(Ed. Note — this article contains major spoilers for Season 5, Episode 10 of Fargo. If you haven’t watched it, you’re warned)
Usually it is the other way around from the title of this post… life, very often, imitates art. But in a show I streamed the other night there was a really great lesson in personal defense, and about what evil is and does. The lesson was called out, of all places, through an article in Vanity Fair.
Like, probably, a couple million or more viewers I am a big fan of the anthology series Fargo, which airs on FX. Inspired by the Coen Brothers film of the same title, the series first aired in 2014 and is now in its fifth season. Often critically acclaimed each season has been a sometimes comedic, sometimes dramatic, but always fascinatingly dark look into stories set in the upper Midwestern United States.
The Coen Brothers, who have executive produced the show, have in their films demonstrated a fascination with chance, irony, characters thrust into difficult circumstances, the often times random, rapid and brutal nature of criminal violence, and the social peculiarities of a region and its population. These infuse the series which was created, and is largely written by, Noah Hawley. The current season, the show’s fifth, has been a delightful mix of both the darkly comedic and the starkly violent and explores themes of debt and repayment of it, duty, overcoming adversity and forgiveness, among others. Good, evil, and most everything in between are on display over the course of the season’s ten episodes. The five central characters are each a study in elements of the human condition and they are studied in depth.
The personal defense lesson I speak of comes fairly early in the episode. The corrupt sheriff Roy Tillman, played by Jon Hamm, is being pursued by North Dakota State Trooper Witt Farr, played by Lamorne Morris. The action enters a dugout on Tillman’s ranch, which leads to a network of tunnels through which Tillman hopes to escape the FBI, state and local police who are trying to put him into custody.
Trooper Farr searches for Tillman in the darkened space but doesn’t realize that the wounded sheriff, who is armed with a knife and has already brutally murdered one person, was lying in wait in the shadows. We see the scene pictured above unfold, as Tillman tries to sneak up on Trooper Farr from behind, Farr senses Tillman’s presence and turns at almost the last possible moment and puts Tillman at gunpoint. They begin to engage in a dialog as Farr orders Tillman to drop his knife and surrender. Farr is in the mode of reluctant good guy… he does not want to have to shoot Tillman but wants to arrest him. Tillman, as the embodiment of evil, doesn’t drop the knife and clearly senses Farr’s reluctance. He uses their conversation to edge just bit closer. Farr doesn’t break out of his reluctant good guy mindset, even though he is perfectly justified in that moment to shoot Tillman down to the ground. And, as it turned out, he should have. Those of us who’ve studied in depth how criminal attacks unfold will immediately recognize Tillman’s actions as the bad guy trying to get close enough to spring his trap.
Suddenly, Tillman lunges forward and plunges his knife into Farr’s chest and holds it there. With his face inches from that of his victim as he holds him upright with the knife Tillman, with a voice cold as ice, tells Farr not to fight it, to go ahead and let go of his life and die. When Farr does collapse and expire, Tillman removes his knife from Farr’s body and heads down a tunnel toward his own destiny, without so much as another thought.
We, the audience, witnessed an almost classic criminal assault play out on the screen. The same manner of attack happens every day, and has since the dawn of time. The predatory behavior and posturing, victim identification, the sudden and over powering attack. All of it.
The late Dr. William Aprill, whose scholarly and clinical work on the psyche of criminal violence has informed a generation of thinking on the topic, said “Your understanding and consent are not required for someone to take your life, kill your loved ones, and destroy all you hold dear.” Dr. Aprill held that evil doesn’t fight fair. It does not respect rules. Evil will kill you and not give it a second thought. And, in this one short scene of fiction, Dr. Aprill’s statement and larger findings are put on full display. A reluctant good guy is pretty much never going to come out ahead of a determined person bent on evil to get what it is that they want. As good guys we have to be willing to dispense violence when it is necessary lest evil have its way with us should we cross paths with it.
Show creator Noah Hawley spoke to this in an interview published at Vanity Fair the day after the episode dropped.
The reality is, he had the opportunity. They were alone in this cave. He turned around. [Tillman] had a knife. Probably he should have just shot him then and there. But he was committed to the concept of justice, of putting the handcuffs on him and taking him in. He wasn’t having the same fight as Jon Hamm. I think we are all finding ourselves in that moment of like, “Okay, well if one side’s going to fight dirty, and the other side is going to always follow the rules, how’s that going to end?“
Imagine… a Hollywood writer and producer who seems to look at the scene in much the same way Dr. Aprill might have. Noah Hawley gets it almost as if he had spent time in a classroom with Tom Givens and his Rangemaster staff instructors, as Tom and his team talk a lot about exactly those concepts.
The lesson here, with a pop culture spin courtesy of a really well written and produced TV show, is that good guys cannot be reluctant when fate, luck or pure chance puts someone evil in front of them who will stop at nothing to get what they need. Whether what evil wants is money, property or simply to get away and perpetrate somewhere else another day.
The lesson is don’t be like Witt Farr. Not when evil comes calling.
Photo Credits: Fargo icon poster sourced from brendaerre.com, Witt and Roy sourced from tvinsider.com
The View From Out West 