Fargo 2x1 'Waiting for Dutch': The External Force

nicholasimarshall
Oct 16, 2015
6 min read

Fargo 2x1 returns to a simpler time with a hall of fame cast to start the season with a solid foundation of bloody snow.

Reviewed while listening to 'Tombs' and 'Fortune's Fool' by Hiatus, and 'Luna' by Volor Flex.

The Fargo universe is its most beautiful when it highlights the juxtaposition at the heart of its own universe. The basest human acts of moral depravity laid on the backdrop of an idyllic Midwestern community that favors joy in the small, simple pleasures of life. And the characters' struggles to reconcile those two experiences. The best of them can move effortlessly from one to the other. Marge can witness merciless murders, like a body in a wood-chipper, and return home the same night and discuss the value of the 3 cent stamp. Molly and Gus can see to the end of Lorne Malvo's bloodletting and park in front of the television, and talk about spiders. Spiders. It's not that these characters are unaffected by the horrors they see, or disregard the gravity of them. Their resilience lies more in the strength of their domestic equilibrium. Their unfailing ability to face some of the darkest acts of human evil and still notice that it's a beautiful day. They may not understand the evil, but they confront it with resounding faith in their nice, snow-blanketed lives. For them, after all, there's more to life than a little money. Or the atrocities committed in the pursuit of it.

Out of this unshakable bond to stamps and local waffle houses, we get to see the idiosyncrasies that allow us to stop for a moment and take a break from the murders in snow to laugh. Fargo the film did it, and Fargo the TV series did it in its first season. Now the premiere of season 2 takes us back to 1979, when simple Midwestern life was even simpler because there was none of that social-media-stealing-our-lifeforce crap, and that juxtaposition is heightened to new levels with our homespun murder story. Patrick Wilson's Lou Solverson (Molly's dad from last season but younger), internalizes the sight of three dead people in a remote neighborly waffle house. More, he and Ted Danson's (YES!!) Hank Larsson analyze it, and respectfully acknowledge the sorrow over the lives stolen. Yet even then they transition seamlessly from the tragedy to Lou's reflections on his wife getting a cookbook for dishes from around the world, while implying that he's not too happy with it (who wants steak au poivre when you can have FRIGGIN WAFFLES). It's how the world of Fargo stomachs senseless killing. By looking at the intimate and remembering the smaller details that can make one happy.

That's what separates the Lous and the Mollys and the Marges from the Malvos and the Nygaards. And the Culkins (no, not that one. This one). The former can appreciate the joys they have, while the latter have their eyes set on ruthless myopic goals. Kieran Culkin's Rye Gerhardt has no time to enjoy even a cup of coffee at the same waffle house pre-slaughter. He's got a judge to frame. Except the judge is ready for him. She'll eat her waffles, even as the sleuthy scum attempts to outwit her. She faces his depravity with a straight neck and a proud acceptance. And a Biblical reference, just in case we had forgotten what Fargo is all about in terms of religious analogues about human nature and goodness. So when Rye is blindly focused on ambition, the strive to become a big player in his family's crime syndicate, he forgets himself in the moment and kills the judge, the cook, and the waitress. The same waitress who could brush off his rudeness and continue on in her work because she, too, is tapped into that quaint mentality that life's too short to worry about mean customers. Rye freaks out after seeing what he's done, but only because he's afraid for himself, for those ambitions to be better than his bully brother, Dodd (Jeffrey Donovan). It doesn't matter that he's cut down three regular folks who were just trying to get by. All that matters is that he's in trouble. The idyllic life of the north Midwest, in all its snow-white purity, is corrupted by Rye's evil. He can't see that, can't notice the goodness he's just destroyed. He only sees a big, bold future of grandiose things. So of course, in his freak out, he hallucinates a UFO sighting.

Neither does Peggy Blomquist notice Rye on the road, made smaller by his brutal pettiness, as she storms down in her station wagon. She's up there in the clouds with Rye and the UFO, dreaming of bigger things for herself. Probably mentally preparing for that self-help seminar 'Lifespring' she tells her husband about (get it?). While Jesse Plemon's Ed Blomquist is perfectly content with his wife and meat shop, Kirsten Dunst's Peggy wants to go to Hollywood. Leave all the bland snow behind. This singular focus on what's 'out there' gives her autonomy from human decency. When she smashes into Rye, who for all she knows is also just trying to get by, she detaches herself from humanity, and drives home with the Culkin kid still in her windshield. She moves her magazines away from the blood, prepares for dinner, and talks about that seminar. Fargo mark 2 has also decided to experiment with the split-screen, which was at first jarring admittedly. But then you realize that the point of the style is to contradict the narrative the central characters are trying to feed you, counter the lies they tell you and themselves, and undermine their reliability. Peggy tells her husband she drove home with Rye's body because she 'panicked' and didn't know what to do. She says this while the camera splits to show all her immediate actions when she returns home, coldly placing the magazines on a fireplace, wiping blood from her blouse. Preparing hamburger helper. Methodical. Psychologically askew, especially for a North Dakotan beautician.

When Rye turns out to still be alive and Ed is forced to kill him in self-defense, Peggy's able to use Ed's own ideal vision of life against him. She's doesn't give a shit about this world they share, but she knows he does. So if Ed wants to keep his meat shop, and indeed his wife, he has to join her on the dark side and cover up the killing. Instead of doing the decent thing and owning up to it, ya know. Ed and Peggy are worlds apart, but their lives are as intertwined as Sioux Falls is with the criminal syndicate of the Gerhardt family. 'Waiting for Dutch' emphatically highlights this dramatization of the classic fight between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. Lou fighting the natural force of cancer that plagues his wife, Betsy (Cristin Milioti) to maintain the structured home he shares with her and their daughter, little Molly (before she became BOSS MOLLY). Ed fighting against his own wife's cold calculating acts to own the meat shop and have a child. The waitress fighting against social rudeness to enjoy her job serving waffles. It's an unforgiving struggle that will envelop them all. And add to that the 'outsiders' who further corrupt. In the stead of Billy Bob Thornton's Lorne Malvo and Steve Buscemi's Carl Showalter, the external force is a new crime ring from Kansas City plotting to overtake the Gerhardts' operation. The show does wonderfully to give this new crew only a little bit of screentime, a teaser right at the very end. Just short enough to emphasize the gravity of the impact they are about to bring upon little Sioux Falls.

It's the perfect hook to segue us into next week. The veil of Sioux Falls from life's greater unpleasantness is already crumbling above them. Now they've got Brad Garrett as Joe Bulo, part of the Kansas City ring, giving an elementary school slideshow presentation to his crime boss about how to grind them all up in a metaphorical wood-chipper. The invisible hand clawing at money and power is ready to take them all in the coming storm. Thinking of Fargo's story that way, it's easy to forget the setting. Small, neighborly central United States, blissfully ignorant of the wars thousands of miles away (except for Nick Offerman's character, who has the foretelling to warn of something bigger). Fargo shines in the paradox of everyday life muddled with the larger, darker questions of human nature. And the premiere makes sure to tease it all. We're certainly in for a masterful, red-soaked season. Ooookay, then.