The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 8 Recap

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

Jo and Rob are back to break down the eighth episode of ‘Fargo’ Season 5. They open by reading through a handful of listener emails on how this season is depicting the Midwest and its culture. Next, they discuss the rise and fall of Danish Graves, the likelihood of an effective Gator redemption arc, and Roy Tillman’s viciousness. Along the way, they revisit this season’s themes of debt and the characters’ constructed realities. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producer: Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Galaxy Lights, Coachella, Lightning Bolt Necklaces. 20203 was the year of Scandival. On March 3rd, one cheating scandal launched a reality TV investigation that generated hundreds of conspiracy theories, thousands of podcast episodes, and millions of dollars in revenue. I'm Jody Walker, host of an American Scandival. One retrospective story told in three salacious parts. Listen, December 26th on the Ringer Reality Feast. Feed.

Talk to the Prestige TV. Podcast feed is a new year, but it's the same us. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me, the great Rob Mahoney. We're here to talk about episode eight of Fargo blanket. Rob, how are you doing? Happy New Year. Hello, and welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed.

I'm Joanna Robinson. And now throwing to my two other Joanna Robinson's down the line to joyfully mock our way through this podcast, Joe. What are their middle initials, though? was an ABC. We'll see. Yeah, what was, it was Arthur? I can't even remember what the ABC is worth this point. There was an A and a C. Yeah, I don't know if there was a B. I don't know if we got that far. Hello, we're here to talk about this great episode of television. We're here to celebrate the

rise and fall of one, Mr. Danish Graves, the Great Day Foley, had a great episode of television, and then exited. Far too soon. Parking reminders, here in the feed, Sean Vanity and I will be back at some point to talk about the curse. When, I could not tell you, but at some point, we'll be back to talk about the curse. And I don't know what else we're planning to do on this feed in the next

couple weeks. Though I'll just put this out there. I'm not promising anything. I'll just say a new season of True Detective is starting in a couple weeks. Seems prestigious to me, but we'll see what happens. The word of mouth, very promising. All right. Like what I'm hearing. We already spoiled the death of this episode,

I suppose, but just spoiler warning for Fargo on Season five episode eight. That's what we're here to talk about. Not nine and ten, just up through eight. And then as always, you can email us at John Ham's nipple rings at gmail.com. That's John Ham's nipple rings at gmail.com. We got so many emails over the last couple weeks. Y'all were really busy over the holidays. I think a lot of people may be caught up with Fargo over the holidays. I think so. We just got a big influx of email. So we'll do my best to represent what we got while not just spending the whole hour reading out emails.

This episode is written by Noah Hawley and Thomas Bazooka. Wow, I do not know how to pronounce that name, but I hope it's Bazooka. And directed by Sylvan White. I want to shout out just one sort of visual in this episode. There's a bunch of great visuals, but I just really sort of paused and gasped and rewound. The lighting in the, what we call it a cab shed, cabin. Yeah, definitely a shed. Horrible place where Dorothy is being capped.

but their first interaction between Roy and Dorothy, it's just like lit. She's in this sort of like angelic golden glow. Yeah, bathed in it, really. Yeah, but the way it's lit by like cracks in the wall and all this sort of stuff, and it's just this incredible golden light. And this really dark, hopeless place,

I thought was really like a stunning visual in this episode. Yeah, the way they set up all the visuals around the cabin, the kind of slow zooms into it, the very like vivid, red siding that we end up spitting a lot of time with on this episode. I think mercifully in some cases where we zoom outside the cabin and we don't actually have to watch what happens inside of it. But that visual against the stark kind of landscape,

the muted white, gray landscape, that really stuck out to me. And it's certainly inside, once we get inside, as you're saying, the light and dark, the way that stage, I mean, this is very difficult stuff to shoot in a scene that's that dark. And yet they make everything really, really pop. We had a lot of emails about people before they saw this episode, after Linda last week, a lot of people wrote his email speculating that perhaps the postcard under the windmill was to signify that Linda herself was buried under the windmill.

And I would say after this week's episode, that seems more and more likely as a possibility. But what I like when you rewatch this episode out, having seen poor day fully get dragged into, you know, the hole under the basin under the windmill. at the end of the episode, that slow push into the cabin, into the shed at the beginning, the windmill's in frame. And the windmill's just in frame and a lot of these shots, like Roy's slow walk to the toxic cover, which we'll talk about in a minute, like, all that sort of stuff. The windmill is like right there over his shoulder.

And so if Linda is indeed there, it might be interesting to go back and maybe we're watched the whole season just thinking about like why we chose to show the windmill when we did if Linda was under the windmill the whole time. Absolutely. There's definitely something to, going back to last week's episode, Dot may not have realized that that's where Linda was buried, but subconsciously, she's internalized that something bad has been happening around there. Quick Cohen corner this week, two things really quickly. One is that when Monk takes the axe to that old lady's terrible son, as he's walking out the door, and every people emailed us to let us know, it's set up to look very similar to when Steve Bishemi takes an ass. to his shoulders as he's walking out the door, having demanded money, walks out the door,

Peter Stormare follows right behind him and takes him down with the axe. So that was probably that reference. And then also, someone pointed out to us that Scotty is the name of the Lundegarde's son in the film. So, like, our Scotty is just named the same thing

as the kid in the original film. And as we've already learned, Toto is not a scotty. Gotti Docs, so let's just be very clear about that. We've been berated on this particular point. But yeah, I feel like Fargo is always really great about little nameplay like that. I think one thing we haven't called

out this season yet is Indira Olmsted, that Olmsted is Marge's maiden name in the original movie as well. So there's always these little ties whether they're meant to be literal as in these are members of the same family or they're just kind of evoking similar things. I love that. Minnesota Nice Corner

this week. Yeah, what do you think was the nicest? Was it when a guy chained up his ex-wife in a shed? Was that the nicest moment? Well, it's getting increasingly hard to, like, it was just the wrong time in the season to introduce this concept of, like, what's the most Minnesota nice thing?

