The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Fargo’ Season 5, Episode 9 Recap

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

Jo and Rob are back to break down the ninth episode of ‘Fargo’ Season 5 and talk about what they’re hoping to see in the season finale. They head to Coen Corner to parse the Coen references in this episode, and go through listener emails regarding the truth of the phrase “fruit of the poisonous tree,” Russian election scams, Oregonian anarchists, and more. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Sasha Ashall and Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Erica Ramirez, founder of Ili, and host of What About Your Friends? A podcast dedicated to the many lives of friendship and how it's portrayed in pop culture. Every Wednesday on the Ringer dish feed, I talk to my best friend, Stephen Othello, and your favorites from within the ringer and beyond about friendships on TV and movies, pop culture, and our real lives. So join me every Wednesday on the ringer dish feed where we try to answer the question TLCS back in the day. What about your friends? Make Mother's Day even more special at Whole Foods Market. Kick off brunch or dinner with quality cheese and charcutory with no synthetic nitrates.

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I'm John Robinson. I am devastated to report that we only have two more episodes of Far including this one that we're covering today. Joining me as always is Rob Bajon. Hey Rob, how do you feel here at the end of the road? Materially worse now. Terrible. Terrible.

Very bad. Maybe there's a Coda. Can we get a spin-off? Can we get at least an offshoot standalone movie? We'll have to see where things go. I know. Well, season six of Fargo is going to have to wait while Noah Holly does his aliens take.

So we'll see. But Rob and I are taking no pause between covering shows. We're covering the Fargo finale next week, and then we're rolling immediately into the True Detective premiere. Rob has been watching some True Detective to prepare. Rob, you have now seen True Detective Season 1, and I'm so thrilled that you got to experience that in 2024. Well, I'm so glad I got to tell you about this great show, True Detective Season 1, that no one has seen before. I discovered it.

I pulled up the cushions on Max, and I really rifled around down there, and I found this little undiscovered gem. So we'll have to talk about it someday soon, Joe. Rob, thought leader as always. All right. So we are here to talk about season 5, episode 9, penalties to an episode of the season of Fargo, The Useless Hand, written by Noah Hawley, and directed by Toma.

And I really, Thomas, I really hope your last name is pronounced bazooka. It is spelled like it might be pronounced bazooka, and I really hope that that's true for you, but it might be something more bazusha-ish. Anyway, the title of this episode, unlike last week, which continued to mystify us, and we got a number of emails about this. No one gave me an answer as satisfying

as the one that you eventually stumbled on, Rob. What did you decide that you thought blanket meant last week? It must refer to a blanket primary, which seems to be the kind of general primary setup we have going in that episode. But who could blame us for being distracted by the razzle-dazzle, the cowboy hats, the punches of moderators?

There was a lot happening. There was a lot going on. This week, the title, the useless hand, is sort of underlined in this speech that monk gives at the end of the episode as he is returning Gator to his dad. And he says a lot of very monkey things. But then he says, the hand that he steals with must be cleed from him and returned. Still a hand, but now without function, here is your hand. And he shoves a blind, fully blind, half blind, I don't know, Gator back to his dad, seems like fully blind, probably. Roy then says,

If there ever was a point to you, it's gone now and leaves him alone in the mist. So it's a tough episode for Gator who starts with tough look in his dealings and ends sort of down at the bottom of his arc probably. Did you Google the useless hand at all to see anything else about it? I did not. Is there something else I should know? While I was rewatching, I was like, what does this useless hand phrase mean? because I forgot that monk gave, like, told us what the useless hand was, but there is, it's a medical condition by, it's called the useless hand of Oppenheim, not to be confused with Oppenheimer, the useless hand of Oppenheim. And it has to do with, it's a sort of, please, I'm not a doctor,

but it's like a, I believe, a neuromuscular degeneration of the hand. So MS patients often have this where it's like, you still have motor function in your hand, but you don't have, like, you can't fully use. it the way that you once were able to and it has to do not with like damage to the hand but damage to like the spine sort of thing. So I thought that was like an interesting thing. Dr. Joe, that does raise kind of one

