One of the more unpleasant aspects about watching a mediocre season of a show like Fargo—a series that holds its cards close to the vest, building tension by suggesting anything can happen while also promising us it will all come together in the end—is the slowly draining hope that, eventually, the story will figure out how to justify itself. Every time something is confusing or goes in a direction that doesn’t make much sense, every time a character interaction meanders instead of going for the gut, you tell yourself, “Ah, but clearly, they’re just biding their time. Clearly, all of this is exactly what it’s supposed to be.” But the longer that wait goes on, the harder it is to completely believe in it. After a certain point, you have to accept that no story turn could completely make up for all that came before it.
Fargo’s fourth season (not terrible, still very nice to look at and listen to, but hobbled by a lack of focus and an uneven ensemble) passed that point an episode or two ago, which makes “Happy,” maybe the best entry of the season so far, somewhat bittersweet. By the end, we’ve got Ethelrida making her boldest play yet; multiple plotlines finally converging in meaningful ways; and a thorough enough thinning of the cast that (barring Hawley just deciding to bring in a busload of new folks next week) it’s more or less guaranteed the finale is going to spend its time on people we actually care about. It’s tempting to look back and say “Oh, clearly they were playing the long game here,” but I don’t think that’s true. There’s just too much chaff, too much meandering, and too little time spent on actually building up the most interesting aspects of the season, for it to get a pass.
And it’s not like “Happy” is a complete win, either. We see the end of Odis’s story here, and while there are immediate, unexpected consequences, I’m still not sure this character was ever compelling enough to justify the screen time. Yes, his decision to go over to Loy’s side and shoot Deafy and Swanee was momentous, as is the fact that Gaetano manages to trip and shoot himself in the head right after executing the poor sap, but in terms of who he actually was… Well, does Odis’s twitchiness and need for control really mean much for the season’s ostensible larger themes? And is “turncoat with a tragic backstory” so inherently fascinating that it’s automatically worth watching?
I don’t think so on either count. And it’s just strange watching all of this play out in “Happy,” because there’s no cleverness to it, no reversal of expectations (excluding, of course, Gaetano’s abrupt exit; an exit which has nothing to do with Odis himself, apart from proximity). For a while, Odis worked with the Faddas; then Loy threatened him, so he went over to Loy; and when he raids Josto’s place mid-dinner, Josto swears revenge and, a few days later, gets it. Odis has no plan to escape. There’s maybe a suggestion near the end that he finally finds some peace in death, and the sequence where he comes home to find his apartment ransacked and the walls closing in is very well shot. Huston is a fine actor, too. It’s just, there’s no reason to tell any of this. It happens like you’d expect it would, and if that’s supposed to be the point, surely it could’ve accomplished the same in less time.
As for Gaetano’s unexpected exit, well, it was definitely unexpected. I’m not exactly sure what to make of it. It’s an inarguable subversion of expectations; after spending the whole season building up Gaetano as a bad-ass, to have him go out by his own hand in a moment of moderate triumph is a shock. I don’t think I’ll miss him much, either. But it’s just such a stupid exit that it borders on being too overtly random. It’s not that it’s implausible that he would trip, exactly, although it is relatively unlikely that he would’ve tripped in such a way as to immediately shoot himself in the head; part of the point of scenes like this is to remind us that life is often strange and random and weird, unlike stories, where everything happens for a reason. But it’s possible to play that card either too late in the game or too often, and this scene feels a bit like both. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of pressure this puts on Josto, now that the muscle in the family is gone, and there’s some pathos in it, especially considering that the two brothers were friends again. And I dunno, maybe it’s underlining the emptiness of Gaetano’s bravado or something. But it feels more awkward than anything else.
Now that I’ve spent half of what was supposed to be a positive review being all negative: “Happy” finally, finally brings Ethelrida back to center stage, making her once again the main character of the narrative in her efforts to save her family from Loy’s clutches (and maybe see some rough justice done in the process). Turns out she wasn’t entirely satisfied with sending a letter to Doctor Harvard re: Oraetta’s crimes, and decided to do some more research at the library, where she discovered the origins of that ring she stole from Oraetta’s murder closet oh so long ago. The end of the episode has her visiting with Loy and laying things out for him: not only have her parents long since repaid the loan Loy gave them, she also has the means for him to end the war with the Faddas, a means which Loy is in no position to refuse.
I’m not exactly sure why knowing who really killed Donatella Fadda is going to fix all this; I guess Loy can offer the information up in exchange for a deal to end the fighting? (Although that’s a cessation of hostilities, not a victory.) But regardless, I’m interested in seeing how it plays out, because the episode does a good job of both reminding us of Ethelrida’s resourcefulness and establishing Loy’s desperation. The episode title, “Happy,” is a reference to a nickname of the crime boss Loy turns to for help, a boss who’s none too pleased with how Loy treated his (Happy’s) nephew Leon a few entries back. After agreeing to provide Loy with the added muscle he needs against the Faddas, Happy then has a meeting with his nephew and Josto, setting up to betray Loy and install Leon in his place.
It would’ve been nice if these machinations had been spread out a little better, and if more time had been spent showing Loy losing his grip on the gang war, but it’s still nice to see this play out, as it gives us clear stakes heading into the finale. And that’s not the only storyline that finally decides to wake up and get serious. The confrontation between Oraetta and Ethelrida on the Smutny front porch is great, throwing aside any pretense of politeness and letting Oraetta’s sense of outrage build until she decides to get proactive and sneak into the Smutny house after dark. She has a syringe with her, and the only thing that stops her from getting her revenge is a sudden appearance by the ghost that’s been off-and-on haunting the whole season, a ghost whose origins we only learned a few scenes earlier.
It’s unclear exactly how the Roach (as in Theodore Roach, the captain of a slaving vessel who one of Ethelrida’s ancestors killed) factors into all of this, and I’m not sure what it means to see him seeming to protect Ethelrida—my best guess is that he showed up to watch her get killed and inadvertently got in the way when Oraetta, in her madness, was able to sense his presence. Or maybe he thwarted Oraetta because there’s something worse coming for the Smutny family, some final crushing irony after Ethelrida, who is brilliant and brave and true, saves the day. All I know for sure is that I feel like all of this was intentional in a way that hasn’t always been present this season. Same with Oraetta coming home to find the cops waiting for her; like Gaetano’s sudden exit, it’s a subversion of expectations, but it’s one that’s been built up to, and, given Ethelrida’s conversation with Loy, it’s not like Oraetta is out of the story for good.
