FX’s Fargo
Season 3, Episode 10: “Somebody to Love”
Directed by Keith Gordon
Written by Noah Hawley
* For a recap & review of the penultimate Season 3 episode, “Aporia” – click here
Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) is resigning her position as Deputy. I wonder if she’ll take things into her own hands. Larue Dollard (Hamish Linklater) is handling things at the IRS, inspecting the books from Stussy Lots. And ole Emmit (Ewan McGregor) is signing his life away to V.M. Varga (David Thewlis), looking on lovingly at the transfer of equity the way some people leer over something sexual. That wolf is a creep.
So when does it all come together? Well, Larue finds a piece of paper left by Gloria, saying “We should talk” with her number included. Just before she leaves the station she gets his call. But she didn’t leave it; hmm. He’s found “blatant tax fraud” among other madness.
Meanwhile, in a motel room, Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Mr. Wrench (Russell Harvard) are gathering an arsenal for whatever they’ve decided comes next. Looks like maybe a minor war.
Varga: “On some level, food knows it‘s food.”
There looks to be a fiery spirit in Emmit’s eyes. Not in a good way, either. He grabs a gun from out of Meemo’s (Andy Yu) holster, rebelling against his capitalist captors. He doesn’t want to be food. Certainly not for someone like Varga, who for his part goes on about everything from the Medici family to technological advances. They manage to knock Emmit out, and all of them clear out like ghosts.
When Varga and the boys head off they meet a boy who speaks of Swango. The kid leads them – a veritable army for such a situation – to King Midas Storage, an abandoned-looking property. They find spray paint leading them up to the 3rd floor. Up they go. Carefully. They find a note saying to leave the money, that the drives aren’t far. Except Varga receives a text saying the IRS has the drives, to leave. He does, leaving his men to their fates. He also manages to escape the elevator, weaselling his way from out of the grasp of Swango and Wrench who’ve got the cash. She doesn’t want much, only a couple stacks; the rest she gives to him. “All I want is the brother,” she signs to her friend.
Emmit wakes to an empty house, all the men gone. Stamp stuck to his forehead. He rushes up to the office, which is being converted, no longer Stussy Lots. There he finds Ruby Goldfarb (Mary McDonnell). She’s in fact an arm of Varga. They’ve put him into bankruptcy, though his money’s hidden. Ah, how the rich stay rich by getting momentarily poorer! Also how dumb people who think they’re good businessmen are used by other, more powerful businessmen and political-types as pawns in an elaborate economic game.
Now everybody’s on camera during the ambush, from Mr. Wrench to Nikki to Varga, all of whom are now on the police radar. Gloria realises it was Ms. Swango sent the package to the IRS and who was looking for Varga, and she’s hoping to go find Emmit before it’s too late.
Speaking of him, he breaks down on the road by himself. A truck stops and out steps Nikki, shotgun in hand. “Are you as low as you can go?” she asks him at gunpoint. He admits he could probably go lower, judging how far he’s fallen so far. Then he accepts his death, asking her to kill him. She repeats the words the Wandering Jew (Ray Wise) said to her once before.
Before she can kill him a cop stops to see what they’re doing at the roadside. He asks for license and registration, all that. When Emmit tries telling him about the gun, the cop pulls on him. Nikki goes for the shotgun, the cop pulls his pistol, they both fall to the pavement. A bullet right between her eyes. Once again Emmit left in a wild position. Although alive. Somehow he slips through the cracks with an eerie luck.
After all’s said and done, Gloria tells her son Nathan about his sorta-grandpa Ennis, the “root cause” of everything. She doesn’t actually tell him, just that the world is chaotic; perhaps the thesis of Fargo, from the film to the series. It’s all about the randomness of the universe, encapsulated via microcosm in these little pockets of Minnesota.
Emmit goes back to his wife, weeping. Five years later, we see him doing better. He filed for personal bankruptcy, did probation for two years. Claims say he’s got millions stashed away. If he were a man with less money, he’d be fucked. But God bless the capitalist dream, right? Here Emmit sits, the ruins of his life still around him such as the barely mobile Sy Feltz (Michael Stuhlbarg). And while he gets dessert from the fridge – get it, just desserts? – Mr. Wrench sneaks in behind him with a silenced pistol to put him out of his misery, finally.
