It Could Always Be Worse

Fargo finds new foes for its cast of formidable women.

- JEN CHANEY

THE FIRST SCENE of this season of Fargo zooms right in on the dichotomy that has always defined the series: the matter-of-fact decency of folks in flyover country versus the dark, weird shit that some of these same people get up to when they're not exchanging pleasantries over a cup of joe. Noah Hawley, who created the anthology series inspired by the Coen brothers' film, kicks things off with a title card that lists the definition of "Minnesota Nice"-"an aggressively pleasant demeanor, often forced, in which a person is chipper and self-effacing, no matter how bad things get"-then immediately cuts to a massive brawl at a middle-school fall-festival planning meeting in Scandia, a suburb of the Twin Cities. The implication: Everyone in this town, and maybe the whole country, has been pushed so far that they can't even pretend to be nice anymore. "What's the world coming to, is all I'm saying," remarks Deputy Indira Olmstead (Never Have I Ever's Richa Moorjani) as she takes a local housewife, Dorothy Lyon (Juno Temple), to the station to be arrested after Dot impulsively Tases an officer during that middle-school mêlée. "Neighbor against neighbor."