This could all still fall apart again next week, but “Happy” has more momentum to it than the show has managed to build in a while, and, however foolishly, I once again have some hope that this is heading towards something worth watching. That doesn’t make up for uneven writing over the rest of the season, but it does, at least, save these final weeks from falling over themselves on their way to the finish line, and for that, I’m grateful.
Stray observations
- I get the idea of wanting to build a sense of mystery, but I can’t help wondering if Dibrell’s monologue about Roach would’ve been more useful earlier on. It’s a good story, and I would’ve loved to have spent more time exploring how long the ghost has been following Dibrell and her family.
- We check in with Satchel for a bit; he swipes a bottle of milk off a porch and scares off a couple of racists in a truck with the gun Rabbi gave him. I’m glad that last episode wasn’t the last we saw of him, since his story would’ve felt incomplete. As is, I’d bet he shows up in the finale.
- Josto’s potential father-in-law, who is dumb, shows up to tell Josto the wedding is off and throw out some anti-Italian racism. Gaetano punches him, which is satisfying.
- “How does it feel to be so right and know that nobody cares?” (Oraetta getting caught because Doctor Harvard failed to die just underlines how sloppy her attempt to murder him was. Is the idea that Ethelrida’s anonymous letter rattled her so much that she took a poorly considered chance?)
- Zelmare is still alive, and with Odis dead, she can’t avenge Swanee’s death. Maybe she’ll go after Loy.
- Is Gaetano’s death a reference to a similar accidental gunshot in a Coen brothers movie? I can’t think of one; the closest that comes to mind is a scene in Burn After Reading, but it’s not self-inflicted in the literal sense.
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Okay I didn’t see the trip and fall on a gun death. It was clearly set up to be Otis shoots him, but nope! Although they did set it up earlier when Gaetano trips in the streets so its not entirely without foreshadowing.
It was a very Fargo death. I knew he was a goner when he was the voice of reason earlier in the episode.
The only unexpected about Gaetano’s death was how it came about.
Satchel Cannon died on a lonely road in Kansas. Long live Mike Milligan.
They grow up so fast.
And we actually got some dialogue (albeit short) from Joe Bulo this week!
I was kinda disappointed by Bullo’s surprise. If he’d only wrecked the figurine collection, that would’ve shown they knew it mattered to him, but they wrecked his whole apartment. So I guess Bullo’s genius touch was cutting the eyes out of the picture of Odis’s intended?Still, he seemed to be the main featured combatant in the mob war montage at the beginning of the episode, and Violante’s awful cosy with him.
I didn’t catch that – I saw Bulo at the scene outside the house, but I didn’t realize he directed the particulars of the ransacking of the room
I only remembered it because I was excited that young Bullo finally had dialogue.
so poetic.
I’m torn on this one. On one hand the plot finally tied everything together. Ethelrida finally got involved in the main plot by revealing the murder that nobody knew was a murder, Orietta got brought to justice, and the ghost was finally explained.
On the other hand there was a lot of stuff that just seemed kind of pointless. Odis’s death would be a big one since I would assume he’d be the one Zelmare would get vengeance on. And as much as I’m glad to see him go, Gaetano’s death was also just out of the blue. Like what was the point of him then because if that’s it then he was nothing but a waste of time for the whole season.Also on the random front is Happy & Leon. The former we’re only just meeting now and all we’ve learned is that he backstabs easily and takes advice from Photographs. And the latter is another problem of this season, Leon’s been around since the start of the season but aside from being ambitious and being bad at his job he hasn’t really been all that important. But now he’s being set up as a power player in the last minute.I’m glad that this show is finally pulling itself together for the finale but it really just feels like it was just killing time to get to this point.
I thought Happy being introduced now felt weird. The Leon story makes sense but his story could have been done without Happy. Or if you are going to bring him in then a couple episodes ago would make sense
Happy was perfectly fine as a background detail. Now as it stands he’s a another body that needs to be dealt with.
A mixed bag for me, too. We get some interesting backstory from Gaetano and about the ghost, and a few resolutions, but the elements didn’t click into place so much as feel stuffed in before time runs out. As plenty have said already, this season made strange decisions about which characters and plots to focus on.
Gaetano makes it sound like the war started when he was 11 (1940 or so for Italy), which would place him at 21 or 22 in 1950. Seems a bit of a reach.
some interesting backstory from GaetanoActually, Gaetano’s backstory confused me. So he was living in the US as a child (then why does he barely speak English?), killed some guy in self-defense when he was 11, so he was shipped back to Italy (to Sardinia? What does Sardinia have to do with Cosa Nostra? And he speaks with a Neapolitan accent). Okay, but wouldn’t Josto know about it? Why did Gaetano need to tell him this story?
In Season 4 the gangs in 1950’s KC are clearly separated into ethnic groups, save for the “kid exchange” fable part of it.In Season 2 the management level of the 1970’s KC mob that moves in on the Gerhardts’ territory is multi-cultural: Mike Milligan and Joe Bulo out in the field, reporting to Hamish Broker back in the home office, etc.Maybe in addition to the Mike Milligan creation story in Season 4 (assuming they show him meeting the heretofore seen only briefly Joe Bulo), it also sets the stage for how the racism element evolves, especially in the context of how…(SPOILER FARGO SEASON 2) …at the end of Season 2 Mike Milligan is rewarded with a promotion to upper-level management (and even encouraged to take up golf!) which turns out to be pencil-pushing.In that light, the best joke of Season 4 is even funnier – during a visit in the park Loy tells Satchel (and I’m paraphrasing badly here), “You and I are going where your intelligence determines your level of success,” and a puzzled Satchel replies, “Florida?” The joke lands on a lot of levels, including it’s a callback to the last line of “Raising Arizona”…. and the kid really dials up the Mike Milligan “nerdy” voice when he says it… and now knowing that Mike Milligan ultimately discovers the definition of “success” doesn’t ever get any less confusing
The problem is that (as I have been saying a lot this season) there’s just so many characters to try and keep track of this season. They’re all of some considerable importance to the plot and giving them ample developments really slows the story down to crawling pace. It not all that bad, there’s some nice developments as we learn who these characters are, but they’re unfortunately done at the cost of build-up of intrigues that the last three seasons of Fargo have more or less perfected.It not that its boring, it not as exciting either. It’s still an interesting watch, just so.Hopefully the finale would bring everything to a nice conclusion with a bow-tie as is customary of all Fargo materials, it sure took a really really long time to get here though.
