Fargo season 5 premiere: The show comes roaring back with a lean, confident new story

It’s been almost three years since Fargo was last on TV, its fourth season representing something of a nadir for Noah Hawley’s scattered take on the Coen brothers’ classic. At its best, Fargo has been a fascinating and worthy addition to the name, borrowing mostly just “vibes” from the film, rather than a bunch of Easter eggs and character names. I’ll admit I was a little surprised to find out there would be a fifth season, but if it continues to be as good as this two-episode season premiere, I’m extremely down for another adventure in the snowy Midwest.

We start, as all good stories must, in the middle of a slow motion, all-out brawl at the Scandia Middle School Fall Festival Planning Committee. I have no idea what caused such mayhem, but it appears everyone in the auditorium is throwing hands. Save for Dorothy Lyon (Juno Temple) and her daughter, Scotty (Sienna King). On their way out of the melee, Dot accidentally tases a cop, and is swiftly arrested. “Wrong place, wrong time,” she muses from the backseat of a police car, and later admits to her husband, Wayne (a superb David Rysdahl), “On second thought, maybe better if I hadn’t been so freewheelin’ with the taser.”

A brief stint in jail later, Dot is bailed out and on her way to somewhere she seems to find even less appealing: her mother-in-law’s horrendous limestone McMansion for a Christmas card photoshoot. Jennifer Jason Leigh, who never met a matriarchal role she couldn’t spin into gold, sinks her teeth and then some into Lorraine Lyon, offhandedly murmuring “how progressive” at the sight of Scotty in her preferred outfit, a sharp suit. There’s time left over for the microaggressions to simply become aggression, too, when each member of the family is handed a simply massive assault rifle to pose with. “It’s about projection of our values as a family,” Lorraine says. Got it.

GRADE FOR SEASON 5, EPISODE 2, “TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS”: B

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Sore thumb as she is at Lorraine’s dinner table, Dorothy’s happy and active in her own domain, putting Scotty to bed with a well-acted pirate story and kindly rebuffing Wayne’s suggestion for a roll in the hay. Settling down, she’s beset with ominous visions of a ranch-like compound complete with people in freaky masks, a crumbling old barn, and Jon Hamm in a bolo tie. It’s all a bit cryptic, but surely has something to do with her being abducted from her home by two men the very next day, though not before scarring one up right good with an improvised flamethrower and maiming the other’s ear with an ice skate. Dot’s survivalist-style skills are a delightful surprise, but not a stretch for Temple, who’s always been capable of the vicious beneath her warmth. It’s fantastic to see her firing on all cylinders after she, like so many Ted Lasso alumni, was cut off at the knees by the writing during the Apple TV+ hit’s final season.

Even with her hands bound behind her back, Dot is able to give the kidnappers the slip after a cop car pulls them over and make haste to a very well-stocked gas station, which she Home Alones with various traps while the helpful, if hapless, cashier looks on. Meanwhile, the now one-eared kidnapper demonstrates how much better he is at this than the other, killing one cop and wounding Deputy Whitt Farr (Lamorne Morris) in near-wordless pursuit of Dot through the tundra. Sam Spruell’s carved-granite face and low growl are a perfect fit for the man we later come to know as Ole Munch. After a brilliant, tense showdown with Dot at the gas station wherein the cashier and the other kidnapper are killed, she gets the drop on him and conks him out cold with a shovel. “How do you know how to do all this?” Farr asks as she applies a makeshift tourniquet. “Not my first getaway,” she says, never once wincing at all the broken glass beneath her bare feet. By the time backup arrives, she’s in the wind again.

Wayne, meanwhile, has come home to an empty house and blood on the floor. On the scene to investigate is Deputy Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani), who drove Dot to jail after the fight just a day prior. After an understandably rough day, he collapses, exhausted, into the couch, waking at mysterious sounds from the kitchen. Surprise of all surprises: Dot’s back, bloodied and disheveled, insisting she just left for a while to “clear her head.”

One of Fargo’s pet themes, dating back to the film, has been the signature ability of people to ignore and deny while they slowly get sucked into an irrecoverable position in a story that’s far bigger than they possibly know. But this doesn’t feel like that. If anything, it appears Dot’s already lived one of those stories, and is adamant she never will again.

