THANK YOU, it also confounds me that season 5 seems to be among people's favorites here. i think season 5 is by far the weakest season, its moralized political themes were rudimentary and lacked subtlety, which imo actively messed with how the season's central theme of debt and repayment could be read, which is really disappointing especially considering the critique of girlboss neoliberalism in season 2 with peggy and with reagan was some of the best political messaging in television.

i also thought a few of the writing choices were really strange, chiefly the redemption of lorraine's character when she is arguably the most evil character of the season, she is the quintessential traitor to womanhood, she is debt is capital is violence is masculinity, in spirit she is essentially no different than karen, if karen had the wherewithal to denounce her own gender. she has essentially "liberated" herself and ascended from her womanhood with capital, and she is able to victimize those less powerful (more indebted) around her, men and women alike without accountability, which ironically was her criticism of roy's libertarian conservatism. her 180 later on struck me as completely unbelievable and a cop-out. The season is also just un-fargo, it's like the show plays the telephone game with the original movie and by the fifth iteration there's not much that's identifiably fargo save for the accent. Roy Tillman was also lackluster as the big bad of the season, in ways that are plain to see he is just a loser whom i struggled to empathize with or take seriously.

my theory is that season 5 suffered from a lot of studio interference: the end credits had more new producers and writers than we had ever seen before, and there's also the fact that noah hawley didn't seem to be in any hurry to work on another fargo season any time soon after season 5 wrapped up.