ABSTRACT
Several accounts of the echoes between the television series Fargo (FX, 2014–) and the Coen brothers’ Fargo (1996), as well as their filmography in general, have already been made. But far beyond pointing out mere anecdotes and sincere homage, this chapter aims to further explore the connections between the television series and cinema, concentrating on several instances of reflexivity in the second season, whereby the show formulates comments on its own cinematographic, narrative and transfictional aspirations. This chapter looks at the way the series reconfigures and experiments with its relation with the film Fargo – and more generally with cinema – in its episode openings and in its inclusion of fake film clips. The various references to cinema incorporated into the serialized narrative are not just playful intertextual winks and nods but are worked into the series’ preoccupations with reality and fiction, meaning and absurdity.
