Fargo Season 5 Shifts Slightly But Does It Brilliantly (Review)
A batch of episodes where Juno Temple shines, and which recounts the ongoing implosion of the United States. The best season since the first?
Still stunned by Donald Trump’s mandate, Hollywood has barely taken the time to process its many repercussions. Like preparation for the film Civil War by Alex Garland, who will tell in a few months the total collapse of the United States, showrunner Noah Hawley keeps the original recipe of Fargo but takes a step aside to examine an America on the verge of implosion, where everyone lives in isolation. “ The world is becoming like this. It’s neighbor against neighbor “, says at one point Dorothy Lyon (Juno Temple, astonishingly versatile), heroine of this new batch of episodes which skillfully plays with the cliché of “Minnesota nice” – a stereotype of the inhabitants of the state, necessarily courteous, reserved and unable to express their emotions.
It’s 2019 – never Fargo had never come so close to the present -, right in the middle of Trump’s reign, and Dorothy is therefore a smiling housewife, a priori without fuss, who is caught up in her past: suddenly kidnapped at breakfast, she manages to free himself at the cost of a lot of audacity and an astonishing ability to handle weapons… His muscular escape left two dead, both among the kidnappers and the police officers who were passing by. In the middle of the night, bleeding, Dorothy reappears at home, confidently assuring that nothing special has happened… Her husband doesn’t understand it, any more than the local cops or his filthy and extremely wealthy beau. -mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), obviously alerted by this sudden disappearance. But what is this woman hiding?
Dying system
Further away, on a ranch in North Dakota, we meet Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm, quite exceptional), a giant frog sheriff with his own conception of the law. “ People love me because I say what I want and I do what I want,” cowardly, between two quotes from verses from the Bible, this pure Trumpian product in love with the Constitution. Proudly redneck and drunk with his omnipotence, the misogynist and patented racist wants to get his hands back on his wife, Nadine, who disappeared overnight, who now calls herself… Dorothy.
These two worlds continue to collide violently during this particularly successful season 5, which, through its unexpected (really unexpected) breaks in tone and finely crafted writing, manages to maintain its dark humor throughout its ten episodes. .
Hawley describes how Trump’s new American dream has transformed its inhabitants into angry babies, incapable of socializing, ready to draw out weapons at the slightest annoyance. And the first victims of this dying system are women (except the rich, obviously), treated like objects (“the grab them by the pussy » left traces) or punching bags. The trajectory of Dorothy/Nadine, a tireless, almost fantasized fighter who puts men in their rightful place, is obviously to be taken as a warning: the world is changing and “Minnesota nice” has lived. From now on, the blows will be returned.
Fargo season 5, ten episodes, to watch on Canal+ and MyCanal from January 18.
