Fargo Season 4

Fargo Season 4 is a chronicle, not a history.

THIS IS A TRUE STORY

In college I took a class in which we discussed the difference between a history and a chronicle. A history is a causal, narrative telling of a certain sequence of events--a story of humans past.

Around 60 BC, Julius Caesar fled to Gaul to escape his Roman debtors. As proconsul he waged a war of conquest, primarily for the purpose of bringing home slaves with which the general coffers to fill, and he earned enthusiastic support from both the Roman people and his legions as a result--but he also earned the ire of the Optimates. When he finally returned ten years later, he illegally crossed the Rubicon with a legion in tow, and the Senate declared him a public enemy. Thus, essentially, ended the Roman Republic.

A chronicle is something different. A chronicle is simply a list of historical facts. It tells us nothing of why or how, only of what.

Caesar went to Gaul. Caesar conquered Gaul. Caesar returned to Rome. Caesar was made a public enemy. Caesar became dictator-for-life. Caesar was assassinated. Marc Antony and Brutus fought. Augustus and Marc Antony fought. Augustus became Imperator.

Every episode of Fargo, this season and the previous, begins with the words THIS IS A TRUE STORY. With every passing series this stretches credulity further and further, and it was already absurd in Season 1. It's a lie, of course. Nothing about Fargo is true. That's why, in Season 3, this title card fades out with instead the words THIS IS A TRUE STORY.

Season 4 takes this lie one step further. Not only is the word "true" before each episode obviously untrue, but so too has become the word "story."

Season 4 is not a story. Season 4 is a chronicle. There is no narrative value. It is, at best, a list of scenes that happened, with only the dimmest of causal links binding them all together.

What else is there to say?

I've been putting off writing this review for several weeks now. Unlike so many of the games I dissect, I take no joy in these words. I love Fargo. I think it's brilliant. I'm a huge fan of Noah Hawley. And Season 4 is terrible. It's a dull, pretentious, humorless slog, and although it ends with the kind of bloodbath that Fargo must end with, it doesn't even have the common decency to show us its climactic fight scenes--instead, they're all edited around, and we're left mostly with characters talking and talking and talking to each other. Generally about America, racism, capitalism, or whatever other profound subject is in the news these days.

You'll note that nearly every episode in Season 4 is credited with multiple writers. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as the credit is with an &. That signifies a writing team. If the credit is listed as and, on the other hand, you're in trouble. That means the episode has different writers who were not in contact with one another. Guess how many times you'll see "and Noah Hawley" at the end of each episode?

Constantly.

I can only imagine the utter mess of a story that we received, with a hundred too many characters, none of whom matter whatsoever, with no plot trajectory and nothing at all interesting to latch onto as a viewer, has something to do with COVID. I know the series' production was disrupted back in March. This explains the completely underwhelming finale, but unfortunately doesn't explain why the writing is so terrible.

Ultimately, the whole point of Season 4 seems to be that it's all pointless. If you've seen Season 3, you may recall that this--among other themes--was also the idea there. Unlike a lot of Fargo fans I love 3 almost as much as 1 and 2, but the profound pointlessness can be very frustrating. It works in 3 because the characters are so good, the action is so memorable, the dialogue so snappy, and the irony so amazingly funny.

But most importantly, 3 still has a story.

4 does not.

Season 4 has no trajectory. Its degree of pointlessness makes even Season 3 look like a rapier. It is, as I've said, nothing more than a chronicle of two gangs. Worse, it has an uninteresting cast of characters, none of whom are given the time they need to develop; it has no sense of humor, and nothing at all is funny; and when each character dies pointlessly, it's often in a way that makes no sense, isn't set-up, and comes out of nowhere.

It's terrible. Watching this season was a tremendous slog. I almost gave up; there are only so many monologues about America and racism that one can take. Season 4 has at least one an episode. In fact most of Season 4 is monologue. No conflict, just one character lecturing the other. It's like a Hideo Kojima game. But the conclusion is always what makes Fargo. The conclusion is always what sells the season. So I stuck it out.

Was it worth it?

Do you remember the game of cat-and-mouse between Lorne and Lester at the end of Season 1? How tense and exciting it was? The catharsis when Lorne was finally killed?

Do you remember the shootout at the motel and the chase between Hanzee and Lou at the end of Season 2? How unbelievably high the stakes were and how glorious the violence, and how tragic it was when Meth Damon died just as his wife began to love him again?

Do you remember the brilliant dynamic between Mr. Wrench and Nikki Swango developed in the last three episodes of Season 3? Do you remember how awesome it was when the Wrench and Numbers theme started to play at the end of 3.7? Do you remember the scene where this new crime duo CUT OFF A GUY'S HEAD WITH A METAL CHAIN, and how exciting their dismantling of Varga's empire was?

In Fargo 4.8, we take an entire episode off from the main storyline, right before the climax, to develop a relationship between two characters that do not matter--one of whom will die through an awkwardly edited act of God, that makes no sense and serves no purpose, at the episode's conclusion.

Over the three subsequent episodes, Chris Rock gives a few monologues, some Italian guy gives a few monologues, a few characters die pointlessly without ever doing anything to contribute to the narrative, a ghost shows up for some reason to avert a crisis that only arose because the characters were behaving like idiots and in ways that make no sense, and the series' weakest villain to date--a villain who does nothing for ten episodes and whose only purpose in the 'plot' is to provide an easy out for the conflict between the two gangs--dies following a tortuously prolonged "trial" sequence.

The two attempts at exciting shootouts that we receive are more like storyboards than actual scenes in and of themselves, likely due to COVID. They are so bad that nothing would at all would have been preferable, and certainly less embarrassing for FX.

Ultimately, in episodes 10 and 11, there is no cat-and-mouse, no big reveal, and no clever espionage. No one's head gets ripped off and no one steps in any bear traps. The most exciting thing to happen is that the leader of the Italian gang instantly fulfills all of his objectives that he has been working toward for the last year off-screen, by himself, while wearing no pants, five minutes before his demise. Just like that! It was so easy, why didn't you just do it sooner?!? You would've saved us all a whole heap of trouble!

This season exists in the paradoxical limbo of being both rushed and drawn out. That is not a good place for TV to be.

If you can't tell, I don't think sticking this out was worth it. I would have gotten just as much out of Fargo 4 if I'd shut it off after the premier. The entire 11-episode run is nothing but filler, and its conclusion is no different. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of characters and monologues, signifying nothing.

Don't watch it.