![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Medical update; Fargo s5
Jan. 20th, 2024 12:22 pmMedical update: went for my post-release follow up at the hospital. Swelling in the leg has gone down considerably (but the clot probably won't disappear completely for awhile). I'll be on blood thinning medication for about three months. Doctor ordered a barrage of tests to see if there's any possible underlying conditions behind the blood clot, so.... more needles! More blood work! Colonoscopy! Fun!
**********************
Fargo really hasn't been hitting on all cylinders since the peak of Season 2 (I covered s2 in one of my first Dreamwidth posts!). S3 had Ewan McGregor's flashy dual performance (but not much else), and s4 stranded a lot of great actors (yes, I'm including Chris Rock) in a plot that moved like a tractor in mud.
So Season 5 is something of a retrenchment, with series creator Noah Hawley leaving the mob wars behind, paring down the cast, and focusing on a sympathetic central protagonist (Juno Temple). It's a smart way to keep the audience engaged, and still allows for spectacular performances from supporting characters.
Hawley's main theme this time is DEBT, and most of the misery in this go 'round stems from characters who want to take their proverbial pound of flesh--one way or another. Leading the pack is Jon Hamm, who thoroughly inhabits Roy Tillman, a small town sheriff in North Dakota who has set himself up as the tin god of his own little kingdom. Roy sees himself as a Biblical patriarch tending his flock--but he is a monster, fueled by selfishness, hatred and spite. Roy is determined to reclaim his ex-wife (Temple), who escaped his clutches ten years ago--and has absolutely no intention of going back.
Temple's Dot is no helpless victim here; she looks like a little slip of a housewife with a stereotypical "Minnesota Nice" accent, but she is a tiger when cornered, beating back kidnap attempts with a breathtaking ferocity. She is assisted in her game of "keep away" (sort of) by various ineffectual law officers--and her mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Lorraine isn't really that much better than Roy; as the queen of a financial empire built on America's crushing middle class debt, she wields her power with something approaching cruelty, and lords it over her subjects with smug superiority. (Leigh based her accent here on William F. Buckley. That should tell you something.)
But Lorraine, cold hearted tyrant that she is, is eventually worn down by Dot's courage in the face of Roy's attacks, and her love for--and fierce protectiveness of--Wayne and Scotty (Lorraine's son and granddaughter). That sets Lorraine and Roy on a collision course, and the face-to-face confrontations between Leigh and Hamm are a blast. Roy tries to intimidate Lorraine with macho swagger, but Lorraine slices him off at the knees every time.
[BTW, Dave Foley does great work here as Lorraine's consigliere, a smooth operator with a cool-looking bone-colored eyepatch, who thinks he has all the angles covered (until--unfortunately--he doesn't).]
Drifting through the narrative like a fog coming off a Minnesota lake is Ole Munch (pronounced "Moonck"), one of those weird, quasi-supernatural characters you sometimes see in Coen Brother movies (like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men). Munch (Sam Spruell) starts off as one of Roy's thugs for hire, but then reveals himself as something much older and stranger, with a burden and a code of honor that dates back centuries(!). Munch's code of debts that must be repaid in blood is Lorraine and Roy's code boiled down to its primitive core...
So it's appropriate that, after all the big showy gun battles are done, the final confrontation is between Munch and Dot--over dinner and biscuits at the Lyon home. In both Fargo the movie and Fargo the series, the whole Minnesota Nice motif is something of a joke, a veneer of politeness disguising sinister motives (or just plain idiocy). But this scene--maybe my favorite of the whole series--suggests that maybe behind that veneer there is something deeper: a warmth and a generosity of spirit that can forgive even the oldest of debts.
Highly recommended. Come for Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Stay for the biscuits.
**********************
Fargo really hasn't been hitting on all cylinders since the peak of Season 2 (I covered s2 in one of my first Dreamwidth posts!). S3 had Ewan McGregor's flashy dual performance (but not much else), and s4 stranded a lot of great actors (yes, I'm including Chris Rock) in a plot that moved like a tractor in mud.
So Season 5 is something of a retrenchment, with series creator Noah Hawley leaving the mob wars behind, paring down the cast, and focusing on a sympathetic central protagonist (Juno Temple). It's a smart way to keep the audience engaged, and still allows for spectacular performances from supporting characters.
Hawley's main theme this time is DEBT, and most of the misery in this go 'round stems from characters who want to take their proverbial pound of flesh--one way or another. Leading the pack is Jon Hamm, who thoroughly inhabits Roy Tillman, a small town sheriff in North Dakota who has set himself up as the tin god of his own little kingdom. Roy sees himself as a Biblical patriarch tending his flock--but he is a monster, fueled by selfishness, hatred and spite. Roy is determined to reclaim his ex-wife (Temple), who escaped his clutches ten years ago--and has absolutely no intention of going back.
Temple's Dot is no helpless victim here; she looks like a little slip of a housewife with a stereotypical "Minnesota Nice" accent, but she is a tiger when cornered, beating back kidnap attempts with a breathtaking ferocity. She is assisted in her game of "keep away" (sort of) by various ineffectual law officers--and her mother-in-law, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Lorraine isn't really that much better than Roy; as the queen of a financial empire built on America's crushing middle class debt, she wields her power with something approaching cruelty, and lords it over her subjects with smug superiority. (Leigh based her accent here on William F. Buckley. That should tell you something.)
But Lorraine, cold hearted tyrant that she is, is eventually worn down by Dot's courage in the face of Roy's attacks, and her love for--and fierce protectiveness of--Wayne and Scotty (Lorraine's son and granddaughter). That sets Lorraine and Roy on a collision course, and the face-to-face confrontations between Leigh and Hamm are a blast. Roy tries to intimidate Lorraine with macho swagger, but Lorraine slices him off at the knees every time.
[BTW, Dave Foley does great work here as Lorraine's consigliere, a smooth operator with a cool-looking bone-colored eyepatch, who thinks he has all the angles covered (until--unfortunately--he doesn't).]
Drifting through the narrative like a fog coming off a Minnesota lake is Ole Munch (pronounced "Moonck"), one of those weird, quasi-supernatural characters you sometimes see in Coen Brother movies (like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men). Munch (Sam Spruell) starts off as one of Roy's thugs for hire, but then reveals himself as something much older and stranger, with a burden and a code of honor that dates back centuries(!). Munch's code of debts that must be repaid in blood is Lorraine and Roy's code boiled down to its primitive core...
So it's appropriate that, after all the big showy gun battles are done, the final confrontation is between Munch and Dot--over dinner and biscuits at the Lyon home. In both Fargo the movie and Fargo the series, the whole Minnesota Nice motif is something of a joke, a veneer of politeness disguising sinister motives (or just plain idiocy). But this scene--maybe my favorite of the whole series--suggests that maybe behind that veneer there is something deeper: a warmth and a generosity of spirit that can forgive even the oldest of debts.
Highly recommended. Come for Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Stay for the biscuits.
