Minnesota abolished the death penalty in 1911.
ohh yah.
Yah, now y’see…
It’s like, Lester is just… well… y’know
I think he’s really a… well gosh darnit!
This is just all so irregular, see?..
Just riffing off of others’ comments for simplicity’s sake. There was nothing to indicate that she’s a hooker.
Really? I thought it was obvious the moment we saw her. She looked at him in a way that a woman that beautiful doesn’t look at a guy like Lester, despite how high on life he might be feeling.
I will say I was a little surprised to see Gus behind the wheel of his cruiser on speedtrap patrol. I figured, given how much he’s bumbled things lately, not to mention shooting Molly, he’d be on desk patrol for a few years.
I think Lester’s shedding of his wimpiness started the moment he killed his wife with the ballpeen. He then got to observe the way Malvo handled things first hand, and decided there was nothing to lose by being proactive. He’s going to present the wimpy facade when fingers point at him, much the way Malvo did when he switched to his small-town preacher personna.
I think Bill is being willfully stupid, because he doesn’t want this simple town to have big-city problems. He doesn’t want to delve into the dark side and risk change. People got murdered, and somebody’s being punished for it, tucked safely from sight. The fracas happened under his watch, and he’s worried about his (and the town’s) squeaky-clean image.
The review board to discuss the shooting didn’t happen until the next day after the phone conversation with Molly. They talked about it. We never get to see the review hearing as we jumped 364 days after it.
Given his new line of work, I’m guessing it didn’t go well.
This reminds me of something I’ve been wondering about: we saw Malvo receive that identity in the mail, didn’t we? (In the scene in which he threatened the old mail-room attendant–Malvo claimed to be “Duluth.” Malvo seemed to be sort of surprised that the identity was that of a preacher.)
Was it just implied that he’d been sent this (name, information, and documents) by someone in the Fargo mob (the group we saw eating fish in the Asian restaurant)? Or was it laid out explicitly?
The sending of a whole identity implies some sort of plot beyond those we’ve seen so far (the abduction of the St. Paul office worker; the shakedown of the Supermarket King; the ‘freebie’ killing of Hess…but *was *it random, and/or at Lester’s behest? Hess was tied to the Fargo mob, wasn’t he?)
What was the plot that required the ‘preacher’ identity? It’s true that the identity came in handy when Gus found Malvo by the side of the road…but surely it hadn’t been sent to Malvo on the off chance that a cop who’d seen him once would see him again…?
What I’m trying to figure out is the extent to which Malvo is the hired hand of some other person or group, over and above his freelancing (such as purporting to work for the Supermarket King). Was he the hired hand of the Fargo mob, who wanted him to do something in the preacher identity (until he shot them in revenge for their having sent Numbers and Wrench after him)…?
Malvo has no ties to the Fargo mob, other than going after them after the Fargo hitmen went after him. He does have an employer, he was shown calling into them in the first (or maybe second) episode, where they told him to go do the Supermarket King job. I don’t remember if it was stated specifically, but presumably the employer sent him the package and set up the fake church website.
That would be the official review. Certainly his chief knew about the shooting immediately, and Gus was already in the doghouse for screwing up the Malvo stop. I just expected the chief to put him on duty where he could do the least damage until the review was over.
Molly is a police officer in Bemidji; Gus was an officer in Duluth. These cities are 149 miles apart. With them getting married this is too long a commute. So this is an alternative explanation to Gus getting fired.
Okay, thanks. So we haven’t seen or learned anything about Malvo’s employer, other than that he phoned them early on, and that they (apparently) sent him the ID package and set up the website.
Surely this is a shoe that is going to drop in the finale…
I don’t know who I’d like to see be run through a woodchopper more: Malvo or Lester.
Lester, I think.
I thought Malvo’s employer was Mr. Rundle (of Rundle Realty) and that Malvo did bad things to him when he realized that Mr. Rundle had informed the Fargo mob about Malvo’s location.
Yes, exactly. Malvo didn’t drive to Texas for the sun.
Agreed. It’s weird - before this episode, I didn’t hate Lester as much as I would expect. Even though he committed endless crimes, for some reason he still just seemed like an average Joe who was in over his head. But by the time he was looking to cheat on his (new) wife, I seriously couldn’t stand him. Which is ridiculous; murdering your wife with a hammer and destroying your brother’s life is far worse than infidelity. But now that he’s so damn confident, the guy’s unbearable.
Or maybe it’s just the haircut. 
Exactly.
Before he was a sympathetic, hapless, milquetoast man who made a very subtle but horrible mistake that got him in over his head. Now, after every unconscionable thing he’s done to get away with it, he’s smug, over-confident and arrogant about it all.
At least Malvo is honest about his evilness. In that way, he’s sort of likable. Lester’s become repugnant.
Well, maybe. But I was under the impression that Rundle was just a middleman of sorts (conveying messages to various mercenaries such as Malvo), rather than the actual employer. I didn’t get that “he was the big boss” vibe…but time will tell, I guess.
Yes, that sounds right. And Malvo wanted not only revenge on Rundle for the squealing, but also whatever information Rundle had about the whereabouts of the Fargo mob guys.
Thirded, or fourthed, or whatever. He needs killin’.