Michelle Faye/FXIn the fifth season of Noah Hawley’s brilliant Midwestern crime thriller series Fargo (premiering Tuesday, Nov. 21, at 10pm ET/PT on FX), the question that seems to be bubbling up from underneath the gun-toting machismo and quick-witted verbal volleying is: What is a man?
Really bringing this question to the surface is cowboy Sheriff Roy Tillman, exceptionally portrayed by Jon Hamm, who is a “constitutional” law enforcer who makes his own rules and expects everyone to follow them, other than him. Occasionally he makes good points, but Roy has all the downsides of a cult leader, including very inappropriate behavior toward women.
Always nearby and looking for his approval is his trigger-happy son, Gator (played by Stranger Things’ Joe Keery), who is more bark than bite and can’t seem to ever get a “win.”
Most unlike a man is police deputy Indira Olmstead’s totally useless husband, who spends his days playing golf in the garage and is so childish in his behavior that at first it appears as if Olmstead is a single mother with an overly coddled adult son.
To contrast these extreme cases of modern manliness (and lack thereof) is Wayne Lyon (David Rysdahl) — son of billionaire Lorraine Lyon — who is the complete inverse of all the other men; he’s just a regular guy who can’t quite catch up to the chaos around him. Also, he is fenced in by brilliant women who are always several steps ahead of him.
Women are definitely the highlight of the season, using their brains over their brawn to outwit the brutes who surround them. Wayne’s wife Dot Lyon, played by Juno Temple, is at face value an overly polite Minnesota mother. However, an incident at a PTA meeting sets off a chain of events that leads to an assortment of cascading, dangerous escapades, for which she is oddly well prepared. Her mother-in-law, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Lorraine, is no mere housewife either. Crude, blunt and definitely somewhat unhinged, Lorraine has some of the best dialogue on the show and is enjoyably unpredictable. Never Have I Ever’s Richa Moorjani also shines as the town’s police deputy and possibly the only one who has her head on straight.
Dubious men are often the driving force of Fargo, but boy, this is quite the assortment; at times it’s not clear who to root for, because at its core, it is not a battle between good and evil — all the main players are definitely a mix of both — but about who has more influence, and if laws supersede money or money supersedes law.
“It’s a modern story about the things that divide our world,” says executive producer Steve Stark. “Big ideological things. The power of ego and control. So, the villains are not as obvious this season.” Luckily for viewers, with Hawley at the helm, nothing in this show is obvious. That’s what makes it such a joy to watch.
Great article. Will definitely watch