‘Fargo’ Season 5 Is a Lean and Mean Trip Through a Walled-Off Midwest
Lorraine Lyon, the CEO of a private debt collection company and matriarch of the Lyon family, is sitting for an interview. Dressed modestly in a black skirt and jacket adorned with gold buttons, yet surrounded by her sleek marble-floored office space, Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) listens patiently as the reporter asks how her business soared to record profits by buying consumer debt other collectors wrote off as “uncollectible.” “Here’s what you need to understand about Americans,” she says, unperturbed by the question’s doubtful implications. “They don’t want a handout. What they’re looking for is an opportunity to fix it themselves. We give them that.”
Like any good spin artist, Lorraine laces her plainly contemptible conduct with grains of truth. While no sane person would object to the sudden dissolution of their obscene medical bills or interest-inflated credit card debt, they may, in fact, like to fix such problems on their own; to believe they can work hard enough, save long enough, and plan carefully enough to get out from under the crushing charges that have been designed to do exactly that: crush them. After all, these days a helping hand can seem suspicious. Isn’t that what hospitals and credit cards are for? To help you feel better, either with essential medicine or covering expenses? Asking for help after asking for help is hard for people, but especially Midwesterners, who are more likely to apologize for their own house going up in flames than to ask you, their neighbor, to turn on the hose. (Growing up in rural Illinois, I am familiar with the feeling.)
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“Fargo” understands this. Noah Hawley’s FX series has long juxtaposed the sincere and faux niceties of North Dakota-adjacent Americans to illustrate greater truths about the country at large. In Season 5, the series examines a creeping insularity; a desire to wall-up whatever people deem theirs to protect it from whatever’s outside. These characters, well-intentioned and otherwise, want to believe they can fix their problems themselves, if they’re just left alone long enough to do so. But time and time again, “Fargo” shows just how destructive such an isolated approach can be.
And boy howdy, is it fun to watch! After a sprawling, far-reaching “Year Four,” Hawley tightens his focus to a singularly pivotal relationship. Dorothy “Dot” Lyons (Juno Temple) is, by all appearances, a classic Minnesotan housewife. She raises money for the local library. She cooks a hearty breakfast every morning. She loves her daughter, Scotty (Sienna King), and husband, Wayne (David Rysdahl). But her life-altering connection isn’t with any of her current family. Heck, she wouldn’t even consider the man of her nightmares to be family at all — not anymore.
Looming in her memory is Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), a Bible-thumping cowboy who just so happens to rule over a wide swath of North Dakota. “Maybe you weren’t paying attention but I am the law around her,” Roy tells a few interloping outsiders. “Removable only by the governor or my constituents, who love me by the way, because I say what I want and I do as I please.” He sure does, whether that’s exacting frontier justice on an abusive husband or excusing his own domestic dominance by way of chapter and verse. Roy’s got his own ranch, his own crew, and his own police department at his disposal. His son, Gator (Joe Keery), is his right-hand man for all three: living on the estate, dolling out his dad’s advice to their wranglers, and serving as a vape-smoking police deputy to boot.
Despite his expansive and powerful network of resources, Roy hasn’t been able to track down Dot for some time. She’s in the wind, so to speak, until an accident at a local school board meeting gets her in trouble with the local authorities — and puts her back on Roy’s radar. That’s a problem for a number of reasons. First, her current family has no clue who Roy is or how he knows Dot. Second, Roy isn’t much for sharing, so if he wants to see Dot, then she may not get to see her family for some time. While all this is a bit befuddling for Wayne, a man of simple wants who dotes on Dot like the lovestruck husband he is, it’s dubious to Lorraine, Dot’s mother-in-law. She’s got a fortune to protect, and as soon as people start asking questions about her son’s wife, this gun-toting wealth hoarder is ready to go to war.
The Lyonses vs. the Tillmans, Minnesota vs. North Dakota, the rich vs. the powerful, with everyone else caught in between. “Fargo” keeps its core narrative taut in Season 5. When men in masks start roaming the streets, it’s never a mystery who’s behind disguise. Still, pairing as nicely as it always does with his incisive dialogue and eccentric characters, Hawley has more than a few cryptic surprises up his sleeve. Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) is, at first, another enigmatic goon; the smart, silent partner to his slow, doomed cohort. But his role grows in leaps and bounds once he disperses with his initial duties. Ole’s perspective serves the season’s most outlandish swing, which works in part because he’s caught in between poles; both a man utterly of his own designs, and a tool wielded by others.
Temple and Hamm are, fittingly, the two top performers. Her commitment to deconstructing “Minnesota nice” is enthusiastic and excellent — not in the sense that her accent is regionally perfect, but in the more critical sense that it’s true to her character, heightening around her family and easing when she lets her guard down. Hamm, meanwhile, is having a ball. He’s so good at being smug and entitled — eight years playing Don Draper will do that — but even better at sliding an unexpected insult under the door (a credit to his comedic exploration in the years since).
Other highlights include Leigh, whose purring cadence adds menace to every line; Lamorne Morris’ straight-laced cop, Witt Farr; Keery’s hopelessly devoted, hopelessly insufficient son, Gator; and Richa Moorjani as Indira Olmstead, a dedicated but increasingly disillusioned officer trapped between looking out for herself and serving a community that’s all but unrecognizable to her. “What’s the world coming to is all I’m saying,” she says to Dot. “Neighbor against neighbor.”
Isolationism meets authoritarianism, individualism vs. the social safety net. “Fargo” remains a show about national, big-picture battles, but Season 5 also finds its swagger by savoring a sharp central narrative. The premiere features two long stretches of silent tension, where traits like cunning and ingenuity spark a natural rooting interest and more than a few laughs. Ideological debates are centered around charismatic characters and delivered with a blunt playfulness that comes across as natural-enough conversation that’s still packed with divine wit. “Fargo” Season 5 is more concentrated than years past, but its individualized attentions not only make for a lean and mean dark-comic thriller; they also befit a story about the dangers of walling yourself off from the world.
Grade: B+
“Fargo” Season 5 premieres Tuesday, November 21 at 10 p.m. ET with two episodes on FX. New episodes of the 10-episode season will be released weekly.
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