Fargo, S04
There isn’t too much I can still remember about the previous seasons of Fargo. The main thing being that I was surprised to have liked the first one. Because I really hate the movie. A lot! Luckily the show was different enough to be quite enjoyable.
I think the second season was still good – I like the anthology format, because it’s basically like getting a new mini-series each year. And mini-series often hit the sweet spot between an almost great movie that just didn’t have enough time to tell its story properly and an almost great TV show that overstayed its welcome. Anthology series can of course also mean that you don’t like some seasons but still enjoy later ones.
This fourth season features some really big names again, Jason Schwartzman being the absolute highlight for me. Chris Rock does a good job, and Timothy Olyphant back as a U.S. Marshal1 was great, but Schwartzman playing a gangster-version of his neurotic self I’ve been in love with ever since Bored to Death absolutely was the highlight.
It was a bit odd to see the show venture into supernatural stuff, has that been the case in earlier seasons and I forgot? The episodes themselves were kind of a mixed bag – some were really great and kept me hooked the entire time, others bored me after just a few minutes.
All in all, the plot was too convoluted. It’s hard to get invested in characters when you always have to try and remember how the characters are related to each other. It’s kinda what the show does, I know, but three different generations of multiple huge crime families, and keeping track of their kid exchanges with a different outcome each time while trying to connect the differently aged child actors to their respective characters… that was a bit much.