Fargo 2.01 “Waiting for Dutch” & 2.02 “Before the Law”

Fargo has done it again. We’re two weeks in and already feel completely transported to the cold North Dakota, inspired on the world that the Coen brothers first created with their 1996 movie by the same name. Noah Hawley, who created the show for television, is back for this second season, developing Fargo into an Anthology-kind of series that no one should be missing.

In these first two episodes we have seen plenty of welcome aesthetic changes as the series uses the “breaking the screen into panels” technique masterfully. The perfect music is utilized for the presentation of characters, and other key moments, in something that has a very distinct appeal to it, both classic and, how to put it? Really Coen-esque. Both of these changes help Fargo set a unique and very recognizable mood, and I’d say that’s a good start.

Set in 1979, in a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate US, Fargo makes perfect use of the paranoid elements so imbued in the American culture and society of that time, developing very three-dimensional characters which seem easy to relate to.

This happens especially with the great portrayals of two family cops, Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson), father to an infant Molly (the relentless heroine on Fargo’s first season, here played by up and coming Raven Stewart), and his father-in-law Hank Larsson (Ted Danson). Both of these characters have come out alive from very different wars, both have seen and experienced a level of death that you certainly wouldn’t tell by looking at them living their actual lives in a small rural town in Minnesota.

They have great interactions, and as happened with the previous season, are presented to the audience via really developed conversations. Fargo, as opposed to most of the shows on TV, likes to take its sweet time with each scene, conversation, or character interaction, and that is another, very important part of its bloody uniqueness. Yes, bloody. Because, starting with the whole mess at the diner from the first episode, there’s splattering, shooting, stabbing, car knocking down, ear cutting, body chopping…

And the good thing is, there are a number of dangerous characters running around, both from the Kansas mob – represented by the heck of a character Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine), who recalls first season’s brilliant Lorne Malvo with his “scare first, maybe kill later attitude,” and the silent twin brothers who accompany him (played by two real life brothers, Brad Mann and Todd Mann), and the crumbling Gerhardt Fargo mob empire. Even with the death of Rye Gerhardt (Kieran Culkin) – the youngest son who, after an spectacular and murderous debut rampage, has managed to get himself run over, stabbed, cut into pieces and chopped – the family still has plenty of anger and desire to keep on controlling their business and inflicting some pain to those who stand in their way.

All of the Gerhardt’s characters depictions are priceless, with maybe the strongest ones being Mom Floyd (Jean Smart) and the elder son, Dodd (Jeffrey Donovan). Their sit-down to talk about hierarchy in the family was pure gold, and once more proof that Fargo excels at dialogue-heavy sequences, knowing how to put violence into words and gestures instead of bullets. I wonder who’ll die first, of these two confronted sides.

And then we have the two surprises of the show, the quietest, weirdest characters, who are smack dab in the center of the storm, having accidentally killed Rye, the mob son everyone in the series is looking for. Ed Blomquist (Jesse Plemons from Breaking Bad fame) continues Fargo’s tradition of using actors from the acclaimed series, and both he and Peggy Blomquist (Kirsten Dunst) bring the most surreal side; that of a married couple, with their miseries and hopes – him wanting to have children and she not so much, both bogged down by their mundane jobs – who suddenly, accidentally, have killed a member of the mob. They try to clean everything up without leaving a trace, all the while making mistakes that might soon doom them.

Fargo has just begun, and there is already blood on the snow.

Whose blood will be spilled next?