one concern I have about this Gator plot line and where we are at present, which is as you alluded to, we don't know the full extent of what has happened to Gator just yet. I have a concern and a sneaking suspicion that the blindfold will be removed and no eye will have been taken

and that the whole thing was an elaborate ruse to separate Gator and Roy, and that the cleaving is not the literal cleaving of Gator's usefulness, but the cleaving of that relationship. And if that's where we go, I think I'm going to have a lot of questions narratively. I just, I can't get the nag out of the back of my head that that's where this might end up. Okay, so you need the eyes to be gone. I mean, I feel like the relationship is cleaved no matter what. When you're, you know, whimpering daddy in the mist and your father has abandoned you, I feel

like that. Among Us, Joe. I feel like that, I mean, but not in this way. But I feel like that's like, that's over. You know what I mean? Like the, right? So the relationship, yes, cleaved. But you're like, show me the eyeless sockets next week or get the fuck out of here.

Is that how you feel? A little bit. I think TV has broken me in this way. Like, if I don't see you die on screen, I'm not going to believe you're dead. If I don't see the sockets, if I don't see like the minority report level eye sockets, I'm just not going to buy it. So we're going to need to see those sweet, sweet sockets from Gator in the finale. Rob was like the cutaway. from a dot last week

I appreciate, but the cutaway from the hot needle poker, whatever that was that was going towards his eye. No, give me okay. Coen corner this week, I've got two things. Nothing from our listeners, all for me, all organic, homegrown.

Indira says when Witt is talking to Indira on the phone this week, he's talking to her about quitting the cop, quitting the force. And she says, not in the way you mean. And there is an exchange of no country for old men when Anto Chigur is sitting in front of the dead body of Woody Harrelson and Moss is on the phone and he says it's Carson Welles there

and Shiger says, not in the sense that you mean. Which is great. And then the bantering feds, I mean, our listeners have brought this up a couple times, but like we are in firm burn-after rating territory with the feds who show up this week. I really liked the bantering feds. I didn't like when they drew a line under it to say, Don't interrupt a superior officer when he's bantering. I was like enjoying the bantering.

Then I'm like, don't say that you're bantering. Just banter for me. You know what I mean? It was a little much. I did enjoy that new character though. You know, special agent Docherty. I thought brought, and I say this in a complimentary way, but like a little NCIS that the show was missing,

like a certain authoritative guy shows up with the machine gun, just telling you you can't get away with that slick. And I feel like sometimes shows need a little bit of that. So I preferred him. like miles and miles and miles above Mr. Mrs. Joe Queen, who to me are the least effective part of this entire season, I just keep bumping on them every time they show up. I couldn't agree more.

I was like, this is what they should have been the whole time. Yeah. However, I feel like even the presence of the new players elevated the Joaquin banter, because when he says it was a piglet that went missing from the Sheriff's Storage Depot, wasn't it? Like, that was funny. I was like, oh, you're hitting the tone that I've been wanting you to hit all season for the first time. Do you know what I mean?

They finally got some of it, but I could, and this is really, I think, a larger issue with this episode. It's like there's a little too much putting a fine point on the speech of fine. In particular, I don't need Mrs. Joe Queen to take me through the history of witch, like witch hunts. You know, it felt a little bit like writing for the screenshot or writing for Twitter, writing for that moment where people are going to say, oh, got them. And I don't really want that in my storytelling. In the, well, it can't be like the Trumpiest because we literally saw Trump in a previous episode, but like the orange idiot gets called out in this episode.

And so like that all felt like a piece of putting a really Trumpy spin on the whole militia, armed militia showdown, which I agree. I felt like there were a few moments including like calling out the bantering or calling at the witch hunt or calling Lorraine literally the queen of debt when I'm like, no, we just got it last week. We got that Lauren is queen in French. You don't need to say it. I was like, but I really liked this episode a lot. But there were a few of those moments. I agree where I'm just sort of like, trust us. We're here with you. We are here with you on this Fargo journey. Yeah, I'm all four, especially watching dots link around the ranch and all the escapes.