“takes advice from Photographs”lmao!
Easily the best episode of the season. With all of the elements we expect from Fargo. Loved the scene with Josto and his potential father in-law. Great Fargo dialogue. Gaetano’s death had the randomness that we have come to expect. And we got the explanation of the ghost! The one thing I did not get thouh was Oraetta being by Ethelrida in bed. We just had the scene earlier where Loy’s son was going to be providing protection but Dibrell mentions how she sleeps with a gun. Unless this is somehow supposed to show that she can get to you no matter what…it just felt weird to have her be there right after that.
Apparently Oraetta can be super quiet sneaking around (despite he awkward loud shuffle pretty much all season). We saw Loy’s son sleeping with a gun (?) on a bench by the steps and she went right on by. The way they shot it, it made it seem like she had some kind of supernatural powers but I think that was more for effect than her actually having them.
I worry that all I’ll remember from this forgettable season is Oraetta’s stupid penguin walk.
There was one shot where Oraetta Mayflower really looked like she was wearing Pilgrim shoes.
Before last night’s episode, I didn’t even remember her walking that way before, and yes, it is stupid. Maybe the more outwardly crazy she acts in front of other people, the more the penguin walk comes out.
Re: Gaetano. This is a stretch, but they are riffing on Miller’s Crossing a lot in this season. One of the big riffs in that film is Johnny Casper’s (who sort resembles Gaetano) refrain that he always tells his boys that when you kill someone you “always put one in the brain.” After Gaetano shoots Odis it looks like he is going to follow through with a coup de grace, but doesn’t. He then trips and puts one into his own brain. The gratuitous shot of his skull falling off makes this even more explicit.
Yeah, Gaetano seemed distracted by the peaceful look on Odis’ face, perhaps recognizing the love in it as similar to what he’d felt as an 11-year-old.
Nobody seems to have mentioned this but the guy playing Calameda looks a lot like Gabriel Byrne
Christ, Tom… he knows that
Calameda has reminded me more of The Dane.
I haven’t watched the ep yet, but it kind of sounds like the end of Out of Sight when the fat henchman accidentally shoots himself in the head after tripping on the steps in the rich guy’s house.So, not really a Coen homage, but a contemporary of the Coen’s.
Thank you! That was driving me crazy, trying to figure out where the guy tripping and blowing the top of his head off fell in the Coen’s ouvre!
Not by tripping, but “unexpectedly random death of menacing big guy by shooting his own head” is part of the Coens’ canon too, both in Intolerable Cruelty and in The Ladykillers. Those are deep cuts, I know. But they exist!
Thanks! I’d completely forgotten about Wheezy Joe shooting Clooney with his inhaler, and taking a puff off his gun. But seriously, another Clooney-involved gun accident looks a lot more like Gaetano’s fate, right down to the characters looking similar:
When in doubt, Coen.
My thoughts exactly. The Out of Sight guy on the staircase was all I could see.
I made the same connection to White Boy Bob’s death on the stairs.
That’s exactly what it reminded me of too, albeit more graphic.
white boy bob!
The Roach reminded me of The Gentlemen, which reminded me of of the excellent Buffy episode, Hush and that then reminded me of how subpar this season of Fargo has been. Shrug.I figure the that The Roach has been haunting Ethelrida’s family since the 1830s, which reminded me of Lovecraft Country, which made me think that Michael K. Williams (who’s birthday was on Sunday) would have been a better choice as Loy, but he’s already portrayed a similar character on Boardwalk Empire. Shrug.
Michael K. Williams will always be Omar to me.
Gaetano’s death seemed like more of an Elmore Leonard move to me. It’s the way White Boy Bob dies in Out of Sight, and one of the Crowe brothers trips and falls on his own knife in season 5 of Justified when going after Raylan, which seems appropriate since Timothy Olyphant did his marshal thing in this show this season…
I’ll make my duty to remind everybody who’s trying to locate the correct Gaetano’s death’s Coen reference of the existence of an allegedly minor (I actually like it a lot!) Coen movie called Intolerable Cruelty in which a character looking very much like Gaetano abruptly shoots himself in the head by accident. (I also seem to remember something similar in The Ladykillers, but I never rewatched that one since I found it dreadful).
Oh, that’s why I was thinking Burn After Reading. At least it was a Clooney coen.
I was a bit confused with the timeline of this episode. How much time has passed since last episode? The montage made it seem like the gang war has been going on a while, but Orieta sat around all this time, not fleeing and waiting to confront Ethelrida? Also, how long has Satchel been on that road? The timeline of the Fadda/Cannon war seems to be going much faster than literally everything else. ALSO, the shootout at the slaughterhouse mentioned on the radio last episode… I guess we’re just never going to see that?
I guess the war lasted a while because we go from having snow on the ground everywhere to Ethelrida and her mom talking on the porch with trees full of leaves in the background. It looked like spring time.
I think all it is about this season which feels a little off is Chris Rock’s acting and that due to covid shooting was cut short and instead of waiting and going back and finishing the episodes there was a Frankenstein filler in the beginning and it was definitely felt.
Chris Rock is good, but I agree he is not quite strong enough to really tie together the large ensemble around him. My understanding is that they filmed about 8 episodes before March and then came back in the summer to film the final 2 or 3. Not sure what you mean by filler.
