BEST OF 2017: LEGION AND FARGO

5/6.  LEGION/FARGO

I am bundling these two together, as you can look to the dropdown menus on the right to find my reviews of each individual episode of the season.  Suffice to say that while I understand those that preferred the languid sensuality of American Gods, or the auteur-certified dreamscape of Twin Peaks, Legion was my preferred stop for hyper-stylized mindfuckery this year.  When it comes to alternate dimensions, give me Jermaine Clement dancing around in a leisure suit over a giant tea kettle standing in for David Bowie.  And definitely give me Aubrey Plaza’s off the wall, tour de force performance over any other villain on TV.  Probably anything else, actually.

Meanwhile, Fargo’s third season suffered from a growing familiarity with its eccentricities and a slower start than the last two years.  But time is showing it to be the most directly resonant, and perhaps the best fictional accounting of the Trump Era, despite mostly predating it in terms of writing and production.  While plenty of shows – from Broad City to Saturday Night Live to Mr. Robot – contented themselves with flipping the bird at the buffoon in chief, Fargo was the only one that seemed to immediately cotton on to the fundamental trauma his rise represents.  What creator Noah Hawley calls “the mental violence of finding out the world is not what you thought.”     

The full-bore attack on reality and facts has only intensified in the year since his electoral victory (which in itself represented a repudiation of the raw vote totals).  And as we have learned more about the methods and motives of the trolls and bots that helped astroturf his rise to power, this has still proved frustratingly ineffective at combating them.  Last June, the finale left us with an unresolved duel between a worldview that said the rule of law still reigned in our great American experiment and a more nihilistic view that all the terms are set by moneyed and inveterate liars.  Six months later, the country is still waiting to see if it will be a Robert Mueller that walks through that door to drop the hammer, or a Mitch McConnell to tell us all that all this evidence of high crimes staring us in the face was a big misunderstanding and really nothing of interest at all even happened here.

Watch It For:  When Hawley really goes for broke, dropping without warning into a silent horror film or a purgatorial bowling alley.