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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
155
Mixed:
19
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
The first few episodes are a riveting cat-and-mouse game with the potential for a role reversal heavily foreshadowed. .... But the momentum starts to flag as Hawley works to sustain drum-tight tension for several hours. .... The more “Fargo” plays up Roy and Dot as archetypes of a controlling man and his victim, the less interesting they are.
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Nov 21, 2023
Season 5 Review:
To the extent the latest version delivers a modest kick from its trademark mix of deadpan humor and explosive violence, is it possible to enjoy this season (six of the 10 were made available) strictly on its terms? You betcha. Thus far, though, this feels like a case of an established formula gradually yielding diminishing returns.
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Sep 28, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Fargo still creates an absorbing, cinematic viewing experience, with painterly framing, pointedly deployed split-screen and arcane yet evocative needle drops. ... With such a crowded plot, it’s no wonder the show can’t maintain a consistent tone. ... Like this nation, the new season is a beautiful and ugly, inspiring and infuriating, a tragic and sometimes darkly hilarious mess. As frustrating as it often was to watch, I couldn’t look away.
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Sep 14, 2020
Season 4 Review:
At this point, even after three years between seasons, the Fargo model has gotten a little stale. Season 4 is feeling a bit like diminishing returns. Which is not to say the show is at all bad; it's still fun to watch and exceptionally well-made. It just doesn't feel as vital as it once did.
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Sep 28, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Previous seasons of "Fargo" achieve a balance between quotable dialogue and surprising action. That former features much more heavily than the latter in this season that slow-walks the narrative toward inevitable death and violence. If you have an ear for logorrhea and a hankering for quirk, these new "Fargo" episodes should deliver satisfaction. If that previous sentence made you roll your eyes or curse its writer, save your televisual peregrinating for another title. (To put it more simply, you can let this one pass.)
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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
This is a highly professional endeavor, and there’s nothing (too) embarrassing happening here. The show’s self-seriousness leans toward the dull more than the ridiculous, although some ridiculousness would be more fun. It doesn’t help that Rock, who has described this as the best part he’s “ever, ever, ever” had, is in such single-mindedly dramatic mode that he does not bring any looseness or lightness to his role
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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Fargo is full of riches—decadent set pieces and fascinating visual choices—but they ornament a sparse narrative. ... Fargo isn’t bad. It tries to do so many things, and it kind of succeeds at a lot of them. But it serves too many masters to transcend the sum of its parts.
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Sep 24, 2020
Season 4 Review:
It’s a more ordinary show, a more mundanely plotted and “watchable” show (through the nine episodes available for review), with less of the strangeness and arch surrealism that didn’t always work but generally kept you engaged with the stories. Its oddities felt original in earlier seasons; here, they tend toward caricature. And cliché.
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RogerEbert.comSep 23, 2020
Season 4 Review:
This latest “Fargo” installment suffers from too much muchness. There are isolated scenes of excellent melodrama, some thoughtfully pointed questions about the decay of the American dream, and a few standout performances. ... But with more characters than backstory, some particularly predictable turns, and a certain simplistic approach to its questions about race, this fourth season of “Fargo” sometimes feels like a tornado: all bluster and destruction, but with hollow emptiness at its core.
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Sep 18, 2020
Season 4 Review:
Outsize characterizations are not new for “Fargo,” but a balance has been lost here, with many characters standing in for the grandest sorts of evil and too few giving us what the series at its best possesses — soulfulness. Rock gets those notes, though, and plays them well. ... Rock’s real human wistfulness, a break in the season’s showy nuttery, feels like a flicker of the show that might have been, and could be still.
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Apr 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Hawley’s film noir plot is reasonably Coen-esque in its twists and misunderstandings and character-motivated actions. But it can’t match the extremely particular style of the inimitable and unpredictable Coens, a target Hawley apparently chose for himself and misses by a country mile.
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Nov 22, 2023
Season 5 Review:
It’s much easier to emulate the arch performance style of the Coens’ movies than it is to convey a sense of the character beneath the quirks, and Temple never gives a sense of who Dot is at her core, even when it turns out later in the season that there are many more shoes left to drop. Leigh too seems overdirected, all nasal consonants and power-suit scowls. Hamm strikes a more effective balance. .... Hawley is disinclined or perhaps incapable of replicating their [the Coens'] self-effacing charm.
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