Last week was the promising start of Fargo, this year set in
1979. There is a crisis of leadership as
the Gearhardt family patriarch is felled with a stroke. Meanwhile, Rye Gearhardt has caused a
murderous mystery at a diner in Minnesota before falling victim of a clumsy
attack by Ed Blomquist. Peggy has
implored Ed to cover up the murder and it’s clear they are already in over
their heads.
The episode opens with a montage, which includes Hank Larsen
and Ed and Peggy Blomquist, all looking pensive. A car of gangsters drives to the Gearhardt
compound to pay a visit. Inside the house,
the youngest grandson Charlie reads “get well” cards for Otto to Floyd. Floyd is busy counting money and taking charge
of the business. She instructs her
grandson to get Dodd from the barn for a family meeting.
In the barn, Dodd is telling the story of his father’s
history as a WW1 German soldier. Unfortunately,
the story falls on deaf ears, literally, since Hanzee (Zahn McClanon) has
sliced them off. Hanzee notices the
tortured man is dead, so their business is finished. A German Shepard goes to the bucket to eat the
man’s severed ears!
As the men exit the barn, the Gearhardt’s pass two men in
bowler hats; Dodd tosses a cigarette in the men’s direction. Joe Bulo and his partner exit the front door
as Dodd enters.
Once inside, he asks his mom, “Who are the goons?” Floyd responds they are from Kansas City and
they want to buy out the “family business.” Dodd protests his daughter’s
presence when they are discussing business. Floyd insists she stays, “Girls
grow up to women who change men’s diapers.” She goes on to say they offered to buy their
business but let them run it and report to them. Dodd feels slighted he wasn’t consulted as
the oldest son. Floyd replies Otto’s
time running the business is over. She
feels she should succeed her husband and Bear, Rye’s girlfriend and Charlie
agree. Dodd feels he should be in
charge, “I’m oldest, I’m boss, end of story.”
Floyd asks to speak to Dodd alone. Floyd reiterates Otto’s humble beginnings as
a penniless war veteran who made an empire in a new country from a shoeshine
box. She notes the next weeks will be
critical and to let her run things for the time being. She promises him, “Your time will come.” In the meantime, she tasks Dodd with finding
Rye.
In the car, Joe considers the Gerhardt’s. “Germans don’t persuade easy.” They contemplate dealing with the youngest
and most malleable member of the clan, the already deceased Rye. Their bosses don’t care how the deal is made,
with diplomacy or war. Joe Bulo offers,
“The first Gearhardt to switch sides gets a shiny red apple!”
At the sheriff’s office, a deputy explains on the phone how
the Waffle Hut murders are a “local matter.” Hank sits at his desk, looking at
the single white patent leather shoe longing to know its owner.
Hank goes to Betsy and son-in-law’s house for
breakfast. Betsy is still reeling from
her chemo treatment so her father settles for coffee. Molly wants to hear a story but her
grandfather is more interested to learn one of the victims in the case was a
North Dakota judge from Lou. The lawmen
ponder if that’s a coincidence or was the judge the target of the attack?
Dramatic music plays as the camera focuses on the dark
broken windshield of the Blomquist’s car. A clear handprint in blood can be seen on the
side of the meat freezer that holds Rye’s body. Outside the garage, Ed looks forlorn as he looks
at the dead man’s driver’s license and wallet. Peggy appears, sporting a black eye on the
right side from last evening’s activities. Peggy urges him to go to work, but he argues
he should clean up. Peggy, donning large
sunglasses, decides to go to work to “keep up appearances.”
Dodd sits alone at his family’s kitchen table. He looks sad. He enters a hallway and asks the Hanzee, “Are
you with me?” Dodd explains he needs to
find Rye and get his younger brother to support his ascension to the leadership
of the family business. He is dismayed
that Bear has thrown his support behind his mother. He asks Hanzee to find his Rye right away.
