It was winter in Minnesota and a car sped down an empty highway in the middle of the night. Suddenly, a deer was in the road. The collision left the deer mortally wounded and the car in a ditch on the side of the road. Then, the trunk popped open and a man dressed in boxers fled through a snowy field and into the nearby woods. The driver, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), awoke to find a bloody wound on his forehead.
Lester Nygard (Martin Freeman) was a mousy insurance salesman in Bemidji, Minnesota. While walking down the street, he encountered Sam Hess. Hess used to bully him in school and decided to relive the good old days. Shortly thereafter, Lester was in the emergency room for his injuries. He happened be next to a man with a head wound, none other than Lorne Malvo. Upon hearing Lester's story, Lorne claimed that he would have killed the man. In fact, would Lester like Malvo to kill Hess? Lester dithered but called 'Yes' to the nurse when she summoned him. It was a fateful yes.
Sheriff Thurman was called away from the frozen naked man in the forest to the corpse of Sam Hess at a strip club. Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) had some keen insights and Thurman viewed her as his natural successor when he retired. Molly linked the frozen man to the man with the head wound to Lester Nygard to Sam Hess. It was all connected. Though she wanted to interview Lester, the Sheriff went. He arrived at the Nygard house to find that Lester had murdered his wife. Before he could take action, Malvo arrived and killed him with a shotgun!
Now Lester must convince the police that he was a victim. Malvo was only passing through Bemidgi on his way to Duluth. His car wrecked earlier, he took Lester's. A tangled web is thus woven; it is up to Bemidji Deputy Solverson and Duluth Officer Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks) to unwind the threads and find the solution to the murders. However, it gets much worse, as Sam was connected to a criminal organization who sent some fixers to find and kill his murderer.
An outstanding series with lots of interlinking storylines and interesting characters. Billy Bob Thornton is outstanding as an agent of chaos, a man who causes trouble for the sake of causing trouble. His Duluth job was to solve a blackmail scheme, but he instead took over when he uncovered the culprit. Though a slight fellow, Thornton imbued Malvo with an astonishing level of menace and danger. Really terrific villain. By contrast, Martin Freeman begins as the most wimpy of characters but evolves into a conniving rat who sells out anyone to protect himself. Allison Tolman felt like a retread of Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), going so far as to be pregnant for the climax. Key & Peele star as a pair of FBI agents out of Fargo who are on the trail of Lorne Malvo. They proved to be quite funny, more because it is them than any of their actions and dialogue. Bob Odenkirk plays the new sheriff who is in way over his head and won't listen to Molly's theories. Keith Carradine plays Molly's father, a former cop who now runs a diner; he has a limp that ended his career. Oliver Platt plays the blackmail victim and is also a man who, back in 1996, discovered a bag of a million dollars on the side of the road (see Fargo movie). A terrific cast for an excellent ten episodes of dark comedy and crime thriller.
Throughout the series, there are several references to a dark event that led to Molly's father's injury, among other things. This proved to be foreshadowing for season 2.
Highly recommended.
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