• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 8, 2017

Ugly Jewish stereotypes have emerged as a running theme on the new third season of “Fargo” on FX.

Two Jewish characters have been introduced so far in the third installment of this TV series inspired by the 1996 Coen brothers movie. The new “Fargo” premiered April 19 and has been airing Wednesday nights at 10 Eastern ever since.

This week’s episode will be the season’s fourth. And already, two Jewish characters associated with money -- one a Minnesota lawyer and the other a Hollywood con man -- have come to strut arrogantly upon the “Fargo” stage.

I cannot explain why this series is suddenly trafficking inexplicably in anti-Semitic caricature. You would have to ask the makers of this show what they’re trying to say with these Jewish characters. All I know is, as a viewer, these stereotypes are jarring and shocking. 

The first of them was introduced in Episode Two. His name was Irv Blumkin, played by an actor named Hardee T. Lineham. One of the show’s main characters -- Emmit Stussy (played by Ewan McGregor), a wealthy businessman known as the Parking Lot King of Minnesota -- was one of Blumkin’s clients.

In a meeting with Stussy and Stussy’s top executive, Sy Feltz (Michael Stuhlbarg), Irv lectured them about money because Stussy and Feltz were dealing with the consequences of having secured a $1 million loan from a shady Englishman who turned out to be a criminal.

“At the time we needed the loan, we should have come to you,” Stussy admitted at the meeting, although Blumkin is not a banker, but an attorney. 

“You borrowed a million dollars from a man without knowing his first name”? an incredulous Blumkin asked them after they admitted they only knew their lender by his first two initials and his last name, “V.M. Varga” (played by David Thewlis). 

“You get a lot of business from us …,” replied Stussy indignantly, bristling at Blumkin’s tone of voice.

To which Blumkin answered, “Which, boychik, will stop the moment they arrest you for money laundering, at which time all your business goes to a criminal attorney. And may I recommend Bruce Lipschutz in our Minneapolis office?”

Thus, according to “Fargo,” all of the best lawyers in the northern Midwest are Jews. Or at the very least, they’re the kind of lawyer one should turn to when one is in serious trouble stemming from associating with shady criminals.

Blumkin didn’t survive the episode. He was thrown from an upper level of a parking garage by henchmen of Varga’s. One of them was a Russian who engaged Blumkin in a conversation about the role of Cossacks in the pogroms of Jewish communities in Russia in the 1880s, pogroms from which Blumkin’s forebears evidently escaped.

The Russian then tossed the Jewish lawyer to his death.

“Fargo’s” next Jew on the hit parade entered the picture in Episode Three last Wednesday. His name was Howard Zimmerman, and he was first introduced in a flashback sequence that took place in Hollywood in the 1970s. 

He was then seen conning a naïve science fiction writer named Thaddeus Mobley out of all his money. Zimmerman (played by Fred Melamed, in the photo above right with Thomas Randall Mann as Mobley) claimed to be a Hollywood producer, but he possessed no money of his own. So he conned Mobley into giving him his.

Zimmerman approached Mobley at a bar right after Mobley won an award for one of his novels. “You’re the cheddar, kid, get used to it!” Zimmerman said, flattering the young author.

“Wait … the what?” asked Mobley in surprise.

“You’re the cheddar, the cheese …,” Zimmerman said slickly.

“Hold the phone,” Mobley said, “you’re saying you want to turn my book into a movie?”

“No, bubbeleh,” Zimmerman answered. “I’m saying I want you to turn your book into a major motion picture.” The 1971 Three Dog Night song “Liar” then began playing in the background.

In a later scene when Zimmerman blithely informed Mobley that he’d been played, Mobley severely beat him with Zimmerman’s own cane. Elsewhere in the episode, a much older Zimmerman was seen in a rest home, where he has apparently resided ever since he was nearly beaten to death.

So far, the Jews of “Fargo”-land are being depicted as greedy, dishonest, interested in money above all else, and capable of acting as “fixers” in the event of difficulties with finances or criminals. I wonder what the rest of the new “Fargo” season will bring?