[For Fargo “Fear and Trembling” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
FX Summary:
Fear and Trembling Floyd responds to Kansas City’s proposal; Hanzee takes a road trip; Lou has a realization.
Yet another Fargo episode title makes an intellectual reference. But you don’t have to understand or even have read Kierkegaard to feel the impact of the “Fear and Trembling” theme. Kierkegaard’s work of the same title speaks about two kinds of people, one who hopes for happiness from something “out there” while the other finds happiness from something inside. Specifically Kierkegaard refers to those who focus on hope for the future and those who revel in memory of things past. This episode literally teams with examples of these very people working in opposition – even if one may be trying to help the other. These characters can’t work in concert because such binary perspectives are a recipe for conflict.
The beginning brings us back to Fargo 1951 when Otto Gerhardt takes his son, Dodd to the movies and tells him not to make a sound. Otto’s there for a business meeting with a guy who says it’s “all about being king” but Otto says he just wants “a place at the table.” Nobody speaks the truth in this scene, it seems. Just as the king-focused guy’s about to take Otto out with a bullet to the head, little boy Dodd stabs him in the back of the neck in a sly move from behind and frees up his father to shoot all the guy’s minions. Dodd was a good boy. He didn’t make a sound.
Then we’re back to Fargo 1979 and Dodd takes Bear’s son out for some shooting practice then brings him along for an attack on some Kansas City thugs at a local bakery. Dodd tazes a guy to the ground while Bear’s son punches the other guy out. Next Floyd meets with Kansas City’s Joe Bulo, the fantastically repugnant Brad Garret. She puts forth a counter offer – partnership between them with the Gerhardt’s paying a million and splitting territory with KC. She tells him not to underestimate her just because she’s a woman. But Joe does anyway and he’s got a point, not because she’s a woman but because Floyd is mother to her minions. He confronts her on Dodd’s assault of his men that very morning at the bakery. Can she really control her family? Joe says if one of his men defies him he can take their arm off but she’s dealing with her kids and won’t do that. This is the crucial difference between them. So, it’s not an equal partnership – see? Floyd says Dodd will fall in line and Joe says no. We’re officially in deadlock city. She’s locked in a memory of a “peaceful” Gerhardt family business and Joe’s got his hopeful eyes on the prize of owning them.
Next we’re in a hotel room where men in turtleneck sweaters and white suits play cards. They’re guarding the suite where Mike Milligan sleeps with Dodd’s daughter, Simone and she snorts coke off his shoulder. Free of blue eyeshadow now, Simone is gorgeous with luxurious Farrah Fawcett hair and a calculated ease in discussing her family’s business matters with Mike. She tells him where he can find the (barely alive) Otto and advises Mike that he’ll have to kill her father, Dodd.
Because Otto’s not actually dead but just in a post-stroke, non-verbal and paralyzed state, the family takes him to the doctor and when he’s in the parking lot Mike Milligan and the Kitchen Brothers kill his bodyguards and minions then greet him, vulnerable and alone in his wheelchair, saying, “Joe Bulo says ‘hi’.” Joe gets news of this while still at the sitdown with Floyd. He then rejects Floyd’s counter offer and says anything but unconditional surrender from her and Kansas City will wipe the earth of Gerhardts. So, it’s war.
Meanwhile Hanzee’s out on the road looking for Rye and goes to the Waffle Hut. He surveys the scene and checks the tire tracks outside, picking up a piece of broken glass there that seems to spur on a vision of something in the sky. It’s as if he remembers when Rye saw the UFOs. Next Hanzee goes to an auto repair shop and finds Peggy’s car, noting that the piece of glass from the Waffle Hut tire tracks fits perfectly into a space on her headlight. Ignoring the warning of dufus mechanic, Sonny, Hanzee checks the inside of the car and finds a bloodstain on the seat. Then Sonny the dufus breaks his own rule about customer privacy and tells Hanzee the owner of the car is a butcher. Hanzee’s about to show his gratitude for the info by knifing the dufus when Karl, played by Nick Offerman, comes out of the bathroom and averts the crisis with strong words and showing his gun. So, Hanzee turns to leave on his calm and measured heels then drives away. Next he’s at Ed and Peggy’s house where he finds Rye’s ashy belt buckle in the fireplace and takes it for safekeeping. He then sees Lou drive up and exits from the back of the house while Lou takes a seat on the front porch to wait for Peggy and Ed to get home.
Betsy and Lou go to the oncologist where they get the news that her cancer is spreading but they can put her on a clinical trial drug called Xanadu… or a placebo. That’s the most hope the doc can offer. Should he sign her up? In the parking lot later Lou asks if he should treat Betsy any different and she says “Please don’t.” She’s on the trial now. After that conversation Lou heads over to meet Hank at the body shop where Hanzee had just left after encountering Peggy’s car and the dufus Sonny. Hank tells Lou the alleged report of how the car got damaged – the story Ed and Peggy told. But it’s not particularly believable to Lou who also has a flashback to his visit with Ed on the night when he nearly saw Rye’s chopped fingers on the floor of the butcher shop. Lou’s getting warmer and it’s clear in this scene that his intuition is similar to the visions Hanzee has. They’re playing the yin and yang of this investigation – powerful insight swells in their opposition.
Meanwhile Peggy’s secretly on the pill while Ed dreams aloud about all the babies they’re making together. Ed’s caught up in his delusions about babies and owning the butcher shop, neither of which Peggy cares about. In the next scene Ed’s boss at the butcher shop says his check for the down payment on the shop bounced and there’s another interested buyer. If Ed doesn’t pay he loses the shop for certain. It turns out the check bounced because Peggy paid for that seminar even though Ed told her not to. He confronts her and Peggy apologizes but also says her seminar for self-actualization matters more to her than owning the butcher shop. Ed tells her she’s gotta get the money back. Peggy goes back in the salon and tells her boss but just gets a self help lecture series and it’s clear she won’t get that money back.
Peggy and Ed see Lou waiting on their porch as they pull into their driveway that evening. At Lou’s suggestion they invite him inside then reiterate to him the made up story about hitting a tree. Lou makes it clear he knows they’re lying and tells them to be straight with him so he can help them. He tells them a war story, how when it’s obvious a buddy who’s just been shot is going to die everybody tells him he’s going to be OK. It’s what you do, you give the dying man hope so he can bear those last few minutes of life with dignity. He tells them they’re like those dying soldiers right now. They don’t even know it but they have no chance to redeem themselves if they continue to lie. But Lou can help them if they tell him the truth now. Peggy and Ed dig in their heels and ask him to leave, fools that they are…
On the ride back from the Kansas City sitdown Dodd has his head on Floyd’s shoulder and it’s a sad, operatic scene. Then Floyd’s curled up with comatose Otto on their marital bed before she has to give the news to the family of their next move. “It’s war,” is all she says. Next we see Betsy staring at her trial drug pill bottle before joining Lou in the backyard. He says he thinks she got the real pill and not just the placebo. But the world’s out of balance now, Lou ponders and trails off. People used to know right from wrong but now it’s all off center. Betsy goes in to bed and Lou continues to practice tying knots in the dark cold night of their yard. He’d hoped to inspire her much the same way he’d hoped to with Peggy and Ed but it’s clear he’s failed both times. Neither Peggy and Ed nor Betsy have any hope because they’re so caught up in their interior worlds that they remain locked in a lonely void. Who could possibly understand them? So, the one man who really could understand them, beautiful-patient-insightful Lou, sits, quiet and alone, to tie his knots, a symbol of Lou himself… on the inside.
–Katherine Recap