Like the narrative thrust of this episode really worked for me. It really, I just felt like we started trading off character for ideology a little bit too much. You know, this is not a strong Lorraine episode by any means. Indira is basically now an accessory. Wayne and Scotty are barely in it. You know, Roy has some stuff to do, and obviously Dot has a lot to do in this episode. But overall, there's just a little too much of, let me tell you this very important thing about like not crushing the victim with the helping hand.

And I really could have done more character beats instead of that stuff. I agree with you. It also felt very table-setty for, like, Like, we're getting everyone a position on the ranch for the finale. When it starts with Dot escaping and she's slinking around, I'm like, this feels so early for, like, all of this to be happening. But it's like, I guess we're going to see it all come to head next week. I have really good news for you, Rob. If you and I are ever in legal dire straits, it turns out that a lot of lawyers listen to this podcast.

And here's how I know. We got, oh, I think the legal term is a bill, bagillion emails. Oodles, perhaps. Oodles of noodles of emails. about me mistakenly saying that the phrase fruit of the poisonous tree was not an official legal term. I'll later I'll show you my inbox and how many emails we got that are just simply titled Fruit of the Poisonous Tree. It was a constant influx from the legal team of the Prestige TV listenership. Here's one from Henry, but there were many to choose from.

Henry says, Fruit of the Poison Tree is actually a well-established legal doctrine in criminal law. It refers to the dismissal of evidence that is directly produced by illegal actions on the part of police officer. or other officials. For example, any evidence gathered during a search of a house without a warrant will typically be inadmissible in court. Many legal doctrines

have pretty flowery names, honestly. Things like piercing the corporate veil and depraved heart murder. So I loved that legal education I got this week. How do you feel about depraved heart murder and other things?

I'm blown away that this is actual legal terminology. Obviously, the concept makes sense and frankly, having just watched True Detective, I would say it applies to basically every person. piece of evidence collected in True Detective season one. So you can see how it would apply in a lot of real life situations.

But look, shout out to whoever came up with that one. That's some heat to just throw into legal doctrine on a whim. Just like a couple more last week on cleanup things. We got a bunch of emails about, there's a shot right before Roy shoots Danish. There's a shot

where his head is perfectly framed on the wall by the horns on the skull that's like sort of mounted behind him, giving him effectively double horns. I think I noticed that. We didn't call it out, but I think it's a great thing to call out. Nice framing. And then our listener Wilbert wrote in to let us know that in St. Petersburg, Russia, it was like recently, like, 2021, I want to say, there was an election scam with three Boris Vishnevskis. And like, I'll send you the Guardian link, but there's just like a photo in the paper of them. And like, they're all,

they all look the same. And it's just like, hopefully this is where Noah Hawley got his sheriff of Roy a scam from. But yeah, this is the subhead on The Guardian. Real Vishnevsky battling two doppelgamer who seem to have changed their appearance as well as their name. So we love a Russian political

scandal replicated in the Midwest of the U.S. And we're going to, we got some Oregonian stuff this week from the last man. Interesting. Yeah. We'll talk about that too. Last not least, most Minnesota nice,

I have a real hard time with most Minnesota Nice in this episode, Rob, because even Wayne dropped his groceries in the scramble to pick up the phone call from Dot. So if even Wayne cannot keep his composure, who are we to turn to for Minnesota Nice in this episode? Do you have anything? Maybe it was Wayne letting Scotty munch on the Tate's cookies on the way out of the store, or perhaps even in the store. That is grocery store behavior. I've never been able to wrap my head around when people are just walking around,

consuming products in the store. I don't know. Something about that has always rubbed me the wrong way. But if not that, I would say it would have to be Gator. I would say graciously offering Monk, a little blow, a little meth, a little oxy. You know, pick your poison. Whatever you like. He's got the CVS for you, bro. Young girls, whatever you need.

It's fine. All right, let's get to the episode. Well, I guess, do you want to say, like, save the needle drop conversation to the end? Or do you want to do it now? We can do it now. What strikes you? I wanted to say it was Jesus paid the debt from Sam Cooke because to put it, again, a little on the nose

but it's a jam, it's really good. But it has to be the YMC by the village people when the militia rolls up, right? Just as all these dudes are rolling into play soldier, it's honestly pretty perfect. Young man, like, and yeah, just, it's fantastic. The last track was Whipping Post by the Elven Brothers, which is also a great jam.

