Post updated 1/7/24 — See update below.
In the fifth season of Noah Hawley’s Fargo series, based off of the 1996 Coen Brothers film of the same name, many of the Fargo-isms we’ve come to expect from the show remain, but the show itself has become an entirely different beast.
Fargo-isms—for lack of a better term—are things like subtle (or not-so-subtle) references to the movie; the exaggerated Minnesota accents; the over-use of the word “commode”; and the presence of characters who live outside the boundaries of cultural expectations and the law.
In Season 1, the character who lived outside the lines was Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo, a trickster demon of sorts who created chaos and mayhem wherever he went. He left a trail of bloody footprints in the snow, and ruined lives and lifeless corpses followed in his wake.
In Season 3, V.M. Varga was the nefarious beast that defied laws of man and god. David Thewlis’s villain was not so much trickster, but he was still very much a demon—and perhaps even more grotesque than Malvo—who existed outside the imagination of the poor saps who fell for his plotting and scheming.
The closest thing to a similar character in Season 5 is Sam Spruell’s Ole Munch, who is (possibly, we’re not quite sure yet) a centuries-old sin-eater. Whatever he is, he exists even further outside the laws and customs of humankind than Roy Tillman (John Hamm) the central villain of the series—a man who’s built his own little theocratic fiefdom, ruling over his rural county like a king or warlord, with impunity. In many ways, Tillman is just a thug who’s gotten away with it long enough to think he’s invincible.
The reappearance of his runaway child-bride Nadine/Dorothy (Juno Temple) has put that theory to the test, as Tillman suddenly finds himself facing not just a vengeful Munch, but also the deep pockets of Dorothy’s ruthless mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) the CEO of a giant debt collection agency.
It’s all a pretty great setup but something is missing from this season and every week I find myself trying to figure out what exactly that is—and why Season 5 pales in comparison to the first couple seasons, despite the great acting and obviously terrific production values. I write this as someone who really enjoyed the first couple of episodes. With each subsequent episode, however, I find myself less and less impressed.
In Episode 7, we followed Dorothy as she took a trip to dreamland, wandering to Camp Utopia where Tillman’s first wife, Linda, had set up a retreat for battered women. Here, we got a bunch of Roy and Dorothy’s backstory—which was quite horrible and violent—in the form of a rather clever puppet show. The fact that it was entirely a dream sequence, however, felt like a cheap trick. A narrative gimmick that Fargo ought to be above using.
In Episode 8, bizarrely, Dorothy seems to still not realize that this was all just a dream. She tells Roy’s son Gator (Joe Keery) that she found his mom and can take him to her. It’s not until she spots the windmill in the back of Tillman’s estate that she realizes everything was a dream. I found this puzzling because in last week’s episode, she wakes up in the diner before getting into the accident in the parking lot (which I assumed we’d learn more about but never did) though I suppose we can excuse that because of whatever head injuries she probably sustained.
Another thing that bugged me about this latest episode was Lorraine’s right-hand man and lawyer Danish Graves (Dave Foley) who decides to go to Tillman’s ranch alone after state trooper Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) tells him that Tillman has Dorothy and she doesn’t have much time. He knows this is a man who has resorted to kidnapping and murder to get Dorothy back, and yet heads to his compound alone without even telling anyone about it ahead of time. “If you’re so smart,” Tillman says before shooting him in the stomach, “why are you so dead?” I would like to know why the writers took an otherwise very smart character and made him do something this stupid also. It takes me out of the show when a character makes such obviously boneheaded choices.
More than anything, I think Season 5 isn’t clicking with me because the characters are so flat and one-dimensional. Season 1 was a terrific examination of Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) whose weakness made him do terrible things. Nygaard is, initially at least, a very sympathetic character. But the very slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that make us empathize with him are the same things that drive him to make terrible choices, over and over again, until he sinks under the weight of all his selfish, often despicable, decisions.
