Fargo – Storia Americana

By: Kelly Kearney

What is the American dream? Is it something we can fight to achieve or is it a birthright given to those who are deemed worthy of it? Who are these worthy Americans and who are the deciders? Perhaps it’s all just a merry go round with an unattainable golden ring that’s snatched from the hands of anyone who doesn’t fit a certain mold. How does a country born through human rebellion, stolen from the creators and rebuilt by immigrants and slaves become a land where only a choice few get to glory in all of its gifts? These are the questions we are left with as the door closes on the final moments “Storia Americano.” The war is over, but was the fight even worth it? For Loy and Josto the answer is a resounding NO!

Josto’s Revenge

In the opening minutes we catch glimpses of the ones we’ve lost throughout the series. From Doctor Senator (Glynn Turman) to Rabbi Milligan (Ben Whishaw) and everyone in between, we see each scroll across the screen like a memory. The photos flash to Loy (Chris Rock), who is sitting with Ebal (Francesco Acquaroli) on the same park bench he met Don Fadda in the opening episode. Elsewhere, Josto (Jason Schwartzman) is drowning his sorrows in the bottle over losing his entire family. He lost his brother, Gaetano (Salvatore Esposito), and everyone else who mattered to him, even his girlfriend Oraetta Mayflower (Jesse Buckley) who is now in jail. Everyone is gone and Josto is deep in the bottle and marinating in his pain. Next we see Lemuel (Matthew Elam) handing over the keys to the funeral parlor to the Smutny’s. Ethelrida’s (Emyri Crutchfield) plan worked and her suitor is impressed she was able to hold his father to his word. What she offered him was worth it because Loy is about to use that ring to secure a win in this mob war. We don’t know what Loy and Josto’s consiglieri are discussing when we see them on the bench, but Cannon hands him the Fadda ring and things start to fall into place. Truth can be a powerful weapon, especially when it provides proof of treason.

Loy isn’t the only one cutting deals in this episode. Oraetta is released from jail thanks to an unknown person posting bail. She assumes its Josto, but he seems too busy kidnapping Dr. Harvard (Stephen Spencer) and tossing him into the back of the car with his beaten and blooded former father-in-law. It’s payback time for all the people who did young Fadda wrong and his first victims are the ones who insulted his heritage and family name. After a short drive to parts unknown, Josto shoots both men in the backseat and then sets the car on fire. This leads us back to the park bench with Ebal and Loy. “Get your house in order,” Loy tells Ebal, who has been ordered by the New York family to end this war with what little foot soldiers they have left. Ebal agrees to do some house cleaning and says will meet again soon. As Loy leaves he spots Josto in the car and smirks. Maybe it’s a “gotcha” kind of smile or maybe it’s one of sympathy for a guy who is about to lose the last thing in his life he cherishes. Either way, it definitely shows Loy has a secret and this war isn’t over until he says it is.

Et tu, Leon?

After his meeting with Ebal, Loy heads back to his hotel room for a drink and some deep thinking. As he sips scotch and stares out the window we see Leon (Jeremie Harris) creeping up behind him aiming a pistol at Cannon’s head. Loy never turns around as we see Opal (James Vincent Meredith) walk up behind Leon and throw a rope around his neck. Loy’s man strangles Leon to death and the whole scene plays out in silence as Loy continues to sip his liquor and watch the street below. At the same time Leon is being dealt with we head over to the diner where Doctor Senator was killed. Happy (Edwin Lee Gibson) is about to add an “un” to his name because in comes one of Loy’s henchmen. As the bells over the diner door jingle, the hitman pulls out a gun from a box of flowers and shoots Happy dead in his seat. With all of Loy’s threats neutralized we head over to Josto, who looks a wreck. However, after he hears Leon killed Loy his mood lifts. Josto has no idea about Opal finishing off Leon so he is all smiles as he walks into his office ready to kick off the celebrations. His good vibes come to a screeching halt when he finds Oraetta, Ebal and the rest of his men sitting in his office waiting for him. From the looks of things, this is a coup, and Josto has nobody to blame but himself and his trust in Nurse Mayflower! Ebal bailed the red head out and now she’s saving her own hide by blaming the murder of Don Fadda on Josto! Apparently, when Josto told her to take care of his father, her serial killer brain heard that as kill Don Fadda. It was a misunderstanding, or so she says, and she did what she thought he wanted. Ebal breaks the whole thing down to an assumption of guilt and even includes Gaetano’s death in Josto’s traitorous ways. He says., “you kill your father so you can wear the crown. Then you kill your brother, so you don’t have to share it.” He goes on to talk about all the issues the Fadda family has faced over the years and chalks it up to their business being stuck in the past. “We need a new way” he says, and that way is him. With that, Ebal is in charge now and he orders his men to take Josto away. He isn’t alone, because Ebal also orders his men to take Oraetta and together the unhappy couple are stuffed into the backseat and bickering all the way to their end.

