Fargo: Eating the Blame

Between characters pretending to be saints while secretly being devils, Lorne Malvo's seemingly omniscient presence everywhere you look and a reenactment of biblical plagues, "God is real" was a tremendous theme in this week's episode of Fargo: "Eating the Blame."

We begin the episode with a flashback, or so we learn later. Milos, the grocery store tycoon and his wife and young son break down on the side of the snowy road leading to Deluth - their new town. Down and out on their luck and now without gasoline, Milos takes to the road to flag down a passing truck, only to get knocked to the ground. He prays to God for a miracle, for some help. And lo and behold from his faceplanted viewpoint on the ground, he sees the iconic red ice scraper that Steve Buscemi's character leaves behind in the film Fargo, marking the spot of the buried money. Milos, now in present day and in the midst of a blackmailing venture and day to day mental torture, learns to again remind himself that God is indeed very real.

My big question is, how is Malvo everywhere and anywhere all at the same time? This dude gets around. Anytime there is a conversation to be had, a plot line to push forward, Malvo is there... just creepin' in the woods, a dark silhouette against a snowy yard.  He's everywhere and he's everything, all-knowing and ever present everywhere you look.

Yet so was Gus, the bumbling cop in Deluth who happens to drive past Malvo by chance and immediately, (yet clumsily) arrest him. Malvo, a master of disguise, (though HOW did no one notice he stole the clerk's glasses?) claims to be a minister in a neighboring town and manages to fool these keystone cops and walk out smiling. When Gus asks how he could just lie like that, Malvo asks him, "Why does the human eye see more green than any other color?" A perplexed Gus pays a visit to Molly in Bemidji to catch her up on his awful day and she answer the question, "Because we're predators."

I've tried and I've tried, but I just don't like Billy Bob Thornton's character. I just don't! He's supposed to be creepy and dangerous, yet silly. I just find him grating. As I mentioned before, he reminds of this guy with a mix of this guy. He's just not believable and I just don't care about his whole storyline, which is obviously the central crux that the show is built on. It just falls apart for me. The scene after the crickets invaded Milos's grocery store and Malvo is standing on top of the roof, God-like and smiling. I mean, I get the metaphorical image here but I felt like we were beaten over the head with it. I half expected him to outstretch his arms like Jesus.

Meanwhile, Numbers and Wrench are hellbent on completing the task of killing Lester, their prime suspect in the murder of Sam Hess. After throwing him in the trunk, (a favorite throwing-spot in this show, eh?) Lester is dragged kicking and screaming onto the frozen lake to meet his untimely demise after he is intended to declare: "I killed Sam Hess." Unfortunately Numbers is tazed, (insert joke here) and Lester escapes for a brief period of time before meeting Numbers and Wrench again in the jail cell.

I'm looking forward to next week's episode mainly so we can see Lester get punched in the face some more.

The Crocodile's Dilemma, You Betcha

Recently I listened to several podcasts from TV Critics instructing its listeners on how to view the upcoming pilot of the new FX show Fargo, which is: Whatever you do, don't compare it the movie Fargo. While the Coen brothers sit as two of the show's Executive Producers, the characters and plot loosely rely on the movie's story, and the show itself is set in frozen Minnesota... that's about where it ends.

Jerry Lundegaard, (William H. Macy) is essentially replaced with Lester Nygaard, (played by Martin Freeman) whose plights border only on a few similarities. For one, Jerry Lundegaard, while not the brightest bulb, at least had a direct plan to get out of his present financial predicament. Lester is just unhappy, bad at his job and doesn't claim any responsibilities to the situations he finds himself in. (And may I say, Martin Freeman does a terrible impersonation of a Minnesotan. I thought Southern accents were hard, but c'mon, eh?)

Lester meets Lorne Malvo, (Billy Bob Thornton) who's like a weird hybrid of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men and some mythic, yet comedic character from an old Looney Toons rerun. You were supposed to fear him, yet be able to laugh with him. I suppose this is a page from the Coen brothers character playbook. Yet I don't believe I, well, believed Lester. (Loved him failing to deliver an eerie and foreboding message to Colin Hanks' character later in Deluth, "Thar be dragons...")

At any rate, Lester and Lorne meet while waiting to be seen in a hospital for different head injuries. Lester relays his reason for sustaining his injury, (an old High School bully still, somehow, tormenting him in his adulthood) and Lorne, being that he's a Hit Man, offers to take care of this situation for him. While no authority was given, Lorne takes it upon himself to complete this job with seemingly no ulterior motive other than, perhaps, he's standing up for the little guy. We see this later as he implores the kid working at the motel to pee in his boss' gas tank, but then immediately gets him in trouble for it. Perhaps we are to believe that Lester is the kid holding the magnifying glass over the anthill.

We meet other characters along the way including the Chief of Police and the other officers working under him. Like Bob Odenkirk, (!!!!) and Molly Solverson, a woman we know will eventually take his job when the time comes. (This is what's called foreshadowing...)

The trouble doesn't stop for Lester, clearly, after his bully is found dead in the local strip club and he'll soon by implicated by the Chief of Police himself. Lester is bullied at home by his unhappy and dissatisfied wife for a great number of things: his inadequacy at work, his inadequacy in bed, his inadequacy at not being able to fix home appliances. And just when I thought this episode was going to pass by with just a few peaks and valleys, Lester totally kills his wife. Not just kills her, beats her body in with a hammer.

The gruesome scenes didn't end there as the first show of this limited season surprised its audience with some hard hits. The likable Chief of Police is shot in the back by Lorne while coming to confront Lester, leaving a pregnant wife at home. Lester, realizing he's about to be in quite a bit of trouble, fakes an accident by ramming his own head into a wall and is knocked out cold next to his brutally murdered wife in the basement.

I don't want to say that the show was made better because they filled it with violence in the third act, but they certainly fooled me in the direction it was going to take. While I wasn't riveted in the pilot by any means, I was impressed with FX taking another chance on a bold idea, (The Americans...). I'm looking forward to the remaining nine episodes in this limited season. And in surveying our vast and countless options in television programming recently, I really would say we're looking at the Golden Age: Pt Deux.