Let's start with this Gator Monk conversation. You already mentioned the CVS offer. We're not in the shed that we were in last week. We're in a different sort of shed-like environment, but the lighting is very similar. That's sort of like golden shaft of light coming in around them. I suppose there's only like a few ways you can light a shed, but it seemed like we're getting a bit of parallel between Dot

trying to sort of bargain with Roy versus Gator trying to bargain with Monk here, neither bargaining winds up being successful. But this is like the most literal eye-for-an-eye debt conversation that we've had, again, to your point of this episode, just sort of putting its finger underlining a bunch of the themes of the season. What did you make of this? How did this work for you? Yeah, I mean, for one, I thought a cozier little shed overall.

You know, you got the fireplace working. You could rent this thing out as an Airbnb if you wanted to. I think there's some potential here. And Monks really, I'm sort of spruising up the place. But I enjoy this little experience. I enjoyed seeing Gator try to bargain and kind of, you know, it's always telling in these scenes, like what is important to the character who's being held hostage and they try to use some of those things? Like what they view as currency is often kind of what they offer to other people.

So the power and the access of the evidence locker, the power and the access of underage girls, as you mentioned, that he offers Monk. Like, you can really get a sense of where Gator is coming from in his life. Where I'm not getting any sense is where this redemption and, narrative is supposed to be, especially if he does end up eyeless at the end of this episode in the frozen wasteland, it's hard to know where Gator's story is going to go from here. I mean, maybe we made that up. Maybe we were just like extrapolating too hard. Maybe so.

From interviews, because it's really hard to think about a character like Gator who starts the second to last episode of the season offering underage girls in like exchange for his freedom to be like, can't wait for that redemption art to kick in. Maybe it's not coming. But we all I mean I genuinely Love a monk Monologue especially a monk

Animal Association We get of course some classic tiger mentions at the end of the episode But here Gator gets a rabbit screams Because a rabbit is caught The Gator says try again in fucking English Bro By the way

In case you're watching this season of Fargo And you're concerned About the state of Joe Curie's hair The official Stranger Things account did release a photo, cast photo of like everyone gathered to start on season five and the hair is back in full glory, full force.

So enough time has passed. You must be on some vitamins to make it grow fast or whatever, but it's back. I was very concerned. I know. Do you not think he's wearing a wig in those promotional photos? It's not a, it's like a,

everyone's just hanging out. It's not like they're in costume or anything like that. And the hair is just like. You can wear a hair piece out in the world, you know? If you're trying to pull one over on some people. That would really disappoint me if Joe Kerry shows up to the table read and a wig.

I would be hot-bumped. We're going to talk a little bit about some Macbeth stuff a little later on. Delightful. Just a little tease for you. But I just want to, like, as we leave the Gator plot, which is, like, in the shed, the eye may or may not have come out. Rob would like to see the sockets, show us the sockets. And then we get the handoff in the mist.

The mist is reading very much. very Macbeth to me, right? Like very Burnham Wood, like, spooky stuff going on. How did you feel about, now that we've seen under the windmill, we know what's under the windmill, dot goes down underneath. But like, if you're taking a little shot of some delightful liquor every time you get a windmill shot in this episode, how in trouble would you be? We get like a tight close-up on the like the blade spinning, all that sort of stuff.

What did you make a flash of realization when Dodd's like, oh, I'm going to go hide under the windmill. Yeah. What did you make a windmill watch this week? Yeah. I do have to say, and maybe this is me exposing myself as Blood Simple. I kind of was thinking there'd be more bodies down there. Yeah. But I suppose many of them have decomposed and we see Dot pick up what looks like a big femur to maybe club somebody at a certain point. Obviously Danish Graves is down there. May he rest in peace. But this just. seems like the kind of crime family that's just been burying people for decades. And it seemed scantily attended, I will say that. I think a scantily attended body pile is, I'm sorry, it was such a disappointment to you. But I do think what it could speak to in terms of that bloods upon concept is like how very much things have gotten out of control and ramped up in the last couple weeks for this family. When before they just kept it to like, you know, your occasional spouse, you know, very light

murdery, not full-blown the way that they've been piling of the bodies the last couple weeks. And that is such an interesting Roy, the state of Roy this episode. I would say this is like, in terms of like the psychological state of Roy is our subject in this

episode. So we'll get to that a bit more. And I think Noah Hawley in crafting this episode and crafting this arc of the season is very interested in what takes you to the point where you have decided it's a stand, it's you against the entire world, right? That you've broken all decorum, all rule of law, all whatever. What is behind a person like this?

