November 21st brought us season 5 of FX's Fargo
on Hulu, resurrecting the titular show set in snowy (again) Fargo, ND bordering on Minnesota along the Cass River, and starring a stellar cast of actors (Juno Temple fresh off her triumphant run in Ted Lasso; Jon Hamm most recently in Apple Plus' The Morning Show and Amazon Prime's Good Omens in two very different roles as ruthless tech mogul and angel, Gabriel; Jennifer Jason Leigh whose performances always give shade both literally and figuratively as Temple's mom; other well-established veterans Dave Foley (Boys in the Hall) and Lamorne Morris (New Girl); and newer franchise names Joe Keery (Stranger Things) and Richa Moorjani (Netflix's youth crush series Never Have I Ever).
As always, the series issues a warning with episode 1 about "Minnesota Nice":
Crime writer and Minnesota native Catherine Dang says this about "nice" in the land of 10,000 lakes:
"Minnesota Nice is not about niceness at all, but rather, it’s about the appearance of niceness. We are very concerned about the people around us. We don’t want to be judged poorly for our lack of good manners. We want to seem friendly, hospitable. That’s why we’ll smile awkwardly at strangers on the street. That’s why you’ll hear an apologetic, “Ope, just getting through here” as someone passes by in the grocery store aisle. A consequence of Minnesota Nice is that we often don’t say what we mean. We don’t want to cause problems by complaining or turning down someone’s goodwill. We will lie straight through our teeth to keep the situation calm...Confrontation is ugly, and it makes us extremely uncomfortable. Why ruin an otherwise pleasant situation? We stick to neutral topics, which in Minnesota, is always the capricious weather."
This is what makes the opening scene, a brawl amongst dozens of parents at the fictitious (but it's very real) Scandia Middle School Fall Harvest Planning Festival, so delicious. "But with Minnesota Nice, everything pales in comparison to our passive aggression. We aren’t any less aggressive than other people—we’re just subtler about it...In Minnesota, we believe in a slow, quiet burn, not an explosive burst of anger. The pain lasts longer, and we don’t look quite as bad. But aggression, even the mildest forms of it, will always express itself somehow. That’s the scariest part: you never know when a Minnesotan will snap beyond their polite exterior. You don’t know how bad or how violent that moment may be."
A harbinger of what's to come in this Coen Brothers' masterpiece, Season 5 reminds us that in this fictional town based on very real Minnesota-ish "aggressive pleasantness", things are always brewing under the ice.