Season two of Fargo (Channel 4) opens on the set of Massacre at Sioux Falls, starring Ronald Reagan and Betty LaPlage. Or, put another way, with a real (though unseen) historical character with a made-up co-star in a made-up film in a television series that purports to be based on real events and real characters but isn’t and that is itself based on a film that does the same. Which, you might agree, takes some getting one’s head around. Probably better just to go with it. Hey, there are truths in falsehoods, the line between them is often wobbly, certainly in Fargo, unlike the roads round here, ruler-straight dark slashes through frozen white upper midwestern wasteland. There will probably be more killing at Sioux Falls, somewhere down the line.
The first homicide, which isn’t long in coming, is spectacular. Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin), the youngest of three brothers in a family cartel, tails a judge along one of those roads, to a 24-hour Waffle Hut. He snorts a little co*ke off his hand, to make him even jumpier than he already was. It wasn’t even supposed to be murder, just blackmail, to do with typewriters (IBM self-correcting Selectric II electric ones – oh yeah, it’s now 1979, so before season one). Things don’t go to plan though; you get the feeling that not a lot of what Rye does goes to plan.
In the diner, the judge explains she won’t be blackmailed, via reference to the Old Testament, which goes way over Rye’s head (you also get the feeling that a lot goes over there). In a cocaine and sweet black coffee-fuelled hissy fit, he shoots the judge; then the chef who comes at him with a frying pan; then the waitress (well, she had to go, and she witnessed it, and she was freaking him out a little).
Wait, the judge isn’t dead though, she steak-knifes Rye in the back, so he shoots her again, three times to make sure; she falls back on the table, a spreading pool of her blood meeting and beginning to mix with a pool of spilt milkshake. Then it’s the waitress’s turn not to be fully dead, she’s crawling out the door, making a futile bid for freedom; she has to be followed and finished off, though not without further hitches. Her warm red life is spattered rudely over the icy whiteness of a Minnesota winter.
It’s Fargo all over, in its look, and its atmosphere, black humour, white landscapes, in its chilliness spattered with human warmth. Excruciating, shocking and hilarious, it sends mixed messages to the stomach muscles; I’m tensing and squirming and properly belly-laughing, all at the same time.
Oh, and this scene, too, isn’t quite dead yet. Enter the even absurder; what is it though? UFO? Drone? Biblical visitation? Whatever it is, it means Rye doesn’t notice another car speeding along the icy highway he’s standing on. Smash, he’s gone through the windscreen. But he, too, is not quite finished, half in, half out, of someone else’s car, of his own life. There’s further gory hilarity and unplanned killing to be had with Rye, also involving Peggy and Ed Blomquist (Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons) whose unspectacular lives are thrown into chaos by the crash.
Trying to make sense of the blood and the footprints and the vehicle count in the parking lot of the Waffle Hut is State Trooper Lou Solverson. He’s the link with the first series, the younger version played here by Patrick Wilson, and helped in the investigation by his boss and father-in-law Hank (Ted Danson!). If you saw the first series, you’ll enjoy the realisation that the little girl here will grow up to be Deputy Molly Solverson. If you didn’t, no matter, this stands alone very nicely.
It was a ballsy thing for writer Noah Hawley to attempt – to give birth to a TV series fathered by the Coen brothers’ movie masterpiece. He pulled it off – remaining deferential, in feel and look; in themes of human weakness, violence and masculinity; with good guys doing bad stuff; and being very funny. But also creating – through great writing and dialogue and storytelling, and top performances from a starry cast (and from the landscape itself) – something brilliant and beautiful in its own right, too.
He’s done it again; this – so far – is at least as good. It may be a pack of lies, but it captures a real place, and a real time; it feels cold, and it feels 1979 (not long before a certain former actor enters the Oval Office, further shivers). It’s bloody, bloody funny, and I can’t bloody wait for more.
