The Formula for The Coen Brothers/Noah Hawley’s Fargo – Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #79

Your hosts Mark Lin­se­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt are joined by Tam­ler from the Very Bad Wiz­ards pod­cast to con­sid­er the plau­dits and com­plaints heaped on this moral­i­ty-tale-turned-orga­nized-crime-dra­ma that began with the 1006 film and  has con­tin­ued through a 4‑season TV show. We delve into its elab­o­rate style, “tun­dra west­ern” set­ting, dry humor (includ­ing “Min­neso­ta nice”), speechi­fy­ing, gen­der issues, stunt cast­ing, and the role of chance in its plot­ting. Did the show go down­hill in its lat­er sea­sons, and is there alto­geth­er too much rehash involved? Yes, there are spoil­ers, but no, it bare­ly mat­ters.

Check out these resources for more opin­ions and back­ground infor­ma­tion:

• “How All the Far­go Sea­sons are Con­nect­ed” by Pete Pep­pers
• “Far­go Sea­son 4 Has a Lot of Noth­ing to Say About Amer­i­ca” by Dar­ren Franich
• “Far­go: The 10 Best Exam­ples of Stunt Cast­ing on the Series” by David Mel­lo
• “‘Far­go’ Sea­son 4 Want­ed to Talk About Race, but Had a Big Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Prob­lem” by Julian Kim­ble
• “‘Far­go’ Showrun­ner Noah Haw­ley Reveals What Hap­pens Between Sea­son 4 Finale and the Begin­ning of Sea­son 2″ by Daniel Hol­loway
• “A Superb ‘Far­go’ Swerves into the ’70s with Almost Too Much Sto­ry to Tell” by Hank Steu­ver
• “Fargo’s Sec­ond Sea­son Will Be a Clas­sic in Its Own Right” by Matt Zoller Seitz
• “‘Far­go’: How a Great Movie Became a Per­fect TV Series” by Jeff Rid­skopf
• “A Guide to the New ‘Far­go’ ” by Ali­cia Lutes

Fol­low @tamler. Hear him on The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life. Check out his book, Why Hon­or Mat­ters.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.