Fargo

Too early to call, but Season 4 may be Fargo’s best run yet given its larger scope and more ambitious message. It helps that Fargo never preaches to its audience; instead, it embraces its strengths and trusts viewers to connect the dots on their own.

There are so very many good and great things to point to — characters whose evil is a thing of warped beauty, plots that balance thrillingly on contingency and bad timing, dialogue whose comedy is cloaked in murderous intention and gluttony, resonant cinematography that speaks of a grimly Disunited States — I don’t know which one to start with. Series creator Noah Hawley has come up with yet another ambitious, dazzling, and entertaining season of his Coen brothers-based anthology series.

Even with the lofty stories it’s woven throughout the years there’s nothing quite as ambitious, intense, or grand as Fargo Season 4. Whether or not that’s a good thing will depend on what draws you to Fargo in the first place.

“Fargo” feels utterly of its time and place. The dialogue is stylized and clever. ... Every episode contains stunning, elaborately choreographed scenes worthy of a major feature film. This is one of the best-looking series of the year, featuring some of the strongest performances of the year from more than a dozen of our finest actors.

There are some ambitious ideas at play here and the technical elements of “Fargo” are strong throughout, but what really starts to elevate Season 4 around that third episode is the ensemble.

Season 4 may not go down as the best year of “Fargo.” The structure lurches a bit, episode to episode, and the cast can’t collectively hit the highs of prior seasons’ players. (In part because they’re not asked to, given the dour tone.) But Hawley’s choice to evolve beyond his established structure is as necessary as it is invigorating.

Hawley is a creator who loves images, ideas, and words, and not a single episode watched for review (FX provided the first nine) lacks for an unforgettable camera shot, a haunting character choice, or a line of dialogue so weird and wonderful it could only be Fargo. And in a year when pretty much everything feels coated with a layer of tarnish, perhaps it’s right that Year 4 is a season where heroes feel very hard to find.

Four seasons in and Fargo is still as strong as ever, a sprawling gangland feud delivered with bravura filmmaking. It’s a lot to get your head round but, skilfully played by a pitch-perfect cast, it’s well worth the effort.

FX's Fargo returns after an absence of three years, with no discernible diminution of bloodlust, contempt for its fellow man, or general weirdness.

By throwing caution to the frostbiting wind, rather than trudging over former glories, Hawley and co. give TV’s great snow swept saga quirkier characters that cover greater thematic ground. Is it a departure? And is that what makes it great? On both counts: oh yeaaah, you betcha.

Hawley and company are in no hurry to help us sort through [the characters and conflicts], but there is a strong design and structure being formed here, and patience is rewarded. ... The road is long, but worth traveling.

Fargo is significantly better than the disappointing third season, though probably not as good as the near-perfect second season.

Even as tension builds, it’s a treat to hear pungent dialogue, revel in artful cinematography and evocative music, and get caught up in a story that’s a bit too sprawling, but makes us wonder what happens next.

Like America itself, Fargo is a dizzying, delightful swirl of influences. And this move away from the series’ familiar Minnesota home turf is mostly a rollicking success. After all, there’s plenty of snow — and blood — to be found in a Kansas City winter, too.

It's a period drama featuring two dozen (or more) main and guest characters. Yet even with those moments in which Fargo loses track of who was supposed to be the story's heart or which narrative threads have the most urgency, when the show works — when its vision is realized entirely — very little on TV can compete.

Fargo occasionally strains under the weight of what it’s attempting to accomplish: a lively examination of the history of different groups of Western European immigrants who have gradually been granted whiteness, and the many Black Americans, whose ancestors were brought here by force (and greed), but are now, as Doctor Senator puts it, a “part of this land, like the wind and the dirt.”

Although smart and beautiful, there is something left wanting in the new episodes – an inciting murder that grabs you in the first episode – perhaps because the previous seasons of "Fargo" are just that breathtaking.

I had no trouble watching nine hours of the new series at a sitting, except for the sitting. ... Because criminals dominate the action, the story seems not so much morally complex as unfocused, and because there are so many storylines competing for air, including one involving Jessie Buckley as a nurse with bad habits (and a Minnesota accent to honor the franchise), the show robs some promising characters of screen time.

Because it antes in so many pots, this “Fargo” is like a thick novel – frequently unwieldy. Schwartzman and Buckley get lost (just when you need them the most); Timothy Olyphant and Jack Huston show up as lawmen when you’re not quite ready for them.

It unfolds at such a languid, almost hypnotic pace as to blunt its impact, getting distracted by an abundance of oddball characters that don't overtly do much to advance the central plot.

Fargo has lost its footing in Season 4, succumbing to stylization and caricature and gratuitous over-plotting, and effectively wasting a tremendous cast. We’re left with a weak story and a few banal monologues about race, money, and Life In America.