Of course, another thing Fargo likes to remind us is that those kinds of preferences are rarely up to us, and Sheriff Roy Tillman (Hamm) is hunting Dot down. The pieces are still falling into place by the time the second part of the premiere comes to a close, but it’s clear Dorothy was once part of Tillman’s commune, serving as his “wife.” In a show full of scoundrels, Tillman’s one of its most vile creations yet, simultaneously a cult leader and a tyrant in his greater role “serving” the community. Meeting with two of his constituents, a woman and her husband who’s been physically abusing her, Tillman chastises the man, but only for the imprecision in his brutality. “Under the husband, the woman abides” he says almost ceremoniously.

Back at the ranch, Ole Munch is none too pleased about the job Tillman sent him to do. “She is for real,” he says steadily, telling Tillman he needs to pay up their agreed fee “plus pain and suffering,” and a new bounty now that he knows he’s “hunting a tiger.” Tillman’s son Gator (Hey! Joe Keery!) and some cohorts attempt to execute Munch but that goes about as well as you’d expect, and suddenly Tillman’s got two big problems to worry about.

Back in Minnesota, Dot is explaining how her disappearance was no big deal to Deputy Olmstead, who’s clearly having absolutely none of it. But without a witness and without testimony, what is she to do? Wayne even tries to jog the truth from Dorothy, reminding her that two types of blood were found in the house but, angel that he is, he lets the subject go. He’s the only one, though, because Lorraine’s convinced the botched kidnapping may have been Dorothy’s idea in a convoluted play for her empire. Visiting Dot later on she presents an idea: Dot leaves Wayne, and Lorraine will “stake” her for the first two years. Finally, for a moment, the mask slips. “Listen, bitch,” Dot whispers, “I’ve climbed through six kinds of hell to get where I am. And no Ivy League royal wanna be is gonna run me off just because she doesn’t like the way I smell.” Temple and Leigh make great partners here, both trying, in their own ways, to retain their veneers and failing miserably: Dot’s a fighter, Lorraine’s a sledgehammer, and finally they’ve met each other, really, for the first time.

Speaking of sledgehammers, Dot enlists Scotty to help with a little craft project: making their home a veritable den of death for anyone unfortunate enough to break in. Windowsills are electrified, door handles are covered in shattered glass, and, yes, a big ol’ hammer is tied up, ready to come down like a pendulum on a front door intruder.

Wayne comes home, understandably nonplussed to see his daughter dutifully hammering nails into a baseball bat. He makes yet another attempt to pry something, anything from Dot about her obvious abduction, but she doesn’t budge. “It makes sense to us; that’s what matters, right?” The walls are rapidly closing in on Dot, between Tillman’s son Gator doing his best to disrupt Olmstead’s investigation and her mother-in-law now understanding just what kind of adversary she’s dealing with. Ten years ago, Dorothy Lyons made some promises. Now, it seems, payment is due.

Stray observations

• Don’t worry, Ole Munch still holds a grudge, his attention now fully turned to Tillman. As episode two closes, Gator drops into the scene-of-the-crime gas station for a Slim Jim, giving Munch just enough time to, uh, pin a “YOU OWE ME” note to his partner with a hunting knife.
• “Consider that bitch flummoxed,” Gator says, on deleting Dot’s photo from Olmstead’s phone. But really, how much time is that buying? They’re the police! They have copies!
• Sometimes Fargo likes to play on the fringes of interpretation; other times, subtlety be damned. I’m speaking, of course, about the mural in Lorraine’s office: a giant red painting of the word “NO.”
• I have no idea how Olmstead’s husband, the aspiring pro golfer Lars (Lucas Gage) is going to play into proceedings, but I’ll bet someone gets their bell rung by a club at some point, if anyone wants in on that action.
• The two episodes kicking this season off are bookended by two sublime needle drops: “Your Move” by Yes scoring the Fall Brawl, as it were, and “This Is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas closing out episode two.

Fargo season 5 is available to stream now on Hulu.