I was a big fan of FX’s Fargo last year. It’s not really an original thought at this point, but for all the love directed at True Detective, Noah Hawley’s adaptation of the 1996 Coen brothers film was a far more compelling series with a tighter story, more poignant characters and an ending that may have not been dramatically satisfying to some, but was not a letdown.
So I was certainly anticipating season two of the show. Though Hawley quickly distinguished his version of Fargo from the original movie, making clear that this was not a made-for-TV adaptation of a feature film, how would the series fare as it stepped further away from the Coen brothers’ shadow to continue establishing its own voice and building standalone stories in an anthology format, with a different set of characters and storylines each season?
Well, the set of characters isn’t entirely different in season two. Fulfilling speculation and some hopes among fans, season two does jump back into the past from the first season — to 1979, to be exact — and provides at least one familiar name to hang onto: state trooper Lou Solverson.
In season one, we saw the older version of the character, played by Keith Carradine. He’s a former cop who now runs a diner, father to Deputy Molly Solverson, who was essentially our protagonist and hero. This time around, we get the younger version of Lou, now played by Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring), raising young Molly with his terminally ill wife (Cristin Milioti, How I Met Your Mother), who could turn out to be the most entertaining character in the cast. Solverson is the lead investigator on a shooting at a Minnesota diner that goes very wrong.
https://youtu.be/dFVNi8gUEy4
But it takes a little while for the season two premiere to get there. In fact, as you watch, you may feel like the episode is taking far too long to get to anything interesting. It starts off very slowly, with a prologue that begins amusingly enough, taking place on the set of an old 1950s film titled “Massacre at Sioux Falls.” The point of this opening doesn’t really make sense, though the title of the movie is surely a hint, but the impression (assumption?) is given that it probably will as the story unfolds. What we do know is that Ronald Reagan is in this movie and everyone on set is waiting for him — thus the title of this first episode, “Waiting for Dutch.”
Following a montage of what was going on in the world during 1979, highlighted by President Jimmy Carter speaking of the crisis of confidence America faced about the future, we proceed to meet each of the characters that will presumably play an important — or somewhat important — role in this second season.
The Gerhardts are a family who run a small-time crime operation in Sioux Falls, extorting individuals and businesses for money. But matriarch Floyd (Jean Smart) does the bookkeeping and finds that some aren’t paying their share — funding their own pursuits of gambling, drugs and prostitutes — and leaving the Gerhardt operation short on cash. Meanwhile, the youngest of the clan, Rye (Kieran Culkin), has aspirations of his own (beyond his actual capabilities as a wanna-be gangster) which have fatal consequences and set the story in motion.
Besides the good guys and bad guys, however, there are the seemingly normal people who get caught up in criminally abnormal circumstances, much like Martin Freeman’s Lester Nygaard in season one. In this narrative, it appears to be young couple Ed (Jesse Plemons, Friday Night Lights) and Peggy (Kirsten Dunst) Blomquist. Ed is an apprentice at a butcher shop and wants the simple pleasures a life should yield: his own business (he’s in line to take over the shop) and a family. But as we see and hear in a dinner table conversation, it’s clear that Peggy wants so much more from life, aspiring to something more meaningful than being a housewife and mother.
The tension, both spoken and unspoken, between husband and wife makes this the best scene of the episode, despite its seemingly simple circumstances. (Although the following scene in the Blomquists’ garage is more visually exciting, with one great shot involving a flashlight.) As it turns out, Peggy sort of gets her wish for a more interesting, dramatic existence, as Rye Gerhardt’s failed criminal ambitions fall almost literally into her lap and pull Ed in for the ride.
If you watched season one of Fargo, you can see the narrative similarities in season two, at least in what’s established so far in the first episode. We have the supposedly innocent dragged into covering up a terrible incident, perhaps tapping into darker impulses. There’s a local crime family attempting to protect their territory, while also looking to expand the operation. And then we have the small-town law enforcement, whose idyllic charm is shattered by a gruesome crime, suddenly facing something with implications that reach farther than could have been imagined.
The pieces are certainly in place for a compelling second season. And though the first episode dragged for its first two-thirds, think of how many times a new season of Mad Men or The Sopranos debuted following months — and sometimes years — of hype, only to have a premiere that left some wondering what the big deal was all about. That’s not to say Fargo should be on the same shelf with those two shows. Not yet, anyway. It’s far too early to say, and the series has a long way to go. But the fact that Fargo takes its time with scenes, some of which are beautifully shot, makes it stand out on the TV landscape. Obviously, the hope is that the payoff justifies the slow, simmering build-up.