Fargo 1.09 “A Fox, a Rabbit, and a Cabbage”

This is great television. This is how perfect drama, how noir television, is done.

As you know if you have been following this series, each Fargo episode usually carries a lot of weight. Definitely a level of tension and drama much higher than your average thriller. But it is not the killings, the betrayals or the police investigations – there’s plenty of that going around all over the place nowadays – but the way they are told, without any fanfare, just telling the viewers to sit and watch how real events unfolded. How real lives were taken away. How innocent people got killed, most of the times without them knowing why they were being offed to begin with.

This is also great storytelling because it makes us feel invested in these characters. And both the storytelling’s pace – slow intro at first to show the current situation of our killers, which lives seem to be in a perfect time and place, all-new and completely off the radar of Bemidji police or FBI, only to get very hardcore really fast – and the character development are superb this time around. This was one of those episodes that left such a perfect feeling that you wouldn’t want to see any more tv the rest of the week. Not noir tv, anyway.

Let’s see how I feel right now about the main characters in our story, shall we?

I am genuinely afraid of the way Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), after apparently having built a new life for himself – proposal to an amazed by his charms beautiful lady included – is still the same cold hearted bloody killer, completely devoid of any emotion, lest of all love. He is stuck with Lester in an endless loop of death, and what this episode showed us is that, though their trajectories, their lives, may have drifted away, once they meet again both their lives start turning around the same two objectives: kill and not be killed.

Malvo has Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) in his sights now, and after their bloody first encounter, the rest of the episode is a creepy hunt for the man. And knowing Malvo, you’ll know what that means. Bloodshed.

This was possibly Thornton’s best performance in the whole series, as he stopped playing games and went back to being the ruthless, stone-cold killer that we first met. It is really good to have the best Lorne Malvo ever right in time for this scary episode. So creepy that it still has me looking through the window, making sure that there’s no one there.

I am terrified and in love with the character of Lester. Still finding new layers of dark of his twisted psyche. This is a man that, even while running away from being horribly killed, is capable of sending his own wife to the arms – and gun – of the killer. Just so that he gets to live another day, and all of this right after she had declared to him how their marriage had saved her from an unsavory life, how she loved him, because after all, he had saved her.

I am scared about Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman), because, even if it has taken her almost the entire series, she has persevered in her quest to bring Malvo and Lester to justice, with almost nobody who would listen to her. I said I’m scared because, suddenly, things are changing for her, as the two downgraded FBI agents run from Fargo to Bemidji and feel impressed about how much work she has put into it, right at the same time that Malvo is in town, Lester is running for his life, and her husband Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks) has spotted Malvo in his car and photographically recalled the plate’s number.

All of this, I’m afraid, will lead to no good. Oh, did I say that Malvo had a very dark chat with Molly’s father, where he found out that Gus was Molly’s husband? Malvo with info and a gun? Not a good thing, I tell you.

There’s only one more episode to go of this first season of Fargo. So far there’s been noir, drama, blood, and great characters involved in both mundane and horrifyingly crazy situations. All of that mixed with a unique touch of humor that has permeated the entire season.

But, as all great, special things do, Fargo is drawing to a close. I’m sure it will go out with a bang.

And blood on the snow.