The ending was pretty satisfying; Ethelrida finally being the hero. I’ll overlook they never really justified her badass-ness by having her earn it; she was just that way from the beginning. If she had been the focus of the season, we would have seen her flaws and how she overcame them to become the hero. As is, her supreme confidence and skills were just there, deployed whenever the plot needed them. I think the actress aged a year between the first episodes and this one; she looked older.Lliked O’s scene by E’s bed, the ghost, all of it, but if this is the end of the nurse’s story, or very close to it, I wonder about the point of the character thematically. Not as clear as Malvo in S1 or David Thewlis in S3. Seems like a trivial way to go, getting arrested and that’s it.I kept wondering why Satchel wouldn’t call his parents. Guess he feels they betrayed him by putting him in danger, but that hasn’t been conveyed. I did like his encounter with the racist hillbillies.
I have a lot of qualms about this season, but I think I’m okay with waving off Satchel’s lonely walk in between two potential explanations: one, that it’s 1950, he’s young, and he just doesn’t know how to get in contact with his parents; and two, yes, he’s dealing with abandonment issues and would like to be alone, from having seemingly been abandoned by both Loy and Rabbi, the latter of whom made every promise to stay but disappeared anyway.My only frustration there is that there was no writing to develop Satchel’s character and really show these emotions moving through him. It’s happened for a lot of characters this season.
This point was discussed last week: Rabbi told Satchel it isn’t safe at home, which warning is backed up by the news report Rabbi on the car radio about the shootout at the Kansas City slaughterhouse.
The thing is, those guys in the truck would be back before long with shotguns and friends with shotguns.
I’ll point out that his family’s in hiding. No one’s at the house, Lemuel’s with the Smutnys, Loy’s staying in a hotel, and his mom and grandmom are at an undisclosed location. So if he called home, there’s no one to answer. Still, it seems like this is more a decision on his part than a matter of him not being able to get in touch. It works for the purpose of setting up his persona as Mike Milligan, but I’m hoping the finale provides us a confrontation where it’s clear that he blames his family for Antoon trying to kill him.
“it’s more or less guaranteed the finale is going to spend its time on people we actually care about”- Satchel–
End of list.
Oh come on, Ethelrida is cool too.
Yeah, but she’s gone from smart, above it all teen to…smart, above it all teen who’s finally a bit more involved in the story. Plus for all the danger that’s surrounded her she’s never really seemed in peril.
And she doesn’t have the built-in curiosity factor of “…wait, does she grow up to be..?” that Satchel has in his favor.
This entire season has been interesting. Zach just has some incredibly odd takes on things. Absolutely can’t wait for the finale.
One of the perils of being a professional writer is that sometimes you’re stuck covering a topic long after you’ve grown disenchanted with it. It’s like being in a relationship after you fall out of love with someone.
Aw, I LIKED Odis, I WAS genuinely sad to see him go! And I completely missed that Gaetano shot himself. I’ve been still waiting for the reveal of who the mysterious sniper must have been.I have enjoyed this season, much more than last season, but this episode did show that it WAS possible to give attention to all the plotlines and yet tie them more tightly together and keep up the pacing in a way that had been lacking. I was glad that they even gave Mike– I mean Satchel– some attention even though he’d had all last episode to himself. So for me it was just straight up “Good episode!” than “where has this good episode been all this time?”
Yeah. He was an acquired taste, but I became really sympathetic towards him by the end.He might end up being my most memorable character from this season.
He killed my Deafy. He needed to die.
Yeah. It’s not given much time in the episode, but it seems like his words to Deafy a couple of episodes back weren’t just a front to get him included in the raid, and that in the aftermath of the train station massacre, he went back to really being a cop again, leading raids on both the Faddas and the Cannons. He had a good character arc.
Loved me some Odis but hate that he killed Deafy. I blame Loy for that more than Odis.
I don’t think it was the intent of The Roach to save Ethelrida. (Why would he?) Instead, he appears to be the Spectre of Impending Death, which suggests that Orietta was definitely going to kill her successfully. She just got freaked out when she saw him….
If the Roach’s purpose is to haunt Ethelrida’s family, letting Ethelrida die without offspring might put an end to his spectral mission. She’s Dibrell’s only daughter and Zellmare’s unlikely to continue the bloodline. A disease needs a living host.
A List of Fictional Characters Ranked by Their Success (or Lack Thereof)Why Do Babies Always Come in the Middle of the Night? EditionEthelrida “No. That’s your word. You invented it to make yourself feel bigger. But that’s not what I am.” “I’m assuming you thought their punishment should be monetary. A fine.” “You haven’t seen the thing that makes it priceless, yet.” I love how the show put the small musical stinger “Yeah, she did.” under the final image of her at the end of the episode, before going into the Higher Ground outro. Kumagoro called it that Mr. Snowman (now, more properly, Captain Roach) turned out to be Ethelrida’s protector. Makes sense. He likes sunshine, and she’s as close to sunshine as we get in this show. By the end of the hour, she has two Cannons eating out of the palm of her hand—Lemuel was too hurt by her not remembering about their talk about Charlie Parker for this to be a casual thing. The fact that her interview with Loy is so masterful is a statement on how steel sharpens steel—her confrontations with Deafy and Oraetta prepared her for this moment. Up from the last time she was ranked.Satchel “No ‘you.’ No ‘boy.’ No ‘do what you’re told.’ No everything. This is my world.” Walking back to Kansas City, apparently. But the episode shows us he’s not just walking, he’s figuring things out—taking what he needs to survive, protecting himself from a hostile world. Up big (kinda) from last week.Happy “Decades that tell us the only thing worse than living in darkness is stepping into the light.” He’s the one you’re talking to, even if he says it’s Leon. Not sure if the pair of photographs his valet brings with him are supposed to be his living partners or deceased forebears with whom he communes, but but as a group, the lot of them turned out to be backstabbers. Although his beef with Loy is ostensibly about the beating Leon took, it seems to really be motivated by the fact that he thinks Loy’s gotten too big for his britches. Previously unranked.Leon “Just sad I can’t kill him twice.” I’ll be really upset if this prat kills Loy, since that would be the first time he’s demonstrated any kind of competence. My money’s still on Ziro. Up from last time. Death prediction: since Omie’s gone, Opal might have the pleasure of taking Leon off the board.Dibrell “That girl ain’t met a trap she can’t squeeze out of or a hole she can’t fit into.” “I smell him more than see him. Low tide.” “And he choked the life out of that man with his own mouth full of seawater.” The big takeaway from this season, it seems, is that we’re going to regret the show not having given us more time with Ethelrida. Scenes like Ethelrida talking over the Curse with her mom, which the actress playing Dibrell knocks out of the park, are a reminder that we should’ve spent more time with the season’s most sympathetic character, learning how her world works. For example, while the show told us clearly that Ethelrida speaks French, it didn’t do nearly as well telling us about her interest in art. It might’ve been a good idea to pass on one monologue about America or another to give us some cue about that. Down slightly the last time she was ranked.Lemuel “Yes ma’m. Sensible. Can’t be too careful these days.” Lemuel’s right to be stung by Ethelrida forgetting their earlier talk, but when a young lady asks you to run interference for her with a serial killer, and you get her an appointment with a mob boss, that should earn you some points. He loses a few for letting Oraetta slip by him, but hopefully, no harm, no foul.Buel “How long have I been doing your hair? I ever cut you?” “And now they want to snuff us out. Us! Cause after they string me up, they’re coming after you!” Buel shows fire and savvy that belies Loy’s (forever repeated in promos) rollercoaster monologue to her. We knew she was tough when she stared down Calamita with a shotgun; we didn’t know that Loy is the mob outsider and she’s the one who’s connected to the larger underworld. Up from her last ranking.Loy “Yeah but how many strikes is a strikeout?” “You’re always losing til you win. That’s why it’s called an underdog.” “My missus, passing a 12-inch head through a six-inch hole. On my best day, I’m half as tough as that. And this isn’t my best day. That’s behind me, I think.” As I mentioned a couple of episodes back, Rock’s performance as Loy is best when the gangster’s on his heels, a bit. And Loy, losing the war of attrition with the Italians, watching his reinforcements sign up with the enemy, and still reeling from the loss of Satchel is on his heels. Down from last time, but with a glimmer of hope.Josto “I miss you kid, when you coming home?” “That’s the new guy’s problem. But my guess is that it rhymes with ‘flurder.’” “Jesus, I ain’t been fucked this rough since prison.” Josto knows he’s playing a weak, overextended hand, a fact he dissects when he complains that the alderman’s smart play would be to shake him down for concessions, not call off the wedding. The Fabulous Fadda Boys being a limited time act is one of those “inherent unreliability of time” things that we talked about last episode. Down from last time.Oraetta “The devil’s got a special place in hell for people with small minds who betray their betters’ trust, and take advantage of their charitable acts.” “What’s it like to be so sure you’re right and know that nobody cares?” Oraetta smells Captain Roach before she sees him, which is more than she can say for the cops in her apartment. Being downed by something so small as Dr. Harvard surviving to rat her out might be a terrible disappointment to those who see her as Lorne Malvo’s successor. Those expectations were a bit much, and more on us than on the show. Only down slightly from last time.In MemoriamGaetano “You make it personal. Can’t be personal.” “Eleven. But already like an ox!” Adelina got him sent back to Sardinia, but Groucho lost an eye and his daughter’s virtue. Dies because he couldn’t take a high curb with a loaded gun, a nice callback to his big pratfall earlier in the season, and presaged by Odis stumbling in the same spot moments earlier. The crazy thing is, for his onetime nemesis Josto, he might have just been the only one holding things together. I’m trying to remember when the Coens featured a character tripping to his death by a similar self-inflicted gunshot. I have an image in my mind of a character having a truly gruesome “blow his head off by tripping with a shotgun” moment, but I can’t place it to a movie. Maybe it was Ballad of Buster Scruggs?Odis “It’s against police policy to accept gifts from the chain gang. Which is ironical because I can give you all the bullets I want.” In a life dominated by fear and anxiety, Odis goes out on a moment of serenity, accepting the inevitability of Gaetano and remembering his girl singing to him.Other Quotables and NotablesOpal “It’s the moon, my mama said. Babies come like the tide.”Alderman Whatshisname “What’s this, a secret meeting of the Hi Ho club?” “Listen to me, Eggplant Einstein!” “I’m running away from you like a fart in an elevator.” Eggplant Einstein might be the put down of the season.
The episodes blow, but these are always enjoyable.
Gaetano “You make it personal. Can’t be personal.” That beating must have really scrambled his brain, cause that’s pretty much the polar opposite of the pre-beating Gaetano we were introduced to.It looks like Loy’s going to pin Daddy Fadda’s death on Josto, and the improbability of Gaetano just falling and blowing his own brains out might not look good for Josto after that.Josto reminds me of Michael from The Office sometimes.
Yeah, it seems like Omie literally beat some sense into Gaetano. It’s rare that anyone’s thought process and emotional state improve after being punched repeatedly by a trained boxer, but post-beating Gaetano was actually an appealing character.The one fact that was missing from Ethelrida’s presentation to Loy is that she knows (but may not yet recognize) that Josto and Oraetta are an item, because she saw him leaving Oraetta’s place the fateful day she came to clean it. I’m not sure that she’s seen Josto to know that he was Donatello’s son; even though she was at the other funeral home ordering supplies on the day of Donatello’s service.Either which way, it’s a good call that Gaetano’s death might get pinned on Josto, possibly after Donatello’s is.
I was trying to remember whether/how she knew about Josto and Oraetta’s trysts, cause I don’t see how the ring could stop the war without tying it to Josto.The rest of Ethelrida’s presentation was kinda BS. If Loy’s the defacto owner, those invoices don’t mean shit, and the punishment was loss of ownership, no matter how much that cost them, and she doesn’t know Loy lost exactly 27 men, cause they wouldn’t all make it to Smutny’s. Satchel, for one, wouldn’t be included (if he was actually dead). Rabbi too.
