Fargo - A review of the TV series

This is my second post of the day. And continuing on from my last post, where I was talking about TV, I would like to use this post to review the anthological TV series, “Fargo” (2014 – present).

While this series may not be as well known to Indian and even international audiences compared to series like “Breaking Bad”, “Game ofThrones”, “Sherlock” etc, I can confidently say that this is one of the best series that I’ve ever seen. Period. It’s a must watch for anyone into unhurried, intelligent storytelling.

It’s based on the film, “Fargo” by the Coen brothers in 1996. Though taking inspiration from the movie, and set around the same region, the stories told in the series are completely different from the one told in the film. The series just completed the second season and the third season is expected to be telecast in 2017.

It’s based on true incidents, though creative liberties have no doubt been taken with the narration.

The incidents in both the seasons center around the Minnesota and North Dakota region of the American Midwest. It’s a harsh and bleak country, drowned in snow. The perfect setting for the stories that are about to unfold.

I’m not going to delve into the story, or the intricacies of the plot. Just do yourself a favour and watch the show. I'll however be delving into the themes running through the show.

The first season is set in 2006, and stars Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Bob Odenkirk, Colin Hanks among others. Freeman is a revelation here as the cowardly, whiny and emasculated Lester Nygaard, who’s the catalyst for the chain of events that are about to unfold. Billy Bob stars as Lorne Malvo (channelling Anton Chigurh from the Coen’s “No Country for OldMen”), an almost literal devil-like, wild force of nature.

The second season is set in the late ‘70’s, and stars Patrick Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Ted Danson, Bokeem Woodbine and others. Almost immediately a connection is established to the first season (apart from the physical proximity).

A few people that I’ve spoken to about “Fargo” have told me that even though they like the initial and middle parts of the second season, they felt let down by the ending. As they felt it was leading up to something big and didn’t deliver. Well, that’s just like life and that’s just how things happen sometimes. There needn’t always be a big pay-off or overt conclusion to a story, sometimes things aren’t resolved and there’s no closure. However, if you keep your eyes peeled you can see that one of the threads from the second season’s ending is actually resolved in the first season. And you go “oh fuck, I didn’t expect that”.

Personally, I loved the second season. And my pick for the standout character: Bokeem Woodbine's Mike Milligan.

Fargo works on so many levels. The setting’s brilliant, the music used is phenomenal, the acting is tremendous, and the way it has been shot is magnificent - I especially loved the second season for that reason, it really brought the seventies back to life.

There are multiple premises you can use to evaluate Fargo, one is the surface level story, which is very successfully told, and in an entertaining manner.

The other is the underlying subtext. And this is where it shines. There are so many themes you can pick up from the series.

The basic theme is the eternal struggle between good and evil. The decent and the brutal. Fargo is a meditation on man’s capability for brutality. It deals with individuals struggling to come to terms with man's violence towards his fellow man. In the first season, the “good guys” talk amongst themselves about how the land has changed, and people have become more cold-blooded, whereas things were peaceful in the past and people were more friendly and decent.  Then we visit the past in the second season and we see the same thing - “good guys” talking amongst themselves about how the past was more peaceful and friendly and how much things have changed now. So we see that life and man are always the same, the individuals are just looking back at the past with nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses. And even if we were to go back a thousand years, the individuals alive then would be reminiscing about how their past was more peaceful, and how much things have changed for the worse. This sort of talk happens even now.

Man has always been war-like and brutal. Man has always been good and decent. Though there are men who indulge in brutality, there are as many decent men willing to do right and set things straight. There is always a balance. Everyone eventually gets what is coming to them, as we can see over the course of the two seasons.  

The second season especially had a large number of themes running through it, right from women's liberation and empowerment, America’s treatment of its minorities (black and native American), effects of the Second World War on an increase in violence, the all-pervading influence of Reagan, corporatization of American culture and splintering family values, to the melding of the corporate and crime culture - the effects of which we continue to see in the various financial and regulatory scams. Phew, quite a lot to tackle.

The location of the series also mirrored the fact that man survives in spite of a harsh environment, and life goes on. Whether in the face of brutality or in the snowy wilderness of Fargo. 

