So Fargo season 3 stars Ewan McGregor – playing two roles – Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead,
Michael Stuhlbarg and David Thewlis. This season is set in 2010, making it the
season closest to us in terms of its timeline. The story is a lot more detached from the
first 2 seasons. Where season 2 can be seen as a straight up prequel of the first season, season
3 is pretty much its own thing, aside from the odd easter egg here and there and one character
from season 1 who pops up in a supporting role. So the story here follows two brothers, Ray and
Emmit Stussy, both played by McGregor. Emmit is a successful businessman who has a cagy relationship
with his younger brother. Ray feels wronged and slighted at how differently the two brothers’ live
have panned out, believing himself to have been scammed by Emmit over a valuable stamp the duo
traded years ago. Ray and his ex-con girlfriend Nikki plan to rob Emmit as revenge. Meanwhile,
Emmit tries to cut ties with a shady organisation his business borrowed money from a year before,
but the company has other plans. A mysterious representative, V M Varga,
a man with immaculate charisma but horrific dental hygiene, arrives at the business and essentially
begins to stronghold Emmit and his partner, all the while Emmit has to deal with his brother.
Meanwhile, policewoman Gloria Burgle investigates the murder of her stepdad,
a murder which entangles the lives of all the principal characters.
So it’s a very Fargo-esque plot. It has all the staples of the series. In fact,
the plan in the opening episode with Ray telling an ex-con to rob his brother but the man who he
hires ends up at the wrong house, with disastrous consequences, is as Fargo as it can possibly get.
With that being said, my overall thoughts on season 3 were that it was alright. It was
OK. It was an ordinary season of Fargo. And because it followed two very strong seasons,
there is a whiff of disappointment in the air. It lacks that pop. That wizz. And those little
nuanced moments. In some ways it feels like a first draft, or made by people who weren’t giving
it their fullest effort, which I think is actually the case as I believe Noah Hawley was working on
another TV show at the same time as this. Don’t get me wrong, it is a solid season.
The issue I have is that it just doesn’t compare to the first two seasons, which were far more
engaging. In fact, a lot of this season is covering ground already covered. Like the whole
thing with Gloria and the chief who just does not want to listen to her theories about the murder.
Didn’t we already see a relationship like this in the first season with Mollie and Saul Goodman?
I liked this season. As with the previous 2, the characters are interesting, especially that weirdo
Varga, and its intriguing seeing them all mix and the storylines intertwined. But I’m trying
to articulate why I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed, and one thing that comes to mind is
that I don’t think this necessarily warranted 10 episodes. The first season was perfect with 10;
with the second, if anything 10 wasn’t enough. But here, with the brothers feud,
Gloria who meanders around moping not really doing much, and the intriguing Varga stuff
which for the most part was left intentionally – and frustratingly – as a mystery, but ultimately
there is not a lot of meat to the story, I felt. It veered off in random tangents and directions,
like an entire chapter dedicated to the past of the first murder victim, his life as a
Hollywood screenwriter. It was kinda random. If there ends up being 10 seasons of Fargo,
I think this one will end up somewhere in the middle. Solid. Thumbs up, but ultimately gets lost
in and among the many better seasons. It wasn’t as funny as previous seasons. It felt rather dry,
aside from Varga’s appearances, who I thought was hilarious. There’s not a lot of colour either and
the cinematography isn’t as creative as it has been previously. At times you might think you’re
watching a standard crime mystery that airs on the BBC, not the absurdist modern-day classic
that is Fargo. That absurdism is really pushed to the point as well. Because the thing is,
for the most part season 3 has a believable story, but there’s strange elements to it that don’t feel
like classic Fargo wackiness and absurdism, but more like contrived and lazy writing. Things like
the ex-con standing in the exact position needed for someone to throw a kitchen appliance on top of
him. Or Emmit’s car breaking down in the middle of nowhere, a plot device so that another character
can catch up with him. At the end of the scene, he gets into his car and drives away, with his car
magically repaired. Another time character set to be shot in an elevator Spidermans his way on top
of the elevator and then seemingly vanishes. There’s a lot of things like this where, yeah
I suppose you could chalk it up to the randomness of life, the stranger-than-fiction like nature of
the show, but it’s really starting to feel like the writing is starting to suffer. I mean, we’ve
had UFOs on the show, and I found that a lot less problematic than some of the stuff in this season.
