First off, we have to discuss this new model of the limited series, miniseries, anthology series (whatever you like to call it) that has started to show up on television. American Horror Story, a show I dislike for too many reasons to discuss here, has, admittedly, been doing that model very well the last three years, bringing back some of the same actors each year but in a new locale and with a new theme, while keeping with the general tone of something creepy and unsettling. AHS was definitely a model for what FX and Noah Hawley want to do with Fargo. This season was different than the movie and the (possible) next season will be different yet again, presumably while keeping the main ingredients of snow, murder and dark comedy. But the most important thing that an 8 or 10 (or even 3, 4 or 6 as per usual in the UK) episode season brings with it is the ability for the show to attract big names. AHS annually gets a large, talented cast and Fargo has the deepest bench in television right now, including Billy Bob Thornton who will surely be a contender come awards season. True Detective became the behemoth it was because of the above-the-title names of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. People who may not have normally watched a gritty detective drama tuned in to bear witness to the McConaissance and expectations perhaps became too high, even if people's expectations of what the show was going to be was never what Nic Pizzolatto was going to do with it. This format can really only work with the type of show that has a central mystery to solve; a workplace comedy wouldn't be able to muster up enough intrigue after 8 episodes to warrant the closed ending, never to be explored again. Sitcoms need time to flesh out their characters & relationships and procedurals live and die on their formula, episode after episode, year after year.
The second point I want to discuss is the current state of quality television, which is in a very good place. Breaking Bad finished recently and Mad Men is technically halfway through its final season, and as previously noted, True Detective has a brief, successful run a few months ago and the ever present Game Of Thrones just finished its fourth season this week. Then, there are the shows like Sherlock and Orphan Black and The Americans which are critical darlings and extremely well-made but still manage to stay under the general public's radar. Game Of Thrones is the only show that has one foot firmly in the high concept genre camp and one in the quality, Sunday night must watch, Monday morning must discuss camp. The Walking Dead is a show that mostly applies to the former while Mad Men is firmly in the latter. Ratings usually come from the former while accolades come from the latter. Breaking Bad was the program that transcended both labels and became a must-watch for the way it satisfied the gangster bloodlust of its casual fans and the attention to detail in the writing, directing and acting that had critics salivating every Sunday night on Twitter. The reasons I don't like Game Of Thrones are mostly the same reasons I don't like The Walking Dead, although Walking Dead is more frequently enjoyable than GoT, which is a slog through middle earth following the attempted power grabs of loathsome, incestuous, stubbornly prideful characters. Game Of Thrones is like all the most boring parts of the Tolkein universe made into a television show that looks really beautiful. The problem with both shows is that there's nobody to root for, the threat of your favorite character being killed off at any time doesn't create enjoyable suspense, it creates a sense of time wasted investing time and emotion in their journey. Perhaps people like the escapism and exoticism that comes with shows like these, watching people in foreign situations so far from their own lives. A man shooting a crossbow into a zombie or a knight raging in medieval battle is interesting because it's not something they have to compare to their own life, it has a certain "epic" or "badass" quality to it. The most talked about, highest rated episodes of these shows are the ones with the biggest shootouts or the most brutal battle scenes. In contrast, Mad Men and Matthew Weiner are able to convey a lifetime's worth of emotion and pain in a scene with no dialogue in an episode that has fewer viewers than the evening news. If Mad Men were on any other network, it's ratings alone would've been the nail in the coffin years ago, but it's hard for AMC to deny the armload of Emmy's it wins every year. Don't get me wrong, I love genre fiction, television and movies, but I'm just tired of the best shows on television getting canceled because they don't have a high enough shock value. I have faith that the powers that be will see that smaller scale shows like Masters Of Sex and The Americans can be big on substance and draw a crowd with discerning tastes for quality television.
So the point of this piece was to discuss Fargo, a show that is severely underrated, underappreciated and underwatched. I can't find a single person discuss the show with because nobody has seen it in it's entirety, if at all. Fargo is a show that shouldn't really be as good as it is. On paper, an adaptation of one of the most beloved & successful Coen Brothers films into a 10 episode series by the guy who created My Generation does not look promising. However, Hawley dispensed with the flesh & blood characters of the film and instead, decided to explore perhaps the most important character; the snowy landscape of the upper Midwest. The dark humor, the unforgiving weather and the brutality the region's unimposing people are capable of are all present in the show, as they were in the Coen's version, but the most striking creation of Hawley and the writers of the show is the creation of the character Lorne Malvo. Billy Bob Thornton has not been this lively and entertaining on screen in years as Malvo, who is the very definition of evil, the wolf at the door of the good, humble folks of Bemidji. Malvo, at one point, decides to enact the biblical plagues on, of all people, the man he is working for, just for the pleasure of it, just to see what happens. Watching the series as it goes on, one can't help but wonder if Malvo is something beyond human, pure evil come to earth in the form of a man, sent here to wreak havoc and corrupt good people and spoil the pristine snowy landscape. He makes the sniveling, petty, cowardly King Joffrey look like an innocent little blonde kitten on the throne of swords. Malvo would have a field day with Joffrey, he'd bring him to his knees and make him beg for his life and then slit his throat with a smirk on his face. Malvo's body count in these ten episodes is astounding. The cast is full of fantastic characters whose humble civility is tested by the changing norms of society. The police captain at one point laments the disappearance of the time when folks used to shovel each others drives instead of having to watch over their shoulders. It's a similar sentiment that lingers in, among other places, the Coen's No Country For Old Men, with Tommy Lee Jones as the sheriff who is struggling to keep order in his Texas border town as the presence of the drug wars start to creep in. Malvo is definitely a chip of the same block as Anton Chigurh, a man who lives to inflict chaos and pain and lose no sleep over it.
Another notable thing about the show is the presence of a second villain, who, played by Martin Freeman, is remarkably receptive to Malvo's influence. His Lester Nygaard is a man with a thin layer of civility that is quickly broken through at the arrival of Malvo and goes forward with no worry as to what kind of man he has become. The final sequence at the end of the penultimate episode is so absolutely tragic, so pitch black evil and devastating as we watch one of the most innocent characters in the show fall prey to the two headed wolf, that it's almost impossible to watch. It's more shocking than the scene where we find out Walter White poisoned Jesse's girlfriend's son. These shows of late have been great at providing conflicted antiheroes somewhere in the gray area between good and bad, and at a certain point, it seems that Lester will redeem himself but that notion is quickly and utterly extinguished. Through it all, Fargo was able to balance the brutality and bloodshed with the humor that you would expect from a Coen Brothers property and with a cast of comedic veterans like Freeman, Key & Peele, Bob Odenkirk, Oliver Platt and even Thornton whose desire to inflict a trail of chaos wherever he goes is frequently quite humorous. His deadpan delivery and insistence on talking his way out of every imaginable situation provides a lot of unexpected humor. It's a show that was made with the intention of being different and working outside the norms of cable television. Ratings weren't off the charts but it is definitely a success for the network and Hawley can write his own ticket for whatever he wishes to do in the future, whether it be Fargo-adjacent or not. There are a few characters begging for an extended backstory to be explored, most notably Keith Carradine as an ex-State Policeman whose own history with a wolf at his door would make for fantastic television, however, it doesn't sound like Hawley wants to go back to Fargo, at least not right away, since he just finished post-production on the series two weeks before the final episode aired. I'm sure he's on vacation, perhaps somewhere warm & sunny, plotting his next project that FX will undoubtedly write him a blank check for the privelege to air.
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