What brings them to that? And what are the less extreme seeds that we can want? So the breadcrumb trail, where we can maybe cut this off before it gets as far as it does, perhaps. Well, not only that, I wouldn't say, not only is it Roy versus the world. Because I would say he operates that way when he's in positions of strength. We've seen that in previous episodes this season. When he shows up in person to get things done, it's him holding the gun, him having the conversation.

And Dot, I think, is right to call out Roy as being in a position of weakness in this episode. He's rallying the Patriots to come cover for him. He's calling in favors. He's becoming, I would say, like, more and more bluntly ideological and using that as a crutch, using that as a way to get more people into his corner onto his side when, as we've seen, I don't know that he's necessarily like about that life.

He's just someone who knows how to manipulate that sort of thing. So I'm definitely interested in, you know, his like baby's first info wars broadcast to like get all the Patriots and their big guns to come to his house because it does feel like him being more desperate and weaker and as Odin says, like a little more Hitler in the bunker

than Hitler and Reichstag. Let's talk about Roy. Rally the Patriots, as he said, Dagan, this is our Masada, Masada being a rallying place a stand against the Romans. But then he says they're coming for us the way they came for Amin-Lavoy. Amon-Lavoy are the names

of two of the Oregonian take over the Malheur refuge in Burns Oregon in 2016. And I wound up watching some of their news interviews, they, LaVoy, specifically, Levoi Finacom,

who died in this standoff with the feds, was recording, you know, the similar kind of like YouTube videos called to arms things that Roy does in this episode. So, again, like, I don't, do you,

what do you remember of that, of that Oregon, like, Occupy movement that happened, I mean, Occupy makes it sound like something else, but like, in 2016, like, do you remember that? Do you remember how that felt? Like, what was going on for you at that time? I think, and maybe this is a testament to how much distance we've had from that. But at the time, I remember thinking of it more as a curiosity, more as like a look at this weird thing going on.

And maybe that's the physical distance from that place that's putting me in that perspective. Maybe it's the political distance and kind of where we are now versus where we were then, where something like that would ring a little bit more seriously. But in those small instances, I think in a lot of cases, when you zoom out to a national level, to an international level, even just across the country, those things get turned into a joke. But when you're on the ground in these kinds of moments like we have in Fargo, it's very clear how gravely serious this is, where you have people rolling up in armored tanks with a SWAT team, and they're being stopped at the gate and being told, like, we don't recognize your authority here. This occupation happened in early January of 2016. Finacom died the 26th of January, you know, and the Trump, Trump was sworn in, like, when this was happening, right?

And so I think for some of us who are maybe like a little bit more pro-clutchy than you, and that might be me, it was like, is this the end of America? You know what I mean? Like, what the hell is going on? And I think that this is a different January 6th, but. Finnecom was interviewed on January 6th, 2016, and he said, I would rather be killed than arrested if the occupation turns violent. I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box. So, I mean, and I was watching some of his speeches, and he's like, what is a terrorist?

What is terrorism? Like, he's very, like, not compelling to me, but, like, eloquent. And in a way that I think Holly might have tried to lift some of that, like, grandiose language that we hear from Roy and the same. episode from this source. So again, this is once again underlining the inspiration, but it was helpful to me because I needed a refresher on this whole thing. What do you make of when Roy is talking to his hench and he's saying, like, bury her, I don't want to feel that way again, bury her. What do you make of that as like a motivation here for, you know, this is like a piece a shit monster, abuser, like, we have no empathy or sympathy for Roy. But this is an attempt to

not get our sympathies for him or whatever, but to root his behavior in something human, which is emotional. How do you feel about that? How does that work for you? I think it makes sense. And his, in particular, the fact that not only is something emotional happening for Roy, but he's trying to keep it at arm's length, right? He's trying to get away from feelings and his way of doing that is I'm just going to have somebody else killed Dot, so I don't have to do it. And another way in which I think he kind of exposes his weakness,

