Warning: Small spoiler for Season 3.#
The first scene of Season 3 of Fargo has always puzzled me. It takes place in East Berlin during the Cold War. A citizen is brought before a government official where he’s asked to confess to a crime that apparently was actually commited by a different person who used to live at the same address. The story then moves to Minnesota, and there’s no further mention of the characters or plot of the first scene. #
I’ve always wondered why was that scene there, what it has to do with Fargo. Here’s my theory.#
Every episode of Fargo begins with “This is a true story. The events depicted took place in {location} in {year}. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of the respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.” #
It’s funny because that’s what the opening scene is. A supposedly true story (we don’t actually know it’s true, we suspect not, same as with the show itself) but the names have been changed. #
Everything in Fargo is nested that way. That’s one of the reasons it’s so much fun to re-watch, you see things each time you didn’t see before.#
Scripting News Annex 