This series is a brilliant, slow burning delight. An essential watch.

Stay tuned: Why TV has never been better

Let’s talk about TV.

As you may know from a casual look around this blog, I’m a pop culture buff. And heavily into films. I don’t restrict myself to just Indian or Hollywood and watch pretty much anything that interests me, whatever the language or country of origin.

As far as Indian films are concerned, there are films that can compete against the best in the world.

TV, not so much.

A pile of excrement has a better entertainment value than our TV shows. Maybe I’m overlooking something, but I can’t think of a single Indian TV show in the last 20 years that I’d willingly watch.

Faced with such a shitty situation, one must look elsewhere for alternatives.

And that is where foreign television series fill the void.

It is accepted that television all over the world is generally geared towards the lowest common denominator, and short on series that don’t belittle the viewers intelligence. Europe may have fared a bit better than America, but overall TV was generally seen as the poor cousin of films.

Films were daring, experimental, with complicated plots and morally gray characters. And TV in contrast used to be populated with inane series and dull sitcoms with predictable plots and horrible acting.

Not anymore.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, there has been a massive renaissance on TV, especially American. Starting in the early ‘00s, TV has gradually been building up stream and now, they are giving films a run for their money. Present-day series are edgy, complicated, with morally ambiguous characters, and extraordinary acting. No longer are TV shows treated as pariahs by Hollywood A-listers, case in point, Matthew McConaughey in True Detective, and Tom Hardy in Peaky Blinders, among numerous other examples.

The lines have blurred to such an extent that you can’t say that a certain subject is taboo for TV audiences and that it’ll never be made.

And even the much maligned super-hero franchises that are renowned for their childish plots and FX-heavy visuals have small screen variants that are critically acclaimed, e.g. Daredevil.

My theory is that this renaissance has come about, as individuals have realized the power of TV as a medium, and the opportunity it offers them to fully flesh out their ideas and not fit everything into a pre-set time limit.

Showrunners are more conscious of the fact that they need to end the series once they reach a certain point, and not keep flogging a dead horse just because it’s successful and has made them a lot of money.

More recently, streaming services like Netflix also play a part by giving critically successful series with low cable viewership figures a second chance. This helps keep alive series that might otherwise have been cancelled. They also encourage new and relatively off-beat content – deciphered using viewership algorithms - which otherwise might not get a chance to air on major networks.

These factors have, IMO, contributed to TV series becoming as creative and complex as films.

Of course all these factors by themselves don’t mean much, after all you need a sizeable audience that watches the content. The viewership figures would also serve as an impetus for the development of similar content.

It seems like a significant portion of the TV viewing audience has matured, and are seeking more from their TV than just mind-numbing reality shows. And this is reflected in the kind of boundary pushing series you are starting to see on TV. I’m by no means saying that all TV is now intelligent and perfect (far from it), however backed by an ever increasing, discerning audience, TV executives and showrunners are betting on intelligent content more than ever. TV is now starting to thrive on complexity.

Just take a look around, there are shows about an anthropomorphic talking horse, a Colombian drug lord, and a schoolteacher/drugkingpin. We also have a series on a Coen brothers film (reviewed here), a realistic crime series set in Baltimore etc.

As mentioned earlier, while European TV was not as bad as its American counterparts, it had a lot of awful shows as well. However, they seem to have stepped their game up, and now have a lot of brilliant series like Forbrydelsen, Les Revenants, Sherlock, War and Peace et al.

A pet theory of mine is that once certain things reach critical mass, they succeed and become the new norm. It’s not like there were no good American TV shows before 2000. It’s just that things coalesced around this period due to audience maturity, exposure through internet, and alternate viewing vehicles. Once TV executives see that their risks pay off and that there is a market for intelligent storytelling, they tend to take more of the same risks.

This is already happening with our films - with a more mature audience asking for meaningful cinema, and rewarding those that make them.

And it gives me hope for Indian television. Once our audience evolves, maybe a decade or so down the line, we will start seeing our very own Breaking Bads and Fargos.