Fargo recap: "We have our own reality"

Let’s have dessert first: The long-awaited rematch between Dot and Roy Tillman’s goons in the fortified Lyon household takes up pretty much the opening half of tonight’s episode. This time the crack team led by Gator somehow do even worse than Munch and Wayne. Maybe it’s something to do with their choice of spooky masks which, we learn via multiple POVs, have absolutely abysmal sight lines. Gator sure is a man of style over substance.

The last three weeks have also shown us that Dot’s well-prepped for this, but there are still a few surprises even for us. Her rope ladder from the basement to the second floor is goofy and practical and maybe demonstrates she had the house scouted for potential tricks and traps long before Roy came back into the picture. With Wayne and Scotty safely stashed in the attic, she’s able to wreak havoc on the intruders via everything from setting off the smoke alarm, well-placed strobe lights, and, yes, rockin’ someone’s noggin with that dangling sledgehammer. Amidst the carnage, a small but powerful character moment emerges when Gator unmasks and Dorothy, frozen for a moment, hisses “shame on you!” She must have known Gator as a boy, remember, and there’s true sadness in her seeing what’s become of him.

Surprise of all surprises, Gator & Co. screw the pooch once more. With one crew member already decked out on the, uh, deck, another gets pinned to the ground by the rapid unfurling of the attic ladder, with time enough for Dorothy to smash him over the head with the lid of a toilet tank. (I count that as twice now Dorothy’s brutalized someone with a part of a toilet, albeit the first time indirectly. Hope this streak continues and she gives Roy a swirlie before the season’s end.) The gang eventually make haste, licking their wounds after Wayne, poor Wayne, makes to escape from the master bedroom window, giving himself a good, powerful electric shock in the process. Violent, inevitable slapstick is a hallmark of Fargo, but I love how this moment also speaks to the dysfunction between him and Dorothy. Their willingness to play pretend that they’re still somewhat a normal, functional family means Wayne never really interrogated just how dangerous she’d made her home, and that Dorothy never thought to tell him. She lovingly pushes an unconscious Wayne into the bushes as she and Scotty take one last look behind them at their home, now fully ablaze. Best laid plans and all that.

Across state lines in North Dakota, Roy’s chatting it up with a statue of Jesus, painfully unaware of both another botched kidnapping and a primal Ole Munch slithering through his family home. Munch leaves a message that’s both unmistakeable and incomprehensible, his muddy footprints leading directly into Roy’s Daughters’ room, and a muddied, bloodied sigil painted on the wall above them as they sleep. If anyone knows what that symbol means or even resembles, I owe you a coke. Safe to say it’s probably not code for “Hope you’re well! :)”

So ends the siege(s), and the episode drifts back into more philosophical territories. Farr, Olmstead, Lorraine, and Danish Graves all arrive at the hospital where Wayne’s being treated. Lorraine having been called away while trying to engineer a puff piece about her debt collection agency in Forbes, Indira and Witt getting word of the Lyon household burning down just as Witt positively identifies Dorothy from the gas station CCTV on the night of her first kidnapping. Olmstead and Farr make a good team: patient, but firm. Farr’s having none of Dorothy’s refusal to recognize him. “I recognize you,” he says, almost apologetically, “That’s just reality.” Of course, having a round-the-clock fixer (sorry, lawyer) attached to the family helps. “With all due respect, we have our own reality,” Graves interjects. Seconds later, he hands Scotty a $100 bill to buy a Snickers from the vending machine, driving home that particular point.

I adore Fargo’s sillier, subtler moments, but I’m also really vibing with this season’s “fuck it” approach in showing us a broken America. Lorraine really does have her own reality, wherein she can deflect cops trying to solve actual murder cases with a wave of her hand and (presumably) get a nurse fired for telling her how a hospital works. Later, the FBI agents who’ve been keeping tabs on Roy take their case to their boss, who tells them to treat taking him down as “more of a hobby.” He tells them taking down the Sheriff would basically mean declaring war on the massive militia he cozies up with, comparing it to Mao’s campaign against sparrows in 1950s China which, yes, successfully wiped out the birds deemed as pests, but led to unchecked swarms of bugs and locusts, one of the main causes of the Great Famine. It’s a brief but nifty demonstration of the American justice system and, by virtue of such a thing existing, the awful, cynical need for a well-oiled system of injustice to maintain it.

As a final flourish, Roy returns to the home of Joshua and Lenore, the couple he met with in episode one to remind Joshua to be more judicious with his abuse. Roy waxes lyrical about Christianity and manhood and nobility, but it’s all just flannel. His disapproval of Joshua continuing to injure Lenore is just an excuse, really, to kill him and identify him as Ole Munch. “Loop’s closed,” he explains to Gator. “States can call off their dogs.” He leaves a terrified Lenore with a promise of protection and monthly payment if she goes along with his story. “Roy Tillman never forgets a friend.” After claiming the smallest and easiest of victories, he literally rides off into the sunset on horseback. He thinks this is his story, but we’re not even halfway done yet.

Stray observations

• Ole lays low this week, but Sam Spruell does the absolute most with his one scene. “When Munch was a boy, freedom was a potato,” he monologues from the muddied bathtub to the woman he calls mama. “Only kings had the freedom to want. Now, everywhere you look you see kings. Everything they want they call their own. if they cannot have it, they say they are not free.” The cut to a seething Roy when he first says “kings” is sublime. “The cost is always death.” This is as close to a real philosophy we’ve seen from Munch. But “mama” is still about as confused as I am. “Please,” she says. “I don’t understand. What do you want?” He rises from the tub. Dirt, blood, and water spilling off him. “Pancakes,” he says. That I get.
• Wayne’s in bad, bad shape after his electrocution, catatonic and amnesiac to the point he can just about point to Dorothy and say “Wife?” I do think she’s genuinely sorry about what happened to him, but she also knows this certainly buys her some much needed leeway when it comes to getting her story straight this time.
• Great, brutal editing in the scene where Indira receives a curt collection call in tandem with Lorraine speaking with the reporter. The fact that even a guy from Forbes reacts with such incredulity at Lorraine’s insistence her company takes an empathetic approach to debt relief is telling. Plus, we’ve already spent four weeks getting to know the woman.
• Okay, you got me: Last week’s flashback to “Late Medieval Wales” was, in fact, a flashback to Wales during the Early Renaissance period. Not to corncob myself, but I really did look up what I should call it based on the date, and I fudged the math a bit because “Medieval” just seemed more in keeping with the vibes? I should have known I wouldn’t get one past the esteemed A.V. Club commentariat. Clearly I forgot who I was dealing with.