Fargo, Episode 5.1: "The Tragedy of the Commons" [1/2]
"That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care."
(The following includes spoilers for the first episode from season five of FX’s Fargo, as well as for all previous seasons and the 1996 film that inspired them.)
I entered into Fargo’s fifth season with my fair-share of apprehensions, some of which appeared to be immediately validated, while others proved to be refreshingly unwarranted. But, lets take it from the start…
The first episode — titled The Tragedy of the Commons1, which is perhaps an intriguing thematic nod toward what’s to come later this season — begins with an all-out brawl taking place during a Minnesotan school-board meeting for the Fall Festive Planning Committee. We’ve never seen a season of Fargo open in media res quite like this before, and I think that’s a much needed departure this time around. One of my primary concerns going into Noah Hawley’s follow-up to our last Midwestern outing into “true crime”2 — a decidedly messy take on race relations set in the early 50’s, told via operatic gang-warfare, fought between the established Italian mafia and a newly founded crime syndicate, comprised of underdog black immigrants — was that by setting this new season during the “Trump years”, it would make Fargo’s satire too pointed. (Once a writer evokes Trump as a source of inspiration, it’s hard to believe any nuance will follow; much like the man himself, who rarely speaks in subtleties, criticism or praise of Trump is never as diaphanous as good story-telling ought to be). By omitting the instigating action which kicks off this riotous revolt, overt politics are postponed. Instead, we’re left to fill-in that blank ourselves — which isn’t terribly hard to do, mind you, given the climate of school-board warfare that we’ve been witness to since 2019, mostly stemming from the inclusion of LGBT reading-material in libraries. This draws us away from the politics being implied, and instead, focuses our attention on this season’s protagonist: Dorothy “Dot” Lyon.
The camera drifts through the auditorium, travelling amidst the chaos — which is shot in buttery-smooth slow-motion, while the song I've Seen All Good People by the prog-rock band Yes adds some ironic flare to the proceedings — until we find Dot, surveilling the unfolding violence from a row of empty chairs, eyes wide and alert, cradling her daughter Scotty like a lioness guarding her cub.
This opening scenario could be read as another form of the Tragedy of the Commons3. Dorothy seems unaffected by the cause of this riot and is unwilling to partake in society’s on-going gladiatorial combat over the destiny of LGBT children, and instead, is hyper-focused on protecting her own daughter (who we later come to learn defies most gender-stereotypes herself). This is a tragic flaw of human-nature, and also, a deeply admirable trait in a mother.
When Dot sees a window to escape this carnage, she takes it, fleeing the auditorium with her daughter under her arm. Before reaching the exit, she’s stopped by a math teacher — who, aptly enough, cries out “no one is listening to me!” Dot promptly tasers him without a second-thought. A police officer immediately grabs Dot’s shoulder from behind. She turns on her heels and tasers him, too.
With this introduction, we’re told everything we need to know about Dorothy. After being handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police-cruiser, she justifies her actions by saying: “Don’t come at a momma lion when she’s got her cub!” This metaphor, which I’ve already used once and will be used numerous times more by Fargo itself through-out the course of this episode, seems to be over-stated, but at the heart of who Dorothy Lyon is. (After all, her last name is Lyon).
And here, I have to talk about one of the handful of moments during this episode that left me feeling disappointed in Noah Hawley’s writing, which is usually razor-sharp, even when operating under several layers of self-reference. The deputy driving Dot to the station — our second protagonist to enter the fray, Indira Olmstead — counters Dot’s justifications by quoting one of the most poignant lines from the original film, 1996’s Fargo.
As Marge Gunderson, the pregnant police chief of a small town in Minnesota, drives the inhuman Gaear Grimsrud to the station (after witnessing the aftermath of him disposing of his partner’s body with a woodchipper), she expresses utter confusion as to how anybody could commit such a heinous crime “just for money”; and ultimately, seems just as confused as to why they’d do it on such “a beautiful day”. In the film, this is an immeasurably powerful line of dialogue. Despite seeing the worst of humanity, Marge remains unchanged. The world she lives in is still beautiful and still worthy of bringing a child into.