But I thought perhaps it was the moderator of the debate saying, does Stark County really need a tank? Like, as nicely as she said it, you know what I mean? Do you think Danish Graves got to her, or is she just an intrepid reporter and she's just trying to hold authority to account? I think Danish got to everyone, right? Because, like, Roy is calling out for, like, the, I don't know, the debate commissioner or whatever.

Yeah, election daddy. Yeah, election daddy, right? And like, and the way he, the way Roy greeted her at the beginning, it seemed like he assumed that she would be quite friendly and supportive and she wasn't. So, yeah, I think Danish got to everyone. So good. What a great scheme. Our email about Minnesota nice to speak, though, is maybe one of my favorites we ever got because it came with a news clip that I watched. Andy wrote in to say,

The Roundabout craze, sweeping the nation, has finally made it to the Midwest, about two years later in the coast, just like every fad, uh, or pop culture. Uh,

pause. Two years, we've had roundabouts in California for a very, very long time, so I don't know. Wait, when was this article dated?

No, I mean, this email is from Andy was today, I mean, or this week or whatever, so. This is someone literally saying

Minnesotans are recently getting roundabouts? And he's right. But I would just say, I would just say the gap is not two years. It's more like 15 years or something like that. Okay. That's more reasonable. Let's go back to Andy's email. Andy says, locals love to complain about them and will never understand them. Even the few who do understand the rules still cause chaos because they're so damn nice and polite. They will stop even when they have the right away and wave you in. No, keep going. You're in the circle. Four-way stop signs weren't much better. Every trip is a game of chicken. Try to be the more polite driver. You go ahead.

No, you go ahead. Somebody fucking go. You have the damn right away. Andy sent a news story from, I think it was like two months ago, local Minnesota station about roundabouts. And it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life because literally these newscasters have taken upon themselves to like explain how roundabouts were.

They're like these newfangled things that we're doing. Here's how you operate them because no one knows how. And I was just like, this is incredible. So thank you, Andy, for that. Maybe Minnesota is just too nice for the roundabout as a concept, you know. It is true that they require a certain ruthlessness. Like, you got to be gunning for your spot in an actual busy roundabout. Maybe they really just aren't cut out for that up there.

Yeah, maybe they got to go back to the faraway intersection. In that news story, I learned that Anoka, Minnesota is considered the Halloween capital of the world. And then I looked this up and this is, like, kind of true. There's a whole history of how Halloween celebrations started in Anoka, Minnesota, which just felt like it fed back into our whole. Oh, yeah. It's a real-life Halloween town. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they have a year-round Halloween committee. There's like a 501C, and they have like a year-round Halloween committee that plans out, like, I think it's 30 days of Halloween celebration every year in Anoka, Minnesota. So good to know. While we're in Midwest Geography Corner, a couple things. Number one, we got a lot of responses to this question of like, is Stark County North Dakota, too far from Minnesota to make it seem like something that they could go just jaunt back and forth.

And we should say this week's episode, we're in Bismarck, at the beginning, we're in Bismarck, North Dakota, which is like halfway between Stark County and Fargo, North Dakota, thereabouts. But Kirsten wrote, Dickinson, North Dakota, seat of Stark County to the Minneapolis Metro is a straight shot on I-94. No curves, no hills, no traffic. It's seven hours if you're going the speed limit. Gator could easily make this a six-hour drive. It's doable. So that's what Kirsten says about.

It's just a breezy six-hour. No problem. The Bay to L.A. Hopefully breezier than that. Yeah, you're not on the five. Got a lot of emails for people correcting me on my idea that maybe people in windmill country don't have, in tornado country don't have windmills. Oh, no.

What have you done, Joe? Wildly incorrect. Okay. But most interesting, genuinely, this is fascinating. I did not know. I don't know anything about the Dakotas. So I learned a lot from this email from Dell. I was talking, yes, about the Minnesota to Stark County Drive.

But he also said, even more so, Noah and the writers have nailed the Western North Dakota mindset. Many have long held an opinion, including me, that when the Dakota territory was divided into two states, it was done incorrectly. Instead of North and South Dakota, it should have been divided into East and West Dakota. The eastern part of both states is more like Minnesota and Iowa, whereas the western parts of both states is more like Montana and Wyoming, both in physical geography. as well as political and mental mindset. Since Stark County is in Western North Dakota, and makes perfect sense for the Western above-the-law cowboy sheriff Roy Tillman

to be king of the county, this person would not exist in the eastern part of the state where someone like Chuck Klosterman could become the sheriff. I believe that Chuck can also confirm this for you. So I haven't checked with Chuck Klosterman yet, if this is true, but this is fascinating and interesting to me. And this happens all the time, inside of a state, you've got a massive,

culture shift from one end to the other. Washington State is like this from the western end to the eastern end. But yeah, this idea of Western North Dakota specifically giving us still this sort of Fargo connected tissue, but giving us

this sort of Western vibe, which was why we rewatched no country from old men and other things like that. What do you think, Rob? I'm here every time we want to talk regional specificity. Every time our listeners and the Fargo watchers

are emailing in telling us about what their part of the state thinks about the other part of the state or their suburb thinks about the other suburb, I want all of it. Obviously Midwest-specific is helpful in this case but I just love that kind of regionalism. I don't know why. You and I are from big states. I'm in California.

You're from Texas. How would you define where you live in Texas versus other parts of Texas? Is there a massive culture shift? Oh, there's There's massive culture shifts. And even among the bigger cities, right? Like there's a big Dallas-Hustin thing that's always brewing.

