Watch: FARGO’s Blank Interiors and Crushing Exteriors

The characters in FX’s ‘Fargo‘ wage a steady war against each other–a quiet war, but a persistent one. Just as fervent and just as persistent, however is the clash between the show’s interior rooms and businesses and the sublimity lying just outside them. The tranquil diners, the bland living rooms, the weirdly sleek mansions push stubbornly against the windswept plains and long, frosty highways of the most deserted part of the midwest, where anything could and will happen. You feel cold just looking at the screen. Roger Okamoto does a wonderful job, in this video essay, of juxtaposing inside vs. outside, shelter vs. storm, civilization vs. primordial wilderness, showing that what Noah Hawley and the show’s DP, Dana Gonzales, have created here is not so much a "prestige TV" drama as an ode to the human urge to punctuate silence, either with gunfire, laughter, or good old-fashioned conversation.–Max Winter