Yeah, I’m not quite getting all the handwringing over this point. As someone pointed out above, Malvo did have that little knife in hand and Gus could easily make the case that Malvo was armed.
And even if Malvo really didn’t really pose * too much* of a threat at that point, cops have gotten away with shooting people for much less.
The koans define different types of personalities. The man who drops the glove is inherently motivated toward kindness and cooperative survival. The predator hiding amongst the green foliage is inherently motivated toward aggression and personal advantage. The boatswain is the strategist trying to maintain survival with recognition and respect for the two types.
I had the same question about Gus. He was trespassing and committing murder and goodness only knows what else. I also had the thought that he’d at last give Malvo a gun after the fact.
The lesson is IMHO around what dealing with a predator brings out in the people affected. Lester went too far and pulled the wolf’s clothing on completely. We see how wrong he was. But how many of us cheered Greta’s decision to go get her bb gun? When you experience a hollow person, you end up with choices you couldn’t have imagined beforehand. Sometimes keeping your soul means letting them win. Sometimes they will gather the whole system and even your own family into their fold, and then where are you?
There many, many times during the series where I said to myself, “That’s completely unrealistic”. But who cares? This was Coen brothers inspired series so what do you expect? I thought it was a great series - actors, writers, director, everything. I never thought I’d get so many laughs out of a story about a homicidal maniac.
Also, I thought that it was somehow going to be revealed that Malvo was the killer in the case Molly’s dad was talking about.
He wasn’t a good cop when he was a cop and a year later he’s an even worse one.
Molly was about to leave and Lester wanted to shut the door in her face, but his wife stopped him and let her use their bathroom. If she knew Lester was guilty of something and was willing to lie to protect him, why let Molly in and continue the interview?
She didn’t know - then. It was only after she let her in and Lester started acting squirrely on the couch under questioning that she picked up on maybe he needed help. I seem to recall she gave him a sideways glance while he was “welling”, then jumped in. Or she was starting to pick up on his discomfort, but her natural good manners automatically overwrote any mild sense of danger she may have had. Or something else.
I don’t see it as much of a plot hole. She was a little concerned but not freaked out because she thought of Lester as a good man and good men don’t really have anything to fear from the police at the end of the day. Add in she didn’t seem exceptionally bright. Not literally stupid, perhaps. Just pretty average and a little clueless.
On top of that, from her POV, what’s the harm in letting a very pregnant deputy use the bathroom? It’s not like her husband is involved (tangentially or otherwise) in the murder of who knows how many people, including his ex-wife and Sam Hess.
Besides, something that she knows that Lester doesn’t is that it’s probably better to be nice to her. Saying ‘sure you can use the bathroom’ will earn more brownie points than saying ‘you can’t come in without a warrant go use the McDonald’s down the road if it’s an emergency’.
It was way too early in the morning, sue me. Sometimes you *do *make it all too easy not to read your posts, you know. (Example: Was that really worth five sentences?)
Nothing. It wouldn’t matter whatsoever that the tapes are what led them to a defendant. And who really cares whether or not the tapes were admissible (they probably would be), and who really cares what would happen at any subsequent resulting trials? I was just mentioning it as another loose end that we can all have fun speculating about what happened. But I’m over it.
Regarding the tapes being labeled my guess is that they’ll get turned over to the FBI who will search their databases to see if any of those names pop up for anything at all. If they do, they’ll see if the recordings help, like they did in Lester’s case. In some cases they might, in other cases, better PDs might have already wrapped things up correctly (other then Malvo, which is moot now).
For the ones that don’t match up, I’ll bet they’ll help out with some cold cases.
Plus, if they put a picture of all the different looks of Malvo out there, I’ll bet some of the other PDs will recognize him. Just based on how many tapes he has, he’s been busy. Surely he’s shown up on plenty of other surveillance systems.
Right. Malvo was a threat to his family. He had arrested him before, and all he got for it was scorn and derision, from his fellow cops as well as from Malvo. So this time, he went to Plan B.
He wasn’t a bad cop at all. When he first met Malvo he was desperately over-matched and made that judgment call during the conversation. It isn’t his job to get uselessly killed on the street, all he had seen the guy do was a reckless and speedy turn.
I liked that because Malvo had administered pain-killers that he wasn’t in shock from the shots and had enough left to scare the crap out of the audience.
Yeah, he was. He wasn’t corrupt, and he did his best, but he had no business being a cop. Ask Molly’s spleen.
Remember too, from way back, Gus knows that Malvo had threatened his neighbor in the apartment building. Gus knew that Malvo had no scruples at all, and would easily kill anyone who got in his way. Malvo was a threat to him and his family, and he used Malvo’s own technique on him. I loved it.
The question of what happens afterwards (lawyers, courts, evidence, etc) is obviously something the show doesn’t care about in the slightest – consider Chaz. Don’t stop the drama for the sake of logic/realism.
I wonder if Gus meeting Bill helped him decide to give up cop-hood, that he saw himself as parallel to Bill? If he continued in law enforcement, he’d be as inept as Bill? He knew he WASN’T a good cop, so he quit. And that’s also why he killed Malvo in cold blood – he wasn’t good enough to stop Malvo in a “fair” fight, and neither was anyone else within a 500-mile radius.
Do we know Gus quit as a cop–as opposed to being fired for shooting Molly?
This is my major problem with the finale (and by extension, with the series, now that we’ve seen the resolution of the main plot).
It was clear from the way the first episode was structured that Gus was going to have to pay a price for having been cowardly (in letting Malvo go) on that first night. I assumed that in the finale, Gus would pay that price: he’d die or be maimed; his daughter would die or be maimed; or he’d do something that would lose him his freedom.
