this is a true story
Okay, I'm going to think aloud a few thoughts about why this season of Fargo, while unmistakably great television, really isn't clicking for me.
(Brief tonal and plot spoilers up to the most recent episode, as well as for the movie.)
I saw the Polite Fight guys on the AV Club talking about the second episode, and one of them mentioned how everyone loves Mike Milligan, though the Polite Fight guy found him too overdone. I don't care if he's overdone -- I feel like the only time I've smiled all season long is during appearances from the prog rock trio of Mike Milligan and the Kitchen Brothers. It's like he's the only character who's gotten the memo that he's in a Coen Brothers pastiche, and therefore he's the only one who comes at this with the appropriate amount of delightful absurdity.
Of course, he also seems like the only one who gets to come at this with the dialogue needed to pull that off. I'm not faulting the actors, who are doing a fine job with what they've been given*, so much as I'm questioning the writers' reason to take everything so damn seriously this early. And I'm even double-worried about that because we know, based on what got said in the first season, that whatever's going to happen in Sioux Falls is going to be downright awful.
Fargo's subject matter is grim -- kidnapping, bludgeoning, mass shootings, horrifying body disposal methods -- and the movie and the first season skated by this by virtue of tone. But speaking for myself, I do not particularly want to watch a body thrown into a wood chipper unless I have a reason to be laughing as that body is thrown into a wood chipper. Otherwise, it's just grim gore. While that's a valid artistic choice that has its place, it's not why I show up to a Coen-Brothers-flavored anything.
Basically, what I think I'm feeling is a lack of joy. That was what made the first season so great, that everyone was so obviously happy to be there and delighted to have these beautifully bizarre lines spilling out of their mouths and hands. While that may be true this time behind the scenes, I'm not feeling it come through the screen. I don't think it helps either that so many of the characters are so low-key, not the bright impausible folk that inhabited the movie and the first season. You could pick up most of the Gerhardts and deposit them into a serious, straight-faced film without many transitional woes. While that would make for a baller local mafia movie, it's not why I'm here.
That lack of joy also has translated into my not particularly connecting emotionally with any of the characters. I can tell that Lou is supposed to be my way in, but his main character note is that he's worried about Betsy, which makes him cold and hard to connect to. He's certainly not the little balls of light Gus and Molly were, those brave little toasters that had me cheering them on from the get-go. I like a lot of other characters, but not so much that I would feel upset to lose them. Compare that, for instance, to the much smaller recurring cast from season 1, where you really felt it when you lost folks.
I get that this season is harder, especially since last season riffed so heavily on the movie and used up all those opportunities. But for pete's sake, guys, you knew it was coming.
Relatedly, both the movie and the first season were morality plays about punishing really awful dudes who hid under the veneer of mild-manneredness, who suffered in hells (largely) of their own making and then left huge swaths of collateral damage when they tried to save their own skins. There was definitely some satisfaction to watching them and knowing their sins were eventually going to find them out.
There's none of that in Peggy and Ed. In particular, I feel just sick awful for Peggy. Maybe I could read her as something else if this were set in 2015, but in 1979, she's basically trapped. I know I'm not supposed to be siding with Menacing Lesbian Boss, but I'm totally siding with Menacing Lesbian Boss, at least when it comes to Peggy doing things for herself. Sure, the self-actualization seminar itself is a dumb idea, but the idea that she should be doing something to take charge of her life isn't.
Frankly, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be feeling about Peggy. Even beyond her actions to cover up for a murder, she's getting some markers that she's the Bad Guy -- taking birth control pills secretly, using the money that was meant to be the butcher shop deposit, distracting/placating Ed with sex -- but all of those just read to me like her trying to regain some control of her life in a situation where she structurally has none. I don't know how she got herself into this marriage, but I'm betting she wasn't wholly enthusiastic about it at the time, choosing instead the best apparent option. And if she was, that's even sadder, because here she is, having bought into this American Dream Family, only to realize that it basically requires her to stop existing as a person.
For comparison, Lester is a sad sack in a sad marriage too, but he has the structural ability to break out of that sad-sackness -- as evidenced by the fact that he does it! I mean, not in a good way, but the show makes clear that he was the only thing holding himself back. In a small Minnesota town in 1979, Peggy probably couldn't even go to the bank and open up her own checking account without her husband there to co-sign. It almost doesn't matter if that seminar does help her be the best Peggy she can be, because nothing else is going to change enough to let it happen.
And maybe I'm more sympathetic to Peggy because she seems about the same age and in about the same life situation as my own mother was in 1979 -- married very young, childless but not for much longer, in an already-shaky marriage that would dissolve a few years later, putting parts of her life on hold for her husband. And maybe I'm just more sympathetic to lady characters in general, especially in pre-present fiction, since trying to game the system for survival isn't a response to crisis, but what you do every morning.
So I'm going to be interested to see, in the end, what the show thinks we should think of Peggy. There may be more to her than meets the eye, though that doesn't really seem this narrative's style. (I'll be shocked if the toilet paper theft pans out to anything more sinister than neurosis brought on by financial worries.) But if the tropes remain true and she becomes the Every(wo)man brought low by her attempts to hide her misdeeds ... I can't say I'm inclined at this point to find that resolution particularly satisfying.
Of course I'm going to keep watching it to the end, as it's very good television and I really do want to see where it's going with all this. But I'm not in love with it, not the way I was by this point in the first season, and I think these are a couple of the main reasons why. The end!
* Minus Handsome Patrick Wilson as Lou, who -- until the last few minutes of the most recent episode -- has seemed like a total tonal mismatch.
