‘The rest has been told exactly as it occured …’
We open the final episode with a roll call of all the bodies that have piled up around Fargo and Dakota over the last nine episodes – Simone, Bear, Floyd and the gang – until the camera comes to rest on Betsy Solverson’s face just long enough to break our hearts a little.
And then … she blinks, and oh, just a little glimmer of hope among all the blood in the Fargo snow. She’s not dead, it’s a just a reaction to those Xanadu pills. She’s tripping out, imagining a “magical future filled with wondrous devices”, shops filled with everything you could possibly want (er, ie an Amazon warehouse) and then Fargo jumps forwards into its own mythology and there’s the cast of season one: grown up Molly! Lou! Colin Hanks! A proper Christmas Easter egg, as it were.
It’s to the show’s credit that it manages to make these scenes work with such warmth – in lesser hands it would be so cheesy; writer Noah Hawley has got a real gift for switching tones throughout an episode. Of course, it helps when you’ve got something like the unleashed chaos of Hanzee to balance things out. The way he takes out a passing driver who stops to help the Blomquists is one of the coldest kills yet.
‘I don’t think we’re going to make it’
As they leave a trail of blood behind them, the Blomquists continue their escape, hiding out in that most Fargo of locations: a supermarket. They bust into a meat storage room, and Ed has got some real talk for Peggy: they’re not going to make it. As you’d expect, she’s not having it – but he’s talking about them, not the bullets flying. It’s about the way they communicate, the way Peggy is always looking for something more – for all her talk about being actualised, it’s Ed who really lives in the now, not Peggy.
The room fills with smoke – Hanzee has got them trapped. But it’s just in Peggy’s head (“just like a movie”) – and when she busts out, waving a long knife around, Hanzee is nowhere to be seen. Lou’s there, waiting for her. He looks into the room: Ed hasn’t made it.
‘You play golf?’
There’s kindness and cruelty in the kingdom of King Mike Milligan, but when he gets back to base to “bathe in the warm champagne that is corporate praise”, there’s one of the weirder twists this season: he’s promoted to … the accounting department. “This is the future,” he’s told by his boss (Adam Arkin – who’s also the director this week). “The money business, just ones and zeros.” Mike looks bewildered by the prospect.
‘I thought maybe I could spend my time in California. Maybe see a pelican’
Peggy seems to be locked in a strange combination of shellshock and delusion – a great performance from Kirsten Dunst, who’s made her so much more than a loopy narcissist as the season has gone on. For all her Life Springs talk (“Be my own me”, “I’m a victim too”), as she wishes there were 37 hours in a day, Lou’s simple reminder seems to cut through, for a moment: “People are dead, Peggy.”
‘And so great empires fall and are forgotten’
Like a phoenix rising, Hanzee buys a black market Social Security card and becomes “Moses Tripoli” (a nice nod to some of Fargo’s biblical themes). As he contemplates his next moves, thinking about revenge and plastic surgery (“Kill or be killed, there’s the message”), he spots some kids signing to each other while tossing a ball around – and then getting beaten up by some bullies. He strolls over to break it up: that’s got to be the future Mr Numbers and Mr Wrench, the deaf hitman with his native American-style fringe jacket from season one, right?
‘Goodnight Mrs Solverson, and all the ships at sea’
Well, that’s it for another brilliant season of Fargo. What a relief to see Hank and the Solversons making it to the end. And just time for one last crazy off-beam “well, OK” story: the mystery of Hank’s study. Betsy gently asks him what he’s been up to and he reveals a gentle, strange story that seems perfectly in keeping with Fargo’s wider world. After his wife died, he started thinking about all the “senselessness, conflict, miscommunication” in the world and wondered: “What if here was one language, a universal language of pictures” that could solve it all? He’s been making his own language.
Lou makes storytelling sound so simple (“Start at the start, work your way to the end”), but there’s no doubt Fargo’s second season has been a sophisticated piece of television, warm, funny, dark and thrilling – it’s a joy to watch, from the acting to the split screen cinematography, the excellent soundtrack and lines like Lou’s “6,000 pounds of angry helicopter parts” and Betsy’s description of cancer, like a “hot poker through the heart; a half-mouldy peach”.
It might have just been pipped to the top ten in the Guardian’s top TV of 2015, but I’d guess that’s more to do with the sheer volume of decent shows around this year (everyone can’t see everything!) and the feeling that’s it’s more of a cult show in the UK than it deserves to be. Anyhow, thanks for joining us here and making it so much fun.
OK then…
“Gunfight interrupted by spacecraft.” – Great unwritten police reports of our times.
The final additions to the Fargo soundtrack (please can someone put this out ASAP!) include War Pigs by Black Sabbath, The Wedding Cake, written by Margaret Lewis, The Woman in Your Life by Alix Dobkin and a great soul version of the Mamas & the Papas’ California Dreamin’.
“Get out of here – there’s a bad man coming!” Peggy keeps her explanations simple.
Betsy’s analysis of Camus is pretty great.
Was that a “G” for Gerhardt on the eagle flag hanging in their living room?
“Fubar yah?” “Fubar.” Conversation of the week.
“People of earth … I’m home!” Mike Milligan is going to be wasted in that accounting department.
“Think we earned one. Or 10.” You betcha, Lou.