I'm from the Dallas area personally, so a very specific opinion of how all that unfolds. But you ask someone from Houston and maybe me even saying that is a bit uppity. So that kind of gives you a sense of where things stand on intercity relations in Texas right now. Wow, I jumped up Dallas boy. Okay. Last but not least in this sort of email-centric section. I promised Kai and Rob that I would do a dramatic reading. of one of the greatest emails

I think we've ever received in our lives. Is that overstating it, Rob Moni? It was the Christmas gift I didn't know I needed. So a million thank you to the writer of what you're about to listen to. Okay, so as you know,

our email address is John Ham's nipple rings at gmail.com. This email came from Joe Curie's vape pen at gmail.com. So if you enjoy it, please do email that person. They sign no other name. So this is from Joe Curie's vapeen And I'm going to channel my best like I went to a lot of poetry slams in my 20s slash I have seen.

So I married an axe murderer. So this is my best like dramatic reading of this work of art that we received. I'm a winner. I'm a winner. I'm a winner. I am the law. I am a prince of handheld mist hits vape. Daddy, why don't you love me ripping your knuckles across the cheeks of all the would be mothers who,

who saw my need for story time. The Bucolic County within me has no sheriff. Just a pockmarked helplessness, flipped at the hilt by the maxed-out knobs of heavy metal. My limbs bound to the swiveling chair of your blanket disapproval. I sit too tight and watch manic panic, farmer's daughters

offer elixirs of affection I cannot reach for. Round of applause. Snaps all around for Joe Curie's pay pen. Absolutely gorgeous. I was getting real 21 Jump Street vibes from your reading there too. Okay, sure.

Excellent work on your part, but just beautifully written, just immaculately composed. What more could we possibly ask for than that? It's hard to pick a favorite line, but I think it has to be, the E. Collick County within me has no share. That's the one.

Excellent. If someone wants to throw that on a shirt, I will wear it. I will wear that. Yeah. I would put it on a mug. It's a lot of words for a mug. Maybe it needs to go in like a Stanley.

A tasteful tote bag. A tote bag. Yes, put on a tote. Okay. Episode 8. Needle drop corner. We're going to start here. Yes.

We've got two major needle drops here. We start with poor people store by shiny ribs. And you can watch. This version is taken, it seems from like a live performance. Which we could, like if you just Google it, it's on YouTube. And then we've got the slowed down. Toxic cover, Jeff Rousseau featuring Lisa Hanigan. It seems like just by my light shazimming of this version of toxic that it was done for this season of Fargo because that's what comes up.

Any thoughts or feelings about these musical moments, Rob Honey? I mean, many, many thoughts and feelings. One, I mean, the toxic drop specifically, I think is pretty inspired. I think it goes straight into the Brittany Needle Drop Hall of Fame. It's not quite every time in Spring Breakers, but it's close. We're in the ballpark. And honestly, I like this version a little better than the version of toxic that's woven into the score of promising young woman. There's kind of a similar deployment.

But here, when the vocal kicks in, I was just cackling. I think there's just a very specific thing that's being evoked here where it's, it is terrifying. But it kind of circles back to something this episode did really well, which is there's a lot of violence and a lot of darkness at the core of this episode. But I think they did a really good job of finding places to have fun on the periphery of it, sometimes on the literal periphery of what's happening inside the cabin. I love that. I also loved this toxic sequence.

You know, I think the idea of a slowed down version of a early off jam is... Yeah, how do you feel about those? I mean, generally I'm a sucker for them, honestly. Really? I understand people saying we need to stop using them in movie trailers. Like, I do intellectually understand that. But my heart wants with the heart wants. Can I ask you about one specific example to take your temperature?

Yeah. The intro of Black Widow. There's a smells like teen spirit moody cover that if I have to say, like, I'm not going to campaign for anyone to lose their jobs. but I hope some music supervisor was held to account for that decision. That's all I want to say about that. Yeah, that wasn't a great one. I'll agree with you on that.

We also got an email from a listener Ross who pointed out that the song, Hey Joe, which was made famous by Jimmy Hendrix, is used in the first episode of the season, and it's about a man who shoots a woman for being unfaithful, and also plays over the end credits of the episode is sort of just like a symphonic motif. So that's something we miss. And then also, this is based off of your prompt

and I've just been quietly collecting these for a couple weeks. I believe you asked the listeners to give us what they thought Scotty's band name might be. Oh, yeah. Our would-be drummer, young Scotty. Here are some options. Just carote the nightmare before Christmas. Bisk quick spelled like Q-W-I-C-K.

And then the electric mayhem with apologies to Wayne. So love that. Love all those. Probably not the best for SEO. You know, we'd have to get creative with the spellings just to create some differentiation. But I think we're on to something. Jason wrote in with...

It should be called Hold the Line, a Toto tribute band to create another Wizard of Oz link. So that's an option. Katie wrote in with an option that I don't understand and I tried really hard to figure it out and usually I don't admit to not getting something, but hopefully you'll get it and explain it to me. Katie's suggestion is us, comma, lion.

L-Y-O-N, like, their last name, us, comma, lion. I'm combing my brain. Yeah. I can't say it's jumping to mind for me immediately, but while we're on the subject of things we don't get, do we get why this episode is titled blanket? Blanket? No.

Other than the fact that she uses the blanket to cover up, like, you know, the tool that she's using to saw the shackles off. But no. Blanket statement. Blanket. I don't have it. Yeah, there's not a lot of comfort. There's not a lot of warmth in this episode.

Is it like an election term or something? Like a voting term of some kind? Not that I know of. Hmm. All right. John Ham's nipple rings at gmail.com. Katie, if you want to explain the Us Lion joke, I'm sure it's really funny and I don't get it. And anyone else.

And last and at least, Mags, two weeks ago. Mags wrote in with these three options. Number one, Minnesota Mean, which is fun. I actually really like that. Gator Raid. which is fun. But this is one that is oddly prescient from two weeks ago. Danish grave site is what she wrote in two weeks ago.

So there we go, Mags. Early, early ode to Dave Foley. So let's talk about the rise and fall of Danish graves in this episode. One thing I think is interesting is we get Roy. Roy talks a lot about his version of the law throughout this season. And in this episode, again, he sort of invokes. the Bible when he's talking to, Dot, he says, he says, fruit of the poison tree. And then he says, that's the legal way of saying X, Y, Z.

