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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
155
Mixed:
19
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The story is muddier and more complex than last season’s, full of halfway nice and semi-awful people rather than the purely good and bad. Every episode starts with a ’70s jam and a jaunty split screen. The Midwestern accents are inconsistent and strange, but that only makes them funnier.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The second season of Fargo is just as fantastic as the first. And viewers who didn't catch the first season can easily slide into the second. Some nuances will be lost, but those are minor compared to how good this series is.... Hawley and his writers' greatest strength is incredible control of tone and atmosphere.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The only complaint one could muster about Fargo this time is that it spreads itself on too thickly in the first two episodes. In moments that count, the show can seem more interested in style than substance. Season 2 also introduces so many characters (played by equally strong actors, including Ted Danson as Trooper Solverson’s father-in-law, Hank; Cristin Milioti as Solverson’s wife, Betsy; and Nick Offerman as Karl, Luverne’s most conspiracy-minded lawyer--to name a few) and so many fascinating threads at once that it threatens to collapse under its own weight. The intricacies do begin to cohere by Episode 4.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Writer and executive producer Noah Hawley upped the game with a sharp, well-developed story involving multiple moving parts. It’s smart, thought out and full of watchable characters with convincing enough motives to create the perfect amount of viewer sympathy. The end result isn’t just a “Fargo” 2.0 (or 3.0 depending on your love of film), but an evolved story that takes television to a whole new level.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
This Fargo has a different idea of evil, based on something just as insidious as Malvo: The grinding amorality of capitalism, which demands more profit no matter what the human cost. In the new Fargo, this is placed in a context that is frequently witty, and balanced with scenes of great family love. The large cast is superb.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
It’s atypical in the television industry for a show born of a larger creative trend to surpass the trend’s flashpoint, but with the new season, Fargo puts itself head and shoulders above its anthology peers. Bigger isn’t necessarily better, but can it be, when done thoughtfully? You betcha.
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Oct 12, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Every performer here brings his or her A-game, and the little nods to the day--such as the chatter about a seminar that will help “actualize” the attendees or the salesman who believes that the electric typewriter represents an unparalleled technological revolution--are both striking and sad.... Fargo is terrific.
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Oct 9, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Despite its endlessly flat landscape, FX's Fargo is elevated by the most spellbinding direction of any drama currently on TV. Season 2 achieves new heights, thanks to writer-director Noah Hawley. The music is exaggeratedly dramatic, and the split-screen device is a throwback to early TV and film's bold experimentation.
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Oct 9, 2015
Season 2 Review:
As always, this is a scattered story with multiple moving parts.... Fargo revels in presenting ordinary folk with extraordinary problems, in stripping away their everyday guises and peering long and hard at their dark potential. That it can do this through adaptations of true stories makes it all the more jaw-dropping.
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IndieWireOct 9, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The most important thing about what's before us is that Fargo remains a risk-taker. Between Ronald Reagan and moments lifted straight out of "The X-Files," it's a show that is having fun, while also being real about the costs of having fun, while living outside the law.
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TV Guide MagazineOct 8, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Fargo casts a mesmerizing spell of suspenseful whimsy in its second year. [12-25 Oct 2015, p.16]
RogerEbert.comOct 8, 2015
Season 2 Review:
This is confident, clever, fantastic television. It doesn’t have a trio of characters as instantly vibrant as the three at the core of season one, and it doesn’t have a premiere episode that will make jaws drop like last time around, but the first four episodes develop into something remarkable of their own, again thematically referencing back to the last trip to the snowy North, but in its own, mesmerizing way.
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Uncle BarkyOct 8, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The first four episodes sent for review give every indication that this all-new story with mostly new characters will reach if not surpass FX’s first time around with Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk, Keith Carradine, etc.
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Oct 7, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The Emmy-winning first season of Fargo, the limited series that was inspired by the Coen brothers film of the same name was a triumph on multiple levels as one of the most creative and evocative works on TV in 2014. The second season proves that was no fluke.... It's all here--writing, acting, directing, music--combining to make a very riveting and entertaining dark comedy spectacle.
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Oct 7, 2015
Season 2 Review:
FX’s frost-covered drama appears to have equaled its splendid predecessor, capturing the same off-kilter tone while actually enhancing the comedy quotient. If the first series deftly approximated the spirit of its movie namesake, this one works in a cheeky Quentin Tarantino vibe, with results as refreshing and bracing as the region’s abundant snow.
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Sep 23, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Hawley’s writing is vivid, sardonic, smart, and brilliantly deadpan, in keeping with the tone of the original “Fargo” movie. His characterizations are deft, nicely nuanced and compelling, offering more than enough for the actors to work with. Danson feels a little out of place, but he may grow into his role. Culkin, Garrett, Smart, Plemons, Dunst and Donovan are outstanding.
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Apr 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
At times, however, Hawley goes a little too heavy on the quirk, and Thornton, who last regularly appeared on TV in the John Ritter political comedy “Hearts Afire” in the early 1990s, overly indulges in that smirk. Bits between mob enforcers Mr. Numbers (Adam Goldberg) and Mr. Wrench (Russell Harvard) also wear out their welcome. The overall quality of TV's Fargo is high.
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Apr 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The singular quality of the Coen Brothers' Fargo was the breathtaking, almost palpable tone it created by threading violence and wit through a staggeringly vapid Midwestern milieu. Fargo the series cannot recapture that fission, but it is enjoyable, funny, and, something TV rarely is, weird.
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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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Apr 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The pilot can be alienating, and not in a good way. It's often too schematic, too obvious.... The next three episodes get incrementally weirder, stronger, and more original, to the point that you forget to measure this Fargo against its namesake, or against any of the Coens' masterworks, and simply enjoy the odd, sour, frightening, occasionally splendid thing in front of you.
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Apr 15, 2014
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 11, 2014
Season 1 Review:
At times, there are actual punch lines in the script and the show veers into "writerly" territory.... But make no mistake: You should overlook the shortcomings and enjoy the series on its own otherwise considerable merits, chief among them, of course, Billy Bob Thornton.
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Apr 11, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The casting on Fargo is superb, but none more so than Thornton, who is absolutely magnetic as the calm killer with a penchant for wry observation.... The four episodes that FX sent are a testament to Hawley’s bold belief that he could tackle such an original piece of cinema and make it work on the small screen.
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Apr 11, 2014
Season 1 Review:
A larger, wholly engrossing story about crime syndicates and hit men. [21 Apr 2014, p.43]
RogerEbert.comApr 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
With an amazing ensemble driven by great performances from top to bottom, an incredibly smart writers’ room, brilliant callbacks to the original that feel more inspired than forced, and a filmmaking style that feels as cinematic as this grand Minnesotan tragedy deserves, Fargo is one of the most addictive new shows of the year.
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Apr 10, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Directed by Adam Bernstein, the 90-minute premiere is particularly taut and effective, with three subsequent episodes slightly less so; nevertheless, there’s enough going on (indeed, almost too much) and such a weird string of dominos that it’s hard not to imagine those sampling the opener won’t want to see things through to the finish.
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Apr 9, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The dark absurdist tone doesn't land quite as cleanly as in the film, and there's the enormous absence of goddess Frances McDormand, who brought such great plainspoken heart to the movie's otherwise bleak landscape.... But do keep watching, because the show boasts unique and satisfying hooks.
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