Fargo
A lot of things have really bothered me about FX’s fifth season Fargo and every week I try to figure out exactly what it is that has gotten me wrong, especially in the last few episodes.
Ham politics are tumultuous, for one thing. This show was a little smarter when it came to bringing politics into the mix. At least the casting of Bruce Campbell as Ronald Reagan in season 2 was funny!
I’m also bothered by how black and white the conflict is at this stage of the game. Badass Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) is more of a caricature than anything else – just a cartoon villain without any depth. Juno Temple’s Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lyon is his complete opposite—heroic and good to the core. Even when she lies to her family, it’s only because she’s trying to protect them, or because she’s a victim who needs to lie to protect herself.
Season 1 main character Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) was given a lot more to work with. You sympathized with him at first and then had to reconcile that sympathy with all the terrible, selfish choices he made afterward. In Season 5, that complex character study is gone.
But another thing I’ve been thinking about is how hectic and unpleasant this season is when it comes to the subject matter. We knew almost from the beginning that Dot is on the run and living a fake life with a fake identity. We learn fairly quickly that her ex-husband, the evil Sheriff Tillman, is not evil. As the season has progressed, we’ve come to realize that he’s a lot worse than we expected. In episode 6, we see pictures of Dot after he beats her to death. In the next episode, creator Noah Hawley used a puppet show to further illustrate the abuse – a clever way to show something so horrific and difficult to watch (but note that this is also unique – in previous seasons, the unpleasant subject matter was not so horrible we couldn’t see it happening on screen).
In the most recent episode, Dot returns to Tillman’s compound, chained to a seat and beaten unconscious by Tillman after suffering a rather hilarious humiliation in a local election debate. Scott Tobias of the New York Times he does a great job explaining why this segment—and the season’s handling of domestic violence—is so wrong:
At this point, it might be worth asking how honest “Fargo” is about domestic violence. As deftly as show creator Noah Hawley has spun the thread of the comic book series this season, it can be hard to reconcile the show’s spontaneous, up-to-date, referential tone with the content warnings that the last two episodes carried. When Roy makes his long walk back to Dot at the shelter, after his humiliation at the county sheriff’s debate, a Lisa Hannigan cover of Britney Spears’ hit “Toxic” closes the soundtrack and strikes a bum note. “Dark” covers of pop songs have become a staple of movie trailers, and here’s the coming attraction for a kind of abuse the show isn’t sober enough to handle. What worked for the dolls in Camp Utopia feels more like genre exploitation here.
This is a great articulation of exactly how I’ve come to feel these last two episodes. There are times when dark humor and truly unsettling story beats can work wonders. You can keep the viewers off by dropping something horrible right after they laugh. Or you can follow up a terrible scene with something really funny for some much-needed comic relief.
But this topic is so dark, and for many so personal and triggering, that literal trigger warnings have been placed before these latest episodes and a domestic violence hotline number at the end. I don’t want to laugh at all, but Fargo he still wants to be funny. As Tobias notes, this is starting to feel more than a little exploitative.
I feel uncomfortable watching this season, but not in a good way. Watching previous seasons, I often felt uncomfortable. There are many awkward moments. Lots of tense moments. But the subject matter suited the tone. A dark crime drama of murder and mayhem with characters overcoming life in a twisted yet mundane setting. Fargo it works when it tells a story like that. When he tries to crack jokes—even dark jokes—right before a scene of horrific domestic violence, the whole thing falls apart. The juxtaposition of comedic (completely improbable) conversations with Tillman and his clones alongside the truly gruesome scenes of domestic violence gets me more than anything else.
The show can’t separate itself from its comedic undertones like Dorothy can from her pathetic husband, and so we’re left with a show that can never reconcile its tone and its subject matter. Fargo it may be trying to deal with domestic violence in a serious and sensitive way, but it’s supposed to be darkly hilarious. The problem is, nothing about Dorothy’s situation is even remotely funny.
