Surprise! There's something good on TV

If you are paying attention, life is rarely surprising, TV even less so.  It’s funny, but when there were only three networks, you didn’t know what to expect (Dr. Kildare?  My Mother the Car?  Laugh-in?).  Now that there are hundreds of networks, it all seems to be the same homogenized goop.

That’s why I have to tip my cap to the first TV series to surprise me since . . . well, since that first episode of Mad Men all those years ago.  If you had told me that a TV series could capture the quirkiness, the unique characters, the sudden violence, and the philosophical mélange of the movie Fargo, I would have told you that you were nuts; if you told me that series would be named Fargo, I would have had you committed.

The FX Network’s series Fargo is a “re-imagining” of the movie.  That’s another red flag, usually signaling that someone wanted to make a remake but either a) couldn’t get the rights or b) couldn’t get the cooperation of the original author.  The Coen Brothers are listed as producers of the series Fargo, so I have to assume this is to their liking.  Incredibly, the series captures the tone of one of the quirkiest, most singularly iconic motion pictures of the past half century.  Probably no film other than Pulp Fiction is more daring, more brilliant, and more unique than the Coen Brothers most successful film until they produced No Country for Old Men. 

Fargo also has some of that film in its DNA in the character of Lorne Malvo, played with understated glee by Billy Bob Thorton.  That character shares many qualities with Anton Chigurh, the unstoppable killing machine that won Javier Bardem an Oscar.  Like Chigurh, Malvo’s haircut isn't the most stylish.  He has one other thing in common with Chigurh: when he is menacing, he’s scary; when he is being polite, you wet your pants.

Fargo, the series, takes place in the same universe as Fargo, the movie.  We know this because one plot point in the series is the finding of the bag of money that Steve Buscemi’s character “hid” in the movie.  There are odd overlaps that you just have to chalk up to some cosmic synchronicity; there is now a pregnant police officer, but it is not Marge Gunderson; there is a weasely sad sack who yearns for better things (Martin Freeman, not William H. Macy); there is snow, a lot of snow.  But then it is Minnesota.

Fargo gets everything right, even down to the strange philosophical universe people seem to exist in.  Things happen seemingly randomly, yet there coming was foreseeable.  Episodes contain scenes of great sweetness and unspeakable brutality.  Good characters die, and bad ones don’t always get their comeuppance.  Each character thinks he or she is the star of his or her own movie, even the dim-witted sheriff or the deaf-mute assassin.  The tenor of the series is summed up in the first episode when Lorne Malvo has a conversation with beaten down, put upon insurance salesman Lester Nygaard, and he tells him, “Your problem is, you think there are rules.  There aren't.”

Billy Bob Thornton confirms his status as one of the great actors of this generation.  The man is a chameleon; I literally have no idea what he looks like, if he is handsome or unattractive, if he is large or slight of build.  It takes a special actor to take a character this odd and fill him with menace, yet also make him seem like a guy who would be happy not to kill anybody if he could just get what he wants that way.  Alison Tolman is amazingly expressive as the woman sheriff no one takes seriously, either because she’s a woman or maybe they’re just idiots.  Colin Hanks plays off her nicely as her colleague/husband.

If I had to complain about something, I’d say Martin Freeman (an excellent actor) is trying too hard to do the Minnesota accent.  I lived there for several years and he lays it on a bit thick.  But that’s a small quibble. 

In the movie Network the mad TV personality Howard Beale said “No matter how much trouble the hero is in, don’t worry; just look at your watch – at the end of the hour he’s going to win.”  That is not true of Fargo.  When Alison Tolman’s character was shot, I couldn't imagine that they would go on without her, but I didn't put it past them to maybe try (spoiler: she survived).  Even Lost had some rules, some characters you knew would b safe no matter how much peril they appeared to be in (although everyone was sort of dead at the end).  Fargo is written on a blank canvas where anything is possible, and no event, no matter how unpredictable, is surprising.

Fargo is a completely unexpected wild card, a masterpiece that takes a brilliant two hour movie and stretches it out over 10 hours without diminishing the brilliance.  It is the best drama on television.