Varga: “Human beings, you see, have no inherent value other than the money they earn.”
These five years on, Gloria is in a new career. Working with the Department of Homeland Security. She’s got V.M. Varga in the interrogation room. He dances around things, as usual. Bringing in the Russian connection again. Equating things in cold, capitalist terms. Doesn’t matter much, he’s being charged with a ton of shit, and Gloria will go out to enjoy the “great American experiment” in freedom. Or that’s what she believes. He believes he’ll be let free, too. Is this the power of the villains? Do they always get away with it, no matter from how high up they’re being rained upon?
We’re impatient. We want justice and we want answers. We don’t get them, not straight out. The bad guy merely fades slightly, and our hope remains in the face of Gloria. It MUST remain. Else the battle is lost.
Timely, no? Resist the villainous. Never give up; be a Gloria.
What a fascinating season! I loved it, and it’s possibly my favourite of the series so far. I’m disappointed we didn’t see more of the Thaddeus Mobley bit, I feel that was a waste. It didn’t detract, though. Serving a purpose to get us into the character of Gloria Burgle.
Either way, this was great, a jam packed, exciting, funny, weird and wild season. Look forward to a Season 4. C’mon, FX. You know you wannagotta.
Open on a concerned Ray Stussy (Ewan McGregor), sitting through night until morning worrying about Nikki Swango (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) after the brutal beating she took at the hands of Meemo (Andy Yu) and Yuri. She only remembers so much. They did an absolutely savage number on her.
Up at the Stussy offices, Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) and Winne Lopez (Olivia Sandoval) arrive to talk with Emmit and hoping to speak with Sy about his vehicular accident. While picking his nasty teeth bloody Varga hears them speaking, so he greases his way into the conversation. The two officers bring up Ray’s name, the homicide of Ennis Stussy, Maurice LeFay, so on. The tangled web of Fargo‘s chaotic world. The officers have connected the dots and believe – what we, the audience know to be true – Maurice, dumb as he was, killed the wrong Stussy. Too many coincidences. And as we know, in Fargo there are rarely any coincidences that amount to nothing.
When Ray gets home to get his money, he finds Emmit waiting in the dark. He wants to end their feud. He’s tired. He offers up the stamp to his brother. “You can‘t give me what was mine from the start,” Ray balks, wanting him to take it back. In a struggle a piece of the glass in its frame smashes, poking into Ray’s neck. He pulls the shard and starts bleeding out all over the place. And his brother stands there, doing nothing. Watching him die.
What a wild, unexpected episode. This series only gets better with every season and each episode. So much to love. The characters are well rounded and even downright symbolic at times. Loving Varga and Gloria most this season, as well as – of course – Nikki Swango!
Emmit Stussy (Ewan McGregor) and his brother Ray (McGregor) are portrayed in a juxtaposed couple shots showing how different they are truly, at the same time the latter’s trying to impersonate his brother. Also, the instruments of the score play us through, every character – named by animal – has a sound.
So Ray’s pretending to be his brother, looking for the safety deposit box. Nikki does her best to pump him up for the work at hand. She definitely believes in him, which I wasn’t so sure of at the start. Inside he goes for the box, briefly meeting a woman from Bemidji, Minnesota which of course was the setting of Season 1. Ray ends up in the office of Buck Olander (Dan Wilmott), he knows Emmit well. Most interesting is how we, and Ray alike, see the difference between the brothers. At first he finds it uncomfortable. Then uses it to his advantage to get the box opened.
One thing prevalent in this series is the chaotic randomness inherent in our world.
At Emmit’s door arrives Varga, sniffing out pork chops. He sits with the family and eats. A very nervous dinner, indeed. The sly Brit intimidates while being sweet as a slice of apple pie. And when he’s finished his meal, he goes to the bathroom to keep himself thin with a vomit. Later, the two men talk business, though Emmit does so reluctantly. “You‘re living in the age of the refugee, my friend,” Varga tells him cryptically, as he speaks of class war, capitalism, and how when things go to shit nobody will differentiate between a guy who pumps oil or a guy who makes tons of cash leasing parking lots.
