History Series / FargoSeasonFour

* AmbiguousDisorder: Odis Weff compulsively knocks five times in rhythmic fashion on doors before opening them.

** The first episode opens with a brief history of organized crime in Kansas City. Liev Moskowitz and his Jewish gang start out as poor immigrants and grow wealthy after taking over the city's rackets. They are then taken out by the IrishMob of Owney "Yiddles" Milligan. The Milligan gang then rise through the ranks, eventually being taken out by Donatello Fadda's Italians. The rise and fall of each gang is illustrated by their clothing change over the years. When the new gang is introduced, they are wearing street clothes. When the gang is about to fall they are wearing suits, furs and jewelry. When the season starts, the Faddas are now wearing expensive suits compared to those worn by the working class black gang of Cannon Limited.

[[WMG:[[center:[-'''Seasons of ''Series/{{Fargo}}'''''\\

[[Series/FargoSeasonOne 1]] | [[Series/FargoSeasonTwo 2]] | [[Series/FargoSeasonThree 3]] | '''4''' | [[Series/FargoSeasonFive 5]]]]]]]

[[Series/FargoSeasonOne 1]] | [[Series/FargoSeasonTwo 2]] | [[Series/FargoSeasonThree 3]] | '''4'''-]]]]]

* ActorAllusion: This isn't the first time Timothy Olyphant has played [[Series/{{Justified}} a U.S. Marshall]].

* ActorAllusion: This isn't the first time Timothy Olyphant has played [[Series/{{Justified}} a US Marshall]].

* ActorAllusion: This isn't the first time Timothy Olyphant has played [[Series/Justified a US Marshall]].

* ActorAllusion: This isn't the first time Timothy Olyphant has played [[Series/Justified a U.S. Marshall]].

** This is the first season to ever feature characters with RapeAsBackstory: [[spoiler:Rabbi, Josto, Zelmare and Swanee, and Odis (not him, but his wife who was brutally raped and murdered while he was in the war)]]. And how abusive father and pedophile [[spoiler:Yiddles Milligan]] is potrayed as a creepy devilish figure whose actions remains in the imagination of his victims, long after his death, like a curse.

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Dr. David Harvard isn't a murderer or a criminal like the majority of the cast, but he's a racist, arrogant bastard who denies help to a man bleeding out the neck and his family just because they're Italian. Not many tears are shed when he chokes on one of Oraetta's poisoned macaroons. It's [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] when the poison only hospitalizes him, as revealed in the next episode.]]
** [[spoiler:DoubleSubverted as he's kidnapped and later brutally gunned down by Josto right after his recovery.]]

* KnifeNut: Gaetano always carries an enormous trench knife on his hip.

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: [[spoiler:Josto and Gaetano's mother gets shot dead for no other reason than to spur the open war between the Faddas and the Cannon Limited.]]

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Dr. Harvard isn't a murderer or a criminal like the majority of the cast, but he's a racist, arrogant bastard who denies help to a man bleeding out the neck and his family just because they're Italian. Not many tears are shed when he chokes on one of Oraetta's poisoned macaroons. It's [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] when the poison only hospitalizes him, as revealed in the next episode.]]
** [[spoiler:DubleSubverted as he's kidnapped and later brutally gunned down by Josto right after his recovery.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: Although ''Fargo'' has always been pretty dark, bloody, ruthless and consistently in touch with heavy subject matter such as misogyny, greed-induced tragedy, existential dread, bigotry, and human depravation in general — not to mention that Season 2 still holds the higher body count — Season 4 addresses more directly racial segregation in America during the 50's and it's practically the main theme of this fourth installment. Unlike the movie and previous seasons, there's no BigGood represented by the "nice cop" character. There's no [[Film/{{Fargo}} Marge Gunderson]], [[Series/{{FargoSeasonOne}} Molly Solverson]], [[Series/{{FargoSeasonTwo}} Lou Solverson[=/=]Hank Larsson]], or [[Series/{{FargoSeasonThree}} Gloria Burgle]] here; instead we have only Odis Weff, who is [[DirtyCop allied with the mafia]], while Deafy Wickware is a bigoted US Marshal. And the rest of the Kansas City police force in general is shown to be brutal, racist to the bone, and represented almost as a villainous entity. The show always showed a little bit of light and hope represented by at least one character in pursuit of justice, determined to do the right thing and find the truth. There's almost none of that here. The closest to a force of good is Ethelrida, and she's a 17-year-old black girl who attends a horribly bigoted school and there's very little she can do about all this. [[spoiler:Still, by the end of the series, [[ChekhovsSkill Etherilda's intelligence and research abilities]] played a crucial role to help Loy to win the war, with the sole purpose of helping her family and ultimately, fullfiling the role of said benign force. See DeconstructedTrope below.]] There is also the fact that the only MinnesotaNice character, Nurse Mayflower, is [[spoiler:a [[BitchInSheepsClothing not quite nice]] SerialKiller]]. Leaving us with what could be the most bitter season so far.