And I'm like, the what? Things work a little differently in North Dakota as far as the actual written law, apparently. A lot of flourishing language there. What, Roy? But Danish, when we first see him, I mean, going through the physical leisure of their North Dakota debtors, which is a great moment. But, you know, he's in the county clerk's office or whatever doing, he's working within the system. Like, he knows how to work the system. Everything's notarized.

He's legally changing the names. Like, he's disrupting and fucking up and stealing an election, but he's doing it within the rules of that are set out. Whereas Roy is like, I'm creating my own rules. And I thought that was an interesting contrast, especially the fact that Danish ends the episode. His bloods sputtered all over the American flag. Great, great moment. There's kind of another part of that spectrum, too, where I think we get a lot of Whitfar in this episode.

Yes. And in particular, Whitfar's version of policing and Tillman's version of policing are kind of coming to a head. And as you allude to, Danish Graves is kind of in the middle. You're right. He's operating legally, but smudging some lines, navigating against the rule of law. Whitfar's version of law enforcement is so lower-case C conservative,

so respectful of the rule of law, that it kind of borders on timidity. And he almost like can't get anything done. He's being so mindful of what he can't do, right? He's like willing to step to Tillman, but not too close. He's always kind of taking a step back and backing away. And so it's interesting that at the end of this episode, his discretion keeps him alive versus Graves kind of goes into this thing headlong,

not quite understanding the differences between him and Tillman. You know, like the, in terms of the conflict and the divided America that this season is clearly wrestling with, you're not going to find a more clear example of that than Danish Graves going into that encounter with like a clever plan and getting gut shot by Roy Tillman, right? Those very different approaches. Yeah, absolutely certain that he's going to walk out of there because he's just sort of like, what do you kill me? Like, you wouldn't. And he's like, I would actually. Even when he gets the like massive heavy clunks onto the desk, gun out, Danish doesn't even like really blank or wink. Like he doesn't do anything.

He's just sort of like, yeah, okay, you've got a big gun. You're not going to use it on me. What are you going to kill me? What are you going to do? So I will say this, a couple things. Danish graves, Dave Foley is Danish grave. Slow-mo badass motherfucker walking out of that debate is, and I say this as a fan of kids in the hall and news radio, maybe my favorite thing, Dave Foley has ever done.

I think he's having so much fun with that slow walk. the follow-up is as soon as he's standing at that filling station and sort of wrestling with his conscience and makes the decision to go after her, I was like, oh, you're dead. Oh, he's dead. Yeah, that's character who's about to die behavior. Yeah. Yeah.

Gone too soon. Do you think the, I mean, it doesn't have to be, but I will just say that in the fact that we're dealing with a local election is giving a little bit of a brother. like Pappy O'Daniel, like election, feelings, emotions for me. Anything else you want to say about Danish Graves in this episode or Roy literally punching a moderator in the face as he walks out of the debate? I have, again, many thoughts about that. But let's start with Danish Graves at first

because I think the way in which he's dispatched here is just good writing to elevate the stakes of where we are, right? everything we've seen of Danish Graves, including in this episode, he's such a savvy operator. He's pretty formidable in this world. Knows how to wheel and deal, knows how to grease the right palms, knows how to manipulate people and circumstances. We saw him be a part of like the complete dissolution of that mustachioed bank owner in the previous episode.

Everything he is sent out to do, he accomplishes. And the fact that he shows up on the Tillman farm and is just summarily swatted away. and not only that, but Dot has to watch as the emissary of her new life is thrown into this basin, I think that's just good writing. And it's a really good way to establish who can and who can't check Roy Tillman.

Because clearly these kinds of plans are not going to be enough. They might be enough to prevent him from getting elected again by kind of coaxing out the version of him that's unelectable, but he's going to have the big gun and you're going to have to have a way to reckon with that.

Right. So Danish can't do it. Whitfar as you mentioned is like she said she was willing to go so there was nothing that I could do in that moment so what will it take and will it have to be dot herself you know what I mean? Like she promises to kill him in this episode

is that what it's going to take to stop him? I'm just sad we're not going to get any more day fully in this season of television and I just thought he was wonderful inspired casting inspired performance from someone that I've loved for a long time so great stuff. A real delight and to circle back to your needle drop

question earlier too. Love this opening sequence and really engaging in a different way with the idea of debt that we've talked about a lot. You know, the premise of someone thumbing through a logbook as a song plays about what you can get at the poor people store and literally picking out people who are in debt to be exploited. You know, we spent a lot of time talking about debt and thinking about debt in the sense of who is who is imprisoned by it, who is limited by it, who is actually indebted. But now we're seeing people on the other side of those bars. and how they see the exploitable opportunities in those things. I think the immediate follow-up of that,

we get that whole opening sequence, and then the immediate follow-up is Roy checking, I'm just going to call her Dorothy because that's what she prefers to be called, checking Dorothy out of the hospital, and he intimidates this woman in the hospital, Kim, via her brother Pete. Like that's similar to what he did with Vivian. Like, Vivian, the mustachioed businessman you mentioned before, like when Roy comes up and tries to intimidate him, he uses a similar tactic, and Danish uses a similar, you know, so it's like these are the two methods of squeezing these various people who are caught up in this larger conflict. That brings me to a debt email we got that I really love from our listener, Kim, who wrote him in about this language of debt in Lutheran-specific language. So Kim wrote in the Lord's Prayer, Catholics and Anglican.

can say forgive us our trespasses or sins. But the version I grew up with, what Minnesotans say, is forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. In contrast with the vengeful Old Testament, God's wrath, an eye for an eye, a car for a car, this is the prayer that Jesus teaches in the kinder, gentler, new testament, all about what we owe to our father, which art in heaven and each other, but the operative word is forgive. And then just a P.S. from Kim. As to Oz, St. Linda might be the wicked witch of the East, or if the inadvertently kills her. She's likely done under her house somewhere. Perhaps Lorraine will end up being Glinda the Good Witch. By the way, in French, do you remember a couple weeks ago when I was like,

oh, Roy is literally king and I felt so dumb about it? We got a bunch of, we had a couple of emails about this, but Kim, I'm reading Kim's, Lauren in French is queen, Lorraine, LeRen, like, so like she's the queen, he's the king. And so yeah, it's very much a commentary on these, you know, the ways in which, yes, we allegedly live in a democracy, but we also have these people in power who feel entitled to squeeze the people around us. Or as Lorraine did with and dear a couple episodes ago, like tell you're the gatekeeper. You know what I mean? Like you work for me. Like everyone works for me.