Roy Tillman, on the other hand, is just a Very Bad Man™. A lot of people online keep complaining that this season is “woke trash” but I don’t think that’s the problem. Tillman’s character is simply little more than a caricature. He lacks the oozy, unexpected wickedness of Varga. And unlike Nygaard, we feel no empathy toward him. Nygaard faces humiliation at every turn. His wife mocks him without mercy. His old high-school bully torments him. Lester’s life is unbearable before Malvo shows up. It’s his deal with the devil and its consequences that make Lester’s story so gripping.
But Tillman is just a cartoon devil to begin with. He’s a wife-beater and a wife-murderer, but his reasons are Just Because I Can, which isn’t particularly compelling as far as stories go. A good chunk of modern day politics are tossed into the mix, but these do nothing to shed any light on why Tillman is the way he is. They just let us know that he is a Trump guy, which isn’t particularly shocking or revealing in any meaningful way.
Meanwhile, Dorothy is a classic heroic figure, fighting the good fight with gusto. She’s smarter and more clever and often a better fighter than anyone around her, though I’m not really sure why or how she got this way. She ran away from Tillman when he nearly beat her to death as a teenager, and she’s spent the next decade creating a new life and identity for herself, and being a suburban housewife and mother. But even setting aside her knowledge of guns, booby-traps and all the rest, she’s just the opposite side of the same coin Roy Tillman can be found on. Good and evil. Black and white.
I thought Fargo was better when there were at least some shades of grey. It’s not that this series hasn’t had heroes and villains before. Francis McDormand’s Marge Gunderson was clearly a heroic figure in the film. But William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard wasn’t a cartoon villain. And Marge’s husband Norm (John Carroll Lynch) wasn’t a cartoon Deadbeat Husband™ like the loser in police officer Indira Olmstead’s (Richa Moorjani) caricature of a bad marriage.
Fargo has always been outlandish and over-the-top, and it’s certainly toyed around with caricature and larger-than-life villains before Season 5. But this season seems incapable of dealing with anything beyond caricature. Maybe that’s the subject matter. It’s hard to do domestic violence in anything but the starkest black and white terms. I get that. But maybe domestic violence isn’t the right subject matter for a show like Fargo to begin with.
I’m still curious to see what happens, but mostly just with Munch and Gator at this point. Tillman isn’t even remotely redeemable. Dorothy is clearly going to tap her ruby slippers and make it home. Indira is leaving that loser in the dust. Lorraine is getting a bit of redemption, though perhaps a little comeuppance, too. At the end of the day, what happens to Gator is the only particularly interesting thing left in this story—that and Munch’s role in all of it.
Update 1/7/24 — The Wizard Of Oz
Perhaps the most interesting bit of pushback I’ve received with regards to Season 5 is the notion that maybe all of this—Dot’s entire life after Tillman—is just a dream. This is something he told her explicitly in the latest episode, of course, but there are some interesting hints that this might be the case. Of course, if it is all a dream that raises a bunch of new questions and potential criticisms, since “it was all a dream” is such an overused gimmick at this point.
Of course, the first time it was used in cinema was in The Wizard Of Oz, and there are countless little hints and clues that this season is a parallel to Dorothy’s adventures in Oz.
We can start with her name: Dorothy Lyon. That combines two of the main characters in the show into one name. The lion of the film (and books) is the Cowardly Lion, which Dorothy is not, though I suppose she did run away from Roy. Perhaps her gentle husband, Wayne Lyon, could be the coward, though while he’s certainly a softer guy, we’ve never seen him act cowardly.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Then there’s Lorraine’s giant painting of the word “NO”. If you turn that word to the left, you get the word OZ. This seems intentional, right? Oz, it just so happens, is the same as the abbreviation for “ounce” which is what you measure gold with.
