Each season of Noah Hawley’s “Fargo” is a study of the varying degrees to which we allow evil, American style, to triumph. Once you understand that, this fifth round takes on a certain inevitability, in that we were always going to end up . . . here. Setting Season 5 in 2019 and a time when evil ensnares all of us, consuming the show’s long presumed notion of “Minnesota nice,” is the closest to the present this show has ever dared to be.
As a brief card defining the term explains, "Minnesota nice" isn't honest. The fabled front was always understood to be window dressing veiling frustrations, squelched desires, and countless other malignancies. That it would someday go up in flames was indubitable; that it would implode in our frighteningly divided era is realistic. The fifth installment takes us back to the show's original feeling and also reduces the level of ambition that flavored past rides. But what is aspiration without economy or organization? An admirable try at best.