* DeconstructedTrope: The BigGood force and "common decency" represented by a cop. In this season, Noah Hawley deliberately took this trope and placed it in Etherilda, a [[ChildProdigy highly gifted teenager]] without any tools other than her intelligence, who contributed to the ultimate resolution in a ''[[Film/RearWindow Rear Window]]''-esque fashion, without the law or police enforcement on her side, unlike the previous seasons' — and the movie's — protagonists/deuteragonists. Also, Etherilda puts herself in a highly dangerous situation with all the odds against her for a fairly less ambitious — if not more realistic — goal; help her family out. Of course, that doesn't make her less of a truth seeker.

* TheDogBitesBack: [[spoiler:After spending the whole season being TheChewToy for everyone else, Odis finally snaps in "The Nadir", killing Deafy and Swanee in cold blood, and only failing to kill Zelmare because she charged him and his shot went wide.]]

* FaceDeathWithDignity: [[spoiler:Oraetta puts on some lipstick and doesn't make a fuss before getting executed.]]

* SpottingTheThread: After the failed attack on Lemuel, Doctor correctly suggests that the hit must have been ordered by Gaetano, because Josto would not benefit from starting a gang war with Cannon Limited.
* StealingFromThieves: Key to resolving the season's conflict - [[spoiler:Ethelrida Smutney steals Don Fadda's ring from Oraetta Mayflower, who stole it from Fadda when she killed him all the way back in the first episode of the season. Ethelrida trades the ring to Loy Cannon, Fadda's rival, in exchange for her parents' debt to Cannon being cancelled. Cannon then turns around and uses the ring to force Don's son Josto to the bargaining table to end the war between their two gangs.]]

** Zelmare and Swanee have the ''brilliant'' idea of trying to solve the Smutneys' debt problems by [[RobbingTheMobBank robbing the Cannon Limited]], ''the gang to which the Smutneys are in debt to.'' The only reason they survive is because Cannon initially believes that they were sent by the Faddas as retaliation. But during the robbery, Swanee accidentally pukes on the stolen money due to indigestion from eating Oraetta's tainted pie, and even after Zelmare literally launders every single bill, the stench remains, meaning that when Thurman hands the money over to Loy, Loy realizes it's the stolen money as soon as he gets close enough to smell it.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Zelmare gets awat scot-free after murdering dozens of people in the train station alone.]]

* Loy Cannon is shown trying to overthrow the Fadda clan and take over the city with his Cannon Limited organization, eventually getting his enemies to turn on each other... only to [[spoiler:find himself cornered and his business absorbed by the newly formed Kansas City mafia. For added irony, he's revealed to be Mike Milligan's father.]]
** Season 4 opens with a brief history of organized crime in Kansas City. Liev Moskowitz and his Jewish gang start out as poor immigrants and grow wealthy after taking over the city's rackets. They are then taken out by the IrishMob of Owney "Yiddles" Milligan. The Milligan gang also grows rich and powerful until they are taken out Donatello Fadda's Italians. The rise and fall of each gang is illustrated by their clothing change over the years. When the new gang is introduced, they are wearing working-men clothes. When the gang is about to fall they are wearing suits, furs and jewelery. When the season starts the Faddas are now wearing rich-men clothes and are confronted by the working class black gang of Cannon Limited.

** History buffs will see it as a ShoutOut to the historical 1933 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City_massacre Kansas City Massacre]], which took place here, where freelance gunman Vernon Miller and two associates (widely suspected, but never proven to be, Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd and Adam Richetti), in an attempt to free escaped felon Frank "Jelly" Nash, attacked a team of armed law enforcement personnel who were returning him to the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas. The attackers killed two local Kansas City cops and two FBI agents, wounded a third, and also accidentally killed Nash as well.

-->'''Noah Hawley:''' In ''Fargo'' you have a [[BigGood Marge Gunderson]], and you have a [[BigBad Peter Stormare]], and one is so clearly all good, and the other is so clearly evil, [...] And for better or worse, the last three seasons, that "all good" role has been filled by a cop. But if you're telling a story about Black people and immigrants, [[RealityEnsues that is not necessarily their experience of the moral spectrum]].

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Dr. Harvard isn't a murderer or a criminal like the majority of the cast, but he's a racist, arrogant bastard who denies help to a man bleeding out the neck and his family just because they're Italian. Not many tears are shed when he chokes on one of Oraetta's poisoned macaroons. It's subverted when the poison only hospitalizes him, as revealed in the next episode.]]