Raff Hanks is a political advisor who's about to run a child for POTUS. Because art imitates life.
The Twilight Zone – Season 1, Episode 5: “The Wunderkind”

Raff Hanks is a political advisor who's about to run a child for POTUS. Because art imitates life.
FX’s Fargo
Season 1, Episode 9: “A Fox, a Rabbit, and a Cabbage”
Directed by Matt Shakman
Written by Noah Hawley
* For a review of the previous episode, “The Heap” – click here
* For a review of the Season 1 finale, “Morton’s Fork” – click here
After jumping a year down the line, Noah Hawley brings us into the penultimate Season 1 episode “A Fox, a Rabbit, and a Cabbage”.
We begin on the new identity of Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) as a dentist. He talks a patient through things while checking his teeth and finishing off a procedure. This new blonde-haired Malvo, obviously under a new pseudonym, is a slick one. Did he really go to dental school? Or what’s going on here? Either way, I love it. He and Burt Canton (Stephen Root) are friendly, so no matter what’s going on Lorne has carved out a nice little niche for himself in which to lounge.
For now.
Lorne still has his recordings, listening to them over and over. The evil in Malvo sits right below the surface. He relives his past transgressions, as if basking in them.
Lorne: “Aces!”
FX’s Fargo
Season 1, Episode 8: “The Heap”
Directed by Scott Winant
Written by Noah Hawley
* For a review of the previous episode, “Who Shaves the Barber?” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “A Fox, a Rabbit, and a Cabbage” – click here
This episode starts with Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) receiving a new improved washing machine. Might as well get rid of that old reminder, yah? The look on Lester’s face begins to make me wonder what sort of person he is truly. While he watches the machine wash away, the look just lingers.
Then he goes to see his sister-in-law Kitty (Rachel Blanchard). She’s ready to leave Chaz (Joshua Close) behind now, believing him to be a horrible man, an adulterer and a murderer. Poor little Gordo is having night terrors. Even some information that normally wouldn’t be suspicious about Chaz starts to slip out, such as his purchase of a timeshare and a boat – likely things his family would’ve used – and it makes the entire situation look all the worse for it.
At home, Lester begins to take down all his wife’s nonsense motivational posters, her commemorative spoon collection, her sewing station and clothes and everything possible. All the while, a steel drum version of “Ode to Joy” plays. Sort of oddly fitting.
Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) heads to see her father Lou (Keith Carradine) at the diner. She gets a coffee fill-up, as well as flowers sent from Duluth; obviously care of Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks). “A smarter man would say you‘re bein‘ wooed,” Lou says on the sly.
Meanwhile, Chief Bill Oswalt (Bob Odenkirk) just ate an omelette and doesn’t want to be disturbed before it digests. Only Deputy Knudsen (Gary Valentine) calls on him, saying Molly requests his presence in the boardroom. There, she has a whiteboard littered with different connections in the Nygaard case. Still, rightfully so, she’s convinced Bill and everyone else is wrong on pinning the thing on Chaz. But Oswalt is only concerned with cluing things up, moving on.
FX’s Fargo
Season 1, Episode 6: “Buridan’s Ass”
Directed by Colin Bucksey
Written by Noah Hawley
* For a review of the previous episode, “The Six Ungraspables” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “Who Shaves the Barber?” – click here
More of the strangeness in Minnesota, between the problems of Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) and the wandering evil that is Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), things have gotten pretty darn interesting around Bemidji and Duluth. You betcha.
A nice Japanese music opening, as we peer into the kitchen of a Japanese restaurant. A beautiful meal of fish and other assorted items is prepared, then brought out to a waiting table. At that table sits Moses Tripoli and other members of the Fargo mob. Love to watch this around again, now knowing what we know from the Season 2 finale this year. Moses asks what’s going on with the Sam hess situation. He’s told about Mrs. Wrench and Numbers (Russell Harvard/Adam Goldberg) in terms of their mileage, et cetera, on the little roadtrip they’ve taken. “Kill and be killed,” says Moses – a line again familiar to anyone who’s seen the second season.
