Fargo as a TV show seemed like a hard sale from the get-go. Though not to all, the idea of adapting some version of the Cohen Brothers' classic 1996 film seemed at best a cash in, at worst blasphemy. There were a few that thought of the potential of such a thing, sure, but for the rest of us this looked like another creative dead end in an industry that had long since given up on original ideas. It's old hat now, but the show worked, and worked magnificently. Fargo doesn't follow the film's plot, nor does it take place in the same location, but it does find itself threaded through some of that film's loose ends. Instead, Fargo takes place in 2006, in Bemidji, Minnesota, where one Lester Nygaard finds himself in a hospital with a broken nose after being harassed by his old high school bully.
The Cohens' always seemed to be operating in the periphery of American folklore. America as a nation is incredibly young, missing a lot of that deep (though retaining the horrific) history that has been smashed and reassembled into myth and slivers of storytelling. But that doesn't mean it isn't without its own folk tales. Fargo, the film, was more closely related to parables about greed than the crime genre it espoused to be inspired by. But even there, a quaint and modern paradigm acted as the foundation to what Fargo had to say. It was about a man struggling with his used car business, who needed money and chose the wrong path in order to get it. He invited evil into the world, but his reasoning was understandable and empathizing even as it was disagreeable.
Likewise, Fargo the show has an element of folklore to it. Lester Nygaard, in the hospital and feeling pathetic, talks to the man sitting beside him in the waiting room. The man beside him happens to be Lorne Malvo, a hitman for hire who has more in common with the manifestation of evil than he does any human soul. The yarn Fargo spins here has to do with a man who has been pushed over one too many times, a sociopath that is more a force of nature than a man, and the quaint, small town cops caught in the midst of something they cannot understand. But Fargo the film isn't the only Cohen Brother's film the show takes from. Most notably, elements from No Country For Old Men have found a welcome counterpoint to some of Fargo's more amusing and humbling aspects. Lorne Malvo is so obviously a mirror of Anton Chigurh (down to full scenes stolen wholesale from No Country) it is almost embarrassing, but a stellar performance from Billy Bob Thorton saves the entire thing and makes the character one of the defining aspects of the show. Where the combination shines, however, is in its themes.
No Country For Old Men is cut from a similar cloth as Fargo, a fact more notable if you've seen the Cohens' first film, Bloodsimple, which feels like a natural melding of the two. Both are films that involve greed allowing for greater violence to infect the world around them. Their most notable thread, however, is in their sense of nature. No Country For Old Men is a somewhat ironic title, because it isn't that the world has moved on from the peace of old folks' past, it is that human nature is simply not being obscured any longer. The great threat of Anton Chigurh isn't some new form, exactly. Violence and cruelty has always existed, it was just that we thought that was behind us now. For Fargo, the force of nature is chance, more than anything else. Chance has brought coincidence into an already unhinged situation, where plans have gone awry and bodies are beginning to pile up. The kidnapping doesn't go as planned, the ransom finds itself with a few more, irreconcilable kinks in the wires. It is no coincidence, however, that chance also plays a part in Anton Chigurh's character. Chance, chaos, and all that may entail is the natural state of the universe. It is empathy and kindness that allow us to carry on through it.
Nature is evil in so far as it allows horrible things to happen, not that it is inherently something to be fought against. In a Cohen Brothers' film, nature and evil are things to withstand, to survive your way through, and part of that has to do with letting go of lofty ideas and careless gambles. People, when they do not heed their own limits and the value of others, allow for nature to intervene. Fargo's Lester is not a good man. He may be immediately empathetic by being meek and spineless, but his character is one of selfishness. Lester's invitation towards nature to come blowing through is an act of chance. He meets Lorn Malvo because he is weak. Just because he doesn't fight back doesn't mean he doesn't have resentments, and is the harboring of those resentments that prevents him from saying "no" outright to Malvo when asked if he wants Malvo to "handle" his ex-bully. It was the slightest of nudges, but it led to a torrential downfall. Malvo is the evil of nature, but Lester is the evil of men who have lost their empathy.
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