Even if Loy doesn’t know about Josto and Oraetta, Loy can use the ring against Josto in a similar way to how Josto bluffed to use Satchel’s “death” against Loy. Just the fact that Donatello was murdered by someone who took a trophy is enough to create suspicion against Josto, the person who profited from his death. As Buel said earlier in the episode, all he needs is the brothers gone, it doesn’t matter if Loy gets Josto or if New York does him in.Ethelrida knows about Satchel because the Smutnys did a memorial service for him (although I wouldn’t count the boy as one of Loy’s “men,” and I don’t think Ethelrida did, either). Rabbi was never one of Loy’s men. The only Cannon soldier who might be unaccounted for at the funeral home is Omie.I think Ethelrida’s preparation mattered for her, to build her own confidence and conviction that the result she wanted was right and worth fighting for (we saw her falter previously when she was unprepared for her interview with Deafy); and I think her presentation worked to convince Loy that she was someone serious and worth listening to, even if he wasn’t convinced of anything until she played her trump card. It was a lot like Loy’s own credit card pitch in the second(?) episode, where for obvious reasons of racism the things he would say didn’t make a difference, but Loy came prepared to say them anyway. She couldn’t count on having a piece of art to discuss with him (although I wonder if Thurman might’ve mentioned seeing it when he was in Loy’s house, delivering the puke money; IIRC, it was hanging threateningly over Loy’s shoulder while they talked).
Duh! Rabbi was a Fadda man. He was so loyal to Satchel that I got confused.
Looks like the media covered the gang war pretty closely, probably wouldn’t take much for such a smart young lady to count them up.
Loy being defacto owner doesn’t mean jack shit to the courts and I get the argument, that he can kill them but he’s in a war. He can’t afford the Smutny’s making a legal scene really. Ethelrida is right, they’ve got the bodies, the signed for payments, and frankly too many funerals in a few days/weeks to have Loy completely tied up in the courts and suddenly the cops.
After the beating Gaetano also figured out Josto’s scheme to get him killed by the Cannon gang, and figured out Loy released him to drive a wedge between the two brothers.Neither brainstorm seems like something pre-beating Gaetano would have had.
It looks like Loy’s going to pin Daddy Fadda’s death on Josto, and the improbability of Gaetano just falling and blowing his own brains out might not look good for Josto after that. This is what I’m thinking. And iirc, Ethelrida saw Josto at Oraetta’s, so there are a lot of dots that can easily be connected to make a picture of him ordering his own father’s death so he could take over.
And since Ebal was in the room when Josto gave Loy the ok to kill Gaetano, it’s going to be real hard for Josto to sell that Gaetano tripped and blew his own head off instead of Josto killing him himself. Regardless of how close they’ve been the past couple episodes, there’s been a lot more bad blood than good between them.
Kumagoro called it that Mr. Snowman (now, more properly, Captain Roach) turned out to be Ethelrida’s protector.I did! Not that I understand why he does it, if he’s the ghost of a slave ship captain. Maybe he has to redeem himself to move on, like an unfinished business. Except, Ethelrida’s ancestor was responsible for his death, so he should be a vengeful ghost more than a redemption-seeking ghost. Oh well, I’m pretty sure it won’t be explained anyway. “blow his head off by tripping with a shotgun” moment, but I can’t place it to a movie. Maybe it was Ballad of Buster Scruggs?I’ll be of service this week by solving this riddle. The reference is 100% Intolerable Cruelty, when big muscle guy Wheezy Joe abruptly shoots himself in the head by accident. One year and one movie later, they recycled the same beat in The Ladykillers, too.
I did! Not that I understand why he does it, if he’s the ghost of a slave ship captain. Maybe he has to redeem himself to move on, like an unfinished business. Except, Ethelrida’s ancestor was responsible for his death, so he should be a vengeful ghost more than a redemption-seeking ghost. Oh well, I’m pretty sure it won’t be explained anyway.I’ve been wondering about this. Maybe the ghost’s vengeance is more about making the Roulette family suffer than actually causing their deaths—I mean, we’ve seen him appear a number of times when death wasn’t imminent. It’s also possible that the ghost wants to keep on torturing his killer’s descendants. So far as we know, Ethelrida’s premature death would mark the end of that family line (Dibrell and Zellmare don’t seem likely to have any more kids), so if the ghost wants to stay in business, it had to stop Oraetta from poisoning her. A weird side note is that Captain Roach also took a peculiar interest in Lemuel when he first came to the funeral home, and it doesn’t look completely out of the question that Lemuel and Ethelrida might end up together, eventually producing a next generation for the Captain to haunt.I’ve previously been on the side that the ghost wouldn’t be explained, but Ethelrida’s talk with her mom not only explained it, it also suggested that we might see some resolution (although I don’t know where they’re going to find the time with just one episode left). Dibrell suggested that Zellmare had tried getting rid of the ghost, but she couldn’t because she wasn’t “what he likes.” It set up the idea that Ethelrida, who certainly seems to be what Captain Roach likes, could be the one to rid the family of the curse.
What you wrote could very well be. I gotta say, though, it doesn’t look like Ethelrida’s folks are particularly worried by the ghost. And he doesn’t seem to do much in the way of the kind of haunting that drives you crazy; he just hovers there sometimes. It’s a truly bizarre story beat, as it’s wont to be.
I’m not sure about the parents not being worried. Admittedly Thurman’s so clueless I’m not sure he’s even aware of it (although I’m glad that other non-Black people, like Swanee and Oraetta, have been able to sense Roach, so it’s not just a magical black person trope). Dibrell looked quite shaken talking about the Roach with her daughter. And Zellmare’s looked heavily traumatized each of the times we’ve seen him visit her.
Soderbergh did it in Out of Sight before the Coen Brothers. White Boy Bob trips on the stairs and shoots himself in the head when they’re raiding Albert Brook’s house near the end.
But this show is called Fargo, not Schizopolis.
wow! i love this ranking game, i’m bummed i just found this review and your wily handicapping so late, with just one episode to go. i’m so glad they finally explained the ghost-guy. when ethelrida’s auntie saw that ghost behind Odie the other week, after her girlfriend and Deafy got shot, i kept replaying it..?? was that ghost ever shown before?also, as i remember, leon just showed up, saying, ‘you’re my idol, let me play, i could help you!’ … now he’s a favored relative of a different wiseguy? okay. and if loy’s wife is somehow related to happy, then leon is related to loy’s wife too? its disjointed, in the fadda crime family, every relation is explained episodes ago. i wondered what happened to Xero, too. so, i thought deafy and odie and the gunplay girls were all going to be bigger. now, i’m whiny. i can’t wait to see the ending but i’m afraid i won’ like itif they send oraetta to womens’ prison, she’ll poison the pruno.
