Plot: The latest installment of Fargo is set in Minnesota and North Dakota, 2019. After an unexpected series of events lands Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lyon in hot water with the authorities, this seemingly typical Midwestern housewife is suddenly plunged back into a life she thought she had left behind.
Review: Before the first season of Fargo premiered in 2014, I thought it was a bad idea. It should have been a clue that Noah Hawley’s series would be a masterpiece since it came with The Coen Brothers’ approval. A decade later, the fifth entry in the anthology series is arriving, set in the pre-pandemic year of 2019. Following the series alternating historical and contemporary timelines, the new season trades period settings of the 1970s and 1920s for a familiar-looking world anchored in the political divide of liberals and conservatives that raged those four long years ago. But, rather than being a story about politics, Fargo’s fifth season returns to the noir roots of the original film and The Coens’ earlier classic, Blood Simple. Opening with a sequence showing the opposite of “Minnesota nice,” we find Dot Lyon getting arrested for tazing a cop, which kicks off a series of events that connects multiple police departments across Minnesota and North Dakota along with a connection to England five centuries ago. In short, this is par for the course for Noah Hawley and yet another brilliant foray into the world of Fargo.
Like all four previous seasons, Fargo consists of ten episodes. Six of those episodes were made available for this review, and so much happens in the chapters that I have seen that I am anxious that Hawley and his creative team will be able to tie everything up. I have felt this way during the same point in every season of Fargo, and the series never disappoints. However, I am especially nervous this season as I am more invested in this cast than ever. Not since Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton kicked off this series have I cared as much about the interactions between two characters as I have between Dot Lyon and Roy Tillman. The first season puts Dot (Temple) through the wringer as she is arrested, kidnapped, shot at, and escapes from a pair of hired thugs. By the end of the first episode, we know that Dorothy Lyon is not who she claims to be. It is not until the second chapter that we meet Sheriff Roy Tillman (Hamm). From the second episode onward, Fargo weaves what may be its most sprawling cast of characters, yet not one but four law enforcement agencies are involved as Dot’s identity spawns a series of conflicts you must see to believe.
While many series have tackled similar plots about fake identities, crime syndicates, and detectives on the prowl, none of them handle it with a surreal sense of humor as Fargo does. Beneath the Minnesota accent and sheen of friendliness, there is a sinister streak that becomes even bleaker when you get stabbed by someone grinning from ear to ear. With four seasons of intricate murder, blackmail, and other criminal plots, this season is somewhat old hat. Still, Hawley and his writing staff have concocted one of their best stories to date, much of it accentuated by the talented cast. Led by Juno Temple, Fargo’s fifth season is as good as ever, with the acclaimed Ted Lasso actress balancing her character’s idyllic suburban mom with a fighting spirit that one character refers to as a tiger. Dot is small in stature, but she is more than capable of defending her family as she blends the best of Home Alone and MacGyver for some of the deadliest makeshift traps I have seen on screen. At the same time, Jon Hamm plays a bit against type as one of the meanest and scariest villains this series has had. Roy Tillman is part dictator, part lawman, and fully scary as he rules over his North Dakota county with an iron fist. Alongside his son Gator (Joe Keery), Roy has a reason for wanting to find Dot, which results in hiring Ole Munch (Sam Spruell), a hitman with a mysterious past all his own. When things go awry with Dot’s kidnapping, Munch opposes the Tillmans and the cops.
Fargo has given us some truly great law enforcement characters through the years, and this season, we get multiple. On top of Jon Hamm and Joe Keery’s villainous cops, we have Richa Moorjani as Deputy Indira Olmstead and Lamorne Morris as Deputy Witt Farr. Both officers enter the story after interacting with Dot in very different ways. Still, they must join forces to figure out why the seemingly meek housewife is the target of so many nefarious characters. They also run afoul of Dot’s powerful mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a rich executive who does not fully trust her daughter-in-law. Lorraine and her attorney, Danish Graves (Dave Foley), enter the story in a very interesting manner that seems tangential at first but evolves over the course of the first six episodes of the season. Set around Halloween, this season of Fargo carries a pervasive anxiety from episode to episode that is at once foreboding and even funnier than usual. Lamorne Morris and Dave Foley are more often associated with their comedic work, and Jon Hamm has proven to be as funny as he is dramatic when the material calls for it. I keep returning to the word balance, which this season has more than any of the four prior entries.
Noah Hawley continues his trend from last season in directing the series’ opening episodes before sharing duties with other filmmakers, including Donald Murphy. Hawley also has his most solo scriptwriting credits since the second season, writing seven of the ten episodes and sharing duties on the remaining three with Bob DeLaurentis, April Shih, and Thomas Bezucha. It is clear that rather than put out a season every year, Hawley has taken to heart his promise of only adding another volume of Fargo if and when the story is worth telling. After the Chris Rock-led fourth season debuted in 2020, I never thought we would be waiting three years for the fifth season, but I assure you that this entry was worth the wait. Noah Hawley, who is at work on his Alien television series and already ventured into Marvel Comics with the brilliant Legion, knows what the Coen Brothers set out to do with Fargo as a film and continues that with a fifth triumph in a row.
From the music this season, using a familiar cue from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to the bizarre flashback early in the season that is straight out of the Coen Brothers playbook, Fargo’s fifth season once again forges a story that is at once surreal and hyperreal, blending tones and genres together for a distinct viewing experience. Juno Temple and Jon Hamm are exceptional at the top of a cast with no weak points whatsoever. Noah Hawley has once again crafted a tale that is worthy of the title Fargo. You will be hooked from the opening scene through the very end of every episode, paying attention to the little details that will have you rewinding to ensure you saw what you think you saw. Without giving anything away, pay attention to the nipple rings. Like the four seasons of Fargo that came before it, this is one of the best series of the year and will have you laughing and on the edge of your seat in equal measure.