Are there SPOILERS ahead?
Oh yah’, you betcha’ young fella.’
I just finished the last episode of this season’s Fargo on FX. All I can say is, “Wow.”
When I first heard that a Fargo TV show was in the works, I hated the idea. The Fargo film is such a classic and so self-contained that it did not seem like it would be possible to improve onto it or add to it. If you haven’t seen it, you should. The movie follows a scheme by a wimpy, chronically disrespected car salesman played by William H. Macy to stage a fake kidnapping of his wife in order to extort money from his overbearing father-in-law. The kidnappers, one of them played by Steve Buscemi in what I recall to be one of the best performances of his early career, botch things up miserably and well, tragedy ensues. The evildoers are eventually rounded up by unlikely hero Margie, an exceptionally pregnant police officer. Throughout the movie, much fun is poked at the ways of the Northern Midwest, the overly polite manners of the people there, and their tendency to speak in pseudo-Scandanavian accents – “Oh yah,’ dontch’a know?”
Naturally, the Fargo TV series did capture some of the film’s themes. There’s a wimpy disrespected loser, Lester Nygaard, this time played by Martin Freeman. There’s a female police officer, played by Allison Tolman, but she doesn’t get pregnant until the end. Further homages to the film are made here and there, but for the most part, this is not an attempt to remake the movie so much as to tell another crime story set in the greater Fargo area.
The show becomes increasingly shocking – especially towards the end – the Las Vegas elevator scene and the scene where Lester sends his second wife into the shop, well, I’ll let you watch for yourself, but those scenes left my jaw scraping the floor.
I did worry that casting Key and Peele as two bumbling FBI agents might turn the whole show into a joke, but oddly enough, it did work.
Overall, a great show. FX continues to set the bar high in bringing quality entertainment.
Bookshelf Battle 