Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman are giving terrific performances in Fargo, the kind of performances that will collect award nominations in a couple of months and acting students will study in the years to come. Allison Tolman and Colin Hanks are creating characters, however, and I totally believe Gus and Molly as real people who might just find a little romance amid all this murder and mayhem. By focusing on Gus and Molly, Fargo had its strongest outing.
Molly, who is by far my favorite new TV character of 2014, has pretty much put the whole thing together. She knows that Lester called Malvo on the night his wife died. Mistakenly, she thinks Lester hired Malvo to kill Sam Hess. When he didn’t have the money to pay Malvo, things went south, fast, and his wife and the chief died. She’s a little off, but she’s got the gist of it right. When she takes this information to Bill, who is completely preoccupied with the impending storm, he finally agrees that Lester might not be as innocent as he thinks. I’m glad Bill, who now seems inept but well-meaning. is finally coming around.
When Bill and Molly go to question Lester, he’s in septic shock. As he’s being rushed to the hospital, Molly asked him if he paid Lorne Malvo to kill Sam Hess. “I never paid him,” he tells Molly which is, of course, true. But the clock is ticking on Lester’s guilt. Molly now knows it’s a shotgun pellet that was lodged in Lester’s hand. And although it appears he’s moved the hiding place of his gun, I’m confident Molly will find it and his bloody clothes. He can’t always pretend to be asleep when Molly comes to his hospital room.
Meanwhile, Gus gets a visit from his insomniac neighbor, who tells him a parable with the moral “Only a fool thinks he can solve the world’s problems.” Gus is no fool, but he does believe you have to at least try to solve problems, even if doing so puts his family at risk. In one of the final scenes, Malvo is sitting in a truck outside Gus’s apartment just waiting. His neighbor says he’s going to call the police, and Malvo threatens him the same way he threatened Gus in the pilot, with talk of windows that aren’t secure and alarm systems that aren’t hooked up to the phone.
Malvo is just being Malvo throughout the episode. His blackmail of Stavros Milos has come to fruition. Stavros has agreed to pay. Poor Don Chumph is so dim and so excited about his upcoming payday (which I’m pretty confident he will never see) that he inadvertently helps Malvo lock him in the closet. Now, thanks to Lester’s jail cell confession, Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench know about Malvo and what he looks like. The question is, who will get to him first – Molly and Gus, or Mr. Numbers and Mr. Wrench?
There were some terrific moments in this episode. I’m for any scene with Malvo buying something out of the van. (“Do I look like I want a pink police scanner?”) The visual representation of the parable was truly lovely. Molly visiting Ida in the hospital and telling her that she’s trying to catch her husband’s killer with tears in her eyes was beautiful and real. It was great to see how poor Lester got the gun in the first place (and a scene with no snow!).
But really, the episode and the show at this point belong to Gus and Molly. While their roles aren’t as showy as Thornton’s and Freeman’s, Colin Hanks and Allison Tolman are just doing amazing work. Hopefully they’ll get some love come awards season, too.
Other thoughts on “The Six Ungraspables:”
•So Malvo’s Reverend does exist on line with one photo and articles about him. That makes me feel a little bit better about the cops letting him go last week, but I still think they should have placed Malvo in a lineup and all the accountants’ co-workers could have probably identified him.
• Lorne Malvo has left no digital footprint, so it’s either not his real name or Lorne is that good. I’d believe either possibility.
• “If anyone could shoot themselves in the face with an unloaded firearm, it’s you.” She didn’t deserve to die, but Lester’s wife really wasn’t very nice to him.
• Dmitri Milos is the only one who figured out that the locusts were from pet stores and not part of a biblical plague. Alas, no one listened to him.
• I still don’t understand how no one noticed his hand wound when Lester went to the hospital the night his wife and the chief of police died, but I’m willing to let it go.
What did you think of this week’s Fargo? Do you think Molly is the best new TV character of 2014? Who do you think will find Lester first?