I’ve watched the previous four seasons of Fargo so I had a pretty good idea of what to expect: Weirdness and Violence. Noah Hawley writes a series of stories that follows the structure from the Coen Brothers’ classic movie, Fargo. Only Hawley amps up the weirdness and violence. For example, the first episode of Fargo, Season 5 (the first of 10 episodes) opens at a School Board meeting in a suburb of Minneapolis in 2019 that breaks into a riot. Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple who starred in Ted Lasso) gets arrested and that event triggers a violent home invasion.
Dot is hiding her past which involves a dictator-like Sheriff (played by Jon Hamm) and his psycho son, Gator (Joe Keery), and a kilt-clad mercenary, Ole Munch (Sam Spruell). The violence follows Dot as she tries to protect her loving husband, Wayne Lyon (David Rysdahl) and her daughter, Scotty Lyon (Sienna King).
Will Dot be able to defend herself and her family from the killers coming after her? Can she outwit her wealthy mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who despises Dot? I’ll be watching to find out! GRADE: INCOMPLETE (but treading towards an A)
I forgot about it’s first cablecast,, so looked at the on-demand play of 401 last night…drowning in commercials. I’ll look at 402 on Sunday and be able to skip the ads, either through recording it or “live-lagging” it. Some of it worked better than other parts (the police at the pullover were improbably dumb), but the content hasn’t yet discouraged me.
Or, even 501 and 502.
Todd, there are wild swings in all the FARGOs, but I’ve stayed with all of them no matter how wacky the action became!
All seasons of Fargo are still on my waiting-to-be-watched list. Maybe I’ll start them next year.
Fans of Fargo the movie should keep an eye out for Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, a 2014 Japanese film about a woman who thinks Fargo is a documentary, and thinks she has figured out where the money was buried. It’s really good. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be on any streaming service currently.
Jeff, thanks for the heads up! I’ll track down KUMIKO THE TREASURE HUNTER! Sounds great!
D’oh! How could I forget? Kumiko isn’t a Japanese movie, it’s an American one with a Japanese lead by David and Nathan Zellner, who also did a western called Damsel (not the currently-being-promoted movie called Damsel) that I really liked. Their films are definitely quirky. This one IS available on Amazon Prime.
You know, we loved the first series of FARGO with Billy Bob and Martin Freeman and especially Allison Tolman. The second was OK. Since then, it’s been downhill and just doesn’t appeal to us much. We tried the first episode this time, and halfway through we both agreed that despite some decent elements, it just wasn’t for us.
So, if it is for you, enjoy. It’s an hour a week we can watch something we like better.
Jeff, desperate times–post Actors and Writers strikes–demand desperate measures. My critical faculties adjust to the programming available. We were hoping the Jets could take down the Dolphins…but no. Maybe the Giants can beat the Patriots tomorrow…
Doesn’t it seem a log time before the bye week? The Giants are finally off next week. I know they would love to take down the Patriots.
No, the Jets offense still sucks.
I’ve now seen both 501 and 502…my spoiler-free take on that pair was sent to Dorothy-L, but for whatever reason I didn’t get it back from the list:
Well, the first episode is perhaps a bit too invested in laying pipe, and it has at least one character acting entirely too foolishly in the course of his business that definitely runs to plot convenience, but the second episode definitely picks up the pace, with various characters making enemies of one another in less-forced manners, and a certain parody, of this 2019-set season, of YELLOWSTONE and its core attitudes, and the old versus new power-structures of one of our US major political parties. I caught the pilot on demand, so was inundated with about 15-20 minutes worth of commercials, but catching the second episode in repeats this morning helped allow getting around that waste of time, via “live-lagging”…
Worth the look so far, even if the second is definitely an improvement on the season premiere.
(Also notable–the dozen or so producers on the series…)