In season five of Hawley’s television remix of Fargo, this line — “it’s a beautiful day” — is instead uttered by Indira under much less horrifying circumstances. This has the effect of nullifying the power of the original delivery of this dialogue and makes it feel too mundane, retroactively robbing it of it’s potency. (A body fed into a wood-chipper and a riot at a school-board meeting are two very different levels of human depravity). Indira immediately follows Marge’s iconic line up with: “And y’know what they call a bunch of lions? A pride. So think about that…” Man, that’s laying things on a little thick.4
Gloryland by Ralph Stanley plays over Dot’s processing at the police-station, which concludes with another exchange between her and Indira, one that sets-up the conflict from which this season’s plot will springboard off of: “My prints”, Dot asks, “do they— is there a national database those go in?” “Why”, Indira replies. Only half joking, she adds: “Are you some kind of fugitive?”
So far, we’ve been introduced to a couple of the typical archetypes that we’d expect to meet through-out the course of a season of Fargo. We’ve got the embodiment of Minnesota Nice found in Dorothy Lyon, who we know is about to be sent on a harrowing series of bloody misunderstandings and desperate wrong-doings (usually caused by their own tragically selfish or deluded decisions). And we’ve met one of the staple good cops, Indira — “good” both in the sense of her morality and her competence. Next, we’ll be introduced to the comedically emasculated husband.
This incarnation of that familiar archetype is fulfilled by Dot’s partner, Wayne Lyon. Here, we are presented with the first wrinkle that differentiates this season’s cast of usual suspects from the previous seasons. Unlike Jerry Lundegaard from the original film — and more importantly, season one’s Jerry Lundegaard doppelganger, Lester Nygaard — Wayne Lyon isn’t constantly battling to preserve his dwindling masculinity from a thankless job or a belittling wife5. Instead, he lives under the controlling shadow of his mother, who herself satisfies another Fargo archetype, that of the greedy business mogul.
When Wayne picks Dot up from the station — with no real sense of reproach, or even much in the way of questioning — he reminds her that tonight they have to go to his mother’s place for the “Christmas card deal”. (As if Dot’s day couldn’t get any worse...) Being the stereotype of a caring husband, Wayne thought to bring his wife a change of clothes, and even collected her make-up cabinet into a plastic bag, except for the “bronzer, on account of [her] saying that it gives [her] the hives.” After Dot freshens-up on the drive to Lorraine Lyon’s estate, she is startled to learn that Wayne’s already told her mother-in-law about her arrest. This seems to alarm Dot beyond the mere loss of reputation that she’ll surely suffer.
The character of Lorraine didn’t make a great first impression with me — I mean, she’s not meant to, but her unappealing qualities didn’t intrigue me in the slightest. She comes off as broadly written and several degrees too campy, even by Fargo standards. Jennifer Jason Leigh is able to make Lorraine’s thick, Transatlantic accent sound borderline musical, but it doesn’t help how predictable her dialogue feels. Upon greeting her grand-daughter, Lorraine pretends to not notice her, on account of Scotty wearing a suit and tie instead of a dress. “Where’s my grand-daughter?” “I’m here nana!”, Scotty calls out, heart-breakingly oblivious. “Hm— How progressive”, Lorraine replies, seething.
“Lets put the cross-dresser at the center”, she continues, directing her family to pose for the Christmas card. Some hired-hands enter frame, handing each member of Lorraine’s family an assault-rifle to hold while the photo is taken. “It’s about strength; projection of our values”, Lorraine explains. This is the kind of pointed satire that I worried about. I’m sure such Christmas photos are taken in real life, but in the context of a narrative, it’s unimaginative, lazy and ultimately a little silly. The only redeeming aspect of this short sequence was the subtle reveal that Dot knows instinctively how she ought to hold the assault-rifle given to her, hinting further at her shady past; that’s a nice touch.6
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The conversation over dinner involves politics, of course, and inevitably, Dot’s arrest earlier that day. In an attempt to change the subject, Dot explains her role on the school’s Committee for the New Library, and her desire to raise money in order to expand the selection of thrillers and mysteries. “Can’t you just give money like a normal person?”, Lorraine interjects with her first piece of well-written dialogue thus far. “Or, here’s a thought… Write your own pulp-fiction, now that you’re an outlaw.” Dot’s half-second of terror at hearing this comment cements our suspicions about her past as a fugitive, through yet another playful joke that’s probably closer to home than she’d like.
