Season Five of Noah Hawley’s Fargo charged onto the scene with a fun trailer and an explosive premiere that surprised us with a fresh-off-Ted-Lasso Juno Temple violently evading kidnappers like some sort of “Minnesota Nice” Rambo. Of course, the surprises didn’t end there. We’ve enjoyed indulgent allusions to The Nightmare Before Christmas, killer needle drops (including an eerie Toxic cover this week), and Jon Hamm’s unsettling nipple rings that belie his character’s salt-of-the-earth, conservative facade. In fact, just about everyone is living in a constructed reality. Some characters use their constructed reality as a tool, while others nestle into it with blissful ignorance. “Blanket,” the eighth entry into this season of Fargo, is done playing games – the facades are crashing down.
Before we assess that damage, be sure you’ve taken stock of things by watching the latest episode of Fargo.
“Blanket” is a phenomenal episode of television, but it made it clear that we aren’t here to have fun anymore….
…well, hold up.
We do get one moment of fun. A couple of weeks ago, Danish Graves (Dave Foley, Kids in the Hall) set out to steal an election from Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm, Mad Men). This week, he delivered on this mission by redefining political theater. After leaning on a few of his bosses’ debtors, Graves is able to get three men to legally change their names to Roy Tillman with a playful shoulder shrug from the city clerk who signed off on the paperwork. When the three men surprise the real Tillman on stage at the big debate (wearing Roy Tillman costumes), their simple mimicry reduces Tillman’s tough-guy persona to a joke and his act crashes to the floor. He collapses so drastically that he even punches the debate moderator on his way out of the room.
Dave Foley then performs the hell out of a slow-motion walk to his Porsche. Fun fact, this is actually the first time any human being has looked unironically cool in a slow-motion walk towards a Porsche.
Unfortunately, this isn’t an episode for victory laps. It’s an episode of painful realization. Ultimately, Graves falls from the height of his triumphant Porsche-walk all the way to the bottom of the Tillman estate’s mass grave.
Perhaps the only person fully aware of the stakes of the battle he finds himself in this week is North Dakota Deputy Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris, New Girl). He finds himself in another chance encounter with Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple, Ted Lasso) while Tillman checks her out of the hospital for a return to his ranch. Farr offers his support to Dot, but she continues to deny that she is in danger. As Tillman’s son Gator (Joe Keery, Stranger Things) and the rest of the corrupt deputies close in with racist rhetoric and not-so-veiled threats of violence, Farr has no choice but to back off. He has done his research, and he knows what these men are capable of. During a follow-up visit to the Tillman estate, Farr gets a bullet through the windshield of his squad car, courtesy of Gator. Witt takes the hint, but does his best to follow up with the feds, Officer Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani, Never Have I Ever), and even Danish Graves. He makes it clear that Dot is in trouble. Specifically, he says that she looks like a “trapped animal.”
Back at the Tillman ranch, Dot finds herself chained to the floor of Tillman’s murder shed beside the haunting windmill she visited in her vision last week. We see Tillman’s open violence continue to mount – and it reaches a head when he returns from his humiliation at the debate. Dot manages to survive Tillman’s most violent attack yet (and nearly choke him to death with her chains) thanks to her resourcefulness, dodging a few swings from a chain, and Danish Graves’ timely arrival at Tillman’s front door…
…well, it’s timely for Dot, anyway. The moment we see that Porsche so deep in the lion’s den, we know that Danish is toast. As Tillman so subtly states: “If you’re so smart, then why are you so dead?” Fortunately for Dot, she is a bit smarter than that…
Nevertheless, throughout this ordeal, Dot looks the most trapped we’ve ever seen her. She makes a desperate run through every available escape tactic. She opens with a litany of humanizing anecdotes in an attempt to sway Tillman’s emotions and compel him to return her to her family. Sadly, there aren’t enough cat adoptions or seasons of Call the Midwife to get through to Tillman (he doesn’t even seem to care what will happen to Wayne if Dot isn’t around to remind him to take his Lactaid). When left alone, Dot is able to use a paperclip she swiped from the hospital to disassemble a portion of her bed and partially escape her chains. When Gator steps in for a word, she appeals to his good nature and insists that she has seen his mother alive – but swiftly switches to destabilizing venom when her first attempt falls through. She digs in, then twists the knife by taunting Gator with the fact that his father didn’t find him worthy of the family name – that he saw his son as a lowly and worthless reptile. Gator spits his own venom on the way out of the door, but it’s clear that Dot won this round.
Gator certainly doesn’t deserve any sympathy, but it’s still a bit shocking to see Dot go for jugular in such a vicious way; we are much more accustomed to seeing her follow a gentle emotional compass. Within this very episode, she offers herself up to Tillman to spare Witt Farr and an innocent hospital employee from violence.
Something seems to be coming to the surface. We realize that Dot still hasn’t reckoned with her dream from the previous episode. It’s not until she watches Tillman’s lackeys dump Danish Graves’ body in the mass grave beneath the windmill that reality finally hits. It was all a dream. Linda is dead, and anything that remains of her is likely buried away.
On the one hand, it’s a bit disappointing to see Dot so slow on the uptake. We want to cheer for her, and we want to see her in control. It’s certainly much less empowering to see her broken and unaware of reality – but this isn’t really new. As resourceful as Dot can be, her refusal to acknowledge the depth of what is happening has kept her in danger since the start of the season.
The way this reviewer sees it, that doesn’t have to be a flaw in the season. Dot is still tough, resourceful, and bursting with love for her family. She has been overwhelmed by the trauma of her past and the fear that everything she has built could disappear in a heartbeat. Dot has done plenty to fight back against Tillman and save folks in her orbit. It’s just about time for some of her allies to put their own baggage aside and get her to safety. Then the healing can begin.
Perhaps there are brighter skies ahead, but for now, there is still plenty of wreckage we haven’t dealt with yet. These structural problems seem to be slated for more attention next week, but we should at least check in with Gator and Indira. Gator hasn’t finished searching the rubble of his emotional wreckage just yet, but when he does, he is going to find Ole Munch (Sam Spruell, Snow White and the Huntsman) lying in wait. Indira, on the other hand, finally spent enough time assessing the rubble of her already wrecked marriage to find her husband in bed with another woman. We got the hint a couple of weeks ago after he spritzed some trashy cologne on his way out of the house, but we get confirmation here. We also get to see Indira shed her cop uniform before driving full-speed toward a jetsetting new gig with Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight).
Perhaps our three strong female leads will finally band together and show us a way to reclaim power from the hands of an abuser. In any case, we’ll get a better sense of the reality Hawley is constructing here next week.
