Fargo season 5 is a masterpiece worth a weekend binge watch

And there's more where that came from

The wonderful thing about an anthology show is that you don’t have to start at the beginning. You don't need to watch the first season of Netflix's Beef to enjoy season 2 (although season 1 is way better), and you don't need to be caught up on American Horror story if the premise of a new season piques your interest. With a few minor exceptions, you can watch pretty much any episode of The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror without missing a beat.

Noah Hawley's Fargo is no exception to the anthology rule. While it might be helpful for viewers to watch the 1996 Coen brothers movie and the FX show’s first season, neither is necessary. References are made in passing, and while fan favorite characters reappear from time to time, the series functions more like a collection of loosely connected short stories. All five seasons are streaming on the Disney-owned Hulu platform, and can be watched in any order.

With this in mind, season five of Fargo is a great place to start.

While you’re hard-pressed to find a season of Noah Hawley’s hit FX crime drama, Fargo, that isn’t worth binge-watching over the course of a weekend, it’s certainly had its ups and downs over the years. After a divisive fourth season starring Chris Rock and Jessie Buckley that missed the mark, season 5 was a long overdue return to the show’s Midwestern roots.

Set in the fall of 2019, the show introduces us to Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple). A seemingly mild-mannered Minnesotan housewife, Dot (formerly Nadine Bump) finds herself embroiled in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with her abusive ex-husband, North Dakotan constitutional sheriff and preacher, Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm).

When a fight during a school board meeting leads to Dot tasing a police officer, she is swiftly arrested and fingerprinted, triggering an alert system that Tillman has in place to track her down. Though diminutive and perpetually optimistic, Dot quickly proves herself to be a formidable adversary trained in levels of self-defense and survival second only to John Wick and Kevin McCallister. It’s when Dot realizes that Roy will stop at nothing to get her back, threatening her precious new life and the people she loves most, that she makes the decision to meet him head on.

Temple’s performance is endlessly entertaining to watch and, frankly, so is everyone else’s.Hamm’s turn as a tight-jean-wearing, nipple-pierced, sadistic, predatory abuser will make your skin crawl. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the “Queen of Debt,” Dot’s mother-in-law, Lorraine, who flips the script on the typical villainous rich woman by coming to Dot’s aid when she’s least expecting it. Joe Keery is practically unrecognizable as Gator Tillman, Roy’s pathetic try-hard son who has embraced a misogynistic, conservative lifestyle, and Lamorne Morris is instantly likable as a kind-hearted police officer wrapped up in the case. But among all of these incredible performances, it’s Sam Spruell who truly stands out.

As has become tradition for the show, each season strays into the absurd and the supernatural. Hawley isn’t afraid to have his stories take a turn for the bizarre or make viewers sit back and say, “What on Earth did I just watch?” (This probably shouldn't come as a surprise from the creator of Legion andAlien: Earth.)

Season 2 of Fargo features a brief appearance from a UFO; season 3 plays with the idea of purgatory as a bowling alley (with a wonderfully strange cameo from Twin Peaks actor Ray Wise), and death haunts the narrative in season 4. Despite being as grounded in reality as it is, season 5 of Fargo is some of Hawley’s strangest work yet, thanks to a hitman with a tremendously awful haircut by the name of Ole Munch.

Munch, played by Spruell (who viewers might recognize as Maekar Targaryen in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), is a hulking man of few words and downright terrifying. It’s revealed early on that Tillman hired Munch to kidnap Dot, but it's later revealed that the character has existed for centuries. Spruell somehow makes this feel believable with a timeless performance that channels Javier Bardem's No Country for Old Men hitman into something far weirder. Munch begins as a secondary villain, but evolves into one of Dot’s allies and eventually provides a remarkably hopeful moment near the end of the story.

In a show where the good guys don’t always come out on top — and in a season that features toxic masculinity, the corruption of American politics, and the toll that debt can have on a person — it’s a relief to see Hawley give some of his characters a happy ending. Here, kindness is as much a form of resilience as Dot’s knowledge of self-defense.

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Fargo is streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus.