Fargo – Insolubilia

By: Kelly Kearney

Debts and paybacks seem to be a theme this season, as Noah Hawley’s Fargo–once again, delivers a jaw-dropping heart-pounding episode that many are saying feels like a return to what made the show a cut above the rest. After a bit of a dip in storytelling for season 4, the story of a housewife on the run from her past has recaptured viewers’ interest while also launching Juno Temple into the stratosphere of leading actress award nominations. Everybody is talking about that sweet little pancake-making killer and this week, the show picks up where we left off with Dot trading in her whisk for a gun and coming face to face with Gator Tillman and his merry band of masked idiots hired to drag her back to North Dakota. With Roy locked in Ole Munch’s crosshairs and Gator locked in Dot’s, everyone has a target on their backs. With a closer as exciting as its opening minutes, “Insolubilia” sits at the crossroads between power and persistence, with every turn deadlier than the last.

Hell Night in Minnesota’s Suburbs

When we last saw Dot (Juno Temple)  she was standing on her front porch glaring into the darkened windows of a van parked in front of her house. She knows who is behind the wheel and why they are there and thanks to her Home Alone boobytrap-making skills, they won’t get very far.  After locking eyes with Gator wearing a Jack Skeleton mask, Dot casually strolls inside her house and gets ready to come face to face with that familiar Tillman justice she ran away from a decade ago. Wearing hauntingly familiar masks, Gator (Joe Keery) and his three pals break into Wayne (David Rysdahl) and Dot’s House but it appears like nobody is home. Armed with guns and hatchets they search through the home that’s been decorated like a haunted house. Ghosts hanging from the ceiling and flashing strobe lights lean into the thriller aspects of this show. As the tension builds, we see Dot hiding behind the bathroom closet door while her husband and daughter stay safe in the attic. When one of Gator’s men wanders into the bathroom, she surprisingly attacks and knocks him out. The commotion alerts the other three intruders and that’s when this happy Halloween turns into a real nightmare.  Dot and her family are trapped so she has no choice but to pull out all the stops; sledgehammers, swinging bats filled with nails, electrified windows, and loaded guns, Dot is ready for whatever the Tillman boy has planned for her. So, when she winds up face-to-face with Gator it is strange to see their interaction border on familial. Gator can’t help but notice his stepmother grew into a competent fighter and she can’t help but express her disappointment that he hasn’t matured and is still doing Roy’s (Jon Hamm) dirty work. Their brief catch-up between fatal blows doesn’t stop her Dot from attacking Gator and attempting to make her escape, but what does slow her roll is  Wayne and the fact he is too pure for this crime-riddled world that landed on his front steps. Not only is he learning that his wife is not the happy little Midwestern homemaker he thought she was, but she also has a deadly side and he meets her accidentally when he grabs a hold of a windowsill trying to escape with her and Scotty. Rigging those windows was a huge mistake because Dot can take care of herself but Wayne– her soft and loyal golden retriever type of a husband gets fried the second his hand brushes against the hidden hot wires. He gets electrocuted and as Dot rushes to his side we see that the sparks from that big zap set the bedroom curtains on fire. Wayne is out cold and with Gator pounding on the bedroom door, Dot has no choice but to lead Scotty (Sienna King) out onto the roof after the teen climbs down, she tosses her husband’s dead weight off after her, the bushes cushioned his fall but getting out of that house saved all of their lives because within seconds the house goes up in flames. Still unconscious and now a little banged up from the drop, Dot drags Wayne away from the smoke and then watches as everything she worked for goes up in flames. Gator and his pals make it out too but with the sirens off in the distance they don’t stick around to finish the job. For now, she is safe but the police are going to have questions for her and she wants to make sure Scotty–who got an eyeful, answers them in a way that won’t add to her problems.

A Recipe for Eating the Rich

Switching to North Dakota, we check in with Roy, who opted out of the Minnesota job to pray God grants him the justice he thinks Dot owes him. His prayers take a darker turn when we see him enter his home and see Ole Munch’s (Sam Spruell) bloody footprints heading up to his daughter’s bedroom. With his gun out and expecting the worst, he pushes open the girl’s door to see she is fine but her bedroom could use a fresh coat of paint. Scrawled in blood over the child’s bed is a symbol–an ancient rune of some sort, painted in blood courtesy of Ole. He will not stop until his debts are settled and knowing he could just walk into the Sheriff’s house–a guy who prides himself on being the scariest dictator in a badge Stark County ever elected, he is ready to make someone pay–even if he can’t find Ole.

Speaking of payments, over in Minnesota, Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is sitting for an interview with Forbes magazine about how she made 1.6 billion from her debt consolidation company. No matter how the reporter tries to finagle some empathy out of her for the struggling people who hand her their extra pennies, Lorraine refuses to shed a tear and instead, claims people love debt collectors because they crave responsibility. She has no idea she is a parasite feeding off of unsuspecting victims she sees as lesser than herself. Her wealth is propped up by people’s misery– like Officer Olmstead (Richa Moonjani) who can’t dodge those harassing phone calls about outstanding medical bills. So much for the class wars Lorraine thinks she’s winning because she wouldn’t exist without the sweat of hard work from people like Olmstead.

At the hospital, Dot and Scotty do not have a scratch on them and it is noticeable to Lorraine and Danish Graves (Dave Foley)  who swoop into the ER like royalty–demanding the staff cater to her every whim. She has this way of steamrolling over Dot that doesn’t let up even with her son sitting in the ICU. Immediately she starts questioning Dot’s role in the fire and even goes as far as to voice her concerns for her continued parenting–as if she has some say in how Scotty is raised. She questions Dot on everything and her suspicions only grow when Officer Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) and Officer Olmstead show up at the hospital to question her about the fire and how it relates to the gas station shooting they know she was a part of. Witt Farr saw her in the security tapes, and no matter how hard she tried to hide her face behind Scotty, he knew the woman who simultaneously played nurse and warrior that night, is sitting right in front of him now. Things are not looking good for Dot–who just wanted to keep her life simple: Bisquick and library charities, a new identity far from the one Roy Tillman knows.

When comparing husbands, Wayne is no Roy, and that’s a good thing as upgrades go. He doesn’t have that hardwired misogyny directing his every move, he is softer and sees Dot as an equal and not a possession. Unfortunately, what he does have is a cooked brain—the man is very confused over where he is and why, and when Dot can visit with him, he just isn’t making much sense. Instead of telling him the truth about what happened, Dot manipulates his fried brain to gaslight him about the night’s “mishaps.” She blames the fire on faulty wiring and says he landed in the hospital with nothing more than a bump on the head. His short-term memory and speech seem a bit spotty so he just smiles and nods through Dot’s lies. Even when he calls her Nadine–the name he heard Gator mention, she shrugs it off like she doesn’t have a clue as to who that is. Whether or not this act is solely to protect herself or keep Wayne and Scotty safe is unclear, but their lives are in danger.  If Roy is willing to kill her for leaving him, he probably doesn’t think twice about hurting her family too and her best defense to keep them safe is the truth. It just won’t happen on this night, and instead, she falls asleep in her injured husband’s arms with a look of guilt-like setting concrete on her face.

Bad Things Don’t Happen to Bad People

Back in North Dakota FBI agents Joaquin (Nick Gomez) and Meyer (Jessica Pohly) ask a Justice Crenshaw (Glen Gould) for an order to investigate the possible crimes tied to Roy Tillman. They want to “send him a message,”  but Crenshaw isn’t convinced that targeting the popular Sherriff is a good idea. He thinks picking fights with the most powerful lawmen in the Midwest– who also happens to be connected to the largest militia in the region, is too risky without any guarantees. If they start threatening Roy, then what happens next? A Federal Government vs. local police stand-off? Until they have a plan for that fall out,  the FBI needs to treat the Roy investigation like a hobby and not their full-time job. His refusal to sign the order is disappointing but their bad moods lift when they learn Roy’s ex-wife, Nadine, has been found living under the pseudonym, Dorothy Lyon. She might be the woman who can help the government catch their man.

After we check in with a filthy Ole taking a bath and explaining his mission to his mom (Clare Coulter), he asks the woman to make him pancakes–all that blood and freedom talking made him hungry. Does nobody eat waffles in Minnesota? Those griddled-up cakes must;ve hit the streets hard in the Midwest because everyone feels better with a full belly of carbs and syrup–even a modern-day Sin Cake Eater who knows all about guilty eats.

Finally, the episode comes to an end when Gator returns home with bad news for Dad about Nadine. Lucky for him his father’s wrath will have to wait because Roy isn’t home, he is at Joshua’s house–the abusive husband he was proselytizing and threatening in an earlier episode. Why Roy is sitting in that man’s living room and judging him doesn’t matter because the real reason he is there is payback. After Ole took away his peace of mind, he wants to feel powerful and roughing up this wife abuser hits the right spot. According to Roy’s speech, Joshua (Sean Depner) is still struggling to heed the sheriff’s marital advice and now he has to pay–as was promised during their initial meeting at the diner. Roy is the law, the judge, the jury, and in this instance, the executioner, so when  Joshua pulls out his gun and aims it at Roy for calling him “a waste of skin,” the Sheriff of Stark County never even flinches. Instead, he stares down the barrel of the man’s gun while reciting parables, and then in a blink, pulls out his gun and shoots Joshua dead. The man falls to the ground in front of his wife, Lenore (Kelsey Falconer), just as Gator shows up to deal with the blood-pooling mess. Roy makes it clear to Lenore that he acted in self-defense and she should be grateful to him because Joshua won’t be around to hurt her anymore. She doesn’t seem grateful, she seems terrified–not that Roy notices. He has this uncanny ability to turn his criminal actions into some sort of heroic vigilantism for feminist justice, and for Lenore, all his back patting it is hard to swallow; she practically chokes down her thank yous before Roy heads out. Before hopping on his horse to leave, Roy tells Gator he is on clean-up duty because he needs to clear his head–police brutality stresses him out! As Roy rides off into the sunlit landscape like a cowboy silhouette roaming the golden dusty hills of North Dakota he must be thinking that the Dot drama will have to wait, and Ole’s debts will have to wait too, because Roy has another dead body on his hands, an election coming up, and two very green FBI agents hot on his trail. The Sheriff has a lot of pots on the burners and all of them are on the verge of boiling over. Too bad he isn’t cooking pancakes, that sees to ease so many people’s minds.