Downtown, the bus drops of Peggy near the butcher shop. She explains to the owner, Ed had some, “bad
clams” and will not be in to work that day. The butcher remarks one should never trust
something that came from the sea. His
bored daughter remarks, “Didn’t we come from the sea?” Next, the salon is a buzz with rumors about
the murders. A female patron remarks, “First Watergate, now murders at the
Waffle Hut, what’s this world coming to?” (Both these remarks keep the strange
humor going in an otherwise bleak story!)
Peggy’s boss Constance confronts her for being late and
suggests she might be hung over. She
urges Peggy to sign up to go to the “self awareness” seminar the next weekend.
Peggy demurs, stating, “We can’t go right now because Ed is saving up to buy
the butcher shop.” Constance chides her
for not standing up for her desires, stating, “Don’t be a prisoner of ‘we’.” She also asks Peggy if she knows anything
about a missing case of toilet paper. (Huh?)
At the office, Lou speaks on the phone asking for assistance
on the murder case since it now concerns a judge and “interstate” issues. It’s unclear whom he is calling.
The goons approach the typewriter store. The owner is on the phone speaking to someone
to which he owes money. Mike Milligan
(Bokeen Woodvine) asks if he has money problems, and the man denies it. He also tells the men the store is closed.
Mike smiles, “That’s okay, we aren’t really customers!” He asks the owner about Rye Gearhardt. The man says he’s meet him a few times and
asks, “Do you need a character reference?” Mike rolls the owners tie into the typewriter
and proceeds to dictate a note he wrote to G.E. regarding a badly made coffee
maker he purchased at Sears. At the end
of the exercise, the man is near choking. He confesses he asked Rye to speak to the
judge but denies knowing what happened to her. Satisfied, (for now) the trio leaves the
typewriter store.
Ed is still busy in the garage as he listens to Burl Ives
sing, “One Hour Ahead of the Posse.” He uses bleach on the garage floor
overcome with emotion. Next he looks at
Rye’s body in the deep freeze. It’s
unclear what he has decided to do with Rye’s body but he is a butcher so my
guess is some dismemberment! Later, he
stands in front of the fireplace in “tighty whities” and tube socks. He burns some clothes, than removes his
underwear to burn as well. A large belt
buckle is seen smoldering in the flames.
There is a view of a blue trestle bridge in the snow that
cuts to Betsy receiving her chemotherapy at a clinic. Afterwards, Betsy and Molly accompany Lou with
plans to go to lunch together. Lou stops
at the Waffle Hut crime scene first. Betsy
seeks to distract her young daughter by building a snowman. Lou enters the dark diner and focuses on the
table where the judge’s body lay. He
notes the bloodied can of bug spray.
Outside, Molly finds a Mylar balloon near a tree, which
reads, “Get Well Soon!” (Was this in
Rye’s car, for his father?) She asks her
mom if she can keep it but Betsy says no. Betsy spots something in the nearby snow, a
revolver. She calls out to Lou. Molly asks what’s going on and her father
replies, “Mommy is doing daddy’s job!” On
the road nearby, the gangsters pass the family in a dark sedan.
On the blue bridge, Hank intercepts the gangster car by
blocking his cruiser perpendicular. He
speaks to Mike who is seated behind the driver seat. Mike mentions his "friends up front don't like to talk to strangers." Hank replies, "Well they are going to talk to me!" Mike attempts some small talk, something about Rock County and
the Flintstones. Hank, losing patience, commands all the
men to get out of the car. Slowly, the
men hand over their ids. Mike explains
they are from Kansas City heard there were good waffles to be had in these parts and were surprised to find the diner closed and a scene of a crime! Mike assures Hank, “They are just passing through the state to points south.”
The Kitchen brothers in bowler hats remain mute. Hank asks for their shoe sizes, Mike is
intrigued and answers he’s a size ten. The
brothers raise their middle fingers, which Mike cheerfully intereperts their meaning for Hank
as size eleven. Hank asks them to move
on out of state promptly or else he'll put out a bulletin for their car.
Mike pontificates as he gets back into the car, “Isn’t it
great given how the world is today, that two men could talk calmly and rationally
while all around us, men are losing their minds!” He adds, “Have a nice day!” as a nervous Hank
walks slowly away from the motely crew.