See, the thing is, most movies and TV shows, made to entertain but to make you ponder,
need to work on two levels. They need to work at the base level, entertaining the viewer, and the
deeper level, where they make you think. Martin Scorsese is a master at this, which is why he’s
such an artsy filmmaker much still so mainstream. You can watch The Wolf of Wall Street as a sex,
drugs and rock and roll extravaganza, which it is at its base level, but you could also look
at it as a critique of capitalism, consumerism, materialism and many things Scorsese was taking
shots at. It works on both levels. Fargo is the same. But here in season 3 it leans to far heavily
into the deeper themes without enough emphasis on the baseline stuff. Don’t get me wrong,
I love all that, my entire channel is dedicated to deeper themes and looking at the meaning behind
character decisions and all of that kind of stuff, and that stuff in season 3 WAS good.
But where the other seasons worked on both levels, here I feel as purely as a piece of entertainment,
Fargo season 3 is a little dry and flat. When it comes to the themes and commentaries,
it is on absolute fire – the surrealism takes off and never quite lands. The season, for example,
is dedicated to the question of reality and truth. What does it mean for something to be real?
Does it need to have actually happened or be believed as actually happening. It’s all a matter
of perspective, as one character says. There’s a big emphasis on storytelling – characters
tell stories to each other, we are told a story in one animated segment,
one of the victims was a novelist, and during the part where it says This is a True Story, the last
word to disappear is Story. There’s a lot said about globalisation, about legality vs morality,
perception colliding with morality. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the seasons is
set shortly after the 2008 financial crash. Gloria also goes around the entire show not
doing anything; a first for Fargo where the main cop is usually front and centre to keep the show
grounded with all the weirdo characters. But she’s just kinda there – and again,
I know it works thematically, she’s basically the robot in the story, she says as much,
the way in which she feels invisible in the modern world is relatable, but it isn’t a lot of fun.
So clearly, there’s a lot to analyse and unpack in this season, and it seems intent on subverting
your expectations. But it sacrifices entertainment for exploration of its themes, and there’s a faint
aura of the writers ever so slightly starting to enjoy the smell of their own farts. Like
the bowling club scene, perhaps the most esoteric scene in the entire series. It works thematically
but how does it work within the context of the characters’’ stories? The open ending too,
which again works on a thematic level, and ties into a line in the final episode about the world
not always working the way its supposed to, but purely in terms of watching as a viewer and
wanting some manner of a conclusion, it feels like a cop out. It’s probably a cleverer season than
the previous two, more ambitious in its writing, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better.
The characters also feel like flanderized versions of classic Fargo stock characters. Like we’ve
had the stubborn police chief, but in season 1 he actually felt like a person and had a personality.
Here the guy is just a concrete wall who’s only reason is to block Gloria and slow down the story,
and then he just disappears. Then there’s Sye and Varga, two characetrs who I like but they
went so far in trying to make Sye this classic cute quaint Fargo Midwesterner that he just came
across as a little dim sometimes, and Varga sometimes has little to offer in scenes other
than to launch into a monologue, showcase his disgusting teeth, and occasionally put
his ***k in people’s coffee mugs. The characters in general just feel more one dimensional here,
existing for the same of the themes of the season. So it looks like so far my opinion of Fargo
coincides with the consensus. I’ve heard people say the first is great, the second is brilliant,
and the third is just OK, and I pretty much agree with this. Season 1 is really about
the characters; 2 about the plot, and the third about the ideas. Onto the 4th season,
where from what I hear, the show takes a massive nosedive in quality.