[Spoiler warning: Read this after watching the season finale.]
When FX’s “Fargo” premiered back in September, FX only sent out the first nine episodes of an 11-episode season to press, leaving critics hanging as to the resolution of this violent saga. It wasn’t just to reduce spoilers or build excitement—the final two episodes of this chapter weren’t filmed until after the pandemic lockdown changed the industry. Now that they’ve been broadcast, it’s easier to look back at the entire arc of the year and take in this entire story of American violence.
“Fargo” opened with the promise of escalating conflict in the heartland of America. Two very different factions of the criminal underworld battled for control while variables like a homicidal nurse and a pair of sociopathic convicts made things increasingly difficult. In the end, it was about a gang war that didn’t explode as much as fizzle to a close as more and more soldiers shuffled off this mortal coil. Death dominated the season, as captured in the “In Memoriam” montage that opened “Storia Americana,” the season finale. In Noah Hawley’s vision, violence doesn’t lead to power or strength as much as it leads to desperation. It is a show not so much about the violent history of the country in the traditional sense that a victor emerges from these conflicts but that both sides beat each other down, trade their children, lose their loved ones, and end up miserable or dead. Power is fleeting, and in jeopardy, from the minute it’s gained. As Josto says just before he dies, “This is a ladder but there’s nowhere to go.”
After the artsy oddity of the excellent “The Wizard of Oz” riff in “East/West,” the final pair of episodes gave ticket buyers what they paid for in loop-closing carnage. The penultimate episode knocked off two of the key players in this saga—Odis Weff (Jack Huston) and Gaetano Fadda (Salvatore Esposito)—right after each made decisions that seemed to point to happier futures. Odis finally stood up for himself and sold out the Faddas, only to get gunned down in his car by Gaetano, who, moments after bonding with his brother Josto (Jason Schwartzman), tripped and blew his own brains out. In very Coen-esque fashion, tragedy comes unexpectedly and violently. And the pan to the sly smile on Odis’s face after Gaetano’s fatal fall is one of the best moments of the season. He almost seems to die happy with the knowledge that the last shot of the brutal Gaetano’s body is the top of his head sliding onto the pavement.
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It appears for much of “Happy” that either Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley) and/or Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (Emyri Crutchfield) could join the long list of the “Fargo” deceased, especially after the Angel of Death sets her sights on the nosy neighbor. In a series with plenty of “WTF” moments—remember the aliens in Season 2?—the decision to have the ghost of a slave ship captain save the life of the descendant of the man who killed him is certainly one of the strangest. Does the slave trader just want Ethelrida all to himself? Or is it possible that he sees a common evil in Oraetta? After all, her name is Mayflower.
The impact of Oraetta Mayflower on the action of Season 4 of “Fargo” is a fascinating thing to consider. What if Donatello Fadda had ended up with a different nurse? How differently would the season have played out? The fourth season of “Fargo” sometimes felt tonally distinct from the other three seasons in terms of black comedy—this year was much more somber—but all four outings dance to the beat of what Paul Auster called “the music of chance.” They’re about random events or encounters that typically lead to murder and other tragedies.
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And they’re often about good people caught up in all that death, although this year seemed surprisingly short on heroes. Sure, there was the protective Rabbi Milligan (Ben Whishaw, one of the season’s MVPs) and the law-abiding Deafy Wickware (Timothy Olyphant), but this season was light on “aw shucks” average people who get sucked into the chaos. If anything, the audience sympathy was typically reserved for the children, primarily narrator Ethelrida and Loy’s son Satchel (Rodney L. Jones III), who turned out to be the tie to previous “Fargo” stories that fans had been speculating about all season.
Honestly, with the back story that season about Bokeem Woodbine’s Mike Milligan and the last name that character shared with Whishaw’s this season, it would have been shocking not to affirm that connection in the final scene. The shot of Woodbine is a fascinating coda on the year in its simplicity. He has no lines and there’s no further connection other than a wistful look, as if he’s remembering his journey home and the death of his father. Then he points his gun and smiles. Was this always it or could this have been truncated due to COVID? It’s probably the former—a silent commentary on how violence breeds violent men—but we will never know. (And it may be fun to now go back and watch Season 2 with this back story in mind.)
As for the COVID factor, the final two episodes are nearly seamless with the rest of the season. Rock looks a little more exhausted, but that fits the character. The only noticeable difference is in the physicality of the young performers, Crutchfield and Jones. Like those kids who hit a growth spurt over summer break, they look just a bit different. One also has to wonder if the incredibly short running time of the season finale (38 minutes doesn’t even fill a traditional ad-supported hour of TV) is coincidental or if some material had to be cut. Whatever the case, the production team should be lauded for pulling off these two episodes in the midst of a rising pandemic nationwide.
Long before the pandemic, it looked like the fourth season of “Fargo” wouldn’t happen at all. Noah Hawley appeared to have walked away from the series after a relatively mixed response to the third season in 2017 (compared to the widespread acclaim for the first two years) and a focus on other projects. While this year sometimes felt like it was biting off way more than it could chew regarding the history of race in America, it revealed the ambition of Hawley hasn’t waned in the slightest. As Mike Milligan drives a stretch of road that looks a lot like the infamous money-hiding location from the history of “Fargo,” it’s hard not to feel a similar sense to what Marge Gunderson felt at the end of the movie. That all of this violence led to nothing. And it’s a beautiful day. [A-]