But it's interesting to see, to go back to Roy just murdering Danish as he goes on the farm here, Danish is saying it's over. Your reign is over. Generations of your family have ruled this county, and it's done. You punched a lady in the face. Like, it's done. And Roy shooting him in this sort of increasingly desperate bid for control, as he feels it's slipping away from me, reminded me of a concept we talked about in our first episode covering the season, which is that idea of Blood Simple, that idea of the the ramping up of blood-crazedness in a character and violence in a character. We talked to this already a little bit with Roy, but just like it's getting worse and worse and worse for him. The line of civility is just sort of washing away from him and he's just becoming a guy who just shoots someone in his office, someone that everyone knows when to his farm.

You know what a wild thing to do? he's getting sloppier and sloppier and he's getting to your point more and more kind of feral about his violence. And he and Dot are both increasingly desperate in different ways. They're both being squeezed.

They're both kind of being descended on from all sides and the thing that they want most, like freedom for Dodd and this power for Roy, those are kind of being slowly taken away from them. And to sort of see how they react to those situations is another

really fascinating parallel that the show has set up. But I think the stuff with Roy in particular, the way he's, his whole image is deconstructed at that debate, right? We're doing pure political theater by repeating him to the point that he becomes a joke and agitating him to the point where he does become like a petulant child. He tries to take his ball and go home when at the beginning he's saying like, oh, I'm so

manly, I don't even need a microphone. And this idea of like your clothing is a costume, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you are such a joke. You could deck three guys in exactly what he's going to show up to wear. Absolutely. So you have what he's wearing. I hadn't, so I've never seen Rambo, an important cinematic classic that I've never seen. What a confession. So I didn't even actually know that this is the plot of Rambo. But one of our listeners wrote in was watching Rambo over the holiday, sent a photo of his Rambo watching experience in a beautiful home decked out with their stockings on the mantelpiece. Like it's a lot. I love seeing people's Christmas decorations. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, Jason running to point out that Brian Denny's character in Rambo,

who is a power mad sheriff, one might say, wears the same coat that John Ham's character wears. Holy shit. And again, I did not, I thought Rambo was a war movie. I really never seen it. Oh, it's a post-war movie. I know that you know what Rambo is about, but just in case there's someone listening who also hasn't seen Rambo,

Here's the summary. A veteran green beret, the titular rainbow, is forced by a cruel sheriff and his deputies to flee into the mountains and wage an escalating one man more against his pursuers. So, like, does that feel a little bit dot to you? Like, do you see a comparison between Dot and Rambo in that, in this email? Or is that stretching a bit? No, honestly, absolutely.

You know, we've been talking about her in terms of McGiver and Kevin McAllister, but wasn't there a call out earlier this season to McGiver meets Rambo? That was kind of where they were. a pudding dot. Yeah, I love it. I guess I should watch Rainbow. I probably should have already seen Rambo, but here we are. It's okay.

There's lots of movies out there. We got to re-watch every Cohen movie. We got a lot going on. There's a lot to do. You only have 80 more podcasts to record this month on various properties. There's time. I will say that the coat that John Hamm is wearing is a fairly like, it's not a unique coat necessarily, but it is the exact same coat.

And so if we're talking about like medicine sheriff, and people waging one-man wars, a veteran of some kind, to think of Dodd as like a veteran of a war that she escaped and thought was behind her, and then the war comes back to her doorstep. I think that's interesting. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

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Taking Zepbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. We talked about wit. You already brought up wit. I want to talk about Gator. Gator in relationship to wit, obviously, in this interaction.

It seems increasingly, and Noah Hawley essentially warned us of this in various interviews of the beginning of the season, that we're... or meant to be on some sort of like Gator Redemption, Gator face turn. Yeah, a tour, an arc. Yeah. It is hard for me. Like, we only have two episodes left. And it's hard for me when Gator says racist shit, like calling Wittfar, JZ or Officer Nightstick,

to get on the like Gator redemption train. but Dot telling Gator that she saw Linda, he doesn't believe her. So is that because he can't, doesn't dare to hope, or he knows something about what happened to his mom? I don't know the answer there. But I will say, again, and it's tough within the same episode to watch Gator be like a racist piece of shit and take a hit off his vape in the Bismarck Hospital. But then watch him walk out of that shed. He says horrible shit, like I hope you die. in here and never see your daughter again. Not great shit. But as he walks out, I will say that I do

see in Joe Curious performance a little boy who felt abandoned both first by his mom and then by this like woman who was his like friend crush mom or whatever it was that Dorothy was. These people left him behind and all he had left was Roy. And if he felt abandoned the way that Dorothy felt abandoned by Linda, then he got double abandoned, then when Dorothy left and left him there. So it doesn't excuse anything he's done, obviously. Yes. I still feel like this arc is maybe a little bumpy. I don't know how I'll feel by the end of the season, but like where are you in all of this?

We've got two episodes left. That doesn't seem like a lot of time to cover a lot of ground when he, as you say, he's saying pretty racist stuff in this episode. He's saying that Whitfar is on his period in this episode. It's just like, this is the guy we're supposed to root for his redemption. And I agree that in a lot of scenes throughout this season, he's felt like a child. He's felt like a child playing dress up, trying to be his dad. And Dot, if anyone understands that most specifically, that what he wants most, what Gator wants most, is to be Roy.

