Shaun Munro reviews the eighth episode of Fargo season 3…
This week’s episode of Fargo was easily the darkest, weirdest and most suspenseful of the entire season, and despite the general consensus on season three being a decline in quality from the first two, this was certainly one of the strongest episodes in the entire show’s history.
A sharply directed alternate perspective of the bus crash kicks things off and reveals that Mr. Wrench’s appearance wasn’t a mere Easter egg, but he is in fact chained to Nikki and actively helps her escape from Yuri and DQ Qualls’ assassin.
The episode’s first half focuses entirely on the pair’s desperate fleeing from the scene, and boy, is it a brutal sequence, loaded with collateral damage as unfortunate bystanders, even a young boy, are summarily murdered by Yuri. That’s without even mentioning Qualls’ grotesque demise, when Nikki and Wrench decapitate him with the chain binding them. Gnarly.
This opening half-hour is a tripwire-tense fight for survival, with action that tows a fine line between being rough and messy in true-to-life fashion and agreeably stylised, such as with Wrench’s well-placed axe throw, which causes Yuri to lose an ear.
Things get much weirder when Nikki and Wrench end up at a remote bowling alley, and come across apparent traveling businessman Paul Marrane (Ray Wise), who Gloria so memorably bumped into during her trip to Los Angeles. What follows is a scene broached between The Big Lebowski and Twin Peaks, as Marrane chats prophetically to Nikki, somewhat implying himself to be a cosmic force, perhaps even God or Death, and instructing Nikki to deliver a message to wrongdoers. He’s also good enough to give her and Wrench a new ride. Oh, and Ray has been reincarnated as an adorable kitten if you take the scene at face value.
That’s not even the end of it, though; then Yuri arrives at the bowling alley and gets his own chat with Marrane, who soon enough brings up Helga Albrecht, the woman Yuri presumably murdered in the past, which led to that sinister East German mix-up in the season’s very first scene. Yuri isn’t seen again after beholding a haunting vision of a woman who may or may not be Helga, so his tenure as one of Varga’s cleaners may very well be over.
The episode’s second-half couldn’t really live up to all that insanity, but it didn’t need to either. Gloria didn’t get much to do in this installment, beyond spending Christmas with her son, getting turned away from the bus crash crime scene, and later finalising her divorce. That final half-hour was all about Sy, Emmit and Varga, with Sy suffering through a GIF-worthy vomiting scene after being poisoned by Varga, and it’s eventually implied by Varga that he probably won’t wake up. As a huge fan of Michael Stuhlbarg and his work this season, that’s extremely disappointing.
Things conclude three months later in March 2011; Emmit is being royally screwed with, as someone’s decorated his office with pictures of that elusive stamp, parked Ray’s car outside the hospital and glued a fake mustache onto Emmit’s face while he drunkenly slept. One has to assume it’s Nikki at this point, and it’s safe to say these final two episodes will surely see her launching a revenge crusade on Emmit and/or Varga. She may have trouble reaching Emmit, though, given his turning himself in at the last minute, though of course, just because he’s confessing, it doesn’t mean he’s going to confess to what we think he will.
This was everything a Fargo episode should be; intense, action-packed, darkly hilarious and very, very weird. Mary Elizabeth Winstead in particular gave another great performance, and while it wouldn’t be surprising if she actually sat the next episode out ahead of a re-appearance in the finale, hopefully Noah Hawley won’t slow things down at this crucial point.
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more TV rambling.
Originally published June 8, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
