With a show like Fargo I think it’s gotten to the point where we’re taking it for granted. Granted, this series has received largely positive reviews, and for the record it’s going to receive another right now. However despite their being no major departure in quality, with it still being one of the most wickedly entangled webs of plot, deceits, tension and wonderfully dry and interesting characters – The fourth season of Fargo does in so many ways feel like much more of the same, whereas previous seasons have felt wholly different, bar the generic crime centric themes that they all ruminate on. But my question now I guess is; what’s wrong with more of the same, when the ‘same’ is this truly, truly excellent?

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This time in Fargo we are once more in the world of mob families, however this time we spend a lot more focus on mythology and the history of such families in both American history and the history of crime itself. We view through the years as multiple families attempt to topple each other in an epic decade spanning prologue, narrated by our central figure this season, the young black woman Ethelrida Pearl Smutney, played effervescently and wonderfully by E’mryi Crutchfield as a rebellious and fierce spirit of hope at the centre of all the chaos that shall occur. Eventually we find ourselves in a more specific period of time in 1950 where we find the two families central to the plot of the season. The Fadda Italian crime family and the Cannon crime family of African-Americans. I keep stating people’s ethnicities, as immigration and identity is a core theme of this season, perhaps more than any other. Hawley and his team of writers and directors spin this tale of philosophical and emotional woe in and out of its central crime plot of a gang war so intricately as they have done season after season, that plans and plotlines quickly become known to the audience as possible fodder to be ended or continued at any time. The overall sense of the season is one where flights of fantasy are even more present perhaps than previous seasons, certain characters only make themselves involved in the central plot at the pivotal final moments, leading to some sensationally harrowing and shocking moments of television. Even sat alone watching it I audibly gasped at moments in the final episode, before sighing with great pain at the ultimate fates of certain characters. When it comes to the ensemble of this season, one could go on for hours, so for this piece I will remain with standouts, all of which were positive, with no negatives in the world of performance to my eye.

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Chris Rock as Loy Cannon kept a more stoic approach to his performance as frankly all goes wrong around him as the series continues, it’s a powerfully silent performance with explosive moments that are all the more effective because of this silence. Glyn Turman by his side offers more than valuable mentorship despite being under him, leading to a very compelling friendship dynamic that reaches a very effecting conclusion. Timothy Olyphant and Jack Huston go back and forth as two different sides of the law enforcement coin, both with compelling complications aplenty within them, with Huston a deeply neurotic ‘rat’ and a Olyphant a devout officer and devout Mormon. Many others come in and out of the show (Ben Wishaw and Rodney L. Jones III are excellent throughout but do show just how good they are in their solo outing East/West), however one really cannot overstate just how devilishly fun and enjoyable the turns of both Jason Schwartzman and Jessie Buckley are in this season. They truly are the standouts in many, many ways. They’re certainly the wackiest turns in the show and perhaps one could comment the most absurd, but the humanity, humour and horror that they both bring respectively to these outlandish characters is the exact sort of vital combination that makes the show the success that it so frequently is time and time again. It is very fair to say that above its excellent handling of tone and writing, Hawley year in and year out delivers an incredible set of characters for some great actors to really enjoy performing and of course for us to enjoy watching and meeting.

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Another incredible 9/10 series from Noah Hawley and all involved. Although this is the first series I wouldn’t give the full 10 to, it is in by no means a dramatic fall in quality, as already stated this is simply yet another incredibly fine tale of crime and all the lives that such activities can effect. Hawley as a show runner, director and writer has made a piece of modern American television that could be commented spends a little too much time monologuing, but always delivers on a tightly woven intricate selection of stories and characters that are equal parts entertaining, thrilling, intriguing and emotional effecting. All underscored once more by perhaps the series most unsung member, Jeff Russo, as once more he delivers a stirring and masterful score to tie the whole thing together.

P.S. If one were to give an overall standout episode, one is hard pressed to not select the wonderful acute East/West, with its wholly wild conclusion and it’s glorious road-trip sensibility. However I feel like this is a sort of trap, with that singular episode being so singular and separate from the rest of the series. I would probably have to say personally that The Nadir had not only some of my favourite scenes of the show, but also had a wonderfully melancholy quality to it that worked very well for that exact point in the series. However also picking a favourite episode from this season feels a harder task than usual, with this season in particular feeling more like one long grand tale than the other seasons with their episodes feeling slightly more separate (bar of course the natural continuation of stories and plotlines and characters).

P.P.S. What a beautifully haunting post credits scene. Fate, legacy. It’s all one in the same. It’s all inescapable and unavailable, no matter where our lives take us. GO BACK, if you missed it. 

-        -  Thomas Carruthers