What took you so long?
After mid-series slumps by the two best dramas on television, Fargo and True Detective are back.
That’s not to say back and better than ever. Fargo’s second season and Detective’s first weren’t just good; they were industry highlights. Commercial films don’t reach the bar freshman Detective and sophomore Fargo set. So asking the same of later seasons is an impossibility.
Not that both shows don’t make Herculean efforts — and nearly manage — to recreate the magic. Fargo wrapped its fifth season this week with a watch-it-twice finale. Jon Hamm, who played a suave seducer in Mad Men, makes a chilling killer in Fargo. He hasn’t been this good in 15 years.
Like Fargo Season 2, this installment is well aware of its time (2019) and its political backdrop (Trumpism). Hamm is a MAGA-brewed sheriff who calls on all “patriots” to get ready for a confrontation with law enforcement (sound familiar?). When the monied protagonist demands to circumvent local authorities and go federal, she snaps “Get me the orange idiot.”
There are no idiots in Detective, now in its fourth year. Unlike Fargo, whose first season was a barn-burner, Detective has had but one good season, the first.
Until now. Detective’s premise is an intriguing one: A group of Alaskan geologists disappear, only to resurface murdered and frozen in a block of ice. Was it a serial killer? A cop? A raging environmentalist?
The question and premise might be enough to propel a solid season. But the real wind in its sails is Jodie Foster, who plays the lead investigator.
Foster may be the only actress with the gravitas for the role. She won an Oscar last century playing a cop in Silence of the Lambs, and her transformation from eager recruit then to embittered supervisor now makes for a slipper-fit. This iteration of Detective may suffer from a bit of wokism, but when Foster clenches her jaw, you’re looking at a cop too old for this shit.
Fargo is already wrapped, and Detective has just a couple months before it’s gone. So the reprieve will be brief.
But, save for Succession and Jury Duty, the TV landscape was a steaming bowl of suck in 2023. Here’s to true stories turning tides.
