Fargo loves a good misdirect. Remember the bit in this week’s episode — “The Useless Hand,” the penultimate episode of the show’s stellar fifth season — where Dorothy opens up all the gas valves on Roy Tillman’s stove? You anticipate fireworks that never come. Roy smells the gas, stops one of his dipshit minions from lighting a cigarette, turns off the stove, has the boys open all the doors and windows, boom, problem solved.
All the gambit manages to do is tip Roy off that Dorothy has been in the house, which he honestly might have eventually guessed anyway. (He’s very quick to figure out she’s hiding someplace she thinks they wouldn’t expect.) And he would have figured that out the moment he went up to his bedroom and found his wife knocked out cold — not that the sight gives him a second’s thought of stopping his hunt to help the woman when he does stumble across her. Not our Roy!
The point is that neither expected outcome, neither the worst nor the best, comes to pass. The gas doesn’t make or break Dorothy’s escape attempt. She doesn’t kill Roy with it, and she doesn’t get killed because of it. (It’s a close call in the end, but again, it would have been a close call regardless.) The show just wants you to think something might happen. Creator Noah Hawley, who wrote this episode, constructed the show’s entire approach to action and suspense around allowing the viewer’s mind to spin as fast as it can for as long as it can before he finally lowers the boom.
Later in the episode, state trooper Whit Farr warns the task force of feds and state cops he’s assembled to rescue Dorothy not to shoot at her even if she appears armed and dangerous, which she almost certainly will. “This story,” he tells them, “will not end with us crushing the victim with the helping hand.” Puts an idea into your head, doesn’t it? Doesn’t beat you over the head with it, but slides it right in there nonetheless. And there it will stay for one more week. You can rotate it in your mind like a cube if you want. I’m pretty sure Noah Hawley wants you to.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo for Decider.
Tags: decider, fargo, reviews, TV, TV reviews