Gus murdered Malvo in cold blood. It’s certainly true that Malvo’s record would have some bearing on what a judge and/or jury would decide Gus should have to pay for his choice to murder Malvo–specifically, Malvo’s record for committing acts of vengeance. If Malvo had lived, he would almost certainly have gone after Gus and the family as soon as his leg injury healed enough. A judge and jury would have known that Gus truly was protecting himself and his loved ones by killing Malvo, and that would surely have meant a relatively short sentence.
But none of this happened.
We don’t know if Gus faked the scene to make his gunplay look like self-defense. We do know that he got a commendation for his actions, which does lend credibility to the ‘faked the scene’ theory.
I find this dramatically unsatisfying. Gus was partially responsible for dozens of deaths–and he knew that he was partially responsible.
But he paid no price at all (unless you count ‘soul-searching and anxiety’–and I don’t) for having been frightened and unwilling to do his duty, back on that first night.
For me, this is a blot on the quality of the series. It’s still a wonderful series and I would recommend it (with reservations), and I do hope that Hawley will go on working in television. But I was disappointed about this one element.
I like this very much (thanks for posting it).
I hope he let him go, too. Remember, we saw the car salesman earlier in the episode, in the diner, giving a friendly greeting to Lester.
As TruCelt wrote, there was a continuing theme in the series about predators and how different people deal with them. Part of the appeal of our image of the Fargo area–accurate or not–is that the people there are friendlier and kinder than is the national average in the USA. Again and again, we saw people being trusting and helpful, instead of cold and self-protective–and each time we saw such a person suffer for having been kind, it was a blow.
Bill’s speech was so perfect for the finale–just a brilliant addition, in my view. He had spent his life in the delusion that people in his town were basically good and kind and friendly and helpful, and he couldn’t face dealing with a world in which that wasn’t true. (Bill would never have been able to find the kind of balance that Molly has. She is able to accept that cruelty and selfishness exist without becoming cynical about that fact.)
If we’d had to watch the car salesman blown apart by Malvo’s bullets, it would have been a heavy-handed confirmation that ‘only the cold and hard can survive.’ And that would have been too much to bear.
He could have called for backup when this guy started threatening his family. Or, let’s skip this. When he saw Malvo drive past him while he was on his mail route why didn’t he call Molly to say that he was back in town. He never wanted to be a cop, he never had that instinct. Molly’s dad on the other hand, knew something was wrong with Malvo. He knew not to give up Lester’s info, he knew to tell Molly about him (even if it was a little late).
Don’t forget, we know a lot more about Malvo than Gus does. Gus just got a bit spooked and let some wacko go. It’s a small town, all he had to do was ask around or check Gus’ facebook page to find out he has a daughter. Next time you get pulled over do your best Malvo impersonation and tell the cop that you’ll kill his daughter if he gives you that speeding ticket and I bet he has you on the ground with a foot on the back of your neck inside of 90 seconds. He’s not going to say ‘well, why don’t you just have a nice day than…try to stay out of trouble’.
Gus was a bad cop, Bill is a bad Sheriff, Molly is running circles around both of them, that was sort of the point.
I’ll give you that you can call Gus ‘bad’ or ‘not cut out for it’ or whatever, but it’s just not the job for him if he’s going to spook that easily.
In real life, it would never have gone to trial because the local DA would never have charged him.
I think the strong implication is that he was fired. Last thing he tells Molly before the big time skip is that his board hearing is scheduled in a week or two. Given his superior already didn’t care much for him, I suspect it didn’t go well.
Ah, see this bothers me not at all. Good people get away with bad shit all the time. Bad people get away with bad shit all the time. And I’m sure bad people get nailed for doing ostensibly good shit once in awhile :D.
I don’t necessarily require moral punishment in my fiction. It can be very satisfying, but it isn’t a requirement. I don’t care for the unnrelentingly bleak, but otherwise I’m fine with morally compromised and even anti-climactic if the ride is clever enough. If for example Lester had somehow escaped all consequences of his late-blooming sociopathy in a way that was even vaguely plausible, I’d have been perfectly happy with that resolution ( or lack thereof ).
I’m not a lawyer, or a cop, or … anything really, but here are my two cents anyway.
The morality of Gus lying in wait and then killing Malvo in cold blood is for us to debate. And that’s as it should be.
As for the legality of it — yeah it was probably illegal.
But here’s the thing. If Gus were still a cop, then there are probably automatic procedures in place to investigate the incident, bring him up on charges, etc.
But he’s a private citizen. In order for him to be arrested, a member of the Bemidji Sheriff’s department would have to decide that what he did warranted (pun unintended) an arrest, or someone at the — county, maybe? — DA’s office would have to decide that what he did warranted a trial. And given the number of deaths Malvo is known (by them, never mind by the viewer) to have caused, including those of two FBI agents, it seems really unlikely to me that anybody is going to want to press charges.
Absent somebody (I dunno, maybe a reporter) making a stink about it, nobody’s going to do anything to Gus. If someone did make a stink, then who knows? I still don’t see him doing any jail time, but maybe I’m cynical (or idealistic, depending on how you look at it).
How do you figure this? He arrested Malvo later, when there was much more evidence against him, and Malvo still walked. What makes you think it would have gone any differently if he had arrested him the first time, when all he had on him was speeding or whatever?
I agree he’s not a good cop, but IMO it’s way too much to say he’s partially responsible for anything Malvo did. On the contrary, I think he saved his daughter’s life by not arresting him that first time, and otherwise had no effect on Malvo’s body count.