No. 3. Fargo' Bloodbath? You Betcha
3) Fargo: Last year, Noah Hawley’s miniseries was one of the sleeper hits of the year, pulling off the high-wire stunt of channeling the Coen Brothers, while writing every episode himself. Last year’s version owed as much to Old Country for No Men as to Fargo: the Movie, but, man, did it work.
This season, Hawley's dipping into the same trough—a huge body count juxtaposed against the comings and goings of polite and slightly clueless Midwesterners. But this time he's shifted the tone just slightly. Just enough. Fargo 2.0 is a period piece, and the trip back to 1979 comes complete with Oscar Gamble Afros, double knits and split screen edits. And race and gender politics have become part of the landscape, as well, with Kirsten Dunst skirting the right side of the line between ditsy and dumb.
But season 2, the story revolves around the young Lou Solverson, played with stoic subtlety by Patrick Wilson. In Season 1, the bloodbath took the lawmen and women completely by surprise. But, this time Lou, a Vietnam vet whose wife has come down with cancer, senses something all-too-familiar in this mindless violence. And it's that familiarity that informs Fargo's most meaningful moments, where we find Lou together, at home, with his daughter and his wife. For now, at least.
