Director and writer Noah Hawley presented a very different television experience over the course of 10 years with the series “Fargo”, which was inspired by the movie of the same name, presented by the Coen brothers in 1996.
The first season of “Fargo” was shown in 2014, and achieved critical and popular success. Directors Ethel, Joel, and Quinn were impressed with the new work, and joined as executive producers. Then the seasons followed, each separate with its own events, characters, and the time period it covers, but uniting many similar features, which essentially go back to the original film.
The fifth season of the series is currently being shown, starring Jon Hamm and Juno Temple, who were nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the acting category, while the entire series was nominated for the Best Miniseries Award.
Minnesota is TV crime country
The events of the film and series “Fargo” take place in the state of Minnesota in the United States, an area with harsh and extremely cold weather, which is reflected in the behavior of its residents in the form of cruelty, caution, and a lot of indifference towards what is happening in their lives. Their days seem similar, with short days and endless nights.
Each season begins with an ordinary person who cannot imagine committing a greater crime than not following traffic lights, but his path intersects with evil forces, which brings him, against his will, into a conflict that makes him abandon many of his principles at times.
The fifth season of the series does not change this opening, as we initially get to know “Dorothy,” the housewife who lives in the suburbs with her husband and daughter. The controversy intensifies in one of the parents’ council meetings, and leads to fistfights, so she is taken to the police station, and there, after… Taking her fingerprints, her quiet life enters a new turn, as an enemy returns to her from the past, whom she thought she had completely misled.
The plot begins to unfold gradually. Unlike previous seasons, in which the viewer learns about all the relationships between the characters, and the most important event occurs during the first and second episodes, and then the viewer follows the results over the course of the remaining eight episodes, here everything happens in the opposite direction.
The viewer follows two parallel narrative lines, the first of which takes place in the present, and presents Dorothy’s attempt to escape from her ex-husband, the police, and her new husband’s mother simultaneously, while the second line explores the characters’ past using flashbacks and dialogue.
Trump is present and absent
The series’ makers excelled at representing the time periods they presented in previous seasons, such as the beginning of the millennium in the first season and after the Vietnam War in the second season. Likewise, in the fifth season, they reread the history of the United States in the Trump era and the pre-Covid-19 world in a very intelligent way. And make these details simply appear within the events.
The events of the fifth season of the “Fargo” series take place in 2019 in the months preceding the Corona epidemic, but more importantly, it takes place during the rule of former US President Donald Trump, who appeared on a television screen as one of the characters during one of his speeches.
That timing was not random. The police chief, Roy Tillman, in the rural city that Dorothy left, and at the same time the husband she fled from, believes in conservative values that tend to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, and color, and is represented by the former president. He used the same ideas to torture his wives and rule… His city with iron and fire under the nose and eyes of the authorities higher than him.
The series also focused on the American economic crisis that middle-class people are experiencing, tying them to higher education and mortgage debt. The mother of the heroine’s second husband owns a giant company that benefits from this deteriorating economic situation, and her wealth is multiplied by buying back debts, increasing their interest, and collecting them in devious ways.
This woman and the police chief represent organized crime, which is a recurring theme in other seasons of the series, but here it is a crime that gains its existence from manipulating the law and the American Constitution, which can be re-adapted and its loopholes exploited in a way that makes a small town appear as if it has independent rule as a result of the power and tyranny of its ruler. A woman who owns a commercial company acts as the owner of an endless number of slaves, whose debts she exploits to subjugate them.
A mixture of nostalgia and renewal
Despite the change in the time period covered by the series and the difference in the cast of actors, there are many links that connect this season, “Fargo,” to the previous seasons and the movie, the first of which is the construction of the plot itself and the choice of a heroine from the middle class, and the scene of her kidnapping in the first episode, which is similar to the scene of the kidnapping of the wife in Coen brothers movie.
In addition to the policewoman investigating these crimes, who is considered the heiress of actress Frances McDormand – the first female policewoman in “Fargo” – which leads to more similarities such as the policewoman’s peaceful husband, the car showroom owned by the victim’s husband, and most importantly the deranged killer who commits the crime out of love for her without… Any material incentives, which makes his actions unexpected for everyone.
These similarities represent the puzzle or the game of searching for hidden pieces that attract viewers who love the series, as they make them expect part of what they are watching, but at the same time they do not reveal much due to the changes in the use of the puzzle keys, which makes the episodes of the series fresh and intelligent, and calls for a sense of nostalgia at the same time. One.
In its fifth season, the series “Fargo” did not depend only on the exciting plot or the viewers’ feeling of nostalgia for the rest of the series, but also on the performances of the actors. Each of Jon Hamm, Juno Temple, and Jennifer Jason Leigh gave distinguished performances in a different and complex role, whether “Dorothy,” the woman who… She only wishes for peace with her new family, but she turns into a fierce tigress when she defends this happiness, or the police chief Roy Tillman, who turns the myth of the highly romantic American cowboy around to show the other side of her, represented by the narcissistic personality with disturbed values and brute force, and finally Lauren Lyon, mother. The violent capitalist husband who only speaks the language of money.
The fifth season of “Fargo” was admired by both critics and viewers with a rating of 96% and 93% respectively from the “Rotten Tomatoes” website, but more important than the numbers is that it demonstrated the ability of director and writer Noah Hawley to create new plots within the same framework for the fifth time.
