The Pitch: It’s the fall of 2019, one Presidential administration and a lifetime ago, and seemingly content suburban wife and mother Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) has landed herself in a spot of trouble after getting arrested for tasering a police officer at a PTA meeting. Not because of any potential charges against her — her mother-in-law Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is too powerful and well-connected a businesswoman to let that happen — but because as part of the arrest, she was fingerprinted.
This means that if someone had been looking for Dot for several years, and if that person happened to have access to law enforcement databases, then well, they wouldn’t have much trouble tracking her down under her new name. And unfortunately, Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) happens to be such a person, and he’s a real sonofabitch — which means Dot has to figure out how to protect her family from harm, no matter what it takes.
Minnesota Nice: Whenever FX’s Fargo returns for a new tale of crime, it tends to inspire the question, “What exactly does Fargo mean, as a concept?” After all, it’s been a long time since Joel and Ethan Coens’ 1996 masterpiece was released, and with each installment, it feels like creator Noah Hawley finds new dimensions to explore within his own personal definition of the series, as inspired by the film.
In the case of Year 5, there’s some sense of the show getting a bit more back to basics, after the denseness of Year 4. Not only is it a smaller ensemble, allowing more characters to stand out early on, we get a sequence which pays direct homage to the original movie, capturing its horror on an equal level. Plus, there’s the fact that Dot’s husband Wayne (David Rysdahl) happens to be a mild-mannered car salesman hocking TruCoat, just like Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) in 1996. This time, though, Dot’s the one keeping secrets from her husband — secrets that kick off an intense cat-and-mouse game that, in classic Fargo-the-series tradition, includes a few truly odd curveballs. Not just in the casting… but yeah, the casting is full of surprises.
Unexplored Depths: Every season of Fargo brings together an eclectic cast of big names as well as under-the-radar talent, because Hawley loves to pull together actors who might be best known for one thing, but then prove themselves to be capable of a lot more. The most obvious example of taking comedians like Chris Rock or Key and Peele and dropping them into dramatic roles; in general, though, it means identifying an actor’s established persona, and pushing them hard in the opposite direction.
Along those lines, Juno Temple does a full 180 from her breakout role in Ted Lasso, revealing Dot to be, as mentioned frequently, “a tiger” of a woman when her life or those she loves are in danger. Being a physically tiny presence, she still manages to fill up the screen, especially during her more intense moments — it’s really her show, in the end, the smaller-than-usual ensemble allowing her in particular to shine.
Fargo (FX)
