I’d really like to ask you about these Lost Boys in Minnesota, though. Can you tell mewhat that is about? Just a one line summary would be good.
Also, I wonder about that brunette woman at the bar as you have mentioned. It reminded me of the Dumb and Dumber movie. I wonder if she could be working for some federal agency spying on Lester. I would kind of hope for that eventuality.
Bottom line for me? This is one Hell of a great show!
Oh, … You Betcha!
P.S. My reference to the Dumb & Dumber movie is about some sexy lady who attached herself to one of the guys and followed him from a gas station up to his room. She was actually an FBI agent. She explained later the FBI had been following them all the way from their starting point.
The most important part was that he took the job because he had to support his daughter. I think that’s where most of Molly’s respect comes from, and it’s the same reason I like the guy. He’s doing his absolute best for his daughter. Not only supporting her, but trying to set a good moral example at a job where we know it doesn’t come easy for him.
He is the guy talking to Malvo at the end of the episode.
This explains the conversation between Key and Peele about the file room. How many files do you have to remove before it is no longer a file room?
Midwesterners simply don’t hold with hair-bleach for men.
That speech of Bill’s (to Molly, scolding her for wanting to keep the Verne/Lester’s wife case open) was amazing. This is a character type that hasn’t been delineated so specifically before.
It’s not exactly that Bill is stupid (though he is) or lazy (though he is)…it’s that Bill feels that ‘deciding quickly what the solution to a case is, and sticking to that in spite of actual evidence’ is the righteous thing to do. Not even religious righteousness…just general moral-and-ethical righteousness.
There’s a lot more of that in the world than fiction usually shows us.
I like it (though what’s the Vegas connection)? I guess we shall see…
Interesting to have the writer reference a Quentin Tarantino movie (with the line from Malvo to the deaf hitman, “if you still feel raw about it…” I’m assuming this was a shout-out to Kill Bill Vol.1.) We’re so used to seeing Coen Brothers references, that this one seemed kind of odd. (But okay.)
I’m guessing we’ll see the Widow Hess again. There’s no crime guys in Fargo for her to go to, but there’s probably still some guys at his local trucking company. Some guy there who always check her out when she’d stop by, and is now happy to comfort the poor grieving widow. And who maybe eventually she can convince to go lay a beat down on Lester. Or she’s out with her new guy at the local steakhouse and sees Lester and sends the guy over to Lester for a good talking-to.
I would think that the coworker would be a little grossed out to hear Hess yell at Lester like that. And Lester is a widower and a grieving one as far as most people should think. It is a little strange for the coworker to be hitting on him like that. But people do act strange when they’re attracted to others, so it’s too far out there for me. Lester has shown he’s gotten smoother at lying. I could see him being able to explain it to the boss in a suitable manner, where he wouldn’t get in trouble for lying to the widow about her benefits earlier.
I have no idea if we’ll see the supermarket king again. His plot was wrapped up fairly well, but it’s possible he’ll pop again. Probably just as a quick thing if he does, since there’s only two episodes left. I would like to see the deaf hitman try to come after Malvo. That would be something to see no matter which way it goes.
If the trial has happened, I would think Lester would have to testify. The time skip is good since it’s interesting to see how the characters have developed over a year, but it also allows them to skip past anything that might be hard for viewers to swallow about the trial in terms of realism.
interface2x’s link explains who the Lost Boys are. There’s a large population of Sudanese-Americans in Minnesota, so when more Sudanese people come over to America, a lot of them go to Minnesota.
I’m doubting the woman checking out Lester was any federal agent. He’s in Las Vegas, it’s either a woman who’s ready to go wild, or possible a prostitute looking for clients, and Lester looks like someone wanting to have a good time.
I’d like to think they introduced the Sudanese kid for a reason… got any thoughts on that?
As for Vegas asked by someone else…it makes sense to have an insurance convention there and to run into somebody you never hoped to see again there. Someone who might have no reason to come to your hometown again…although he would if he wanted to get at that:smack: bag
I assume it was just to humanize the chief a little, esp. given his tirade to Molly on reopening the investigation, and to provide a reference to the supermarket king. But I really don’t know.
One thing we’ve learned is that Malvo likes to fuck with people just for the heck of it. In an early episode, at the motel, he told the put-upon kid to piss into the gas tank of the mean motel proprietor. It first appears that he is helping a downtrodden person get some revenge against his oppressor. But then he rats the kid out. A bad omen for Lester?
I’m assuming by Lester’s acceptance speech that Chaz went to prison.
“You know you can go through your whole life without a care, then one day it all changes. People die. They lose their homes. They go to prison. It’s calamity, huh? I know it ‘cause I lived it. And if this year has taught me anything, believe me, I’ve seen it all. It’s that the worst does happen, and you need to be insured. Thank you so much, it’s a great honor.”
Quite likely. Remember Malvo has those phone calls on tape.
I’m amazed that, after such a terrible massacre in Fargo - that would truly be The Crime of the Century up there - that no one other than Molly seemed to have noticed the similarity of the pics of the guy who dragged the man out of his office, pretended to be a humble preacher to the Bemidji police, and was photographed by the ATM next to the two FBI agents’ car. Presumably he would’ve been filmed entering the hospital, too, the day he hid in the bathroom, strangled the cop and freed the deaf assassin.
Malvo has preternatural powers of not actually being stopped by the system. I think they extend to this. I’ve just added it to the things my suspension of disbelief have to deal with.