but the show, I'm very curious about the shooting of this scene and the framing of this scene because we see prior to that conversation, Roy's on his front porch, it's very like cinematic look, him gazing out at his ranch. And literally the aspect ratio of the show is changing,

boxing him in in like a more cinematic format. As he walks across, again, this big swinging cowboy in his boots on his ranch. He has that conversation where he opts out of having feelings and doing the one thing he's been trying to do all season. And as soon as that happens, the aspect ratio shifts back. And Roy gets a little smaller in our frame. And we're starting to understand kind of where this character is. And in our estimation, like, again, how desperate he is. The fact that he is not the guy who we've seen over previous episodes who doesn't necessarily want the same things. Because right now all he's doing is fighting

for his life and trying to get as many people to fight with him. I think it's fascinating. I love when an aspect ratio shifts on a show. It calls himself America's Sheriff. We were just talking about America's mayor. Before we start recording... As one does. As we're just talking about Rudy Giuliani.

This is where Macbeth comes in, right? So his call to arms that he records, our listener, Randy, wrote in, Mcbeth is something to think about because, obviously, Joel Cohen, made a great, you know, adaptation, film adaptation of Macbeth, very misty film adaptation

of Macbeth. But in terms of this concept of Blood Simple and Macbeth, Randy says, you might have covered this already with all the talk of royalty and the concept of Blood Simple. I can't stop thinking of Macbeth when he decided to double and triple down a murder after his failed banquet. Quote, I am in blood steps

in so far that should I wait no more returning were as tedious as Goor. And Randy also writes that dot sleeplessness definitely fits the Macbeth vibe as well. Also, the little snippet of Tillman's call to Patriots in the trailer for next week's a reeks of Macbeth's desperate last stand. So, like...

I was thinking that the grab your beans and your bullets was kind of Shakespearean. You know, there's just something about it that really rang through. But I think this idea, I mean, we have been talking about kings and queens, and we were thinking about it in terms of, like, the way this show is trying to reveal what royalty is in America. It's a constitutional sheriff. It's a queen of debt sort of thing. But yeah, I think, you know, similarly as when we discussed succession,

I think if you're going to talk about allusions to royalty, you need to be thinking about allusions to, you know, Shakespearean storytelling. And I think the concept of Macbeth, especially to your point, this idea of, like, who does the crime, who has the bloody hands? Like, where is the courage, you know, whereas the sin is something that is bumping around the corners of Macbeth. And I think also on that Halloween spooky or the visions Dot has of him and he has of

dot, like all of that supernatural stuff is, of course, like very Macbethy. So, yeah, I love that call out. Thanks, Randy, for that email. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used. with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight

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if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If your nursing pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound 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 zepbounds.lily.com. Let's talk about the orange idiot, Lorraine situation. If we must. What's the point of being a billionaire If you can't have somebody killed Is a throwaway line from Lorraine

How did you feel about that? Love that line Especially in I would say a pretty mixed Lorraine episode Like that felt like Lorraine to me Her whole spiel to dot about no daughter of mine I was like what line Like what character is this line coming out of Because I'm not familiar with them

I agree Like I do not mind Lorraine having this I like this slow transition that Lorraine has had to this intraloper in my family to this is my family's part of my pack. Like I've enjoyed that. But again, it's saying the quiet part out loud to be like no daughter of mine, etc. So I agree with you. Check off's tank. We got an email. I can't, I'm sorry. I couldn't dig it up before we started recording. But like we got an email. Someone mentioned the tank mentioned last week. Do we think the tank is going to come into play in this standoff?

with the feds, is that checkoff stake? How do you? This really turned into a Game of Thrones all of a sudden. It's like, are the dragons coming out or what? I don't know. I don't know. They got dragons on this side. Can we have dragons on that side?