Once they are delivered to the location, the skies are clear, and it looks like a beautiful day for an execution. Oraetta prepares for the afterlife by fixing her make up, and as the two face their freshly dug grave Josto begins to panic. He knows where this is leading and starts to appeal to Joe Bulo’s (Evan Mulrooney) good side, who really doesn’t have one. With a laugh, Joe asks them if they have any last words, and Oraetta jumps in to request Josto go first. Our girl Oraetta loves a good killing, and she isn’t going to go first and miss this! As per her request Joe shoots a rambling and pleading Josto in the head and he goes tumbling down into the dirt pit. Nurse Mayflower soon follows, putting an end to both their kill sprees and their kinky relationship. Side by side the two will spend an eternity together.

This War is Over

After taking care of Leon and assuming Ebal is handling Josto, it’s finally safe enough for Loy and Buel to go home. When they arrive, the door is ajar, and Loy cautiously walks through the house looking for what he assumes is another Fadda hitman. Instead, he finds his son Satchel (Rodney L. Jones III) sleeping away in his bedroom and Loy is overcome with emotion. As he hugs his boy, he screams out for Buell (J. Nicole Brooks) to come upstairs. It’s a happy and tearful reunion that even includes Rabbit the dog. Everything seems to be falling in place for Loy, which is why he’s feeling good about his meeting with Ebal.

Hoping to cement his truce with the Italians, Loy is stunned when Ebal mutters that there will be “adjustments” to their deal. The new boss breaks the bad news that he plans on taking half of everything Loy owns. This enrages Cannon, who yells “WE MADE A DEAL” but Ebal reminds him that he is just one man, in one city, while the Italians are an army of families spread out across the world. All of which back the new boss of Kansas City. Loy starts to argue and Ebal the Brutal flexes his boss muscle by threatening to kill Loy and replace him with someone who will respect the new ways. This leaves Loy without many choices. In the beginning of the season Cannon talked about what it was like to be a black American success story. How your hunger for success keeps you going but the minute you get your piece of the pie, someone hungrier will come along and gobble it up before you ever got a taste.  That is not an American dream as much as an American horror story for anyone who doesn’t fit the white patriarchal mold. Loy knows this is a fight he will never win and the look on his face says he is done scrapping for scraps in the gutters of the land of the free. Without a word he leaves the meeting with Ebal and tells Opal to drive him home. “War’s over,” he says, in a defeated tone. The fiery spirit that kept him in the fight, has all but been snuffed out.

As he arrives home Loy stands on his porch looking in the window at his happy family. A smile breaks like wave across his face and one can only guess that he realizes maybe he did win this war after all. Maybe the glory isn’t in the fight for power, but in his family who are safe and happy and all under one roof. As he watches their smiling faces and listens to Lemuel dribble out the saccharine tones of his brass horn, he begins to cry happy tears. The mood is abruptly broken when Zelmare (Karen Aldridge) sneaks up and stabs Loy in the back! “For Swanee,” she says as she leers over his crumbling body. Within moments, Satchel coms outside to find his father bleeding in the floor of the porch. The boy looks to the smiling woman holding a bloody knife who motions for him to “shhhhh…,” Zelmare drops the knife and slowly strolls down the street as Satchel squats down beside his father as he takes his last breath.

“my name is Ethelrida Pearl Smutny, and this is my history report”

As the curtain closes on another fantastic installment of the Midwest crime drama, we go back to Ethelrida reciting her history report as the screen flashes through all the crime families of the past. The final lines of her report paint a broad stoke across the canvas of American exceptionalism. It is about how history is written by the winners and often forgets those who fought in the battle along the way. “Who writes the books” she says, “who chooses what we remember and what gets forgotten?” The scene flashes forward to an older Ethelrida packing her bags to move out of her family home.

As the credits roll there is a break midway and we see a car driving down a dusty rural road. In the backseat sits Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) from season two loading his gun and aiming it out the window! The future is molded from the past and the scene flips to Mike’s memories as a young Satchel Cannon walking down the same road with Rabbit. The adult Mike Milligan reminisces about a time when an Irish Jewish mobster saved his life and sent him on the long road home to find his future. That boy is now a man and he is following his fathers’ Loy and Rabbi’s footsteps. The history books might have left out the names Loy and Rabbi but, Mike ‘Satchel” Milligan’s name will grace the pages for generations to come.