Fargo season 5 finale: Dinner and a show

It takes less than 15 minutes into Fargo’s season-five finale, “Bisquik,” for the FBI to cuff up Sheriff Roy and put an end to the Siege of Tillman Ranch. “Your son gave you up, by the way,” gloats Joaquin. It’s less the defeat for Roy, who knew in his heart he was going down that day and more the ignominy of how he was defeated. “Belly shot, can you believe it? By a female,” he laments to Witt, pointing to the rifle wound Dot stuck in him minutes earlier. Sensing the sun setting on his kingdom above ground, he uses his last rush of adrenaline to drive a hunting knife into Trooper Farr’s heart. One final meal for this asshole’s ego.

My thanks to a commenter from last week whose name I forget but rightly pointed out that one of the longstanding threads thats connects all Fargos is the good cops. The ones who pore over a case because the truth is important, damnit. The ones who put themselves in harm’s way before someone else can get hurt, someone who hasn’t accepted that risk. Lamorne Morris never got a showpiece episode (or scene, really) like the rest of his main cast costars, but he brought gentle pragmatism to a show severely lacking in such things. He was a man who saw “reality” in a world where—and it’s been highlighted a lot this season—people desperately build and cling to their own versions. Eventually, there’s just no space in this show for that kind of clear-eyed thinking.

It’s also a grimly realistic show of violence in a series more known for pairing the grim with the ridiculous. Even Dot finally getting the jump on Roy and holding him at gunpoint rings strangely hollow, as she realizes there’s no catharsis in vengeance. All the same, he must be stopped, so she pulls the trigger less for her and more for the good of the world. Before she can finish him off, the FBI appears, and Dot’s savvy enough to immediately drop the gun and identify herself as the hostage.

The entire showdown plays out as a montage, absent of any music or dialogue. That’s how these things go in the real world: gunshots, darkness, silence. And then it’s over. Karen and Roy are arrested, Odin got his throat slashed by his son-in-law after some more alpha male posturing, and Gator gets just the right amount of grace and forgiveness, given everything he’s done. Forget when they locked eyes in Dorothy’s house on Halloween, this is the real reunion, as they hold hands and he tells his sister (for all intents and purposes) he’s sorry. “Did you really see my mom?” he asks, already knowing the answer. “No, hon,” Dot says. “I thought I did, but she was just a beautiful angel in a dream.” Before she leaves, she promises to visit Gator in prison. “With cookies.”

Finally, we can exhale as Dot’s escort pulls up at the family home, which is being restored to its former glory. (Lorraine Lyon must have access to some absolutely miraculous contractors because that fire was no joke.) She can finally hold her daughter and husband without looking over her shoulder. What’s more, she can do it with the blessing and a newfound understanding with her mother-in-law, who gives her a performative, reluctant hug, too. “Shot him in the stomach, they said, which…” Jennifer Jason Leigh’s face goes through about 1,000 calculations in the span of 0.5 seconds here. “That’s my girl.” Marvelous acting.

But there’s still more than half the episode left. “Bisquik” is as much a finale as it is an epilogue, flashing one year into the future after the family get-together on Dorothy’s porch. She and Scotty pay a visit to Farr’s grave on the anniversary of his death, and have a brief meeting with Indira, who is still working for Lorraine and has adopted Witt’s cat.

I don’t know about you, but I knew what was up the moment we see how Wayne is framed sitting on the couch when Dot arrives home. Sure enough, as she walks into the living room and the camera glides with her, Ole Munch is there in their living room.

“A man frees a tiger so the tiger can finish her fight. This does not mean the man is finished with her,” he says in his beautiful strained growl, even flinching when Wayne sticks out his arm for a handshake. I’ll go mad if I say it every time I’m thinking it over the next 20 minutes of his performance, so let me just say here: Sam Spruell is unreal in this final scene, alternately murderous, gravely serious, confused, and hilarious. Sometimes all in the span of a few seconds. His nonplussed pause when Wayne opens up an orange pop and clinks bottles with him before delivering a clipped “A man is grateful,” made me hoot with laughter and rewind a couple of times.