I mean, the fact that you have one armored vehicle, I would say begets another armored vehicle. Certainly, we're seeing the guns. We're seeing lots of unpacking of ammunition and all these assault weapons that Roy has so kindly endowed or misplaced in a way that the militia could find. So it's good to see, you know, his down payment paying off in terms of getting all these guys equipped. It's finally really coming back to help him out. I think it's more like Chekhov's tank more than it is Chekhov's tank, but you never know. Look, apparently I'm out for blood this

week. I'm really looking for some violence in the finale. We got, here's the thing. If you're going to light a bunch of burners on a gas stove, sorry, not light a bunch of burners on a gas stove, but activate the gas and have a, like, someone almost lighting the building on fire in a way that's going to make it blow up, I'm just left wanting a little bit. I'm ready for some carnage. apparently. I want to talk about not in depth necessarily. I just need to call out the language. Again, either lifted from Oregonian occupiers or wherever it may be, but there are, as we mentioned, a few moments in this episode that feel a little too on the nose. And then there is just like, you can just sort of marinate if you choose in the like, when Roy says, God cuts our name into bone,

and that's what we become. You all came here to find lots of wife, but she's already a pillar of salt, and she ain't turning back. I was like, how do you, what were you, what did you drink that day? No holiday you came up with that. And I mean like coffee or tea or match or whatever. I'm not talking about like booze. I'm just sort of like, what, what do I need, what headspace do I ever need to get into to come up with something that delightful?

God cuts our name into bone and that's what we become. Like the language, it's one of the purest pleasures of Fargo is just sort of like marinating the language, especially when, you know, if you rewatch these, and want, like, whenever this sort of like Old Testament language comes seeping into the story, I just, I eat it up every time. I absolutely love it. I thought that was some of the best stuff from Roy, too. When he does allow himself a little poetic license, I feel like it was when his stuff really sings.

Anything else you want to say, I mean, we're going to leave Roy and go to Dot. Anything else you want to say about Roy or the feds or the establishment of this standoff here? I do think it's interesting You know, Odin calls Like this idea of Dot Nadine as his like weakness I mean it's so perverse

But this idea of like In order to be the person that Roy is, you can't actually care about anything. You can't care about your son can't care about your wife can't care Like when we saw him sitting in the room

With his twin daughters Earlier in the season and looking at that sort of mark on the wall that Monk had left, you know, it's not that he doesn't care about any of these people. He cares about his, like, possessions, his territory, his kingdom, etc. And the projection of strength, the idea that someone came into his home and did this. And this is the one exception is Dot ever in his life, perhaps. And the question is, why?

I mean, she's, I think that's the only question worth asking. because, again, I don't want to, like, even really humanize or sympathize or empathize with Roy at all. But it's sort of like, I think it's worth asking at the end of the day when we get to the end of the season, what was it about Dot that unseats the kind of power that Roy is a master around him? You know, what is about her that is like, what does she stand for that she wormed into an unmade something like this? Do you know what I mean? I think it is that. It is the fact that she eludes his power.

That she's the one who got away. And it's kind of a different manifestation of that kind of story and that kind of attraction. But clearly, you know, Roy is an unspeakably evil dude. But he understands Dot and her tactics in a way that no one else in the show does. He's always the one who smells the gas, who sees what she's up to. I think it's because, for one, he's obviously been trying to keep her under his thumb for a very long time. but there is something about their connection

where he sees a version of her that other people don't see. And I think his obsession and his fixation with Dot is because she got away, is because she's the one thing that we'll say no to him, that runs away from him, that he can't seem to pull back

under his control. I think there's something to that. That's interesting. Plus, it was along these lines of his family too. I don't know that I expect more of Roy than this, but there was something a little heartbreaking about the fact that when he's clearing the house looking for Dot.

He sees Karen bloodied on the floor, and he doesn't stop for a single second for any reason. He's just like, okay, I'm on to the next room to find Dot. Something that's really interesting about the Dot and Karen interaction, and I wouldn't notice this if a couple of our listeners had pointed out that last week, when Dot was talking to Gator in the shed, and she's talking to him about, like, what his dad actually thinks of him, why he wasn't named Roy, all this sort of stuff like that.