Thanks! There are links above to the three previous rankings (in Ethelrida, Satchell, and Leon’s entries), if you’re interested. I think I started doing this for episode 4.Yeah, the train station was the first time the ghost appeared in public, or that anyone acknowledged they could see it. Before that, every time it’d shown up it wasn’t clear if it was supposed to be a literal ghost or some kind of fantasy sequence metaphor that was showing us the state of mind of one of the Roulette girls or the other.Yeah, that’s been bugging me about Leon, too. I think if they’d conceived of Leon as the cousin of a regional boss from the get-go, the character’s portrayal should’ve been a little less ingratiating and more entitled. If you’re someone who thinks they’re born to be in charge, the attitude is less “Boss! Let me prove to you that I’m more than just muscle!” and more “When is it that you’re gonna teach me to do management stuff, like you promised?”
[EDITED – I posted this before I realized at least 5 other people have already posted about Wheezy Joe in the comments. I’m sorry – I promise I’ll do better next time!]“I have an image in my mind of a character having a truly gruesome ‘blow his head off by tripping with a shotgun’ moment…”
In “Intolerable Cruelty” (which was pretty forgettable but it had a few good jokes, which makes it better than most movies), Wheezy Joe died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head when he distractedly mistook his pistol for his asthma inhaler
You might be thinking of Willem DaFoe’s death in WILD AT HEART. He tripped with a shotgun and blew his jaw off.
THANK YOU! That’s definitely the image I had stuck in my head!
Was there a COVID filming gap before this last episode? Satchel and Ethelrida looked and sounded noticeably older in this ep than the last one – not acting, but the actors actually growing up during filming.
Gaetano’s death was similar to Danny Crowe’s on Justified except he had a knife. Also the doctor guy at the beginning of World War Z.
I really enjoyed Josto and Gaetano being buddy-buddy as brothers for a few episodes, which has been a way more fun interaction than Gaetano looking around at stuff creepily. Gaetano being the reasonable one in various interactions was fun, too.
Agreed, and right when they were getting interesting together.
The great thing about them in the last couple of episodes was that Gaetano was deferential to Josto while at the same time not buying his bullshit. The perfect moment was during Gaetano’s story about being exiled to Sardinia, Josto interrupts to say he, too, has a big dick. And Gaetano’s priceless response is “Big. Like a pickle?” which is the kind of shit you can say to someone when you’re friends and you love each other.
that’s a good one.
Gaetano accidentally blowing his own head off felt like a callback to Wheezy Joe’s ill-fated attempt to relieve his asthma symptoms in Intolerable Cruelty to me.
Man, I can’t believe I had to read ALL the comments to find someone who thought about Intolerable Cruelty’s Wheezy Joe! I understand that it’s not the most popular entry in the Coens’ filmography, but still!
I don’t know whose fault this oversight was, but I do know that when I find them…. I’m gonna nail their ass!
And they won’t get that reference, either!
I don’t remember all of his earlier appearances – but last night made me think that the Roach isn’t so much haunting the Smutneys – actively seeking to do them harm – but is a wildly unsettling specter of impending death – he may even be an early warning signal. Zelmare sees him at the KC Station shootout prior to Olyphant and Odis showing up; he’s in Ethelrida’s room to freak out Oreatta. Based on his origin story – why would the descendants of the righteous victim (slave great-grand pa) be haunted by the ghost of the evil bastard who met a justifiable end?PS – If slave great grand-pa died at sea after killing the Roach – how is he anyone’s great grandpa?
Season as a whole is kind of a miss, but still some good bits. And the ending was pretty cool. One of the best slow smiles since Colbert doing his Herman Cain impression!
Again, I make my Westworld analogy: This is a shit show with no logic, no characters, no emotional charge, and no story. Nothing matters in the plot, none of the characters are engaging or even believable. I’ve seen high school plays that had better stories. And Happy as a tacked-on character had the feeling of desperation, like Rudy Giuliani waving around a folder full of blank paper. Hawley is, alas, just another hack who gets huge funding because of somebody else’s previous work (whomever penned Season 2.)
I had to stop reading this review after you refer to Odis’s “twitchiness” and suggested that it needed to have relevance to the storyline. Why does the observable manifestation of OCD have to have a plot purpose? Does a character being left-handed, or brown-haired, have to serve a plot purpose?
If there were several moments throughout the season specifically focusing on those elements, yes.
I honestly thought Odis’ OCD issues (particularly his delays with opening doors) would have a story pay off because it was highlighted so many times in the series.
It did pay off…. he needed to open his car door to get his gun which had fallen between the seat and the door frame, and he couldn’t do it because he had to go through his ridiculous door lock routine!
Oh, damn, I didn’t catch that. Thanks.
Weather has now been an issue in both this and last week’s episode. For a Kansas winter, Satchel is experiencing surprisingly mild weather during his walkabout with the dog.Also, regarding last week’s demise of the Rabbi, it takes place in December (or January). Tornado season in Kansas is mid-April through June. Not a tough thing for a scriptwriter to ascertain.—Jim Cantore
I don’t recall the context of Roach’s appearances before the last episode, but when he appeared in that one, Zelmare escapes getting shot by Odis at point-blank range. He appears in this episode and Ethelrida escapes getting a lethal shot.My guess is Roach is the one who is cursed to protect their family to atone for the earthly atrocities he inflicted on their ancestor.
Gaetano’s death TOTALLY reminded me of White Boy Bob’s death in “Out of Sight”.
But it was a direct reference to Wheezy Joe accidentally and out of the blue shooting himself in Intolerable Cruelty. Same kind of big guy, too.
This episode was ok. but man, Ethelrida is not a good character. She is something of a Mary Sue with the personality of a wooden plank. Everyone else had a developing character arch and she hasn’t really changed since the first episode.
