Even the best series have to sometimes step back after an exceptional episode, just to sift through all that had happened, before forging on.
Last week’s big “Fargo” episode had not only a marvelous shootout in a wintery whiteout that left Lt. Molly Solverson down and bleeding (at the hand of poor Gus Grimley of all people), it had Lorne Malvo again surviving an attack where he killed one and Lester Nygaard on his most sinister cover-up caper.
This week, there was time to consider all those implications, and in the case of Lester, see them play out. But there was also time to the action, finally, to the city that lends the series its name, with a shootout that might even be the equal of last week’s whiteout, difficult as that may be to believe.
In both, it wasn’t clear from a viewer’s perspective exactly who lived and died. But one could be sure that Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo would survive it all and skip away undetected at the end, even under the watchful eye of a pair of FBI agents so humorously inept they might have well been Key & Peele (no wait, they were Key & Peele).
The episode “Who Shaves the Barber” begins with the otherwise dull domestic morning at the home of Lester’s brother, Chazz, and his family. Dull unless you knew Lester had slipped a revolver into the school backpack of young Gordo. Every shot followed that backpack as if in a Hitchcock movie.
Bad enough that Lester was setting up his own brother, how could he get his young nephew into such trouble, which sure enough occurs when the weapon spills out of the pack once at school?
It was meant to lead police back to the home, where Lester had planted the murder weapon he used on his wife in his rifle case, right next to the seemingly illegal automatic weapon, and next to some further evidence (panties, boudoir photos) to further paint the picture for the proven dim Bemidji force (Lester declined to include a signed Chazz confession to an affair and murder).
The overworked new chief Bill Oswalt, so well played by Bob Odenkirk, had his hands full and an apparent open and shut case, especially with Lester egging him on and Molly away, recuperating from her friendly fire.
Lester’s plan had gone off swimmingly and he walks out of the station free, managing also to suppress a triumphant smile. And only now, 13 minutes into the hour, do the opening credits roll. Had the credits ever started any later?
Speaking of Molly, Gus can hardly bring himself to admit he was the one he had shot this woman he was working with and was harboring some romantic feelings for. Molly’s ready to forgive him right away.
Malvo makes his way all the way to Reno to chat with a guy we hadn’t seen before, whose connection to the crime interconnections is not immediately known. But he identifies the Fargo gang that had sent two men after him (for killing Sam Hess) and now Malvo can go to that South Dakota and seek retribution.
Of that amusing twosome, Adam Goldberg (whose character name was Mr. Numbers) is dead while his partner the hearing impaired Mr. Wrench, survived his shooting, but won’t talk –check that, he never talks. Or as Lt. Solverson puts it: “That deaf fella – turns out he can’t hear.”
Malvo has his Fargo info, though and walks right past an FBI stakeout at the mobster’s headquartered. As amusing as it is to seek Key & Peele as the two feds, they almost take you out of the finely calculated drama. They don’t speak in upper Midwest cadences or phrases. Because they’re from the East coast no doubt, they talk faster and of odd things – the quality of fast food. It’s as if the two think they’ve been cast in a TV version of Pulp Fiction not Fargo.
Either way, they’re not in it much, as Malvo walks right past them, into the Mob headquarters where, behind the bland mirrored glass of the Midwestern three story the camera follows his progress by aiming at the mirrored glass. It’s a visual ploy as inventive as last week’s whiteout.
By the sound of the automatic fire, it sounds like upwards of a dozen people are mowed down before they get to the top dog and Malvo emerges from the building without an apparent scratch, as well as no detection.
But still the packed episode is not over. The newly confident Lester volunteers to take up the case of the Hess widow, who won’t get a dime of the insurance payout she’s expecting. Her drip of a husband stopped paying the premium long ago.
Lester volunteers to see the sexy widow, but withholds this information from her as he gets a drink and retires to the bedroom with her. There, he’s goaded by a picture of the hated Sam in his animalistic act of revenge.
But how much revenge does Lester Nygaard need? Sam might have teased him in high school and punched him in the street as an adult, but he already had the guy murdered. Now he insists on retribution in the guy’s own former bedroom as well?
Wasn’t there something that was supposed to be sort of mildly endearing about the hapless soul at the center of the mayhem – as William H. Macy’s Jerry Lundegaard was in the original Coen brothers movie of the same name?
There was something endearing about Lester, but most of the good will is from the actor Martin Freeman, who played Tim in the original British version of “The Office,” Bilbo Baggins in “The Hobbit” and Watson in the “Sherlock” series before he donned his Minnesota accent for this role. And yes we felt sorry for how he was bullied most of his life. But jeez, as they say in Minnesota, the guy can’t quit.
Next week, it looks as if his sister-in-law comes on to him as well, even as his brother awaits trial. But the one character for which one can still root, Lt. Solverson, recovered enough to return to Bemidji, is just now hearing of the open-and-shut framing of Chazz Nygaard. So that all may change in a hurry as well.
Someone just has to put a stop to Malvo before he mows down more Midwesterners since Starkweather.