Fargo recap: “The Useless Hand” sets up season 5’s violent crescendo

Oh, Gator. In all your time trying to get the upper hand on Ole Munch, have you ever actually stopped and thought about the kind of man you’re dealing with? Fargo Year Five’s penultimate episode opens in a tiny ice-fishing shack, with the runt of the Tillman litter begging for his life as Munch heats the tip of a knife. Gator tried bartering with cash, “girls,” even a fucking flamethrower. But Munch, as we know, is less concerned with such…mortal things. It was never about the money he was cheated out of by Roy at the beginning of the season. It’s about the debt itself. Now, Munch’s “mama” is dead, and there’s only one language Munch speaks, one currency that could ever repay that loss. “A rabbit screams because a rabbit is caught,” Munch simply responds, the blade now glowing red hot.

Munch, the ageless wanderer, knows only one way of dealing with such things. And so he sets to work making real one of the oldest adages of vengeance still around today: He takes Gator’s eyes.

There’s lots to come in this week’s Fargo, but I’ve loved every moment Joe Keery and Sam Spruell have spent on screen together these last eight weeks. Two men from entirely different worlds. One built by bravado, one built by pragmatism. Economical action. “Speak fucking English, bro!” Gator spits into the splintered floor as Munch looms over him. Munch has been telling his story all this time. Gator Tillman just never learned to listen.

It’s a hell of a prologue to a quickfire episode of Fargo that pays off as much as it sets up. Our first order of business proper is Roy—probably pumped with self-righteousness after executing Danish Graves last week—and the still-captive Dot. Dot’s, obviously, once again trying to MacGyver her way out of her chains, accidentally smashing through the floor of the shack in the process and finding a neat little hiding spot. Just as well, because with the police, FBI, and whatever forces of darkness Lorraine Lyon can summon upon the Tillman compound, Roy’s finally decided that Dot isn’t worth the trouble and orders Bowman to kill her. Bowman, nonplussed by the apparently empty room, takes flight, and Dorothy once again clicks herself free from the handcuffs. The tiger is loose and the gates are closed.

Over in Minnesota: It’s official! Indira’s now in the private sector, fancy little earpiece and everything. She and Lorraine quickly work out what befell Graves. “Tell Jerome to call the Orange Idiot,” Lorraine says, flexing not only her unlimited resources but a very dated political put-down, even back in 2019. “It’s time I got something for my money.” Donald Trump’s national guard is teaming up with the good guys, folks!

One quick, unintentionally self-parodying call to arms from Roy to the militia later, and the pieces begin assembling on the board. As Karen packs off the twins and Odin’s armored vehicles begin arriving at Roy’s behest, we’re treated to what might be the show’s cheekiest needle drop to date: the joyous “Y.M.C.A.” ringing out as cases of weapons are unloaded from a small army of pickup trucks.

Amid the hubbub, Dorothy’s able to sneak into Tillman’s home (does this guy ever lock his doors?) and gets in a quick call to Wayne (now almost fully seeming like his old self, but we don’t get time enough to really find out) and Scotty before Karen interrupts, rifle and all. It’s enough for Dorothy, though, just hearing their voices. She handily disarms the third Mrs. Tillman and knocks her unconscious, then turns on all the gas stoves on her way out the door. She’s always got an oven-based trick up her sleeve, that Dorothy Lyon. Roy notices quickly, though, and now knows she’s loose and up to her usual subterfuge.

The cloud of imminent violence hangs oppressively over “The Useless Hand,” but in the calm before the storm, a phone call we’ve been waiting to see since the very first time we met Dorothy Lyon happens: Dot calls Indira but gets Lorraine, who tells her in the most Lorraine Lyon way possible that, yes, she’s cared for, she’s believed, and she will be helped. It’s what Dorothy’s wanted to hear from someone since she was 15. “Why now?” Dorothy asks, to which Lorraine parries with a “Don’t get maudlin” in her trademark drawl. But Dorothy wants to know. Has to know. “This busybody made me,” Lorraine says, looking at Indira with only the thinnest veil covering her admiration. “Get in the fight,” she says, “No daughter of mine is going down on the one-yard line.” It’s lovely work from both Juno Temple and Jennifer Jason Leigh here, even though both are speaking into rectangles. Sensing a miscommunication, Indira quickly grabs the phone back and tells Dorothy not to get in the fight, but rather hide somewhere Roy’s massing followers won’t look. We already know where even before the quick flash of the windmill. And so Dorothy, the woman who refuses to die, shuts herself in Roy Tillman’s tomb.

Say what you will about the Stark County Sheriff, but he’s a man of conviction. After being snidely goaded by Odin into telling the FBI in no uncertain terms they have a war on their hands if they try to breach the gates, he and Bowman split up to look for Dot. Instead, stumbling out of the fog, Roy finds a blinded, snivelling Gator tied to the guiding hand of Munch. Sometimes I wish I could just write down all the Munch monologues and have that be the review, but safe to say Sam Spruell does some more great acting, then disappears into the mist again. Roy retreats in the other direction, leaving Gator. “If there was ever a point to you, it’s gone now,” he tells his son.

Bowman, obviously, hits the relative jackpot, finding Dorothy hunched over Graves’ decaying body. Before he can dispatch her with the rifle she very un-Dorothy-like tossed aside before hiding, Munch once again proves to be a scourge on the Tillman name and kills him. “The tiger can come out now!” he calls, offering her a hand to climb out. “To fight a tiger in a cage is not a fair fight.” He hands her the rifle. “Now the tiger is free.” An act of charity, or a promise that they still have unfinished business once the gun smoke clears next week?

Stray observations

• Y’all were divided last week on whether Gator was dead or if a last-minute redemption turn may be coming. The latter looks likelier now.
• It struck me this week that the way Munch speaks may very well be how someone who’s lived hundreds of years might. His detached use of the third person and definitive article (calling himself simply “a man” most of the time). The storyteller-like cadence to his words adds mystery, sure, but it’s also true to this gift of a character, whose lived experiences must have turned into stories a long, long time ago.
• “What’s the point of a billionaire if I can’t have somebody killed?” Lorraine laments over the phone to “Bill.”
• “Quantico not teach you not to interrupt a superior officer when he’s bantering?”
• I absolutely love Roy’s speech to the FBI at the Tillman Ranch gates. It sounds good, it sounds like it makes sense until you poke it just a tiny bit. We’ve seen him as the yang to Dot and Lorraine’s yin at various points this season, but here he’s the anti-Munch. Lotta words, lotta flannel, but functionally empty.
• Roy seeing but very much not checking on his unconscious wife as he sweeps the house…should we have expected anything else?
• I could have watched Spruell and Keery do an entire bottle episode in that little shack. I’ve said it plenty but here it is again: They’ve been absolutely stellar in their supporting roles in a season headlined by A-tier actors.’

Fargo is available to stream now on Hulu.