I don’t think this is a puzzle at all. He used to be a wimp. Then killing his wife and encountering Malvo’s philosophy empowered him. Now he’s not a wimp, but he is a murderer and a philanderer. Until he sees Malvo at the bar, and suddenly (in a pretty remarkable piece of acting) he goes back to being a wimp.
This looked like a big episode to me; all of a sudden the important themes of the whole drama sprouted into view.
Gus looks a whole lot happier with the career change, and so is the community I suspect. Contrast with the change in Lester – after murdering his wife - from nagged, unconfident non-achiever to speech-giving man of the year: one man made by marriage and one previously broken by marriage.
Fwiw, I don’t have a problem with the confident Lester pulling attractive women; I presume it speaks to the allure of confidence/success/money.
Interesting theme of fate, as was the case with the film (finding the money). Here Lester comes across Malvo twice in random circs in very different environments in different parts of the country.
I quite liked Maggie going from nervously encouraging Gus to set up a first date to heavily pregnant wife watching tv in bed with her big kid of a husband clinging on, in two scenes.
I do hope the Invisible Man (the bandaged man in the next bed to Lester who wasn’t sedated) isn’t going to be a plot hole. Also has it been made clear Lester’s nephew, who saw him in the house, is autistic?
Did Malvo just walk away from his supermarket blackmail gig?
I didn’t quite understand what happened at the end of the Supermarket King meltdown…Malvo orchestrated his breakdown, got the man to put beaucoup bucks in a bag and bury it in the snow…but do we assume Malvo is watching and that he goes and gets the money later? Or not?
The way Malvo is presented is not as a person interested in gaining wealth, but one interested in ‘counting scalps’. He is an evil genie, capable of getting a number of innocent and not so innocent people killed or ruined., but he seems to be doing what he does just because he is evil, not because he has an endgame big money payoff planned.
When he finds a person he thinks deserves punishment, either from offending himself, or offending others (Hess, for ex.) he doesn’t just fantasize about teaching them a lesson…he just figures out a way to do it. His executions, or culminations of his machinations, seem so unprovoked that they pass as random killings…the hardest for the cops to deal with. +
Look at Bill, the top cop in Bemidji now, and realize that he probably figured Hess deserved what he got; that Lester’s wife was known to be a nag and, maybe, slept around a bit…and the chife being killed opened up the job for hm, so…not much incentive to break his gonads investigating, or allowing Molly to investigate.
Maybe the most charitable thing could be said about Bill is that he sees that Evil came to their town and Evil then, apparently, left. He thinks it best to leave sleeping dogs lie.
Good, in a way, that the whole show is shot in winter conditions. Winter in Minnesota has a way of bringing out the best and worst in people.
I used to live in a little town at the northeast end of the Iron Range, a place called Babbit. 7000 people and one cop. Why would you need more? Until somebody caught his wife and her lover when he came home early from the mine and killed both of them. Middle of winter, I think.
Fascinating town and situation (mining town, mostly young people, 5 kids per household, when the mine had to close for pollution problems, the town collapsed, leaving a world class school system, and a business man’s association with no businessmen)
Someone else brought up a quibble about a semi passing a stalled car on a snowy highway…It would never happen. Semi drivers there are well known for never passing a stalled car. One saved me when my fuel pump failed at 4 a.m. temp -15, 10 miles from the nearest light.
Malvo is very interested in maintaining his anonymity. So I don’t think he’s interested in drawing the attention of the authorities to Lester, since Lester can identify him.
I suspect they’ll just drop the bandaged man. It was a clever way to get Lester out of the hospital, nothing more; leave it at that. Lester’s nephew certainly seemed odd, perhaps autistic, but they never gave us an exact diagnosis IIRC. Quirky enough he might not remember, or mention, having seen Lester in the house just before Dad and he got into such trouble.
As far as we know, yes. The supermarket king buried the money in the snow after finding his son and bodyguard dead. Could Malvo have followed him and then recovered the money? Malvo being an evil crime genie, I’m gonna say yes.
So the scene 1 year later in the file room- I loved how there’s a worn spot on the wall where he keeps throwing the tennis ball while the other guy files stuff away. But I was puzzled by the looks on their faces when the bulletin board fell and the picture of Malvo next to their car from the ATM camera was taped there. File guy taped it there the day they arrived, then presumably over the course of the year they put up the bulletin board. So why did they have such looks of amazement when the board fell and they saw the picture?
I really hoped Molly wouldn’t start bawling when Bill told her to shut down her investigation. The way her lip was quivering I wasn’t sure if she could hold it in. Glad she did.
The brunette in the Vegas bar was a pro. She was looking for a job, and I think Lester knew it and was all in.
Molly: “We’re doin’ OK, ya know”. I wanted her to say “Norm”. I have to go watch Fargo again.
I found the “We’re all right” comment disorienting. If this is the end of the movie, then who buried the money that Super Market King found?
Prediction: Malvo tries to blackmail Lester, who tries to kill Malvo, and the resulting ruckus brings the truth to light when a photo of Malvo makes it to the file room.
I also think that Lester will be surprised to find out that the company of attractivegirl is expensive.
Also predict that Tahir turns out to be an American young man down on his luck, who Bill mistook for the real Tahir with no further proof than the fact that he was black in Minnesota. FakeTahir will stay on the meal train as long as possible, possibly even going to college. Real Tahir, meanwhile, is a wanna-be terrorist who has already found a place at an extremist Mosque.