And he's trying his best to do it, but he's ultimately not made of that stuff. And I think that's all in the text. As to whether he's ultimately a person in the wrong situation with the heart of gold, I think that might be. a bit much for what we've seen on screen so far. I don't know. I am fascinated though by the Dot Gator dynamic and relationship that we see in the shed. Because basically from the time Dodd gets into the shed, she's in desperation mode. When she first is talking to Roy, she's throwing everything at the wall.

You know, let me tell you about Scotty. Let me tell you about the kitten we're about to adopt. Let me tell you about being a den mother. Let me tell you how I'm in love. Like anything at all to find some part of him that could be. merciful. And with Gator, it's almost the same way where when they first start talking, you get kind of that older sister babysitter dynamic where she's almost scolding him for being sloppy with the kidnapping. Right. The reason I had to talk to the FBI is because they were wondering

why I was kidnapped. Why was my house burnt down? So we get that part of it. Then we get her telling Gator that she saw Linda. And I think she believes that. I think Dot believes that. I think that. I think she believes it until the end of the episode. Okay, this is the one part of the episode that did not work for me, was we get a full-on moment of realization, all capital letters, as Dodd is looking out the window, realizing that she had a dream. That felt a little insulting to me to both Dot and the audience, that she would have to have this huge moment. I agree. I think it's always, it's not great storytelling when the audience is so far ahead of your character, especially a character that, we are meant to think is incredibly smart.

We think of Dot as very smart and innovative and all this or stuff like that. So for us to be so far ahead of her, we walk out of last week's episode going, well, that was a dream that she had while waiting for pancakes. And I am sympathetic to Dot being traumatized and sleep deprived and in the hospital and all this sort of stuff, like hasn't had time to process it. So I am sympathetic to that. but as a story-telling technique, it just makes her seem not as bright as we have thought, we believe her to be.

So I agree with you on that. And the other bit that I didn't love of this episode, I will say, is that I don't like that it took infidelity for Indira to like walk out of her marriage. I feel like she should have walked out in the last argument that they had. I don't think she needed to catch him in bed with someone to be like, that's it, I'm done. You know, her performance is good in that scene, her saying, like, shame on you or, like, what are you sorry for besides betraying all women everywhere? Like, but aiming most of her vitriol, where it belongs, which is at Lars, like, all that's good, but it felt like just a repeat of a conversation we already saw them have. And I was just sort of like, again, I want to respect and root for Indira.

So I'm like, I feel like you were already done. Did we need this for you to be done, done, you know? What did you make of all that? Her monologue was another big important speech, and it was another very on-the-nose speech. I know you've been alluding to the I-Wen-A-Wife essay, that this whole season has been circling. It was an inspiration for it.

And the fact that she literally says it, after they literally talked about it previously, I want this show to trust in its characterization more than that than to have to spell everything out while the third woman in the room gives reaction gifs to what she's saying. Like, we're better than that on this show. And, again, I really like Endura's performance.

Like, I really like so many parts of that character. It just feels like in terms of the writing, she gets a little bit of the short shrift, say the surface level on the nose stuff, a little too often. I'm glad that, you know, now it seems like she's officially working for Lorraine, so there is, like, another step forward.

I just feel like I was done with Lars in episode one. So I'm just sort of like the fact that it took her, eight episodes to be on with Lars. It's like, okay. But she's done now. She's with Lorraine. I think that is a better place for her to be. I'm interested to see what she does in that new role.

You mentioned Dots' tactic of talking about the things that she cares about, about Scotty, about getting kittens, like all this sort of stuff like that, which I learned from an episode of Oprah when I was a child that is like what you should do when you get abducted is like make yourself into like, sorry, this is too dark, but like I think about it all the time and they use it in film and television all the time is like you're supposed to make your, talk about yourself and make yourself into as real of a person in order to make it harder for the person who has abducted you to turn off your humanity. You're like, let me remind you of my humanity.

So that's something she's doing. But it also, I have all of that tucked under the like sort of home, you know, bullet on my outline this week because this theme of home that we talked about, been talking about a lot, right? Witt says, far from home, aren't you, to her when he finds her in the hospital. But her description of home, she's get home so they can watch Call the Midwife. There's 13 seasons of it. Talking about Wayne being her best friend, who's going to remind him to take lactate when he eats cheese. Like, it's very, like, again, it's, like, kind of funny, it's sweet, it is desperate. It is all these things. but it's like the madanity of

we're binge watching call the midwife. I mean, Blue Bloods is canceled, so what else you're going to do, right? So they're binge watching called midwife. You got to take lactate if you're going to eat the cheesy shepherd's pie that I've made you like all this sort of stuff like that. The modanity of home,

but the comfort and importance of that modanity, you know what I mean? To contrast my criticism of certain things is something that the show has done such a good job with. And that's kind of at a head with this unapologetic evil of Roy, where he's someone who, he's not a criminal mastermind. He's not so charismatic that he wins people over. He's just a guy who is casually horrible, pretty much all the time. And flagrantly, openly so.

And it's because he thinks he's living by a code. So he thinks he has a kind of righteousness to him. And so you have the mundanity of an everyday life that Dodd is fighting so hard to protect. and then you have this villain who's looming over it, who doesn't really care about any of that? Because to him, this woman is his property. And this episode again, hammers home the idea of woman is not only something

that someone like Roy Toman can own, but as livestock. And we got kind of a reiteration of the idea of like, I'm just going to let you struggle like a horse with a bit in its mouth for the first time. I'm going to break you. Yeah. Tire yourself out like a horse with a bit in its mouth first time.

