By: Brandon Wolfe
With only stray exceptions (‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’), TV shows based on films tend to be dire prospects, inspiration-bereft cash-grabs trading on name recognition and far too beholden to their source material to walk on their own two feet. The thought process often seems to be that since a popular film has already laid the groundwork for the story and characters, all a television adaptation needs to do is plug cheaper actors into the roles and churn out slightly varying permutations of the established premise. The rare successful dips into this well, like NBC’s ‘Hannibal’, merely take components from the films in the service of building their own unique world around them. FX’s ‘Fargo’ falls into this latter category. In fact, it goes one step further. It only borrows the title, setting, humor and sensibility from its parent film, not any of its characters or events. While the characters and situations are meant to evoke the film ‘Fargo’, the show is its own animal.
‘Fargo’ tells the story of Lester Nygaard (‘The Hobbit’s’ Martin Freeman), a meek, put-upon schlub whom, we learn in the pilot, has taken a lifetime of grief from his wife, his brother, his boss, essentially the entire world. After a humiliating encounter with a school bully turned adult bully, Lester winds up in a hospital waiting room with a broken nose, where he has a chance encounter with a man named Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton). When Lester shares with Malvo the details of how he wound up with his injuries, Malvo offers to take care of the bully, Sam Hess, for Lester, which he does in violent fashion. Meanwhile, Lester becomes fed up with his wife’s incessant nagging and condescension and bludgeons her to death with a hammer. He calls Malvo for help with this situation as well, but when the chief of police shows up to ask Lester some questions about Hess, Malvo kills him with a shotgun while Lester knocks himself out in a panic.
These events have been the catalyst for the subsequent episodes of ‘Fargo’, as Lester’s hole has grown deeper and deeper and he begins to climb out of it by showing a remarkable aptitude for insidiously crafty thinking. Malvo, a fixer and assassin by trade, but functionally more of a free-roaming agent of chaos, quickly moves on from Lester, setting up an elaborate scam in Duluth against a wealthy supermarket tycoon (Oliver Platt), playing off the man’s God-fearing nature by manufacturing seemingly biblical torments. Two good-hearted cops, sharp-eyed Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) and cowardly Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks), join forces to put all the pieces together and wind up as the only law enforcers on Lester and Malvo’s scent. Also after them are two hitmen from Fargo, Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench (Adam Goldberg and Russell Harvard), employed by a crime outfit with ties to Sam Hess.
“Who Shaves the Barber?” picks up with Lester in the hospital, recovering from a festering wound in his hand from a stray shotgun pellet he received on that fateful night in the pilot. Lester, a spiritual cousin to ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Walter White in terms of his journey from hapless working stiff to criminal mastermind, has set into motion a plan to frame his brother for his own crimes by stashing incriminating evidence in the man’s gun locker. The plan works and Lester is set free, strutting around high on his own world-beating deviousness. Malvo, meanwhile, has eluded Wrench and Numbers, as well as Molly and Gus, in a blinding snowstorm encounter that leaves Numbers dead, Wrench arrested and Molly shot accidentally by a frantic Gus. While Molly quickly recuperates, Malvo, who doesn’t much care for being the target of violent schemes rather than their instigator, simply walks into the headquarters of the Fargo crime syndicate and takes everyone out from floor to floor (in a nifty bit of business, the massacre is shot from the building’s exterior and made only audible to us).
‘Fargo’s’ greatest strength is in its fantastic roster of characters. Lester, introduced as a sympathetically abused mouse of a man, has quickly devolved into monster, and Freeman sells the transformation completely. Walter White had a much slower descent into the level of odiousness that Lester has cannonballed right into, but Freeman has made the abrupt shift in Lester’s nature feel completely plausible (his Minnesota accent is also surprisingly strong) while still remaining recognizable as the putz we met in the pilot. Molly, the lone voice of reason among the folksy dunces in her precinct, is the moral force of this universe, the beacon of decency amidst the mounting savagery. Best of all is Thornton’s Malvo, a wry, frighteningly hyper-competent pot-stirrer who sows seeds of devastation wherever he goes. ‘Fargo’ uses humor quite well, but Malvo’s droll, to-the-point musings are the best of it. Only Hanks’ Gus feels a little slight. His love for his daughter and obvious affection for Molly are sweet, but the character’s nebbishness and ineptitude make him difficult to fully get behind.
As ‘Fargo’ enters its final stretch, the big question starting to take root is what will happen when Molly, the irrepressible hero in the mold of the film’s Margie Gunderson, reaches the point where she has to square off with a seemingly invincible force of nature like Malvo. Margie only had to contend with the standard-issue kidnappers played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare. Malvo is so effective and virtually omnipotent that he feels a better match for James Bond or Batman. And how far will Lester go to save his bacon when the walls inevitably start closing in again? Will he and Malvo cross paths again so the teacher can see how far his student has come? As with the best shows, ‘Fargo’ is thrillingly impossible to pin down.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments