Writer-director-creator Noah Hawley gets a lot of grief for reasons that don’t entirely make sense to me—look, I didn’t like Legion at all, but the dude’s not the devil—yet he has a knack for the little narrative filigrees that the almighty Coen Brothers weave into and out of their films, particularly the crime films with a darkly comedic edge. He also shares the Coens’ affinity for couples so odd it’s like they’re speaking a different language; cf. the Mutt-and-Jeff physicality of Gaetano and Josto, or the contrast between Gateano’s fiery youth and Doctor Senator’s smooth and serious experience, or Nurse Mayflower’s chatty but hard-edged relationship with the quietly sharp Ethelrida. And he’s certainly not above throwing in the occasional overt homage, like the cattle gun used by the slaughterhouse workers, a shoutout to Anton Chigurh’s modus operandi in No Country for Old Men.
But the Coen-ness of such details is just gravy, not the main course, which is the show’s deliberate pacing and slow ratcheting-up of stakes in anticipation of an eventual explosion. And language itself is often a pleasure on this show. Witness the brief exchange Loy Cannon and Rabbi Milligan have, when the latter tells the former he’s teaching his son that “dog eat dog” is the way the world works: “That’s how dogs work,” Cannon replies. “Men are more complicated.”
“Not in my experience,” Milligan counters.
Fargo feels like a roller coaster slowly cranking its way up an incline, waiting for the drop to come.
I reviewed the back half of Fargo‘s two-episode season premiere for Decider.
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