7: Fargo by Matt Haviland

Sophomore slump? Fargo started strong, spent the summer lifting weights, running miles, watching great cinema, reading philosophy, getting enlightened, and spraying its hair three different colors. It then bought a spanking new leather jacket before walking into school to ace every class, endear itself with all the teachers, become friends with everyone, get married, and die of a heart attack. When you read the yearbook for American Television Academy, with its stunning class of advertising salesmen, serial killers, and singing lawyers, one student will stand out from the rest. Captain of every team, creative genius, cherished friend, greaser punk.

While Fargo’s first season almost sheds the baggage of the film, characters come off refried, themes feel retread, and elements skew cartoonish. We’re astounded by this four-star Golden Age Fargo collage, but when someone redoes William H. Macy and Frances McDormand, you ask them, “Why rewrite Hamlet?” Season two’s sprawling 1970s prequel series sheds more and plays familiar notes with verve. Butcher Ed Blomquist (Jesse Plemons) echoes Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) at a backwoods gas station, but instead of Buscemi’s horrifying, edgy sincerity, we’re given Midwestern good manners while Ed smiles sheepishly. Other Coen brothers films are there, too. Burn After Reading bureaucracy, Miller’s Crossing gangster drama, Barton Fink typewriters, everything refreshed. No Country for Old Men overtones include the gas station clerk (who’s one step away from saying, “This is my wife’s father’s place”), white-knuckle phone calls, and Hanzee Dent (Zahn McClarnon), who resembles Anton Chigurh with his menacing silence, serene gunshots (often staged like Chigurh’s), and retreats to patch himself up.

And Hanzee’s one character. Who doesn’t love Bokeem Woodbine’s Mike Milligan, who holds you speechless with mesmerizing speech (one highlight finds him dismantling the concept of revolution using astronomy and one slowly revolving hand)? How about Kirsten Dunst as the beleaguered beautician embracing personal power while avoiding serious consequences? We haven’t even gotten to Patrick Wilson’s Zen state trooper, Cristin Milioti’s steadfast hearth keeper, Ted Danson’s heart-driven, old-hand-sheriff grandfather, the entire Gerhardt clan, countless embarrassing police officers, the Kansas City mafia, and guest stars who evolve, congeal, and astound while everyone else somehow feels like a grass-fed main character.

Aliens, Midwesterners, and gangsters, oh my! Fargo operates on the maximalist philosophy. Oftentimes this season, I’ve felt like I do listening to Daft Punk’s “Giorgio by Moroder.” This is the Golden Age of Television shedding its notions of bondage and flying wholeheartedly into whatever blue skies there are: split screens, seventies tunes, staggering casting, and all. What we’re doing here with this television thing is infinite. We’re gonna narrate an episode like Wes Anderson reading a history book? Okay. We’re gonna Rashômon a scene from earlier while various characters come and go? Alright. We’re gonna recite “Jabberwocky” while everyone gears up for chaos? Why not? We’re gonna borrow Coen brothers themes, setups, archetypes, smashing everything into some postmodern rainbow? Great emotional depth. Great action scenes. Great speeches everywhere. Greatest season ever? Greatness, goodness, golly gee.

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