YMMV / Fargo: Season Five

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • What was Danish’s motivation when he decided to go off on his own to negotiate with Roy? Some viewers interpreted his decision to avoid calling for help as an act of pride, riding the high of his recent humiliation of Roy and thinking he had him fully under his control. Others thought it was because he thought Lorraine might not be willing to negotiate with Roy — or worse, thought she might willingly let Dot die to solve two problems at once. Others thought he simply was treating the situation as a race against the clock where decisive action was needed.
  • Wayne in the finale. When Dot arrives home to find Ole Munch in her living room, she seems a bit startled at first, but Wayne immediately starts giving him the full Minnesota Nice treatment. Is he playing this up to disarm the creepy stranger in his house who insists that a debt must be paid, or is he showing genuine hospitality to a surprise guest?
• Complete Monster: Roy Tillman, third-generation owner of the Tillman Ranch and Sheriff of Stark County, North Dakota, is the dirtiest cop Fargo has ever produced. A particularly nasty breed of constitutional sheriff, Tillman runs Stark County like his own medieval fiefdom, disposing of the casualties of his criminal business in a dedicated mass grave on the ranch. After murdering his long-abused first wife, Linda, Roy moved onto a teenage runaway named Nadine Bump, grooming her, marrying her, then raping and abusing her for the next two years before Nadine ran away. Roy obsessively hounds Nadine, now named "Dot" in the present day after remarrying, to place her back under his thumb as he feels is his right; at one point, Roy dispatches minions to capture Dot's innocent husband Wayne so he can torture him, and when his men capture the wrong person by accident, Roy irritably blows his brains out. After federal pressure comes down on him after he impulsively kills the lawyer of Dot's wealthy mother-in-law, Roy whips up a right-wing militia to kill as many cops as possible. Roy has no loyalty to anyone but himself in the end; he abandons his oldest son Gator after the latter is blinded, attempts to murder his third wife Karen after killing her dad—his own father-in-law—and abandons all of his own men to die in a suicidal last stand while he sneaks off through a secret escape tunnel. Hypocritical in every quality he calls virtuous, Roy is nothing but a despicable coward beneath his macho John Wayne image, a bully and a "baby" who steps on others to make himself feel big.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: John Sasquatch is only in two scenes, but his unusual name and role in helping Danish humiliate Roy through Me's a Crowd tactics have made him a fast fan favorite.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The 33rd season of The Simpsons featured "A Serious Flanders," an Affectionate Parody of Fargo depicting Ned Flanders terrorized by sinister debt collector Kostas Becker. Two years later, Fargo features its own sinister debt collector, Lorraine Lyon (whose majordomo Danish Graves is missing an eye, like Becker himself).
• Love to Hate: Roy Tillman is a truly despicable and merciless monster with no redeeming traits but Jon Hamm's very convincing performance makes you almost like him for these reasons.
• Win Back the Crowd: Critics and audiences generally considered this season a return to form, in contrast to the fourth season which was criticized by many viewers for straying too far from the classic Fargo setting and premise.

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