Yeah, it's pretty vicious stuff that we get from Roy here. Yeah, we got an email from Nikki talking about all the animal stuff with Dot. She's a tick. She's a heifer who got lost on the rain. She's a tiger. She's anything about a human with her own agency, according to Roy, you know? I think it's interesting the way that Karen is used in this episode, too, right? So Karen who, like, brings in the bucket in the jug of water and all this sort of stuff for her.

Karen who hits her. I think the Juno Temple's reading of third times the charm is like one of the best deliveries of the season. I thought that was really good, really, really chilling. Funny, chilling, upsetting all the things at once.

But when Karen, Karen knows what happens when Roy feels humiliated. Roy takes it out on someone. He passes that violence down. So she knows walking out of that debate that he feels humiliated. And so she's sitting in the backseat. Her dad says she's like a bucket of bolts for brains or whatever because she's like poking him on this. And he's like, what the fuck are you doing? This is not what we do with him. Right. He's going to, but she directs it to

Dorothy, right? She says, laughing at you mocking your piety. She's the albatross. Again, animal rhyme in the agent mariner reference or whatever. She's the albatross. It's not me. So she's like, go beat the shit out of her, don't take it out on me. And which is what Dorothy thought Linda did, right, to her, was like redirect that violence or that sexual aggression or whatever it is to her. But this is literally what Karen does to her in this episode. And when he walks away from Karen, toxic is playing, he's walking with determination towards that shed. And again, I mentioned this already, but like you see the windmill right over his shoulder. as he's doing it when you're behind him.

You're mostly on his face. It's a long shot of just John Hamm angrily walking. But when you flip, then you get the windmill over his shoulder. And it's like, is this what, like, one day Linda just pissed him off so much? Again, that sounds like victim blaming, but like, you know, in his own mind, right? And then he just like beat her to death. I mean, if any of those attempts of his to beat Dorothy with the chain with the shackles at the end of if it had hit home, it could have killed her.

Like, she could have died if she hadn't rolled out of the way of any of those blows. It's horrible stuff. And as you say, we cut away from the, like, thing that bloodies her. We don't, we cut away outside of the shed. We don't see it. But we do see that change is like, bam into the ground. And we could just imagine what that would have been like and what might have happened to Linda at any, at any given stage. Well, I think you get a great kind of, you're bringing that idea to life of when someone like Roy Tillman sees women as animals and is treating them as his property, he's putting them in these desperate positions where, as you say, like Dot feels like Linda basically sold her out where Karen is redirecting. Like these are desperate people doing what they can do to survive as best as they can identify it.

Yeah. And it's hard to watch. But I honestly, I really like the performance that Rebecca Lidiot is. as Karen. She doesn't get a lot to say and a lot of scenes in this episode. But if you watch her in the car, you have kind of John Hamm in the front seat and the camera is focused on him, but you can see from her eyes out of focus in the backseat the way she's just trained on him, looking for like the slightest micro response to what she's saying. The way that this character has been trained to look for any possible sign of agitation so she knows how to kind of modulate what she's doing and her own response and what she's, what she's, ultimately going to say to him, I really like that performance.

I agree with you. And the way that it's so clear that her father, who is sitting in the front seat, is on Roy's side more than he's on her side, right? If Roy were to smack her in that car right then, it doesn't feel like her father would object to that. And the way in which she is, you know, of all the marriages that Roy has had, like she's the, like, she's the dowried political sort of piece of property. She's property to her own father, too. it seems like. But while we're talking about the dynamics between

these three women, Linda and Dot and Karen, and I think the corner and animal bit ties into this too. We see, I think it's hard to parse the actual intent behind it because Dot is so desperate.

But the way she lashes out at Gator, and you mentioned, you know, some highlights for Juno Temple in this episode, this scene where she kind of, the claws come out when she's talking to Gator and Juno Temple

physically kind of transforms as she's telling him, do you ever wonder why you're not named Roy? You know, that your father had seen this pale puny lizard in the hospital and couldn't bear the thought of you carrying his name. There's something like venomous and vindictive in Juno Temple's performance there that I think is very different from everything we've seen from Dot. And I don't know whether to ascribe that to just the desperation of her circumstances

where she's trying anything and everything to get free. It's clear she's trying to drive a wedge between the two men. all that's understood. But this is cruel in a way that is kind of more similar to the cruelty of diversion that we see from Karen or hypothetically that Dot has imagined from Linda

or remembers from Linda. There's something about the way she's lashing out at Gator that feels different from the Dot that we know. It also feels more Roy than anything that was seen from her. The line that Roy has at the end when he comes back to take his humiliation out on her is you've always been here, Nadine, it was the rest that was a dream.

Which goes into like a couple things, right? Like our Oz discussion, of course, like what's, what's, is Kansas real? Is Oz real? What's real? What's the dream sort of thing? The dream scenario of the whole Linda episode. But just sort of like, or it's just. this home that you've built, this built on Biskwick and

Callman Wife Binges and all that sort of stuff, the kittens, all of that, that's a dream. And it's gone. And you've awoken to the brutal reality that you've always been here. You've always been here, of course, feels like a shining reference. And there have been a couple other shining moments about the season, just axes and Halloween and here's Johnny sort of stuff. but that feels like the most overt. This is a horror story, you know, moment.