And so, Munch tries to “finish their engagement,” feeling he’s entitled to his literal pound of flesh after Dorothy took off half his ear in episode one. We’ve already joined most of the dots in regards to Munch’s past. At least, as much as we need to, but he states it outright here: He can’t remember when he was born. He’s been in America “since the age of the carrier pigeon and the 600 tribes.” As Wayne tries to connect with the ageless warrior through smalltalk, Dorothy finally does something we haven’t seen her try before: She is direct.

“Why?” she says, cutting off Wayne’s story about fly fishing on the Vermillion. “Why must debt be paid? What if you can’t? If you’re too poor, or you lose your job. Maybe there’s a death in the family. Isn’t the better thing, the more humane thing to say debt should be forgiven? Isn’t that who we should be?” Munch simply stares at her, and Wayne gets started on setting the table for chili. Juno Temple sells this moment perfectly as both a chrysalis emergence moment for Dorothy and also as something, someone she’s always been and just had the confidence wrung out of her by a cruel world for too long. “Whatever it is you think you came here for,” she leans in, “we’re halfway to supper, and it’s a school night. So either you wash your hands and you help, or we do this another time.”

And so Ole Munch takes off his coat and runs his hands under the sink. “A man has a code–” he begins, before being interrupted by Wayne offering a beer. “A code—” he tries again, but he’s in Scotty’s way. “The code. It is everyth—” but it’s time for Dot to teach him how to make biscuits. Finally, the Lyons are in harmony, kindly weaponizing that old Fargo staple of “Minnestoa nice.” Once the food’s ready and they sit down to eat, Dorothy implores Munch again: “You took a job that had a risk. You can’t get mad at the risk. That’d be like getting mad at the table you stub your toe on.”

This push-and-pull probably goes on a little too long, but I don’t care. I could watch Ole Munch tell his impossible tales and the Lyons run rings around him with idle chatter for another ten episodes. Before they dig in, Munch starts up again, telling the story we saw back in episode three: Starving in, ahem, early modern Wales, he was offered two coins and a meal. “But the food was not food,” he says, pained. “It was sin.” Since eating the sin, he says, he can’t age, can’t sleep. “He cannot die. He has no dreams. All that is left is sin.”

A pause, and then Dorothy looks at Munch. “It feels like that. What they do to us. Make us swallow, like it’s our fault. But you wanna know the cure?” He stares back. “You gotta eat something made with joy and love,” she holds up a biscuit, “and be forgiven.” And for the first time in 500 years, Ole Munch eats. And Ole Munch is forgiven. And Ole Munch smiles.

Stray observations

• Gator’s redemption arc is complete with the revelation his favorite cookie is oatmeal raisin. A flavor truly only for good boys.
• When Dorothy asks for Witt to thank him when she’s rescued, calling him “My trooper.” Heartbreaking!
• Make no mistake, Lorraine Lyon’s definitely one of the Bad Guys, but if I got a wink and a “good for you!” from her I’d go in for a hug, too.
• Speaking of the Lyon matriarch’s dark side, she visits Roy in prison a year after the siege so his “real punishment” can begin. She sends the principled Indira out of the visiting room before she details what exactly that means: She’s set up a fund for every single inmate in the prison Roy’s being held in. Except Roy. Paying them, in essence, with money every month for commissary goods such as Vienna sausages and, uh, vaseline. “You want to kill me?” Roy asks, sensing one more chance to swell his chest with pride. But no. Lorraine wants him to live. “And while you live, I want you to feel everything your wives felt.” For the first time, fear crosses the former Sheriff Tillman’s eyes.
• Big laugh from me at “You ever driven a Kia, Mr. Munch?”
• Dorothy asks Munch, wouldn’t he defend his mother the way Dorothy defended herself when he first came for her? “You say that as if life is a circle but it’s a line” Munch says. “Mother is the start. This is the other side.” Dorothy smiles widely. “Well I don’t know what that means.” I’ve never seen a better metaphor for writing reviews of Noah Hawley’s writing.
• Thank you all for joining me for Fargo Year Five! I appreciate just how closely some of you watch this show, and try to do it justice. We critics will inevitably miss things (deadlines, lack of subtitles on screeners, and what have you) so it’s always a joy to read the comments connecting or noticing stuff I haven’t, as long as they’re not also being rude about it. This has been my favorite season since the first, getting back to the “wicked and playful” vibe that escaped the lesser entries in the middle there. I’m down for another round. How about you?