‘You are so out of line, sheriff!’
Peggy’s dazed indignation as Sheriff Hank patiently does his best to get her to face the truth is a great use of Kirsten Dunst’s trademark perkiness. “I’ve got to stay up with the latest trends,” she says, brushing Hank away from a new stack of magazines around her kitchen table. She’s in total denial about the seriousness of the situation that she finds herself in, insisting that her and Ed are just bystanders, repeating her mantra that all she wants to do is “actualise”, to be “the best me I can be”… and still planning to make that Life Spring course (oh how I hope she gets there by the end of the series).
Hank stops her in her tracks for a moment: “Ah … I’ve got five dead since Saturday – I wouldn’t count on getting there early.”
“Life’s a journey, you know?” she persists, and Hank spells it out (“You’re a little touched, aren’t you?”) before confronting her with a simple question: “How come you didn’t just drive to the hospital?”
Her answer still isn’t incriminating, but it’s a proper insight into her state of mind – “You say it like these things happen in a vacuum ... it’s like decisions you make in a dream,” she offers, before she expands on what she really thinks about living in the house where Ed grew up: “I’m living in a museum of the past.”
But it seems her own museum might have saved her. Hiding out in her basement full of magazines, Dodd ends up shooting his own stooge, before Peggy Tasers him. Actualise that!
‘Strap or buckle?’
Meanwhile over on the Gerhardts’ farm, another family is wrestling with its issues (and each other). Bear is reminiscing with dad Otto (still silent) over another brother – the first born, Elron, who should have been there to look after things. Again, a tiny detail that hints at the deep history playing out: Bear unhappy with the way Dodd assumed the mantle of eldest that wasn’t rightfully his, Dodd forever in the shadow of an elder brother whose ghost he can never really hope to beat.
Bear gets a phone call from Charlie in jail – and lays into Dodd. Only Floyd can tear them apart: “None of your bullshit. Not today.”
‘I stared down Chang Kai Shek’
For all his bluster (“There’s a crisis at the highest level”, “I’ll be back before the beer goes warm”, “G or NG”), Karl Weathers comes into his own this week, as we first learn that he’s the best (sorry, only) lawyer in town, and then get to see him back up his bravado with a sterling performance.
Lou pulls him out of the local bar to try to get Ed to talk; but when the Gerhardt posse show up, making it clear they’re about to lay siege to the jail, Karl quickly gets another client: the teenage Charlie Gerhardt. Karl braves the shotgun-toting Bear and plays on his emotions with some solid legal logic: “Leave now, take your men, none of this falls on the kid.”
OK then ...
- “You sure know a lot of words, Karl.” You said it, Sonny.
- Noreen is emancipated, even though she’s just a kid: wonder if we’ll get any more details on her backstory – do we know who her family is?
- Along with more stylish split-screens, there’s a great recurring motif of headlights in the night in this week’s episode; along with the music, the visual cues are one of Fargo’s real strengths. Speaking of which, does anyone know whose version of Man of Constant Sorrow is on the soundtrack playing us out tonight? It’s a nice nod to the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Thou, of course …
- “It’s possible I soiled myself.” Karl excels himself tonight, but he’s not above letting everyone know when his evening takes an unexpected turn.
- “Can’t have him getting killed without me, I’ll never hear the end of it at dinner.” It’s a classy show that makes you relieved when Hank gets knocked out by the butt of Hanzee’s rifle rather than shot in the face.
- “Do you know what a whore’s life is?” Dodd Gerhardt is probably not winning any dad of the year awards after this week’s guide to careers advice for wayward daughters.
- “No such thing as men’s work, women’s work.” Milligan and the remaining members of North Dakota interrupt Floyd’s heart to heart with Simone with a bloody assault on the Gerhardt farm.
- “Let’s barricade that, ya?” Lou is very patient in the face of imminent death.
- “You’ll be amazed what we can find, microscopically.” CSI: Fargo, from Sheriff Hank there.
- Any thoughts on what this week’s title Rhinoceros is a reference to?
- “This better be state-level information.” Not a lot of Mike Milligan this week, but with this, and his excellent (and thoroughly bizarre) reading of Jabberwocky, he really stands out whenever he shows up. Wonder how many other North Dakota hitmen are fans of Lewis Carroll? Twas brillig, indeed.
- “Kiss my grits!” Simone isn’t a happy Gerhardt.
- Ed’s on the run, Hanzee is on his trail … Peggy better keep that Taser close.
- This article was amended on 17 November 2015; Lewis Carroll, not Edward Lear, wrote Jabberwocky.