Love the twisting and turning plot of this season. This episode deepened that to further lengths. Great, labyrinthine writing!
Thaddeus Mobley (Thomas Mann) is at an awards ceremony, the Singularity Awards. He’s won Best Sci-Fi Novel for The Planet Wyh. Could his stories of aliens somehow connect with the interests in aliens from Ted Danson’s character in Season 2? Hmm. Either way, Mobley winds up at the bar with a man named Howard Zimmerman (Fred Melamed), a film producer. Might be the big time for young Thad. He’s whisked off to make his novel into a “major motion picture” with a studio. Although things aren’t exactly as they seem.
A beautifully animated bit brings us to Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) on a plane, reading The Planet Wyh. A man next to her (Ray Wise) asks about it and they have chat. Everyone around them stares at their phones, and he laments the change in times. Me too, Mr. Wise. Me, too.
Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) goes over the crime in her head. She digs into the box she found at the Ennis’ place in the floorboards. Inside are several Thaddeus Mobley (Thomas Mann) novels, she flips through them to see if there are any little notes or anything significant stuck between the pages. Nothing. There’s a newspaper clipping of Mobley winning a Golden Planet award. A photo of a woman, signed. She says Ennis Stussy and Mobley are “one in the same.” Hmm.
Gloria meets with Moe Dammick (Shea Whigham). He’s a bit more of a rough character than some of the cops we’ve seen on Fargo, which is a welcomed touch. There’s already a tension between the two characters, as well. He’s her new boss, and wants to lay down the law at the office. He also wants her to take time off, after the death of her stepfather Ennis.
Loved this second episode! Hawley did a great job writing, and the characters have started opening up. I particularly have interest in Varga, whose purpose becomes clearer with this episode and specifically the final few minutes. Awesome stuff.
Year 3.
Emmit Stussy (Ewan McGregor) and Sy Feltz (Michael Stuhlbarg) are conducting a bit of business, as a 25th anniversary party for Emmit and his wife Stella. Afterwards the celebration goes on happily. In attendance is their daughter Grace (Caitlynne Medrek), as well as brother Ray (also Ewan McGregor). And the much more greasy-looking brother is there to get a meeting with Sy and Emmit. It’s been some time, evidently.
After the exciting events of Chapter 1, we find David Haller (Dan Stevens) alongside Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller), Melanie Bird (Jean Smart) and the others, as one of them sings “Road to Nowhere” by The Talking Heads.
We see memories of David and his sister Amy (Katie Aselton), though they’re very young, maybe eight years old. They run in a field with their dog, they laugh and play. The goal is to figure out where his supposed mental illness started, then leading to, hopefully, controlling the energy of his mind. They head more and more through various memory work, and David witnesses himself as a boy with his mother. Happy memories, evidently. Also, he remembers his father as an astronomer. Those of us who know the comics know better though, don’t we?
What a spectacular follow-up to the first episode. The next ought to be a thrilling experience, just as these two have been! Loving this series. Hawley is an impressive writer, showing us more of his talents here with every passing chapter.
We open on a little baby. We watch him grow up to “Happy Jack” by The Who. Along the way we see he has… issues. He goes from hearing voices in his head to blowing the windows out of a cop car to being examined by a doctor, and more. The boy, soon to be a man, is David Haller (Dan Stevens). Even tries to hang himself later down the road due to the voices running non-stop.
And then another day begins, same old routine repeats. Although David’s life is disrupted, not in a bad way, upon the appearance of Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller), a woman who does not like physical contact with others. She’s also funny, self-deprecating, and a pretty free spirit. The exchange she has with David next is fucking hilarious and perfectly written by Noah Hawley.
The world inside David’s head is a crazy one. Rich, exciting, funny, beautiful. But they’re just symptoms of a troubled mind. An extremely troubled mind.
