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Critic Reviews
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This season takes risks galore and comes up a winner every time.
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Series creator continues to flavor crime drama with humor and taste for the bizarre, assembling another remarkable cast for a funky fable of survival in the chilly Midwest. .... Marvelous Juno Temple is ferociously endearing as Dot. [27 Nov - 17 Dec 2023, p.6]
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Besides great performances, this season of "Fargo" is simply riveting.
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Fargo is back with a throwback season packed with excellent performances and jaw-dropping action scenes.
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The Fargo team packs these initial episodes with inventive filming choices and thorough world-building.
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Created by Noah Hawley, the new season is among the series’ best, using wild characters and round-about storytelling to pull you in. By the second episode, you will be hooked.
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Sure, this latest season also stars Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”), Jennifer Jason Leigh (“Hunters”) and Joe Keery (“Stranger Things”), but this is unequivocally Temple’s season and yeah, sure, you betcha, she shines.
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This season pretty perfectly balances dark and gritty violence with a sharp sense of humor. There's no real whiplash, as both tones feel fully grounded in this specific story. While Hamm is remarkable, the true highlight here is Juno Temple.
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There are moments when Season 5 of “Fargo” seems to be trying almost too hard to be weird and great, but that’s a fine ambition to have. There are also moments of absolutely inspired lunacy.
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Despite this laundry list of great characters, what differentiates this season from the last is that the writers are telling a more intimate story. It’s ridiculous in several facets, but the absurdity has a way of contributing to, not detracting from, that intimacy. The characters become more riveting with each twist.
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“Fargo” Season 5 is more concentrated than years past, but its individualized attentions not only make for a lean and mean dark-comic thriller; they also befit a story about the dangers of walling yourself off from the world.
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Noah Hawley’s show has had some rocky seasons, but it finds itself this year by really going back to not just similar plot points but taking that idea of toppling dominos almost to a national level.
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A cast and writer who are evidently having fun is often disproportionate to the amount of fun we have as viewers, but Fargo’s full-tilt embrace of its own absurdity makes its fifth series hard to resist.
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The series starts so pleasingly in episode one – a clearly drawn plot, entertaining characters, a mix of comedy and suspense – but becomes uneven thereafter when Hamm gets more screen time. .... On balance, though, this is Fargo returning to form.
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Dorothy’s story, about a woman fearful of her past as well as what might be coming for her in the immediate future, is unmistakably a Fargo story. But it artfully captures something new within that story: the palpable tension in a contemporary America where men with guns, badges, and cowboy hats think they make the rules, leaving smart, savvy women with no choice but to prove them wrong.
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By scaling down the scope of the Season 5 story, at least to start Noah Hawley has brought Fargo back to the show that we enjoyed so much during its first two seasons.
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This fifth turn with "Fargo" conveys a confidence that all will turn out as expected, a benefit of this chapter meeting us where we are.
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Temple, best known here for “Ted Lasso,” is terrific. .... Three-fifths of the way in, the story feels comparatively conventional, notwithstanding that medieval flashback. But with four hours left to go — two whole “Fargo” movies — there are certainly surprises ahead, twists around corners hidden behind corners. Things will probably get crazy, and I’m eager to see it.
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Even in a season that is deliberately trying not to surprise the audience but give them what they expect, it’s made at a high enough level that the familiarity feels like part of the fun.
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In the best season of Fargo since its first, Noah Hawley pivots back to his source material and reimagines its events through a strikingly brutal lens.
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But it’s Temple’s show through and through, a capable protagonist whose pursed lips and large, searching eyes tell us everything we need to know about Dot at any given moment, even if she’s lying to everyone else.
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Promises to be an entertaining, stylishly filmed one. It’s not going to be peak “Fargo,” at least based on the four (of 10) episodes made available for review, but it features a few dynamic performances, a nicely focused story line, some compelling action, and a turn by Jennifer Jason Leigh that is so excessive you’ll wonder if her acting tutor is Nicolas Cage.
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More than anything, the fifth season of Fargo is wonderfully acted, swiftly paced, nasty fun.
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Along with a wonderfully deranged soundtrack (Nightmare Before Christmas fans, prepare yourselves for Easter eggs galore) and reliably gorgeous cinematography, this smartly cast menagerie of oddballs makes Fargo a pleasure to watch.
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I’ll admit I was a little surprised to find out there would be a fifth season, but if it continues to be as good as this two-episode season premiere, I’m extremely down for another adventure in the snowy Midwest.
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It’s an absorbing tale this time out, anchored by Juno Temple.
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Thanks to dexterous stewardship and fine performances from an all-star cast led by Juno Temple, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jon Hamm, it’s a sinister remix that by and large satisfies, no matter its frequent habit of telling rather than showing.
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"Fargo" is still funny, bleakly so, and smartly written. Best of all, it's effectively cast three legendary actors (after "Ted Lasso," is Temple now officially "legendary"?) in memorable roles. Very memorable.
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Though this so-called "limited" series may be getting long in the tooth, each and every moment that Temple sinks her teeth into ensures it still has bite. While Season 5 might not be Fargo at its best, it is through performances like hers that it comes close.
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Later surprise-laden and richly complex scenes handily salvage Fargo’s fifth season after a ham-fisted start. That, and consistently remarkable performances at even the most shoddily written early moments, along with breathtaking action and bleak humor, show Hawley is still a TV visionary well suited to build on the Coen Brothers’ Fargo 1996 film legacy–even if he takes commendable big swings that occasionally miss.
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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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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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If Noah Hawley could get out of his own way and stop avoiding all the obvious connections to "Fargo" and "No Country for Old Men," he could make a brilliant show. As it is, with the new "Fargo," he's made a moderately compelling one.
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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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