FX’s Fargo
Season 1, Episode 5: “The Six Ungraspables”
Directed by Colin Bucksey
Written by Noah Hawley
* For a review of the previous episode, “Eating the Blame” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “Buridan’s Ass” – click here
With the story chugging along in between Bemidji and Duluth, our Minnesota stories of mischief and mayhem continue.
We cue up on Lester Nygaard (Martin Freem) looking for new socks, buying a bag of “irregular socks“. We get a funny yet revealing moment about Lester, who asks “What‘s fair?” when a clerk at the store explains the stock is for best offer. We watch Lester struggle to haggle. Then, the clerk offers him the socks and a long gun for $55. Cut to Pearl berating Lester for his purchase, imaging he’ll “blow his face off“. So now, we have a wonderful little explanation for how the gun ended up at Lester’s home. We revisit the night Pearl died, Lester practicing to set Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) up as the culprit. I like how Noah Hawley cuts us back to these moments, giving us different views of how things happened and what went on. Now, we see Lorne slip in as Lester is confronted by Chief Thurman (Shawn Doyle), we watch the death again.
Only now it ends with the buckshot in Lester, sinking into his hand. A great edit takes us to the current moment in that jail cell, the festering wound in his hand. Lester sits wedged between Mrs. Wrench and Numbers (Russell Harvard & Adam Goldberg). He’s sweating it out, literally. The two men are heavily intimidating as a pair. While they both give him a silent treatment, Lester attempts to talk his way out of things. They’ve got an inkling that someone else is involved in the murder of Hess, though, Nygaard won’t give anything up. Pressing into his wound, Numbers puts Lester in a world of hurt, as Wrench stuffs his dirty sock in the poor guy’s mouth. Eventually, out slips one word: “Malvo“.
FX’s Fargo
Season 1, Episode 4: “Eating the Blame”
Directed by Randall Einhorn
Written by Noah Hawley
* For a review of the previous episode, “A Muddy Road” – click here
* For a review of the next episode, “The Six Ungraspables” – click here
After Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) stepped up the mischief, bringing it bloody and tough to Stavros Milos (Oliver Platt), and Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) has begun leaning even further towards something fishy surrounding Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman), we’re back in Minnesota, between Duluth and Bemidji. Let’s see what “Eating the Blame” and Noah Hawley have in store for us, shall we? Well all righty.
This episode opens with more beautifully captured Minnesotan landscapes, snow lining the roads. We watch a station wagon hauling a small trailer. Eventually, we discover it’s 1987. Inside the car, a young Stavros (Carlos Diaz) drives his wife and child in the desperate cold. Things are rough for them, it seems. But what’s at work here isn’t merely flashback. Once Stavros and his little family break down at the roadside, Hawley takes us into crossover territory with the Coen Brothers and their original film Fargo. Desperate and at his wits’ end, Milos prays to God, hoping for “gas, a warm bed” and that if things change he’ll but his “humble servant” forever. Then, out in the snow he spies the windshield scraper. Yes, that one. Same one that’s now, in the 2006 timeline, hanging in a frame on the wall in Stavros’ office. In ’87, he dug up the infamous bag of money left out in the snow buried at the finish of the Coen Brothers film. The lucky Stavros got his fortune out of pure lucky, then misguidedly tried to lightly keep in touch with God due to this afterwards; and I use the word lightly very lightly. But I love how this connects things without having to use the same characters as the movie, Hawley creates his own Minnesotan plots and webs them into that of the Coens original work.
Cut back to Stavros, who has Don Chumph (Glenn Howerton) checking out his house after the bloody shower incident. They want to know about tampering, though, naturally Don plays the fool. Not that it’s hard. A little talk of the Bible, Moses and the Plagues comes out, which spurs Stavros into an amphetamine-fueled rage. He is in one bad state. When Don leaves, he spots Malvo off against the treeline, standing ominously like the wandering evil that he is.