Fargo Season 5 Review: Juno Temple And Jon Hamm Stand Out In A 21st-Century Coen Brothers Riff
One of the great recurring sketches on "Saturday Night Live" in the 1990s was called "The Chris Farley Show." In that sketch, Farley would appear as himself on a lighthearted talk-show set where he'd be joined by luminaries of pop culture like Paul McCartney or Martin Scorsese. His interviews with these legends would amount to him recalling classic moments from their music or movies and then sweatily asking, "Do you ... do you remember that?" It's hard to shake the sensation of "The Chris Farley Show" upon watching just the first 15 or so minutes of the new season of FX's "Fargo," as creator/writer Noah Hawley bends over backwards to make sure we remember what film inspired the crime-drama anthology. It's not just that the show continues to use, episode by episode, the series of title cards telling the audience that what we're about to see is a true story with just the names changed. (That preference occurs in the previous four seasons too.) It's that the season opens with a description of the concept of "Minnesota nice" and that a seemingly friendly female cop tuts at a person they've just arrested, wondering what society has come to and noting that "it's a beautiful day." The allusions are easy to miss if you don't know Joel and Ethan Coen's classic "Fargo," but they are obnoxiously obvious if you know the film.
The good news, such as it is, is that once Hawley gets some of the allusions out of his system, the fifth season of "Fargo" begins to unfold at an effectively fast-paced and compelling clip. (Six of the season's ten episodes have been made available to critics.) The episodes as a whole do continue to evoke the story of Marge Gunderson and Jerry Lundegaard, but in less compact fashion. In general, it's easy to look at the arc of the season's first half and envision Hawley mashing together bits and pieces of both "Fargo" and another Coen classic, "No Country for Old Men." Here, our main character is Dot Lyon (Juno Temple), the person being arrested by the aforementioned cop after a suburban Minnesota school board meeting turns ugly. Though Dot's crime was primarily accidental, as she attempted to get her and her daughter Scottie (Sienna King) to safety, her fingerprints send a red flag in North Dakota to Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), who has a unique connection to Dot and is hellbent on retrieving her. His desire to catch her, for reasons revealed arguably too soon in the show, ends up enveloping Dot's power-hungry mother-in-law (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the cop who arrested her (Richa Moorjani), and a North Dakota trooper (Lamorne Morris) who's in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Some of the remixing of key Coen moments is intentional to the setting in 2019. Consider that "No Country for Old Men" opens with an elegiac montage of images of the American West as Tommy Lee Jones' kindly and old-fashioned sheriff notes how long he and his family have been in the world of law enforcement. The second episode of the new season (the two-part premiere is on November 21) begins with Tillman delivering a monologue over a similar set of images, starting in a similar fashion ... before we learn that he's what is quaintly dubbed a "constitutional sheriff," otherwise known as a noxious far-right-wing bully who would rather amass a militia in the Upper Midwest than enforce laws if he deems them to be improper. Some of Tillman's toughness is utilized to fend off wife-beaters, but it's mostly so that he and his family, including his son Gator (Joe Keery), can reign over North Dakota like the real-life Bundy family.
Hard times
Tillman defines himself as a "hard man for hard times," though as Hawley and his co-writers depict them, the times are only hard because of men like Roy Tillman. Hamm, like Temple, is quite good in "Fargo," recalling Coen performers like Jones or M. Emmet Walsh as much as he seems like he and Hawley are delivering a slam against the popular Western drama "Yellowstone," with its own brand of old-fashioned justice. As has been the case with previous seasons of "Fargo," the issues here have nothing to do with the performances. Temple is the true standout, as we learn that Dot has far more multitudes than just being a doting housewife. (Another example of how Hawley remixes familiar images: in the first episode, Dot appears to be the victim of an abduction a la how Jerry's wife is captured in the original "Fargo," before she flips the script on her kidnappers.) It's not just that Temple has an impressively good Minnesota accent, though that helps; it's that she's able to reveal layers upon layers within Dot's psyche that enable us to understand the choices the character has made. The entire ensemble is solid, including Moorjani and Morris as decent lawpeople and Dave Foley as a cheerful, eyepatched enforcer for Leigh's businesswoman.
No, the issue with "Fargo" is that Hawley is unable to stop himself from underlining his half-sketched-out thematic preferences. Early on in the season, Dot is compared to a tiger, which is both apt and so heavily echoed that it becomes tiresome. (One of the mid-season episodes is not only called "The Tiger," but also includes voiceover narration explaining the mental prowess of a tiger, as if what's occurring on-screen is enough emphasis enough.) Some of the real-world commentary is understandable, but also feels half-realized. That this show takes place in the era of Donald Trump is no accident, as we see glimpses of the ex-president on Fox News and characters like Roy criticizing the concept of the federal government to some of its representatives, along with loaded images like Dot and her extended family posing for a Christmas card with assault rifles in hand to show off their "values." But the briefness of these images flit by, in what is an effectively compact pulp story about a wronged woman that would be better off with a more limited focus.
"Fargo" remains a remarkably well-acted show, and for all the opening nudges to the Coen brothers, there's a reasonably entertaining thriller at the core of the fifth season. Juno Temple and Jon Hamm are about as good as you would hope or expect them to be, and the show manages to avoid seeming cartoonish in its depiction of "Minnesota nice/" As has been the case in previous seasons, this show has no right to be even as entertaining as it is considering that it's inspired by what is basically a perfect movie. If Noah Hawley could get out of his own way and stop avoiding all the obvious connections to "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men," he could make a brilliant show. As it is, with the new "Fargo," he's made a moderately compelling one.
/Film Rating: 6 out of 10
"Fargo" season 5 premieres Tuesday, November 21, 2023, on FX, streaming the next day on Hulu.