Land of the Free, Home of the False
In Season Four of ‘Fargo,’ warring mobs, corrupt cops, and others fight to control 1950 Kansas City
In Season Four of Fargo, mobs and corrupt cops fight in 1950 Kansas City.
‘You know why America loves a crime story? Because America is a crime story,” mob boss Josto Fadda ( Jason Schwartzman) argues. We are a nation built on stolen land, with the labor of stolen people. And perhaps because of this, as Josto notes, we tend to root for the takers in these stories, rather than the innocent victims being taken.
The long-awaited fourth season of the great FX crime anthology series Fargo has no shortage of colorful takers to root for, or against, in its tale of a syndicate war in 1950 Kansas City. On one side are Josto, his hotheaded brother Gaetano (Salvatore Esposito, from the Italian hit Gomorrah), and their army of goons in shiny suits. On the other is Loy Cannon (Chris Rock), who has forward-thinking plans (like partnering with banks to issue credit cards), if only anyone would listen to a black man on such matters. There are wild
cards like Rabbi Milligan (Ben Whishaw), an orphaned survivor of two previous mob clashes, and Oraetta Mayflower ( Jessie Buckley), a nurse with sticky fingers and a ruthlessness that belies her Minnesota Nice demeanor. Even the cops are shady, whether twitchy military vet Odis Weff
( Jack Huston) or smug U.S. Marshal Dick Wickware (Timothy Olyphant, playing to Justified type). One of the few innocents, it seems, is teen Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (E’myri Crutchfield), whose mortician father owes the Cannon gang.
(Can we pause to reflect on the wonderfully absurd names? Cannon’s adviser, Doctor Senator, is neither a Senator nor a doctor, while Oraetta works for the patrician Dr. Harvard. Then there’s bankrobbing lesbian couple Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capp, kids named Zero and Satchel, and Wickware’s nickname, Deafy. )
Ethelrida is our periodic narrator, wise enough to explain what this pulpy story has to say about the immigrant experience in the U.S. and the ways the system pits groups against one another so that they can’t team up to change the status quo.
“If America is a nation of immigrants,” she asks, “then how does one become American?” The struggle goes well beyond this specific conflict between blacks and Italians. Deafy, for instance, brags of having helped chase Italian interlopers out of Utah, even though, as a Mormon in 1950, he can technically be shot on sight in Missouri.
The huge cast and timely discussion of what it means to be American make this, in some ways, the most ambitious Fargo season yet. In others, it’s the most formulaic. There are still winks to Coen brothers films (look for a cattle gun like Chigurh’s from No Country for Old Men). But the show is largely in conversation with itself, mixing elements from installments past (could there be a tie between Rabbi Milligan and Season Two’s Mike Milligan?), and counting on its impressive new ensemble to make it work. Rock is convincingly understated in his most prominent dramatic role to date, allowing co-stars like Schwartzman, Buckley, and Esposito to play things far more broadly.
There is, though, one episode that feels particularly Coen-y: the black-and-white ninth hour, which is also a tribute to The Wizard of Oz. The climax of another episode was shot at the train station famously used in The Untouchables. Like America itself, Fargo is a dizzying, delightful swirl of influences. And this move from the series’ Minnesota home turf is mostly a rollicking success. After all, there’s plenty of snow — and blood — to be found in a
Kansas City winter, too.