It’s dark on the main street as Ed stops his red Ford near
the butcher shop. (I don’t have a good feeling about this!) He watches Peggy
and her boss Constance leave the beauty salon; the older woman has offered his
wife a ride home. (Since the couple’s car is in disrepair.) When the street is empty, Ed drives in front
of the butcher shop and parks. In the back, under a tarp, is the frozen body of
Rye, which Ed drags inside the front door.
Constance asks to use the bathroom once they reach the
Blomquist residence. She is unable to
find a towel and looks under the bathroom sink to find the toilet paper Peggy
stole from the salon. On the radio,
“Going to Kansas City” plays. (There is a great use of music so far in the
series, offering the audience some extra clues about the story. It reminds this
viewer of Breaking Bad in this element.) Peggy calls out timidly for Ed. Constance surprises her in the garage,
surprised to see their badly damaged car.
Peggy makes up a lie about Ed crashing it the previous night when he was
drunk. Constance looks at her knowingly and asks, “You’re a bad girl, aren’t
you? I can usually tell right away. Maybe
you like breaking the rules. I’m not
even mad about the toilet paper or the lies.”
Constance touches Peggy’s collar in a seemly sexual way. Peggy asks her
to leave and she complies. It’s clear
Constance notices something curious about Peggy and her husband.
Lou waits in the dark on the front steps of the Waffle Hut. Hank arrives. Lou admits Betsy found the gun and he is
wondering what else he missed in surveying the crime scene. Hank relates the story of the gangster car
stop but laments it yielded “nothing actionable.” Lou has a strange feeling
about what he observed, stating, “The cook fell funny, that’s why I’m still
here.”
The men allude to the phenomena of déjà vu or
convergence. Lou remembers back to 1974 when
he was in the Navy in Vietnam, a young soldier who liked to smoke cigars like
his grandfather. The soldier was at the
front of the boat, lite a “shit stick” and was shoot thorough the cigar. Lou recounts the look on his face, reminding
him of the cook, as one of complete bafflement.
Hank, a World War II vet shared another story about a German captain who
hung himself in a bunker in 1945. He
recalled that imagine at a suicide scene in 1962 where a man had hung himself
in the bathroom with an electric cord. Not men to dwell on emotions, Hank
dismiss these experiences as “war stories.” However, he notes after 1945, there
were no murders in the area for six years and today, there are so many. Hank
offers a theory, “Did you boys bring that war home with you?”
In the butcher shop, Rye’s corpse lies in pieces on the
counter. The Native American is seen
driving in the darkness. Dodd waits at
the kitchen table. Floyd holds the dying
patriarch Otto in bed. Ed is grinding
Rye into sirloin! Lou drives down the
main street and sees the light on in the back of the butcher shop!
Lou exits his cruiser and begins to knock at the butcher
shop’s front door. In the back room, Ed
grabs an arm and amputates the fingers with a cleaver when he becomes aware of
the knocking. Fingers scatter on the
tiled floor. Ed removes his apron and
goes to let Lou in. They make small talk
about the incident at the Waffle Hut. Ed
asks if the killer is still at large, Lou affirms he is. Lou asks for some
bacon for his daughter’s breakfast. As Ed
retrieves it, glancing nervously at the back room where he left the door
ajar. Lou insists on paying and drops a
coin near Rye’s severed finger! Ed scrambles to reach it before the Lou sees
it; the phone rings and distracts both men.
It’s Peggy calling imploring Ed to “Hurry up!” She says she’ll wait up
for him and make him breakfast. Lou leaves, suspecting nothing.
Alone, Ed picks up the fallen finger. There is a voice-over of a man explaining how
man in the nineteenth century couldn’t have imagined they were being watched
from afar by aliens. This is from the infamous War of the World’s 1939 radio- broadcast.
This ties in with Rye’s vision of U.F.O.’s
before Peggy hit him. On this strange
note, the episode ends.
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