(Brief tonal and plot spoilers up to the most recent episode, as well as for the movie.)
I saw the Polite Fight guys on the AV Club talking about the second episode, and one of them mentioned how everyone loves Mike Milligan, though the Polite Fight guy found him too overdone. I don't care if he's overdone -- I feel like the only time I've smiled all season long is during appearances from the prog rock trio of Mike Milligan and the Kitchen Brothers. It's like he's the only character who's gotten the memo that he's in a Coen Brothers pastiche, and therefore he's the only one who comes at this with the appropriate amount of delightful absurdity.
Of course, he also seems like the only one who gets to come at this with the dialogue needed to pull that off. I'm not faulting the actors, who are doing a fine job with what they've been given*, so much as I'm questioning the writers' reason to take everything so damn seriously this early. And I'm even double-worried about that because we know, based on what got said in the first season, that whatever's going to happen in Sioux Falls is going to be downright awful.
Fargo's subject matter is grim -- kidnapping, bludgeoning, mass shootings, horrifying body disposal methods -- and the movie and the first season skated by this by virtue of tone. But speaking for myself, I do not particularly want to watch a body thrown into a wood chipper unless I have a reason to be laughing as that body is thrown into a wood chipper. Otherwise, it's just grim gore. While that's a valid artistic choice that has its place, it's not why I show up to a Coen-Brothers-flavored anything.
Basically, what I think I'm feeling is a lack of joy. That was what made the first season so great, that everyone was so obviously happy to be there and delighted to have these beautifully bizarre lines spilling out of their mouths and hands. While that may be true this time behind the scenes, I'm not feeling it come through the screen. I don't think it helps either that so many of the characters are so low-key, not the bright impausible folk that inhabited the movie and the first season. You could pick up most of the Gerhardts and deposit them into a serious, straight-faced film without many transitional woes. While that would make for a baller local mafia movie, it's not why I'm here.
That lack of joy also has translated into my not particularly connecting emotionally with any of the characters. I can tell that Lou is supposed to be my way in, but his main character note is that he's worried about Betsy, which makes him cold and hard to connect to. He's certainly not the little balls of light Gus and Molly were, those brave little toasters that had me cheering them on from the get-go. I like a lot of other characters, but not so much that I would feel upset to lose them. Compare that, for instance, to the much smaller recurring cast from season 1, where you really felt it when you lost folks.
I get that this season is harder, especially since last season riffed so heavily on the movie and used up all those opportunities. But for pete's sake, guys, you knew it was coming.
Relatedly, both the movie and the first season were morality plays about punishing really awful dudes who hid under the veneer of mild-manneredness, who suffered in hells (largely) of their own making and then left huge swaths of collateral damage when they tried to save their own skins. There was definitely some satisfaction to watching them and knowing their sins were eventually going to find them out.
There's none of that in Peggy and Ed. In particular, I feel just sick awful for Peggy. Maybe I could read her as something else if this were set in 2015, but in 1979, she's basically trapped. I know I'm not supposed to be siding with Menacing Lesbian Boss, but I'm totally siding with Menacing Lesbian Boss, at least when it comes to Peggy doing things for herself. Sure, the self-actualization seminar itself is a dumb idea, but the idea that she should be doing something to take charge of her life isn't.
Frankly, I'm not sure what we're supposed to be feeling about Peggy. Even beyond her actions to cover up for a murder, she's getting some markers that she's the Bad Guy -- taking birth control pills secretly, using the money that was meant to be the butcher shop deposit, distracting/placating Ed with sex -- but all of those just read to me like her trying to regain some control of her life in a situation where she structurally has none. I don't know how she got herself into this marriage, but I'm betting she wasn't wholly enthusiastic about it at the time, choosing instead the best apparent option. And if she was, that's even sadder, because here she is, having bought into this American Dream Family, only to realize that it basically requires her to stop existing as a person.
For comparison, Lester is a sad sack in a sad marriage too, but he has the structural ability to break out of that sad-sackness -- as evidenced by the fact that he does it! I mean, not in a good way, but the show makes clear that he was the only thing holding himself back. In a small Minnesota town in 1979, Peggy probably couldn't even go to the bank and open up her own checking account without her husband there to co-sign. It almost doesn't matter if that seminar does help her be the best Peggy she can be, because nothing else is going to change enough to let it happen.
And maybe I'm more sympathetic to Peggy because she seems about the same age and in about the same life situation as my own mother was in 1979 -- married very young, childless but not for much longer, in an already-shaky marriage that would dissolve a few years later, putting parts of her life on hold for her husband. And maybe I'm just more sympathetic to lady characters in general, especially in pre-present fiction, since trying to game the system for survival isn't a response to crisis, but what you do every morning.
So I'm going to be interested to see, in the end, what the show thinks we should think of Peggy. There may be more to her than meets the eye, though that doesn't really seem this narrative's style. (I'll be shocked if the toilet paper theft pans out to anything more sinister than neurosis brought on by financial worries.) But if the tropes remain true and she becomes the Every(wo)man brought low by her attempts to hide her misdeeds ... I can't say I'm inclined at this point to find that resolution particularly satisfying.
Of course I'm going to keep watching it to the end, as it's very good television and I really do want to see where it's going with all this. But I'm not in love with it, not the way I was by this point in the first season, and I think these are a couple of the main reasons why. The end!
* Minus Handsome Patrick Wilson as Lou, who -- until the last few minutes of the most recent episode -- has seemed like a total tonal mismatch.