"Fargo" Season 5 is Surreal & Stellar

Juno Temple and Jon Hamm lead this season's cast of crime caper misfits in a game of cat and mouse, or tiger and lion, as this story abides by.

Fargo Season 5 is playing on Hulu

Grade: A (Storytelling, acting and pacing of the crime(s) and its denouement are all top notch)

Created by: Noah Hawley

Trigger Warning: Scenes of domestic abuse and violence against women.

Spoilers below for Fargo. Also a few shows you should watch after Fargo at the bottom of this post.

“Our necessities never equal our wants.”

- Ben Franklin (THE Ben Franklin)

The Tiger & The Sin Eater

Set in 2019, the latest installment of the original Coen Brothers, now entirely Noah Hawley steered production of Fargo, the series, gives us its signature “Minnesota nice” cultural backdrop and infuses elements of crime alongside everyday people caught up in bad decisions. In the case of Season 5, those decisions are not always made by the innocents as in seasons’ past. This comment is a nod to Season Two’s Peggy Blumquist (Kirsten Dunst) making all kinds of poor plans and digging herself in a deeper rut from which she can’t emerge.

This season’s “woman we all root for” is Dot played by the luminous actress Juno Temple in an understated, yet powerful performance very against type. By “type,” I’m alluding to her bubbly, telegenic, more fun-seeking character in Ted Lasso, Keeley Jones. Dot is very much on surface the opposite of Keeley. She doesn’t wear makeup, her muted, shapeless clothes are simple, and she lives for the small creature comforts (Bisquick, her daughter Scotty and her husband, Wayne) afforded by a life hard won and earned.

Source: THR/ Dot (Juno Temple) as the steadfast homemaker spinning up her Bisquick buns magic.

Dot is a survivor. And not in the way you and I navigate the world and are by definition “surviving” by virtue of the fact that we’re not dead. I’m not talking the nuances of a state of being. No, Dot is someone who even when chained up in a hut in the middle of Maga land with no presumable path to live, will dig her way out of it. I think you or I might wave the white flag when faced with those ominous odds.

At the end of the very first episode, we witness the transformation of Dot, a reserved, pragmatic homemaker into a formidable “tiger,” a nickname that our lovable, freaky, sin eating supernatural, not-quite-human hitman Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) anoints her after a particularly hairy run-in that involves him trying to capture her. It’s a life-or-death showdown in which Dot makes it clear she’s not quitting this life or any other after saving a policeman, named Witt (Lamorne Morris). Ole scurries away with his skirt flapping in the cold Minnesota Winter air, vanishing literally into thin air.

In a Munch-lore interlude in one of the early Fargo episodes, we learn that Ole Munch has been condemned to the role of sin-eating assassin for a crime which reads more like he was the unpopular guy in the religious bunch and that’s not saying much considering it happened 500 years ago. With his Playmobil haircut and gruesome teeth, he’s every bit at terrifying as Javier Bardem’s Anton in No Country for Old Men, also by the Coen Brothers. Ole grows on you over time, however, via his unspoken, thoughtful language with Dot and his respect for her which changes him for the better.

It’s Trump’s Tillman’s World. We’re all Just Living Unhappily In It.

Could Jon Hamm be any more in demand? Fresh off playing a more appealing version of an Elon Musk tycoon narcissist on The Morning Show and his hilarious cameo as a Sex Ed coach in Mean Girls (2024), he brings us his most vile role ever in the form of sub human aspiring politician, Roy Tillman, our resident villain.

Roy Tillman is a powerful deity of a sheriff with nipple rings (see pic below) living in North Dakota whose life intertwines with that of Dot’s from the first episode when he tells his son to arrange a kidnapping scheme which involves taking Dot from her house and bringing her back to his farm. Forgo all thoughts of peaceful pastures. This farm is a place where dead bodies get buried literally and people disappear.

Another Theme: The Useless Hand

Roy is on his third wife, whom he hits routinely and uses violence as a tool to keep everyone in line, including his son, a “useless hand” (see penultimate episode) played by Stranger Thing’s Steve (Joe Keery) here a character named Gator. Keery performs well in a very different kind of role which showcases his range and notably, his ability to play a despicable person. Still, Roy is worse and when he finally discards his son for being a “useless hand,” meaning someone who holds no value in Roy’s eyes, you realize that there are other useless hands tapping about this season.

