Noah Hawley pulled off one impressive magic trick with the first season of Fargo, managing to create the rare TV show based on a movie that not only wasn't hot garbage but was also a great piece of television in its own right. The main question hovering over my mind as I began to watch the second season of Fargo was whether or not Hawley could keep up this level of quality established in the first season, a task near impossible in my mind. Well, uh, he did just that. Fargo Season Two is even better than the first season and a sprawling masterpiece that somehow manages to balance a bevy of plotlines and coalesce them into something constantly riveting.
Set twenty-eight years prior to the first season of Fargo in 1979, the myriad of plotlines that comprise this season of Fargo unfold. I'd need a massive whiteboard to fully depict all of the characters and their connections to each other, but put simply, Peggy and Ed Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons respectively) are living a quiet normal life as a married couple until one night when Peggy accidentally hits a man with her car. Instead of going to the hospital or the authorities, Peggy just goes about her normal business, returning to her home with a man in her windshield. She convinces Ed to help her dispose of the body and any evidence it had ever been in her car in the hopes of normalcy returning to their lives.
Of course, wouldn't ya know it, Peggy didn't just run over any o'l person, she ran over Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin), one of three sons of the huge Gerhardt criminal empire that their mother, Floyd Gerhardt (Jean Smart), is now ruling over in place of her husband, whose been stuck down by a stroke. Some Kansas City gangsters are trying to take over the Gerhardt's operations and Rye going missing in the midst of this turmoil means Peggy and Ed get caught up in a gang war, one that local cop Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson), and his Sheriff father-in-law Hank Larrson (Ted Danson), also manages to get embroiled in while he investigates some murders Rye was behind.
That's a lengthy summary, but that's seriously the no-frills plot description of this incredibly detailed season of television which is packed to the gills with backstories, individual character dynamics and underlying themes connected to the decade it's taking place in that make it such a rich experience. That last element is actually a pretty crucial reason why Fargo Season Two works so well, setting this whole story in the 1970's is a stroke of narrative genius that lends a whole other layer of depth to the already incredibly thoughtful proceedings. It's a total cliche of movie reviews for sure, but allow me to say that the decade of the 1970's figures so prominently into the story here that it is practically a character unto itself in these ten episodes of television.
Taking place a short while after the Watergate scandal and the U.S. coming away as the loser of the Vietnam War, the characters in this season of Fargo make no secret of their feeling that the world around them is going to hell as the entire country is thrust into political scandals the likes of which they never could have imagined and their faith in their country also being shaken up by losing so many lives to a war they failed to win. Corruption is everywhere, deceit and treachery run amok and it isn't just in the criminal empire that the Gerhardt's run where one can find pervasive chicanery. Having all of this grisly violence and countless deaths crop up only feels like another drop of water in a rainstorm of wrongdoing.
Gender and racial politics of this era, specifically individuals constantly disenfranchised throughout American history looking to garner more rights and notoriety in society by occupying roles and occupations they were previously thought to be unqualified for, also crop up here in a noteworthy manner. In terms of gender roles that coincide with the resurgence of feminist advocacy in this decade, Floyd attempts to rule over her husband's criminal empire in a role typically filled by men while Peggy is constantly wanting to establish her own identity separate from her husband and role as wife and Floyd's granddaughter, Simone (Rachel Keller, showing up here before she starred in fellow Noah Hawley TV program Legion), is more provocative and open in terms of owning her own sexuality.
Meanwhile, the two most prominent non-white characters are similarly looking to break free of the suffocating confines society puts on them due to the skin color they were born with. Hitman Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) is eager to help resolve the Gerhardt problem in order to obtain a higher level of employment and stature at his job. There's also Hanzee Dent (Zahn McClarnon), a seemingly loyal bodyguard to the Gerhardt's who ends up betraying them in order to be free of their control and start his own control empire. Just as conventions have been shed in terms of what kind of treachery world leaders can commit, so too, it seems, have untold possibilities opened up for individuals like women and people of color are going to chase those chances in order to get a life they previously thought impossible not to obtain, though the folks we see in Fargo are willing to do that by way of betraying and even casually killing anyone who gets in their way, a stark contrast to the peaceful avenues taken by actual real-life people in those same disenfranchised groups that were trying to get a better life in this era.
That's all so fascinating to contemplate and I love that Fargo in its second season uses the 1970's less as a chance to play Spirit In The Sky but more as an opportunity to examine the psyches of people living in a world where it seemed like the gloves were off and the rules had been forever altered. The brief appearance of pre-President Ronald Reagan (played delightfully by Bruce Campbell) adds further tragedy to this atmosphere of chaos as these poor people have no idea what sort of further madness lies ahead in the 1980's under this guy's rule. In 1979, one era of disarray was ending while another was just waiting to be unleashed.
Aside from the thought-provoking implications found in its time period setting, there's still more than plenty to chew on in this season of Fargo with the incredible performances alone being enough of an entrancing attraction on their own. Patrick Wilson plays a level-headed everyman caught in a spiral of bedlam beautifully and Ted Danson as a similar archetype with just more age on him is similarly successful in his performance. The biggest success stories of the season in terms of acting, though, may be Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst as a married couple who finds themselves inadvertently swept up in a mob war.
Both of these two characters live life's of delusion centered around them clinging to fantastical ideas of prosperity; Ed wants to own the local butcher and start up his own family while Peggy surrounds herself with magazines that are chock full of pictures of the kind of life she wants to live while she also tries to assert her own sense of identity. These two just put their heads down and keep running towards visions of what they consider to be idealized realities, even as the brutal and bloody consequences of their actions mount around them. Jesse Plemons is terrific as Ed, a sorta sad sack kind of guy whom Plemons is able to flesh out into this very real human being.
Somehow even better is Kirsten Dunst as Peggy, an individual whose revealed to have not the strongest grasp on reality as the season goes on. Whether it's stabbing a hostage to teach him some manners or urging her husband to wreck a car to help them get away with accidentally killing a guy, there's this unpredictability in Peggy's every move made all the more enthralling by the casual air in which she composes herself. In her mind, she's just a normal woman looking to self-actualize herself, though it's easy to see that her view of reality frequently does not align perfectly with reality itself. Oh, and let's all give a round of applause to Bokeem Woodbine, who gives a menacing air to his hitman character while also delivering a number of soliloquies in a captivating manner. This guy's voice is so enchanting that I'm gonna be disappointed if his character in Spider-Man: Homecoming, The Shocker, doesn't get at least two monologues to deliver!
The words Woodbine speaks come from writer Noah Hawley, whose really just knocking it out of the park and then some for all of his screenplays for the season. The way he's able to use the 1970's so beautifully and manages to also establish all these intricate and complex connections between the countless characters factoring into the second season of Fargo is truly insane. For instance, let's all ruminate on how Hawley is able to introduce aliens, complete with a massive UFO, into the otherwise grounded season and make it feel organic to both the plot and the season it introduces. Let's also recognize the incredible ending of this season, with small-scale sequences contrasting two extremely different approaches to this o'l world. We get to see Hanzee Dent deciding to start his own criminal empire that will start its own branch of violence and misery despite knowing it will one day collapse. Meanwhile, Hank tells his daughter and son-in-law of his previously secret plan to create a universe language built on images.
His daughter responds to this with approvement.
"You're a good man." she says.
Hanks chuckles briefly and then responds with "Well...I don't know about all that. But I do like to think I have good intentions."
Hey, in a world gone to outright madness like the one seen throughout the masterful second season of Fargo, good intentions can serve as a vital reminder of the positive things we can do with our lives.
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