It’s funny to think about how weird and stupid this show sounded before it ever aired. Noah Hawley seems pretty dumb. He writes bad novels. He made a movie nobody liked or cared about. He writes his dialogue like he’s an essayist but he has nothing to say. At least nothing notable or interesting. But he somehow has made some fun seasons of television shows. Whatever else, it’s probably where he should concentrate his time.
5. Season 4: Oof
Season 4 was somehow all of the worst Noah Hawley instincts. Too many characters. Too many of whom – despite their lives of street crime – speak like like they all have PhDs on United States history. They took the stunt casting too far with Chris Rock and Jason Schwartzman playing gangsters who are also supposed to be well-rounded and the main characters – neither performance comes close to fully working. Ben Whishaw and Timothy Olyphant are completely wasted. The season in general is just a total slog. Awful awful awful television in every way. I mean what more needs to be said than the fact there is a season of television where Timothy Olyphant plays a federal marshall and it completely sucks.
4. Season 5: “So you want freedom without responsibility?”
Hollywood has a long history of not being able to tackle the most important issues and events of the world directly – at least not well. Noah Hawley, never one for nuance, decided to make a text here explicitly about Trump and the Trump era. Hawley has always made his works political in direct ways, and as such, his works not only invite but should be looked at from a political lens. So, when the protagonist of the season, is being attacked by her fiscally right-wing billionaire, mother-in-law and by her abusive psycho Christian nut sheriff ex-husband, rest assured that what Hawley does with those characters matter. In the real world, both of those people and their class are a threat to society. The show makes clear though that the billionaire can be redeemed – she calls up Trump to cash in her favors to get the FBI to go and rescue the protagonist and take down the corrupt sheriff. The billionaire’s vapid and surface-level, class-blind feminism gives her room to be a hero in the context of the show. Did I mention that the FBI saves the day? Now, of course, thinking adults can watch this and see through it – but once you see through that there is not much left behind the glass. Just a waste of Jon Hamm, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Juno Temple. But that’s how bad season 5 was that this season can safely be considered better.
3. Season 3: “You think the world is somethin’, then it turns out to be somethin’ else.”
The show made a weird decision with this third season: they went back to the pace of the first season. There was some good casting (with David Thewlis’ performance standing out) and some decent stunt casting (see the image above) which helped, but the lack of “western” feel (for wont of a better term), it really killed the great vibes of the second season. It is neither a notably good nor bad season of television.
2. Season 1: “I keep asking myself. Who could have done a thing like this?”
You have to remember how stupid this show sounded when the announcement happened. Not only were we as a society not really in the middle of the deluge of IP excavating, but the idea of taking what feels like a sacred text and turning into (what we would now call) IP slop seems insane. There was simply no way it was gonna be good…but then it completely exceeded expectations. In retrospect, the season definitely benefited from low expectations. It is perfectly fine television, but you can see that the show feels way too beholden to the film and the specific vibes and character dynamics that film created. This was a solid start to the anthology program, but it would need to escape the film’s shadow and stand on its own ideas if it wanted to be actually notable.
1. Season 2: “I just wanted to be someone.”
The second season of Fargo was exactly what the show needed to do: leave the film completely behind and just tell cool crime stories in the north midwest during the winter. They leaned into the all-star cast and stunt casting, picked up the pace, and well-paced the significant twists and turns to keep it entertaining all the way through. The key to the season may have been the casting of Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons as they had the quietest story in some ways, and without such talented people in those roles, that branch may have collapsed. But the highlights of the season were the standout performances of Zahn McClarnon and Bokeem Woodbine. They just jumped off the screen in every scene. This was by far the best season of Fargo.
The Reel World 