Fargo is a series / franchise that I have mixed feelings about because initially when I started watching back in season one and it was touted as "true stories" I was locked in because I do love crazy as hell stories that actually happened in real life. Unfortunately, it turns out that absolutely zero of any of the Fargo stories are based in any sort of truth and this thing that pops up at the beginning of every episode is a lie every single time.
I started to have my suspicions in the season that featured Billy Bob Thornton where he faked being a dentist for years in order to get closer to his prey. I don't remember the specifics but I remember thinking to myself that it simply wouldn't be possible for someone to FAKE being a dentist and get away with it. If anything, the people who were his regular customers would probably pick up pretty quickly on the fact that this guy putting knives in my mouth doesn't have a clue what he is doing! I then looked it up and found out that none of the Fargo series' stories are based even a little bit in actual events. it's all a lie and I guess they get away with it with some people.
I was still always going to watch season 5 though because even though they are not at all based in truth, they tend to be good stories with big names in them. This season features Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh, among other faces that you might recognize as the series goes on.
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The story borrows a lot from other series and movies in that it is a story of a woman who escaped from an abusive relationship and disappeared and started a new happy life with a new family. Upon finding out that his ex-wife is in fact not dead, Sheriff Roy Tillman (Hamm) begins a campaign to capture her and force her to come back to him. His ex-wife who is now named Dorothy or "Dot" lives a home-maker's life and is quite happy with it as well as her husband and daughter "Scotty", both of whom have no idea about her past or the fact that she is quite adept at survival and killing when necessary.
The show is intentionally confusing at first and as the pieces start to come together it is somewhat interesting. Well, that is until it kind of becomes obvious what is going to happen and that the Sheriff is going to stop at nothing to get to his ex-wife and force her to come back despite the fact that he has remarried and new children of his own.
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I think this sort of "God complex" driven character wasn't much of a stretch for Jon Hamm since his narcissistic character in "Mad Men" was essentially the same person but with less nipple piercings and fetishes. Dot is a pretty amazing character as well because she is exceptionally polite and a very devoted wife and mother, but she has a very dark past that includes exceptional survival skills as well as the ability to be a bit of a ninja. She ends up being referred to by those that wish to capture her as a "Tiger" and she behaves as such as she eludes capture and kills multiple people along the way. All she really desires is to be left alone by her ex-husband and his minions, but they pursue her relentlessly.
The borrowed the unstoppable assassin character from "No Country for Old Men" in the character who is rarely if ever referred to by his name of Ole.
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Ole is the coolest character in the show and his emotionless and methodical methods in which he uses to perform his job is very much like Javier Bardem's awesome performance as Anton Chigurh in that film. Ole wears a skirt of sorts and there is a brief interlude where his family's past in the Welsh occult is shown to give us a bit of backstory as to why he is the way that he is. Much like Anton in "No Country", he seems to just be unkillable and has no allegiance to anyone, just to the task at hand.
Now if like me you end up watching this series now, you are going to think the ending is a bit strange and leaves a lot of things unfinished. However, this is only because only 7 of the 10 episodes were actually completed in time for release because of the strikes that happened with SAG and other Hollywood organizations. These are scheduled to be released in early January but it remains to be seen (at least for me) if they will be able to stick to this time-table. If you are reading this after Jan 2nd, this might not be an issue for you but since I originally started watching them over the Christmas holidays, I was extremely confused when the show "ended" very abruptly.
Should I watch it?
As the various seasons of Fargo go, I would actually say that this is one of the weaker ones but I am gathering this opinion after having only seen 70% of it. To me, a lot of rather silly and magical things are introduced into the story that simply don't make sense if this was truly meant to dupe the public into thinking that this is, in fact, a true story - which it is not.
It is entertaining enough and for the most part they don't waste a bunch of time on useless dialogue that is meant to be filler in order to get enough material for a full 10 episodes. With one episode exception, the pace of the show is just right. It's fast enough that you don't get bored, but not compressed enough that you have to pay complete attention to everything that is going on lest you lose track of what the story is. I fell asleep during one episode and was still up to speed enough to put the pieces together to carry on without rewatching the previous episode.
While not a perfect series, it is good enough to be considered better than a vast majority of other series that are currently available out there. If there was other good stuff available right now I would give this a "maybe" but since there isn't much competition in the world of series at the moment, I will give this one a...
Currently, the only legal way to watch Fargo Season 5 is on subscriptions that support the FX Network such as Hulu and Fubo