Shaun Munro reviews the fifth episode of Fargo season 3…
“The House of Special Purpose” marks the mid-way point of Fargo‘s third season, and in many ways feels like a transitory episode, nodding towards the potential dark ends down the road for many of these characters. That’s not to say episode five wasn’t totally hilarious too, though.
This instalment was all about the Stussy siblings, a keenly focused episode that also boasted one of the season’s best performances, while leaving audiences desperate to find out what happens next. It hit the ground running with Ray and Nikki’s new sex tape blackmail scheme, but in typical Fargo fashion, it blew up almost immediately, with Emmit’s wife Stella (Linda Kash) quickly finding and viewing it. Again demonstrating her deceptive intellect, however, Nikki managed to parlay that failure into an even bigger blackmail plot, one to reveal information (that they faked the tape) rather than conceal it.
Even if the episode ultimately went to some very nasty places, it certainly didn’t want for demented humour, namely Nikki getting proposed to while wearing a hooker wig, and Varga making po-faced cracks about Sy’s fat wife. Also, the season’s obsession with gross-out gags continued with Varga dick-dunking Sy’s favourite mug, and forcing him to drink from it. Charming.
This hour absolutely belonged to Michael Stuhlbarg, who got by far his best material this season and turned in a characteristically fantastic performance. It’s both hilarious and sad watching Sy do his best to be “unshackled” and play the tough enforcer cliche, but he’s ultimately too meek and feckless to be any good at it. Stuhlbarg makes all the right choices here and expertly avoids turning Sy into a guffaw-inducing caricature, but he still brings the mighty laughs regardless.
Elsewhere, Gloria is almost entirely absent from this episode, not showing up until the half-way mark and getting just a few small scenes for the remainder, but considering how far along the episode moved the Stussy storylines, the singular focus makes a lot of sense. In fact, Gloria’s big scene this week, where Chief Dammick pulls her off interrogating Ray, felt like a pretty lazy way to throw a spanner in the works. Honestly, it’s a shame Shea Whigham has been given such a one-note character so far, even if there’s still plenty of room to flesh him out.
It all concluded with the almost-death of Nikki at the hands of Yuri, and unlike most of this season’s violence so far, there wasn’t a sliver of humour about it. It was at first surprising that she was left alive, but this was clearly intentional on Yuri’s part, as Ray knowing what happened to her will only fire up the sibling feud even more. At the mid-way point, Fargo may not be reaching the highs of the first two seasons, but it’s delivering intrigue, gallows comedy and gritty grimness in spades, so it’s hard to feel all that disappointed.
Also, would any other show have the nerve to give an IRS agent the laughably on-the-nose surname “Dollard”, a fact made even more delicious considering he was played by Hamish Linklater, who also appeared in Noah Hawley’s Legion earlier this year?
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more TV rambling.
Originally published May 18, 2017. Updated April 11, 2018.
