Fargo 1.03 “A Muddy Road”

As I anticipated on my last Fargo review, this noir comedy just took a brief respite, but it was only the calm that comes before the storm. And again, was this storm full of bloody goodness.

All the characters had their spotlight, the story moved at an excellent pace, and the noose keeps tightening around both Lester Nygaard (played by Martin Freeman) and Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton).

The Fargo mobsters that arrived into Bemidji on last episode – brilliantly and hilariously played by badass Adam Goldberg, always with his shades on and interpreting for deaf Russell Harvard – looking for clues to find Sam Hess’ murderer, discover that Lester gets pretty nervous only hearing that name, and it doesn’t help his cause that he gets all cuddly with Gina Hess, Sam Hess’ widow, an ex-stripper (played by Kate Walsh) who gets one of the most comedic scenes in all the episode. I really loved how she openly insults his sons, calling them mongolic while, sadly, they prove her right.

It is this kind of harshness and coldness present throughout the series that gives us the sense that this chain of events was real, that this really happened. That the people we are watching were real people who committed terrible mistakes.

There are places in this World where people make wrong choices and have to live with that regret all their lives – marrying the wrong one, making business with shady people, killing that hated someone in a spout of violent, crazy clarity – but all these places and these people do not have a clear representation in today’s mainstream TV series or movies, and that’s part of what makes every episode of this series so appealing.

However, there is a genuine twist that I did not see coming, and that is how Lorne Malvo, our resident cold blooded and twisted as hell gun-for-hire, after discovering that the one blackmailing his client Stavros Milos (played by Oliver Platt) was his wife’s personal trainer, completely turns the situation around.

He decides it’s best to gain something out of the situation and in turn convinces the blackmailer that he’s going to call the shots from there on. The result? A beautiful dog lying dead on the snowy client’s doorstep and another blackmail note, this time asking for 1 million dollars, instead of the previous – and now silly – more than 40,000.

Add to this situation an unhealthy dose of drugs that Malvo – again after some shady dealings in an alley – is having his client ingest and, for the great climax, some Carrie-like blood pouring out of the wealthy, Supermarket King’s shower, making him scream like an infant.

On the other side of the thin line of justice, events continue to develop very fast, as police officer Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman), now taken off the case of the deaths at Lester Nygaard’s and onto the case of the guy found dead in the snow at the very beginning of the series – who, as we are shown now, was brutally kidnapped in broad daylight from his own office desk by Malvo’s devilish character – finds herself with the other person that wants to make things right by catching Lorne Malvo and stop him from killing again, policeman Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks), who thanks to the moral compass provided by his daughter seems to be taking control of the situation, even when he’s still in the dark about a lot of things.

One thing’s right, however. He has come clean about his mistake, and the fun part of it all is that by in doing so he might just have given Molly the piece of the puzzle she needs to convict Lester, and in turn, Malvo.

So, Bemidji and Duluth police are putting their resources together and this bodes ill for the evil that seems to spread wherever Malvo goes.

But what about Lester? With Mobsters and police on his trail, how much would he be able to stall?

That we’ll see. Oh, did I say that the man is learning to shoot the biggest damned submachine gun his brother has? Just in case.