The Power of Performance in “Fargo” Season Three

The performances of David Thewlis and Carrie Coon express the profound alienation of the current moment.

I’ve loved the FX series Fargo ever since I started watching it a few weeks ago. Though the first season truly blew me away, I’ve continued to be impressed by the ways in which the series consistently challenges what we think we know about television storytelling, all while maintaining the off-kilter humor that was and is such a key part of the original film’s enduring appeal. I was particularly impressed by the first two seasons.

Then came season three, and I haven’t been the same since.

For a while, I struggled trying to think what, exactly, I found so absolutely compelling about this season. Sure, it had the same sense of strangeness, of normal lives turned upside down by forces that they didn’t know existed that we saw in the first two. Something, though, was different about this season, something that rattled me more deeply than either of the other two had managed to do.

Then it hit me. It was the performances. Something about the ways in which the actors in this season brought their characters to life struck me as intensely and viscerally odd, so much so that I felt myself both inexorably drawn to the…