Fargo – The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions

In this week’s episode of the Emmy-Award-winning series, Dot dupes Wayne into spending a fortune on home protection and it’s a good thing she does too because her ex, Roy Tillman, sent his son, Gator, and his two friends to finish the job Ole Munch couldn’t. Gator wants to impress his dad, but in his carelessness to make him proud he lands on Officer Witt Farr’s radar as a dirty cop covering up for something or someone the night of the gas station shooting. Dot is in Gator’s crosshairs and now the younger Tillman is in Witt Farr’s, but the real threat in this episode comes from a 500-year-old flashback explaining why Ole Munch’s won’t stop coming for the TIllmans until he gets paid for the job was hired to do. He has already killed Gator’s partner as payback for money owed, and now both Tillman men could be next. Everyone is gunning for each other in this episode but it’s the man they call “The Sin Cake Eater ” who is about to mix up the dynamics in this tater tot casserole of a Midwestern crime drama.

A Debt That Must Be Paid

The episode opens with Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) meeting his panicked son Gator (Joe Keery) at the gas station from the earlier shootout. You might remember at the end of last week’s episode, Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) took out his anger on Gator’s partner for the Tillman men stiffing him on the Dot (Juno Temple)  job. He left the cop in a pool of blood on the ground in front of the gas pumps with a note attached to him that read, “You owe me.” Now Roy is there for damage control and the Sheriff doesn’t want the news of this murder getting out. People–mostly the feds who are already sniffing around him, could tie it back to the job he hired Ole Munch to do and that can’t happen in an election year. The two decide to cover up the death, and from the way their conversation goes, it seems like they are pros at hiding bodies. Helping them is the fact that the state police removed all the security cameras at the gas station after the shootout, so there is no recording of Ole Munch stabbing Gator’s partner. While father and son are a team in this cover-up, Roy never misses a chance to insult and berate Gator over letting Ole Munch go. In a flashback from last week’s episode, we see Ole get the drop on Gator with a flicked cigarette which led to him losing his gun and another cop getting shot. Gator seems to crave his father’s approval so those little digs about his fault in all of this seem to hurt his feelings–not that he lets Roy see that. Regardless of whose fault it is that this maniac is hunting them for a paycheck they could easily pay, they know Ole is relentless and will keep coming for them, so they need to strategize.

The trouble is that they don’t know much about Ole Munch, other than he collects debt for a living and that debt is all about Roy thinking Dot owes him something. When we find out who Ole Munch is, the Tillman boys being clueless is a massive understatement. After dealing with the dead cop Roy heads home only to find a group of militia types congregating around a burning trash can on his front lawn. We find out they all work for Roy’s current father-in-law, Odin (Michael Copeman)–a MAGA hat wrapped in fantasy about 1776. His plans to “take our country back” include the men outside staying warm by a literal dumpster fire on his property. Odin refers to his comrades as “animals” even though they are his mini-army pawns sent to do a job he won’t dirty his hands with. Even Roy seems a bit turned off by him, especially after Odin takes a few nips off of his special homemade hooch and starts talking about revolutions and munitions. A distracted Roy just sighs and tells him they need to be careful, but he is willing to provide the weapons for this big fascist takeover.

Not that he doesn’t agree with Odin, it’s just that Roy has more pressing matters occupying his mind and that’s Dot. As the old man drones on, Roy focuses on a photo of him and Dot from their wedding and he–along with the camera, gets sucked into her world. After a bath and a joint, his current third wife tries to tempt him with a little sexual role-playing, which seems like a nightly routine for the two but Roy isn’t in the mood. Nothing in the couple’s sex toy chest can get his mind off of Dot– wife number 2, so wife number 3, Karen (Rebecca Liddiard) rolls over and goes to sleep. As Roy stares at the ceiling through his weed smoke, we see a vision of Dot at Halloween and the camera shifts to her home. Through his smoky exhale we see she is planning something for the holiday and it seems like the costumes this year will be killer…literally. It’s almost as if Dot can feel Roy’s thoughts and it kicks off a plan to keep her, Scotty (Sienna King), and Wayne (David Rysdahl) safe. Part one of her plan is to sneak out of the house at night and swap the street signs in her neighborhood. Now that her fingerprints are in the police’s database, it is only a matter of time before Roy figures out her address. A little switcheroo with the streets could confuse anyone looking for her and also give her ample getaway time. She also tells Wayne there has been a change in this year’s Halloween costumes; now he is going as a zombie and she and Scotty will be zombie hunters. Unlike Roy, Wayne is easygoing and follows Dot’s lead so he doesn’t question the change until she starts driving nails into baseball bats and takes her husband shopping for guns. This costume situation is very authentic, and partnered with the boobytraps rigged all over their home, Wayne is opening up to the idea that his wife might have some secrets.

The Sin Cake Eater Comes Home

Back in North Dakota we meet an elderly woman (Clare Coulter) walking back to her house after her beer run. As she unpacks her three 6-packs, she hears a creaking sound coming from upstairs. Quietly, she follows the noise until she finds Ole Munch sitting in a rocking chair. “I live here now,” he says, and later we find out why she never questions this; Ole Munch isn’t an  intruder, he is her son!

Next we flashback to Wales in the year 1522, where we see a younger and noticeably more emotional Ole Munch take on the practice of a sin cake eater. A common death ritual dating back to as early as the 1500s, where a poor person was tasked with consuming bits of bread or cake filled with the recently deceased sins so that their clean souls can go to heaven. In a time when food was scarce, being a sin cake eater wasn’t all bad; they never ran out of work and always had a bite to eat, it’s just that traditionally the locals feared a human full of sin and that means a lonely life for this Ole look-a-like.

