Season 2 Fargo

This second season is created with just as much mastery as the first. Starting  off with the same cryptic message and star studded cast. 

This time the story is a little different though. The cop is a lot smarter and tougher. A breath of fresh air from what we had in season 1. To replace the bad guys, we have a family with its fangs in the heart of its community financing and financed by crime. The director uses tight camera shots to encode a feeling of desperation and fear. I hate (ok like) the scene with the patriarch as he struggles with his health as the DOP zooms in to his face creating quite a frightful experience. 

Kieran Culkin brother to McCauly Culkin plays one of the younger brother is in crime family (Gerharts) delivering a masterful though brief performance that forms the heart of season 1. The family dynamics which constituted Succession also makes its way into this season with interesting back and forth between the potential heirs. 

I have had of people often describe the setting as a character within itself and this is the sense you get when you see the long abandoned roads and the winter cold. 

Then there is the dreamy wife (Kirstie Dunts of Spider-Man fame) who does have a job as a hairdresser whose boss though single has made it her goal to recruit her into her cult of feminism and emancipation. She is clearly troubled and wants out of this rural town. Something you see mirrored in season 1 with Nygaard’s Asian American (Linda Park) colleague who later confesses her love and infatuation for him. The wife of the butcher wants out while her devoted husband is digging in trying to get a hold of his dream to own the only butchery in the small town. 

Fargo makes good use of the unfortunate set of events which often causes people of all sorts to face each other. 

As was in the first season, we see the resume of enforcers from a rival group coming into the city to upset the Apple cart. Whereas in the first season one of the killers was deaf, this time around there is a pair of brothers who wear similar clothes but who say nothing throughout the season. 

The writer has an insane ability to make audiences laugh at the most unfortunate situations like the scene where a couple visits a doctor about a life threatening illness. 

This season feels like a tribute to men and the troubles they go through in defense of those they love. Perhaps a useful summary quote or story of the show is the conversation between butcher’s wife and sherif where he makes mention of the man who wakes up every day to push a boulder up a hill only for it roll right back. Instead of realizing this unavoidable problem he wakes up the next day to do the very same thing. 

Season 1 Fargo

This show starts off with a cryptic note telling the audience of the idea that what they are about to experience (not just watch) is based on real life and true.  This for most means that the tale will be told as is and will be as exciting as watching pain dry on a wall. 

Ah but Fargo season one is a lot more than that. The protagonist is a short and unassuming man trying to do his job as an insurance agent at a small firm in rural America. He has a part ridden with all sorts of sad but funny stories which place him as the underdog in almost all his school years. A local bully still rides him just as hard and to add insult to injury this same bully’s sons have inherited the same disrespect which they shovel out to him in massive amounts. As if this is not enough, he has a sarcastic wife who has made it her mission to berate him and ridicule him on every single act in his home. Martin Freeman delivers on this role with such as sense of innocence and bewilderment all captured in his magical facial expressions. 

During one of his challenging experiences with his childhood foe, a stranger passes through town whose role will be pivotal in the transformation of Lester Nygaard. 

After a series of unexpected events, Lester is thrown into the middle of an investigation in a town that has not seen any crime in a long time. At the helm is the newly promoted Captain (Bob Odenkirk later on to star in Better Call Saul) whose blind trust in the Lester is so annoying. His understudy in the meantime is a lady (Played by Allison Tolman) who will not take no for an answer. She must plow though the evidence at the chagrin of her boss who does everything in her power to steer him away from this case. Everything she turns her hand to seems to yield more and more results with her keen detective eye. 

In this town too there is a single dad whose fears for his daughter are plaguing his judgement after a chance meeting with a visibly cruel man. 

As though this is not enough the aforementioned crime has drawn in a duo of ill intentioned men who will stop at nothing to solve this crime. 

Lester has to deal with the attention he gets from the nosy detective as well as emerge from the shadow of his more popular brother. 

The whole show is really about transformation. The growth of Lester from victim, the attempt by the frightened single father to deal with his fears. The changes that Lester’s sole guardian (naive protector of his high school image) must go through as life’s realities hit his town. 

If there is anything that the show does effectively is make the audience cheer for villains out of understanding as well as appreciate the skill displayed by clearly evil men. What is clear at the end is that justice desk in the end prevail.