No one’s going to agree with you. But I will. At least about the personality (I hesitate to use the “M” word). Ethelrida is kind of an emotionless void, that doesn’t really react to anything when put in interesting situations. For our central hero who barely gets any scenes, I’d like more of an impression. So I’d been scratching my head why people think she’s so great, and a few reviews ago, in regards to why her lack of story has been so frustrating, Zack said this: “…so little time on getting into what it means to be a mixed raced teenager with big dreams…”
I admit this made me chuckle. It’s interesting for a few reasons. Not only because he sounds like the white people in Get Out when he talks like this, but given what we knew of the plot up to that point, there was no reason to think the show would explore that (and they still haven’t), which makes it feel as though love of Ethelrida is more about the idea of her, rather than anything she had actually contributed to the season as a character.
So finally she gets her big Girlboss moment this week, and as expected, it’s showered with praise. But I was turned off because she’ll get pretentious about fine art, and brag that she knows several languages, and highlight how she’s an ace detective, and she’ll out-wit any adult in any room at 17 because no one can match her intellect, and it’s all… a bit much. But at least she finally made an impression: She’s the over-achieving know-it-all, and if it were any other character on the show, people wouldn’t mind if they were knocked down a peg. But at least the plot is coming together
We’re all supposed to admire for for her sassy plucky-ness but seriously, would you ever want to be friends with someone that arrogant in real life?
Tracy Flick…
Ha! Totally. But at least we got to know Tracy Flick. Ethelrida’s character could totally be that and that’s fine. We just barely spent any time with her for me to say she was great
She’s the one character who isn’t a caricature, she’s the person who is providing the audience’s point of view and the scenes with her and Jessie Buckley are awesome
Actually, Ethelrida is a total caricature…. the super-competent, super-intellectual black girl who’s smarter than everybody else in the room. Not exactly original.
That’s a caricature ???? ok then
She hasn’t changed one bit because she’s written as being perfect. Seriously , she doesn’t have a single character flaw?
Is Gaetano’s death a reference to a similar accidental gunshot in a Coen brothers movie? I can’t think of one; the closest that comes to mind is a scene in Burn After Reading, but it’s not self-inflicted in the literal sense.Not that I can recall, but it’s very similar to the death of [spoiler of film from 1998] White Boy Bob in Soderbergh’s Out of Sight.
This season is terrible. Season 3 had its issues but at least it had a sense of purpose and focus and wasn’t cluttered with meaningless side characters. This one does have its moments, I guess, but like the review highlights – things just happen, often times for no reason or a reason that isn’t particularly interesting.
The reviews this season all sound like a kid forced to eat liver for dinner. No good points without several bad points. This is an amazing show and television is better because of it. Maybe the reviewer needs a palate cleanser like a few episodes of “Masked Singer” or “Grey’s Anatomy” to appreciate this.
not that it “means” all that much, but there is a definite connection between Otis (the mine-sweeper vet who is plagued by ticks he uses to keep himself alive) being killed, and then his killer is immediately killed in a mine-like death.
i know a secret i picked up about satchel’s future. it might be a bit of a spoiler, but i really want to divulge it before sunday night! maybe i should keep quiet… ok, i’ll write, “SPOILER ALERT” here, and scroll down, so you are warned. don’t read below.okay. remember the fargo season 2, which took place in 1979? there was a character in that season, the only African-American character in it, i believe, played by Bokeem Woodbine. they mentioned off-handedly, that he was from kansas city. his character’s name is Mike Milligan. so this character is an adult, grown male from kc by 1979. now, the kindly irish gangster back in the 1950’s season 4 fargo, played by ben whishaw, is named ‘Rabbi Milligan’ (a play on how he turned traitor for the jewish family he was traded to). so i know what happens to satchel. he turns into mike milligan and turns up in season 2. !!! and as i remember he lived at the end of 2, so maybe season 5 is present day Bokeem playing satchel loy mike milligan! yayyy!p.s. i’m not sure if this counts, its not a Coen brothers film, but one of the henchmen had that same slip-n-fall/self anihilation act, on a stairs, at the end of 1998 “Out of Sight”. ?
Not a spoiler.
Welp I knew something was going to happen to Gaetano because they gave him some backstory that humanized him. Total kiss of death.
Ethelrida is by far the most compelling character in this, and I wish we’d had more of her. Second most compelling character would be Satchel “Mike Milligan” Cannon, followed by the other Milligan. Loy’s good, Josto’s good, the nurse is wacky, the rest I don’t care much about.About “There’s maybe a suggestion near the end that he finally finds some peace in death “ … not the peace in death so much as the peace in no longer trying to fight it off at every turn. He got to live for just a few seconds before he died.
I like that Ethelrida was brought back into focus, but let’s not pretend that episode 1 made it seem like she was a main character. I mean she is a main character but her screen time dwindled after that opening episode. This season has been terribly unfocused. I’m really not sold on Chris Rock’s performance as a gang leader, and I can probably say the same for Schwartzman but I guess his character is supposed to look like someone a gang would not respect or listen to. I thought episode 1 was great but it’s really been downhill from there… with the exceptions being Ethelrida’s aunt and her friend as well as Doctor Senator.
My favorite comedy moment of the season: Oraetta being arrested and yelling “police!!” I nearly did a spit take on that one.
“Oraetta getting caught because Doctor Harvard failed to die just underlines how sloppy her attempt to murder him was.”Well yes, she was rattled by the letter, but you also have to remember that up till now Oraetta has only been killing the sick and injured. Doctor Harvard may have been the first healthy and uninjured person she tried to poison. That, combined with the fact that she was panicking over the letter (who knows my secret!) made her forget that she should probably increase the dose.
What lazy writing. “Hey, let’s have some one-dimensional characters be aggressively racist and also stupid so the audience hates them, then have them immediately get their comeuppance so the audience cheers and we win free brownie points forever!” And they do that twice in one episode. It’s the same as making one of your characters a pedophile: No character development needed, just an automatic audience emotional reaction button. The Coens never picked such low-hanging fruit, in my recollection. The mayor/governor/whatever in OBWAT was part of the KKK, but he was more than just a cardboard cutout of a punching bag.