That scene, I think, plays out the horror as effectively as we've seen it all season. Really any of the encounters between Dodd and Roy, something that Dodd has been running from so hard all season. And for the years preceding the show, I don't think there's been a more monstrous line of dialogue this season than Roy telling her that he'll promise to let her go as soon as she begs him to stay. Yeah. And that, I mean, again, these ideas of home,

these ideas of like he's only willing to let her go back to this place that she's built if she acknowledges that this is her real home. Anything else you want to talk about? The only other thing I have sort of on my list is under the like sort of constructed reality theme that we've been talking about all the season. There's the like holding on to the Linda thing long after the audience has given up on it. Right. So that's that's something that didn't work out super well for us. But there is also just like she is consistently. And when she's in the hospital,

and she's trying to get out of it as best she can, right? She writes, help me on the form or whatever. She's trying to think her way out of this trapped animal scenario that she's found herself in. But she has this moral compass of, I don't want Whitfar to get hurt, right? I don't want Kim, the woman in this hospital, to get hurt. So, like, I will try to rescue myself,

but I'm not putting any of them in, in a situation that they can't get out of just to save me. So when Witt is talking to her in the hospital, she says, that never happened, right? She's still saying that never happened, insisting upon that for his safety and not her own. And it goes under the constructed reality, but it is also just like, it shows us that, yeah,

you're right, you're right that Dots, what Dott says to Gator is one of the cruelest, most royal-like thing that she has said, the season, or the most, maybe on par with her breaking character for Lorraine earlier this season. But in general, she has, she's not self-interested. And this is, this is a, this is a criticism of this character earlier this season. Like, why is she telling her family more she's so selfish in this? And it's like, no, when she says she's truly in love with Wayne in this episode, I believe her. You know what I mean? And when she says- And who isn't in love with Wayne at this

point? Seriously. We got an email. I didn't read it, but one of the emails, Mills was like, it's one of the best pieces of art design on Fargo the season is how they made that smiley face on the pancake look just like Wayne. And I was like, it didn't occur to me, but I missed Wayne this episode. No way in this episode. No Scotty. Very little Lorraine. One of the related thing we haven't really touched on yet is that David Rizzol was

announced as being in Noah Holly's Alien series after this, too, which I am increasingly excited about, increasingly stoked about. Obviously, Tim Aliphon's going to be in that series, too. It's got a great, you know, blossoming cast around them. I'm very eager to see Argyne in space getting a face hugger. And I'm sure meeting an unfortunate demise. Doesn't he seem like he's going to die very early? Unfortunately so.

I mean, unless he's playing a completely different character type, but his character type seems like he's going to, like, poke at a goopy egg and get, yeah, hugged in the face quite early on, like those dumb-dums and Prometheus. Anything else you want to say? I mean, we haven't said that Munk pops up in the backseat. of Gator's spot.

Just hanging out. I'm sure that's going to go great for Gator. I'm sure it's going to be, everything's going to be fun. Yeah, your whole, your cute little redemption arc might be a little difficult with, you know,

the very capable assassin in your backseat. So I'm very eager to see how Gator gets out of this. Like how he managed to elude the death that seems to be lurking around every corner for him. I would not give myself good chances if Munk were in the backseat of my car. It doesn't,

it doesn't like a great situation. for anybody. But I mean, speaking of not having good chances and your kind of likelihood of escape, not only does Dot have a sense of morality that some other characters in the story don't have, this was kind of the first time where we've seen her capability be snuffed out. She's so good at escaping. She's so good at like, again, MacGyvering together all these plans. She's no less clever and resourceful than she's been at any point in the season. But it's almost like her luck has run out. And a lot of because Tillman is kind of always over her shoulder, always around the corner.

She's trying to write, help me on the form, and he sees it. She's trying to smuggle out the pen and he sees it. She manages this elaborate escape where she wedges free a piece of a coil to unscrew part of her cot frame to then get the saw piece of the frame and saw through a chain, but she can't quite get loose.

That being said, he does pull the anchor point of the chain out from under the floor. Like, when he walks out of there, she's no longer, She's chained to herself, but she's no longer chained to anything, which I don't think was her plan necessarily, but that is something he pulls it out of the ground through brute force. And so that is at least like, in terms of her being freer than she was,

a slight tick in her column. It's something, but I think it's telling that at the end of this episode, the visual that we're left with is basically dot cowering for the first time we've seen this season, where she's literally kind of behind the bars of her cot. And like Whitfar says earlier in this episode, her eyes are like a trapped animal. And that's kind of where we're left with, where she is left at the end of this part of the story.

And I know she's desperate. I know she's trying to escape. But she seems down in a way at the end of this episode that we haven't seen yet. I agree. And that's where we are. Episode 8, two more episodes to go. Fargo is a show.

I was looking back at sort of the endings of various seasons of Fargo. Fargo is a show where just because you're, have a good person, it doesn't guarantee you a happy ending. So I actually don't know how everything is going to go for everyone. You know what I mean? It's not a, it's not a clear-cut morality in this world.

Evil people will probably, we talked about this before, Cohen thinks. Evil people will probably be punished, but that doesn't mean that good people will make it through. I know. I'm worried about Wink, too. I'm worried about a lot of people. But your guy, Wink, is top of the list.

for sure. He's obviously the one we want to protect the most. I wouldn't call Danish Graves a good person. We've seen him manipulate a lot of shit and I'm sure he's done probably worse than we've seen his hands are dirty. His hands are dirty. Yeah, he's got dirty hands. So him going down in all of this is

not that like shocking or whatever. But yeah, how the lions protect every lion. Please. One last callout on the Danish Graves front because I feel like these people probably don't get enough callouts is the debtor's book that he's going through at the beginning, all those names are crew members on Fargo,

for the most part, as far as I could tell. So shout out to all the crew members who, at least by my eye, it looks like maybe they got to write their own names and ascribe their own debts. So a nice little Easter egg for everybody. I think there was like some handwriting that I saw repeated, so I don't think they're writing their own, but I do think the production design team had a really good,

and hopefully they got to come up with their own cause of debt or whatever. But yeah, I love a let's get all. the production team into a prop move and a show. So thank you to Fargo. We did this all together. Thank you, Rob Mahoney. So great to be back with you here in the new year. Thanks to Kai Grady. Y'all two are both still in Texas. So I hope you're enjoying that. I'm here in California. If you are listening in your Minnesota or North or South Dakota or anywhere else in the Midwest and you have some thoughts or feelings, John Hamm's nipple rings. at gmail.com. We'll be here for the final two episodes in the next two

week, and I'm really sad that we're almost done with the season of Fargo. It's been a really good time. We'll see you soon. Bye. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly

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