Back in Minnesota, Dot and Wayne go shopping for guns and the whole scene leans into the comedy elements of this series. Wayne is clueless about weapons but Dot knows a military sniper’s level of information about all sorts of weapons and she rattles off models and ammunition. She plans to be locked in and loaded for a night of trick-or-treating until the gun store clerk (Brendan Fletcher) says she can pick up her weapons in a week. Dot needs those guns now, but a 7-day waiting period for background checks is still a thing in some states and Minnesota isn’t about to hand her an arsenal without one. She ends up settling for pepper spray until the following week, but she isn’t happy about it because she knows Roy is getting closer and she needs “stopping power” to stay safe.

Dirty Cops and Dicey Elections

Speaking of the Tillmans, a curious Officer Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) spots Gator pocket something from the gas station shootout case’s evidence box. When he confronts him about it the only response he gets is threats. Now he knows Gator is a dirty cop and instead of taking what he saw to his superiors, he stays quiet and starts to investigate Tillman himself. The trouble with dirty cops is they have plenty of people willing to cover for them so Witt Farr needs to be careful and thorough if he hopes to get to the bottom of the shootout that left him on crutches. After the Officer at the check-in desk gives him Gator’s business card, Witt Farr heads to a diner for some free wifi to research who this dirty cop is. Online he finds an article about prior accusations of stolen police evidence in a missing person’s case. This isn’t the first time Gator “sticky fingers”‘ Tillman got caught swiping something from a box of evidence and the further WIt Farr digs into his past, the more he starts to realize everything about the shootout leads back to Roy TIllman. In the missing woman’s case, it was reported that Gator also gave police a false statement to lead them away from searching his father’s property. He also finds articles discussing Roy’s current election and it seems like the Sheriff might be facing a real challenger for the first time in his career. Maybe this is what prompted all that 1776 talk with Odin. Roy isn’t about to give up the badge that acts as a shield to his criminality–not to mention the fact his entire personality is wrapped around being the most powerful man in Stark County. That’s a power he intends to keep, regardless of the election results–just ignore the headlines calling him a Constitutional Sheriff because he can be that after his insurrection secures his job. Witt Farr also gets a hold of Dot’s mugshot and knows that’s the woman from the gas station. The pieces are slowly coming together for him, and that’s true with Officer Olmstead (Richa Moorjani) too. She and Captain Muscavage (Paul McGillion) were summoned to an insulting meeting with Danish Graves (Dave Foley) and Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) where the two admit they want nothing more than to bribe their way out of any mess Dot might’ve caused. In the Lyon’s world, money is the great decider and it trumps the legal process every time. Muscavage and Olmstead fail to get her to understand the severity of the case–one-shot cop, one dead trooper, and a dead cashier, meaning this isn’t going away but she insists there is a price. Besides, that dead trooper is from North Dakota, so she can’t see why that should matter to her. The privileged apathy pouring out of her like lava is a hard swallow for the financially strapped Olmstead so she and the Captain get up to leave but not before Lorraine disrespects them one last time. She reminds them of their role as gatekeepers protecting the wealthy elites from the hungry peasant masses threatening to overthrow their rule. The police are the walls between the ruling class and the classless and she makes sure they know they exist in the latter. Between Odin and Lorraine, eating the rich never looked more delicious and from the look on Officer Olmstead’s face, she is starting to get hungry. After the two cops leave we find out Danish hired a former CIA agent to look into Dot’s past. After her conversation where Dot turns on her, Lorraine is more convinced than ever that the little innocent housewife is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”  They also hire a private security detail because they do not have faith in law enforcement, which was obvious by the way that meeting went.

Nadine on Halloween

Over in North Dakota, we catch up with Ole, lying in bed and listening to a police scanner and surrounded by newspaper clippings of the Tillman election race. Over the radio, he hears Roy send a message to Gator to meet him at a local pawn shop, and that’s Ole’s cue to pack a bag and say goodbye to Mom for the night. The following day we see the Tillman boys meet outside of a shop and that’s when we learn Dot’s real name is Nadine. Thanks to his cannabis-induced vision, Roy thinks Halloween is the perfect time for his son to grab Nadine and he orders his son to find two trustworthy people for the job. The three should not return to North Dakota without her.

In a montage of clips fittingly set to Prodigy’s hit, “Smack My B***h Up,” we see all the characters preparing for their big night–Gator and his friends in a van, Dot putting zombie make-up on Wayne, Roy lighting a candle in church, and self-proclaimed nihilist Ole Munch eating pages out of a bible–yes, eating, and then walking out of his mother’s house as he recites the sin eater’s code. As Dot and her family head out for the night she pauses to answer the phone and it is Roy on the other end singing the Chuck Berry song, “Nadine.” This is her cue to be ready; now she knows her relentless ex is coming so it is a good thing she is carrying a spiked bat and wearing a costume of armor. While all of this is going on, we see a mud-covered Ole steal a goat and slit its throat. He mixes the mud with the animal’s blood and chants over some ritualistic ruins meant to summon what, we aren’t sure. Next, we see his bloody-muddy footprints make their way through Roy’s house and upstairs where his wife just put their child to bed. At the same time, Roy blows out the candle he lit, while Dot spots Gator’s van parked outside of her house. Those street signs worked for a while but after driving around all night the kidnappers finally decided to trust Google Maps and it led them to Nadine, standing in her front steps glaring at them. The episode ends on a cliffhanger as we watch Dot casually walk into her house knowing every inch of it has been rigged to stop these guys before they ever cross her threshold. The tension is building in Minnesota, but my money is on Dot because one should never underestimate a woman who can hold a 12 gauge shotgun in one hand and a whisk for making pancakes in the other. Let the Bisquick Massacre Begin!