That leads us to the theme of debt running throughout the season, with Lorraine Lyon the Wizardess of Oz, lording over all the little people. Well, L. Frank Baum’s Wizard Of Oz is seen by many as a parable about the dangers of the Gold Standard. Dorothy followed the yellow brick (gold) road to the Emerald City (Washington D.C.) where she discovered that the Wizard of Oz was a total fraud. It was only her silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers in the film, to show off that lovely color) that saved her.
This can be seen as an allegorical nod to the good of the “silverites” led by Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan at the time, who opposed the “gold bugs” led by William McKinley. McKinley ultimately won the election and signed the Gold Standard Act in 1900, the same year Wizard of Oz was published.
The question now is whether we can link any of Fargo’s Season 5 cast to the other characters in Wizard Of Oz, which isn’t quite as easy as Dorothy to Dorothy. If you view the Scarecrow as a rural farmer with no brains, you could possibly link him to Gator. The Tinman could be Danish Graves, who doesn’t really seem to have a heart up until the end (I don’t think it can be Farr or Indira given how much they care). Ole Munch…maybe he’s the tornado? Then again, he could also be Ozma—the immortal princess of Oz. Not only is he immortal, he also appears quite feminine (if also quite feral) with that haircut and kilt. The 1985 film Return To Oz features Ozma, whose lines are dubbed by director Walter Murch’s daughter, Beatrice. Murch is awfully close to Munch as far as names go.
It’s possible that Roy Tillman is the wizard and Lorraine is the Wicked Witch—or it’s possible that Tillman is the witch and Lorraine is the Wizard. Lorraine’s husband is Wink Lyon, and The Winkies were a race of people native to Oz.
What about Toto? Well, in the film Toto is played by Terry, a Cairn Terrier. Cairn Terriers come from the Scottish highlands. Is there a character in the season with a Scottish-sounding name? Scotty, perhaps? This is worrisome, given the Wicked Witch does capture Toto at one point (in Kansas). There are others: Glinda could be Linda, though only because their names are similar. I don’t see any other connection, given Glinda is a powerful counter to the Wicked Witch of the West in Oz, but is (almost certainly) dead in Fargo. Indira also sounds a bit like Glinda (a bit) so that’s a possibility.
Other easter eggs include:
- A drawing of what appears to be a yellow brick road in Scotty’s room.
- When Scotty asks for pancakes, Dorothy says “Silver dollar, just like you like ‘em” a clear reference to silver vs gold.
- The whole puppet sequence is quite fantastical, and while not obviously Ozian, can certainly be viewed as such. Same with the fact that the entire thing was part of an extended dream sequence.
- The waitress asks her if she’s running to or from home. There’s no place like home, after all. Dorothy, of course, is doing both.
I’m sure I’m missing a ton of other little clues and allusions, but the fact is that much of this does point to Season 5 as a direct parallel to Dorothy’s adventures in Oz which are, in the end, just a dream—at least in the film. She wakes up in bed and all the friends she met in her adventure were just farm-hands and the like.
Does this mean that Dorothy in the show is just dreaming all of this up? I genuinely don’t think so, and I would be even more upset if that turns out to be the case. It would be a really cheap trick, for one thing. For another, there are simply too many scenes that occur apart from Dorothy, independent of her perspective, for this to be a dream (the entire Camp Utopia sequence was from her perspective, remember).
However, I do think the parallels are meant to make us think about Oz, and how Dorothy has, in many ways, created a false world for herself—a dream of sorts—to escape the nightmare of her previous life. She is on a quest to defeat the Wicked Witch and get her home back. And this is, by far, the best thing about Season 5, all the clever ways it achieves this and manages to also be a crime drama set in the modern-day American midwest.
If this all pays off, maybe Season 5 will prove me wrong, and my complaints about the characters being too one-dimensional—or the domestic violence themes too bleak—will be for naught. I hope so! I’m happy to be wrong!
I discuss all of this in my latest video:
What say you, dear readers? Do you share any of my complaints? I’m still entertained and I still look forward to this season each week, but it’s leaving me a bit cold. Let me know your thoughts on Twitter and Facebook.
