‘Managing up’
We open with one of those brutally stylish moments that make Fargo such an unnerving experience. A couple of suits (presumably part of the North Dakota management?) are listening to a manager give an inspiring “washing machines or cocaine” bit of business speech. It’s just long enough for you to notice the window cleaners behind them rising up on a lift outside the building, but still short enough for it to be a real shock when they start shooting. It’s followed by a garrotting and a drowning in a toilet. This turf war is on.
‘What’s the point of the damn deal if it doesn’t cover murder?’
There’s a double funeral at the Gerhardt farm: Otto and Rye. After it’s over, Benjamin the dodgy cop and Lou drive up: it’s time to have a proper talk with Floyd. They take her in.
For all her talk of consumption, scalpings, smallpox and sleeper agents, she’s clearly a canny operator. Lou’s question – “How many ghosts can you live with?” – seems to get through to her. She might hate herself, but she’s finally ready to flip: North Dakota run their drugs through a business called Legit Trucking, hiding dope in the tyres.
‘None of us are family anymore’
After being rescued by Lou and Benjamin from Mike’s clutches (what an opportunist he’s turning out to be), Simone holds her own with Benjamin in the Pearl Hotel lift – and then runs into Uncle Bear. He’s got her number.
Ricky will drive her car back, he says – get in. She tries to wriggle out of the inevitable: “I’m the victim here.” But it’s too late, once we’re out in the trees and snow in Fargo: there’s no coming back. Does a Bear hit in the woods? Yes. That’s one less Gerhardt.
Bear bashes his arm on his truck’s bonnet, smashing the plaster cast.
‘They gave me the sugar ones’
Not only do we get the joy of seeing the Breakfast King in action, but we also get to see Betsy wielding a shotgun at the Solverson house this week. Convinced she’s been taking the placebos and not “Xanadu”, Karl starts to tell Betsy an inspiring story (about John McCain’s thumbscrews) when she cuts him off. The simplicity in the way she delivers her thoughts on survival (“I live in a starter house in Minnesota and dream of having chickens one day”) is beautifully understated.
Later, she heads to Hank’s house to check up on his cat, Snowball, and she looks at family photos on the walls – then finds some very peculiar drawings in another room. It’s fair to say this is not playing out like your typical “mom with cancer” storyline.
‘Gentlemen?’
What a great setup for the Undertaker: with that name, his stylish sidekicks and the fact that Mike Milligan seemed genuinely rattled for the first time, it really felt like we were about to meet a big new character to take us through to the end of the season. But no. Mike was ready for him. No poems or lyrical waxing, just a brisk greeting and a bullet to the head from one of those sneaky “hide it up your sleeves” guns.
And then another twist when the phone rings. Milligan clearly thinks it’s going to be the Kansas City bosses, checking to make sure the Undertaker has done his job. But no, it’s the Butcher of Fargo! “Mike Milligan? Today’s your lucky day – I’ve got Dodd Gerhardt in the trunk of my car. You want him?”
Like Lester Nygaard and Jerry Lundegaard, ordinary fellas caught up in other “wrong place, wrong time” quandaries in Fargo’s various timelines, it looks like Ed Blomquist has finally broken bad … Peggy’s cattle prod did the trick.
Next time: “Loplop” Hanzee searches for Peggy and Ed. Dodd ends up in unfamiliar territory.
OK then …
- More soundtrack goodness this week. Along with Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull, there are also new versions of old songs with Coen connections: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) by White Denim (in reference to Kenny Rogers in The Big Lebowski), Danny Boy by Lisa Hannigan (Miller’s Crossing) and O Death by Shakey Graves (a reference to O Brother Where Art Thou). After last week’s version of Man of Constant Sorrow by Blitzen Trapper (thanks, the internet, for solving that one), here’s hoping these are all going to be released when the show’s over.
- “Stories used to be simpler: this, then that.” Kind of glad Fargo isn’t following Floyd’s advice.
- What did Betsy see in Hank’s house – alien hieroglyphics? Makes a change from all those crazy evidence walls that keep popping up, at least. Hank hasn’t really come across as the sort of guy who’d go for UFO spotting though – is it something else?
- “Like porcupines you’re half crazy!” – Fargo Grandmother of the Year 1979, Floyd Gerhardt.
- “Are you familar with the phrase ‘manifest destiny?’” The wisdom of Milligan is undercut by Lou: “Just don’t be offended next time if I don’t say hello before I shoot.” Their two shoes / capitalism or greed discussion
- Floyd smokes a pipe. Of course.
- “Not enough of us left to start telling the truth.” For a man of few words, Bear is pretty heavy when he talks.
- Almost don’t want to think it, but for any season one viewers, just hearing about Sioux Falls, Hank, Lou and Hanzee … it doesn’t exactly bode well, does it?
