreciative of Hawley’s astonishing command but rarely, deeply invested in the story he was telling or the methods with which he told it. I gather this is an unpopular opinion; likely, so is my preference for the show’s first season, which settled on a menacingly intimate dynamic between its lead characters and splintered off on occasional detours, as with the moral reckoning of Oliver Platt’s “supermarket king.” Objectively, the second season of Fargo was tighter, more fluid and more thematically centralized, but I couldn’t help missing the emotional unpredictability and variety of what came before it.
Fargo’s second season takes place within a rigidly American milieu, weaving its focus between a backwoods crime syndicate, a younger married couple and a well-adjusted suburban family, in the Upper Midwest at the dawn of the Reagan era. Based on events forecast in the first season, a series of incidents ripple through each of these characters’ lives, as they wrestle with changes of both domestic and global proportions. Major deaths in the Gerhardt crime family put the matriarch, Floyd (Jean Smart), in charge; her leadership uncovers old wounds and resentments between her children. After accidentally killing a man, beautician Peggy Blomquist (Kirsten Dunst) takes her husband, Ed (Jesse Plemons), down the rabbit hole of covering-it-up and getting-out-of-town – while also revealing, in the process, the fundamental differences in worldview between them. At the third point of the triangle is Officer Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson, based on the character played by Keith Carradine in season one), and he isn’t repressing as much: his simple goal is to clean up the case and go home to his sick wife, Betsy (Cristin Milioti).
Hawley is a writer of tremendous composure. He exposes casual and overt racism – as well as sexism – with a light hand, skillfully integrating such social commentary into his narrative structure. Hanzee (Zahn McClarnon), the Gerhardt’s Native American errand boy, takes on a thrillingly central role in the season’s climax, while Gerhardt rival Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine), the African American employee of a disintegrating Kansas City crime organization, goes from collections agent to lone wolf, eventually left to both extinguish his enemies and turn on his allies for survival. Through Peggy, Hawley also rather brilliantly finds a way to fashion a compelling character, tragic and comic in equal measure. Her relentless go-getter attitude turns laughable in the face of an inevitable downfall, but her drifting from Ed – “I just wanted to be my own me” – poignantly reflects realities of then and now, and of the subtle difficulties that arise out of predetermined social orders.
The season is rich with intrigue; the story builds meticulously, never out of line with theme or character. But between the long, pointed monologues (oh, the Camus talk) and nationalistic musings – there’s a lot of that, in particular, in the finale – Hawley’s frequent grandiose claims prevent a more interpretive engagement with his work. In the final act of Fargo’s first season, Molly (Allison Tolman) told the sleazy, opaque Lester (Martin Freeman) a fable with a fairly ambiguous moral, about a man on a train, and a glove that he found and traced back to its owner – it stuck with me primarily because it could uniquely be applied to every character within that first Fargo season’s universe, as a sort of mini-investigation of their moral judgement and capacity for decency. The first season was darker, but it was also more interactive – more playful. Hawley’s follow-up is an irrefutable artistic achievement, but when he got to that Raising Arizona montage, for instance, I could only think of the Coens’ sensibility, their fondness for the absurd and the unusual – and how I never fully felt it in this second season.
Where this Fargo really comes to life – and it does, remarkably, in spurts thoughout – is via its cast, an embarrassment of riches. At the top of the list, Bokeem Woodbine works absolute wonders with Mike Milligan, a character rife with the idiosyncrasies and soul that make for some of the best Coen characters. It’s great to see the actor – who you tend to see in a very specific, and usually unsubstantive, type of role – totally run with the character, loose and funny and yet implacably fearsome. Dunst, too, reinvents herself with this part, losing herself completely in the trials and dreams of Ms. Blomquist, while Wilson excels as an old-school leading-man type, keeping Solverson interesting while very clearly conveying his sturdy moral compass. The one thread that doesn’t come together as well is the Gerhardt family saga, but whenever given the chance, Smart shines as a woman left to simultaneously grieve for those she’s lost and take charge of a brewing war.
It might sound like a fairly reductive criticism – to say that this is a season of television too neat, too effective, too directional. Yet art excites the most when it surprises – when it lets you ruminate over its existence and its purpose, when it manages something bold without drawing attention to itself. In its second (or I suppose, its third) incarnation, Fargo tells a story about two Americas: whether via Nick Offerman’s amusingly drunk lawyer Karl Weathers or the steadfast anchor that is Lou Solverson, it’s an idea repeatedly discussed with a satisfying blend of humor and heavy. And like the best true crime stories, it comes to encompassing conclusions. I think of Breaking Bad a lot in relation to this season – here’s a show of similar aesthetic perfection and moralistic concern, but one less fixated on its endgame or its implications. Visually striking and thematically potent, calling this Fargo “seamless” would not be inaccurate. But here is one case where, for this critic at least, the whole isn’t exactly the sum of its top-quality parts.
There’s a moment in the season’s penultimate episode – its bloodiest, and also its best – when a giant UFO descends upon the madness, before going up, up and away into space again, without explanation (though the foreshadowing is there). Aside from getting the great Peggy Blomquist line “It’s just a flyin’ saucer Ed, we gotta go!,” it represents the ever-so-slightly disingenuous element of this season. It’s spontaneous, technically, but it also isn’t – working off a brand built on quirks, but within a season essentially devoid of them, the scene plays like an obligatory demonstration of weirdness. As with its split-screen flourish or eclectic choice of music, both sufficient evocations of the period, the show never quite operates on that retro template it alludes to. It comes more naturally to performers like Woodbine and Dunst, but the season itself lacks that kind of character, that distinctiveness. Fargo's second season is great, all right – I just wish it had more of a personality to back that greatness up.
Grade: B