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A rebooted 'Fargo' returns just as good as before

The first season of FX's Fargo could have continued past its 10-episode run. We could have continued to follow the life of ace detective Molly Solverson (the incredible Allison Tolman) as she solved crimes in tiny Bemidji, Minn. - although there can't be that many murders in Bemidji, so it might get old watching Molly solve petty crimes.

Ted Danson (left) and Patrick Wilson star in the second season of "Fargo," which jumps back to 1979 to follow another tale of violence on the Minnesota prairie. The series' creator said each season will focus on a new story. (Chris Large / FX)
Ted Danson (left) and Patrick Wilson star in the second season of "Fargo," which jumps back to 1979 to follow another tale of violence on the Minnesota prairie. The series' creator said each season will focus on a new story. (Chris Large / FX)Read more

The first season of FX's Fargo could have continued past its 10-episode run. We could have continued to follow the life of ace detective Molly Solverson (the incredible Allison Tolman) as she solved crimes in tiny Bemidji, Minn. - although there can't be that many murders in Bemidji, so it might get old watching Molly solve petty crimes.

And if we continued to follow Molly, we would never get to see her father, now a young man, pointing a gun at a group of out-of-towners and saying, "We're a very friendly people."

The second season of Fargo, premiering at 10 p.m. Monday on FX, is just as fantastic as the first. And viewers who didn't catch the first season can easily slide into the second. Some nuances will be lost, but those are minor compared to how good this series is.

From the get-go, series creator Noah Hawley wanted Fargo to be an anthology. Each season will look at a new story that is an extension of a world first explored in Joel and Ethan Coen's 1996 film, in which unspeakable acts of violence occur in a region known for its overbearing politeness. Instead of basing his series on the Coens' characters, Hawley took the soul of their movie and created a world around it.

For the second time around, Fargo jumps back to 1979 to visit Molly's dad, Lou (formerly played by Keith Carradine, now Patrick Wilson), who in the first season alluded to a terrible time in the 1970s. The story kicks off with the murders of a Fargo judge and a line cook and waitress at a diner in Luverne, Minn., by the scion (Kieran Culkin) of the Gerhardt crime family, headed by Otto (Battlestar Galactica's Michael Hogan) and his wife, Floyd (a fabulous Jean Smart, all hard edge and steeliness). Floyd is not afraid of bloodshed but gets flustered by bad language.

Getting excited about watching a particularly violent episode in Lou's life is an odd feeling for me as a viewer. But that's why Fargo, in both filmic and TV form, has always been so great. It's incredibly brutal - the second season centers partially on a mob war between the Gerhardts and a Kansas City syndicate (Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett flexes a new comedic muscle) - but it's also funny and delightful.

"Where's my brother? Are you listening to me? Is he listening to me?" says Dodd Gerhardt (Burn Notice's Jeffrey Donovan) to an unresponsive man he's torturing.

"You cut off his ears," his henchman replies.

Hawley and his writers' greatest strength is incredible control of tone and atmosphere that makes such jokes work.

That sense of control is paramount in an anthology series. FX's American Horror Story may not deal with the same genres of horror in the same places or even the same time periods, but each season has a distinctive look and feel that brands it as a part of the AHS universe.

American Horror Story was a catalyst for the current wave of anthologies, an old format rebooted when Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk announced that American Horror Story, after its first season, would follow a new story each year. (The show's fifth iteration, AHS: Hotel, premiered Wednesday on FX, starring Lady Gaga.)

Fargo and HBO's True Detective followed. Fox recruited Glee trifecta Murphy, Falchuk, and Ian Brennan for this season's camped-out, underperforming Scream Queens. ABC gobbled up a bunch of Emmy nominations (and a win for Regina King) with American Crime, which will next focus on a boy who accuses members of a championship basketball team at an elite private school of sexual assault. ABC will also bring back the Juliette Lewis-starring Secrets and Lies, and debut Wicked City, another period mystery piece, on Oct. 27. FX will add another anthology to its roster in 2016 with Murphy's true-crime-focused American Crime Story. The first season will be about the O.J. Simpson murder case, with Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson.

That list shows the anthology is not an infallible format. True Detective soured in its second season, in part because the glowery tone set so well in Season One ran amok without a strong directorial hand to keep it in check. American Horror Story can have fleeting moments of greatness that are quickly drowned out by the show's reliance on heightened sex, insane violence, and a mishmash of themes and metaphors that rarely make any sense when put together. The sheer loudness of the series often covers up the fact that a given story line is not particularly good, and will, like most Murphy series, fall apart after the first three or four episodes. Its most recent season, subtitled Freak Show, was its least critically successful, but that didn't stop people from returning in droves to watch it.

But if the story falls apart in one season of an anthology, the format allows creators to rip it up and start again. Even if Hawley didn't expressly need to (Season One was a success), that's what the second season of Fargo has done.

Anthologies are an important evolution in the current TV landscape because they give creators unprecedented freedom to wrap up their stories and say goodbye to characters when their times have come. Far too many TV shows, from Homeland to The Killing and lots of others, stretch their initial concepts too thin to fill a second season, which they ultimately can't sustain.

Fargo

does not have to play by those rules. Molly could have stuck around, but why would she when her father has an entire backstory to mine? Her story was told. Time for another tale. Lou's story will also come to a conclusion. And another part of the Midwest prairie will be explored for both brutality and humor.

meichel@phillynews.com

215-854-5909

@mollyeichel