Hamm leans into the Far Right menacing antagonist caricature with a little too much gusto but it works for the show. In a particular scene in episode 9, he expresses his contempt for the “deep state” via live stream and says that they are coming for him with their tanks and guns. He loads up his militia and appeals to his viewers/base to come and fight the “evil feds.” It would be laughable if it weren’t so realistic. A little while ago, the former president and current frontrunner for the Republican Party said something very similar, “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.”

Paying the debt. Repaying a debt. Forgiving debt. Ode to a theme.

Fargo always gifts us with a formidable female detective and in this way, this season is no different. If Dot is our tiger, Indira (Never Have I Ever’s Richa Moorjani) is our bear, a mama bear, at that. In fact, I thought she was pregnant (not because of appearance) for like 4 episodes, which I can’t tell you why I thought this, but potentially it’s due to her strong, sensitive portrayal of Indira that speaks to mother-like superpowers.

Indira is married to a true lowlife named Lars who is played by the actor from The White Lotus season 1 whose character had butt sex with the hotel manager (which apparently is memorable enough to call it out here) and they are in serious financial debt because of him. He has racked up credit card debt from his fantasies of being a drummer and now a golfer. He doesn’t work. She supports his dreams - however unrealistic they are. This debt weighs heavily on Indira and eventually forces her to make a career change, playing the hand she’s dealt and throwing this “useless hand” to the side.

Lars and Indira having a serious conversation in which he advises her to “wife up”

Witt (Lamorne Morris), the kindly and noble detective who Dot saves in the first episode gave his life to repay his debt to Dot because she had previously saved him from an early death. Roy Tillman, Dot’s ex husband, goes after Dot for a debt he feels entitled to (as if it’s owed him).

Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Dot’s mother-in-law and Waynes mom, is a wealthy entrepreneur whose entire business is debt collection. She earns her keep feeding off of other people’s inability to pay their debt or be pardoned of debt. I suppose she’s a cat, too now that I consider her name. Though I already likened Roy to a lion, it may be a more fitting animal representation of Lorraine. Lorraine benefits off of the fear of debt in others and she’s skilled at manipulating that for her own gain. Granted, she at times, she is capable of channeling her energies into more redeeming places, capitalizing on debt is her livelihood.

I’ll say this for Lorraine. She has some of the best one-liners in the show and her repartee with any foe is delightful. Lorraine goes up against Roy and makes mincemeat of him, clearly. Also, I’m just waiting on the Baby Tilman gif where they make a Boss Baby out of him. I’m not sure why apart from 11pm doomscrolls on Instagram.

Sticking with January’s ode to mysteries, murder and crimes:

Wait. Watch This Too.

Monsieur Spade on AMC and AMC+ - Still in its early stages, but two episodes in and I’m hooked. Clive Owen reprises the role of Sam Spade, formerly Humphrey Bogart’s rightful role (Maltese Falcon) but Owen makes it his own. Spade now lives in France and the time period spans post-WW2 and the Algerian War, which was a part of history I wasn’t as close to and has been interesting to learn about. Sure, Spade is full of cliches but Owen feels at home walking in Spade’s shoes and swimming naked in his deceased wife’s almost-infinity pool when the mood strikes. I’ll take it.

I wrote about this one a little while back and it holds. I want you all to watch. It also has Clive Owen, but he’s not the star here. It’s Emma Corrin and Harris Dickinson.

Maybe Skip This One.

Death and Other Details on Hulu. I couldn’t make it through the first episode without getting really bored, but I might revisit it because I love the premise of Only Murders in The Building meets The White Lotus meets Death on the Nile and it’s Mandy Patinkin with a faux British accent. Still, I’d rather watch Peter Ustinov play Hercule Poirot in an early 80s Agatha Christie film adaptations as opposed to Patinkin playing Ustinov playing Poirot. The accent feels forced. The lead looks like a Gwyneth Tenenbaum and the clothes are stylized to make you think you’re watching a period piece out of the 1920s but wait, there are cell phones, so no. Ugh.