Social justice separatism is having a moment. On Yellowjackets, purple-clad adherents to the self-help group founded by plane crash survivor Lottie help the addicted and outcast find peace on their compound. On Mrs. Davis, a convent of fun-loving nuns holes up in an abandoned motel in the Nevada desert. On Foundation, a commune of psychically powered “mentallics” live a life free from persecution by the galaxy’s normies in their home on a distant planet. On The Changeling, a group of women forced to kill the demonic creatures that took the place of their children take refuge on an island off Manhattan accessible only via magic. And now, on Fargo, a community of abuse survivors perform cathartic puppet shows and take on the name of their founder: Roy Tillman’s first wife, and Nadine Tillman/Dorothy Lyon’s groomer, Linda.

Only…not really. Camp Utopia and its gang of Lindas are a figment of Dot’s exhausted, traumatized imagination. Their welcoming community in the woods, full of friendly, grinning women; their therapeutic punch-and-judy shows, in which newcomers tell their horrible stories using puppets they themselves design and build; and most importantly, Linda herself (Kari Matchett), the woman who “fed” Dorothy to Roy in order to escape herself, the woman who atoned for the sin of abandoning Dorothy and the then-salvageable Gator to Roy by helping untold numbers of other women, the woman who offers an apology (though not an explanation) that Dorothy finds she can accept…none of these things, none of these people, actually exist.

I’m fine with that. As an abuse survivor I bristle at the notion that surviving abuse confers upon you some kind of innate decency or dignity, as if abuse were a sacrament as well as a crime. As such, the Hollywood concept of the commune where the wounded gather together to grow stronger in the broken places or whatever has never held any appeal for me. I think it’s begun to exhaust its appeal in Hollywood as well, judging from how many of the above examples either subvert the trope or treat it as a literal fairy tale or dream.

I reviewed this week’s Fargo for Decider.

Let’s talk about Jennifer Jason Leigh. Underneath the Locust Valley Lockjaw accent and the power suits she’s delivering a tremendous performance, lively and mischievous. She plays Lorraine Lyon as a character who relishes each opportunity to show off, to stunt, to exert power. You can all but see a little flicker of delight in her eyes when one arises. 

But in this episode I noticed a few more things. First, and I apologize that it took me this long to notice, she is insanely sexy in this role, holy moses. Lorraine’s self-confidence alone almost erotic in and of itself, as is the feeling that this is the last person on earth whose room-service breakfast order you’d ever want to take. Like, yes, exactly. I kind of think that her impenetrable exoskeleton of casual cruelty is the armor she needed to generate to make men leave her the fuck alone when she’s this magnetic a person.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

There’s one more conversation I want to highlight. When Danish exits the house, he’s stopped by a security guard, who demands to see his ID. Never mind the fact that Danish is leaving rather than arriving, that he’s the most instantly recognizable human being in Minnesota, or that he hired the guy: Orders are orders, and the man carrying the gun has been given orders, so Danish must show ID.

Now, Danish manages a “Don’t fucking do that to me again” afterwards that I think will actually take — he is the boss at the end of the day — but it’s a fascinating exchange nonetheless because it shows how power actually works. It’s as simple as Lord Varys’s old parable from Game of Thrones, about the soldier surrounded by a king, a priest, and a rich man, each of whom orders him to kill the others. Who has the power in that situation? Whomever the man with the sword believes has the power. 

Danish is rich. Danish has political clout, both via Lorraine and likely some of his own. But in that moment, the man with the gun does not believe Danish has the power, and thus he does not. Will Roy and Lorraine come to learn similar lessons?

I reviewed this week’s Fargo for Decider.

Roy’s terrifying speech to Lenore is an episode high for me, one of the two points in my notes where I simply wrote “ooooooh-wheeee.” The other is very different. It comes when Dot/Nadine visits Wayne in his hospital room (dodging Lorraine, Danish, Olmstead, and Farr in the process) after he awakens from his electrocution during the home invasion. While he’s barely coherent or aware of himself and his surroundings, she attempts to coach him into believing a sanitized version of what occurred, to no apparent success or failure. But it’s the way he smiles when he repeats the phrase “my wife,” as if he’s seeing her for the first time and can hardly believe his luck, that gets to him. “Move over, you,” she says finally, tears welling in her eyes, as she scoots him over to lie next to him and cuddle. Tears welled in my eyes too, let me tell you. Not a bad range of emotional experiences for one episode at all, no sir.

I reviewed this week’s terrific episode of Fargo for Decider.

Beyond that, though, Roy’s nipple rings, weed habit, and kinky penchant for having his wife roleplay as women he wants to punish during sex could be seen as the show scoring some cheap points about right-wing hypocrisy. (Not that such shots don’t hit the mark.) But it could just as easily be seen as a depiction of how to men like Roy, this isn’t hypocrisy. Roy is free to do what he wants, and the people of Stark County are also free to do what he wants — the completely consistent conservative definition of freedom in a nutshell.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo for Decider.

But the episode we get is a very good one. Once again, writer-director Hawley displays his facility for building tension and dread; the long take that includes the stabbing murder of Gator’s partner by Ole Munch feels endless, drawing out the sense that something terrible is going to happen before delivering on it. Jeff Russo’s score goes full horror movie in this scene as well, which helps immensely. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up my favorite homage in the episode: Jon Hamm getting out of the bath bare assed, à la Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Season 3. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, so gander all you want.

I reviewed the second episode of Fargo Season 5 for Decider.

Two > > Three > One >> Four. There, that’s the extent to which we need to relitigate Noah Hawley’s Fargo. This love letter not just to the Coen Brothers’ 1996 black-comedy crime classic but to their entire oeuvre is getting to that M*A*S*H point where it’s funny to point out how it’s outlasted its inspiration, but along the way it has aired one truly great season of television, two merely terrific ones, and one that would have gone over a lot better had poor Chris Rock not been miscast as a crime boss. That’s an excellent track record from where I’m sitting, even before you factor in Hawley’s acuity with action sequences, tension and suspense, weird eruptions of uncanny horror, getting gangbusters work out of a slew of fantastic actors both with and without prior Coens experience, you name it. So what if Hawley, on whom I run hot and cold as a rule, is not Joel and Ethan fused into one new guy? Voguish or not, if Fargo is on, I’m watching. 

I reviewed the season premiere of Fargo for Decider. This season’s real good!