In addition to that, I’d like to read this dialogue as a clever piece of self-deprecating humor on Noah Hawley’s part. Why don’t you write your own pulp-fiction has been a critique lobbied at the Fargo anthology series since the beginning. Why are you still remixing the same handful of ingredients that were borrowed from a film over twenty years old? I’m glad Hawley has never seemed to take these remarks seriously. I’m still amazed at how much inspiration he’s managed to draw out of the Coen’s brother’s extended filmography. Never before has imitation and mimicry felt so fresh and wholly unique. I think we might be able to start calling Hawley the honorary third Coen brother.
So far, this first episode has had a fairly slow and meandering pace, which is about to change abruptly. But, I’m reaching the threshold for how much SubStack will let me include in a single post, so I may have to save the rest of my thoughts for tomorrow. Suffice it to say, the vast majority of this episode’s disappointments are now behind us, and what remains is an utterly thrilling back-half, filled with kidnappings and gas-station shoot-out’s.
Stay tuned.
A concept coined by William Forster Lloyd in 1833, primarily used in economics and ecology, which describes how those with seemingly unlimited access to a limited resource will inevitably overuse that resource, at the detriment of “the commons”. This concept has been used to describe the exploitation of all kinds of resources: water, forests, oil, etc. More recently, The Tragedy of the Commons has also been used to described over-population, the cause of pollution and even the exploitation of big data.
Like all previous seasons, this one begins with a disclaimer, ripped straight from the original film: “This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in [location] in [year]. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” And like all previous iterations of Fargo, this is a falsehood — although, given the timeframe season five takes place in, I’d expect to see a few real-life events woven into the story as it progresses, maybe even some of the early days of Covid-19, if the plot takes us that far into 2020.
Quoting Aristotle, who remarked on the same concept as The Tragedy of the Commons approximately 2,200 years prior to William Lloyd: “That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common.” This, to me, sounds like a perfect description of the aspect of human-nature that all Fargo protagonists suffer from, which starts the ball of tragically avoidable mayhem rolling each season.
Before we move on from that car ride, I should note one other interesting piece of dialogue spoken by Dot, while she’s recounting the events that lead to her arrest: “Mr. Abernathy, the math teacher, he came at me like something outta a zombie movie!” As you’re probably well aware, each season of Fargo thus-far has included a supernatural twist of sorts. Season one had a biblical rain of fish (which I’m told, is not really supernatural at all and is actually a real phenonium); season two had a UFO; season three had a bowling alley that appeared to be some kind of purgatory; and most recently, season four featured a ghost. All of these twists, with the exception of season one, were foreshadowed from the very start. With that in mind, should we start paying attention to further allusions to zombies in this fifth season? I know it sounds absurd to consider now, but honestly, if you’d have told me that season two would conclude with an honest-to-God UFO, I’d have thought that was silly, too. But — and most Fargo fans will agree with me here — it ended up being one of the greatest sequences that I’ve ever seen on TV. Just, something to ponder as this season continues to unspool into Fargoian madness...
Later in this episode, as Dot is laying in bed, processing how galactically fucked she might be, Wayne asks her if she’d like a “tumble”. (God, I love the dialogue in this show. When it works, it really works.) Instead of rejecting her husband outright, the way previous Fargo housewives like Lester’s might have done, Dorothy takes a softer approach. “You don’t want that tonight”, she says. “I had to sponge my pits in your mom’s commode like a French lady.” “Well, maybe I like that”, Wayne replies, still hopeful. “Caged heat”, he suggests, echoing more of that lioness theme that we’ve been beaten over-the-head with. Dot admits she’s flattered that he could still want her in such a disheveled state, but insists that she’s too exhausted. Sensing some degree of rejection coming from her husband, Dot follows this up with a little good humor: “Try to touch me right now and I’m going to have to tase you too!” Wayne ultimately settles for watching some Blue Bloods on his iPad, seemingly unbothered. It’s a fair assumption that Dot isn’t terribly attracted to her husband, but despite this, her unwavering instinct to protect those close to her remains. Unlike previous Fargo protagonists who are caught-up in a web of their own deception, I don’t detect much selfishness in Dorothy Lyon. She clearly cares deeply about her family, even if she’s been keeping them in the dark about her true identity.
It’s also worth noting that Dot and Lorraine are the only two not smiling, hinting further at some thematic connection between the two mothers.
"...it’s hard to believe any nuance will follow..." Ya think? Now given the way Jon Hamm's character is playing? Garbage writing (Hawley's). Fargo has become a parody of itself and is settling into coastal mediocrity writing cartoon characters (way overacted accents, for one).