For the first time since her confrontation with, with Lorraine early in the season, she drops the Fargo accent, which I didn't notice, but I rewatched, and it's true. That's a great call. And she does it again here when she's talking to Karen. She says he's weak, you know it, and then he'll never hit you again. Like that whole speech she gives to Karen of like, come on is not in the Fargo accent. So it's like this, I am really trying to get to you without any layer of pretense between us

And whether it's sort of like the vindictive way she went after Gator last week or the appeal that she's making to Karen here, it's like, let's drop everything and just be really real with each other for a minute. And this, you know, because she puts it back on when she's on the phone with Wayne and Scotty and Adira and Lorraine. You know what I mean? So she's like not dropped it entirely. But I thought that was really interesting. It seemed like she was pretty close for a second with Karen too. Like it seemed like Karen is at least thinking about it and ultimately kind of snaps back into her program. but her situation is so strange and so precarious.

And I think you were right, too, to call out not just Karen, but the daughters. And they're kind of whisked away at the beginning of this episode. But the way in which they're whisked away, and I think some of that is just so no one is spending the episode fretting about children being caught in explosions and gunfire and things like that. But I don't think in this entire season, have we seen Roy actually interact with his daughters? It's been him telling Karen, go take the kids somewhere. It's been him talking over them or about them or being word.

about their, you know, being worried about the sigil above their beds. I don't think we've seen him talk to them at all. I don't know. I feel like there was something either in the kitchen or like bath time or something. I feel like there was something, but I could be wrong. Maybe a shut up, you know, it could be as simple as that. But certainly nothing meaningful. Absolutely, for sure.

We got this email about Wayne that I just like really want to read just because I love Wayne so much and we did get a little bit of weight in this episode. So when he used it as my excuse. My guy couldn't get more than one word from Dot before the hang up. And then he starts 69, which is not the best thinking. If she's like talking to you in a hushed tones on a phone somewhere, don't then make that phone ring. Just saying, Wayne.

All right. This idea of Wayne is a counter. So Laura wrote this great long email, our listener, Laura, about Dot. You know, we know that Dot is supposed to be this sort of like answer to the wife in Fargo. Like, what if the White and Fargo had fought back? So Laura's like, well, that makes Wayne then the sort of counter to Jerry in Fargo the film and Lester. Lester, he's one of Fargo, which is, you know. And so she says, unlike Jerry and Lester, Wayne does not seem bothered by his mother's concession,

admittedly some of which is during him being brain fried and on painkillers. He's comfortable showing vulnerability to dot, his desire to play floor hockey and watch Real Housewives. I'm sure characters like Roy would call him a soft boy, but he's also, the only truly happy male character of the white guys at least. Gator, Roy, Wayne's dad, Lars, they're all miserable deep down and consumed by anger to hide their fear and they're unloved and unloved and unlovable. Wayne is loved and lovable by Dot and Scotty and secure in his attachments to them. So he doesn't need the armor of toxic masculinity to try to prove his worth. He gets to be the happy content person Jerry and Lester never could because they cared more about being perceived

as powerful and strong. So what do you make of this love letter to our guy, Wayne? would make Wayne maybe a little bit happier is if someone could give him one goddamn phone call telling him what's going on. Like Lorraine can't tell him anything? You can't clue him in even a little bit on what's happening? No.

Very tough. Also, I should say on your Wink Lion fandom front, Wayne's dad, I didn't go back and check this, but we did get a listener say that when Wink is reenacting that war sequence, he seems to be on the side of the Nazis. So it's a bad look for your guy.

Yikes. I have to say. And Lorraine sounds like she's a big Trump donor. So I don't know what to tell you. I'm just going to start. Slowly inching away from the Wink Lion table and hope that no one caught my allegiance earlier this season. Come join us in Wayne Lion Corner.

It's a safer place to be, I think. It certainly seems it. last two things I want to talk about is wit in this episode. You already noted this sort of like, we're not going to crush the victim with the helping handline, which again feels a little on the nose. But like wit being here, I don't know, wit all season.

What is your sense of like where wit stands as like an archetype in this story? I'm having trouble getting a full grasp on it. Why does he need to be in the story? what does he stand for? Why is it important that he's here, this big standoff? I'm glad he's here. I love Warren Morris a lot, so I'm always happy to have him here,

but I'm just trying to grasp his larger place in the story, you know? It's definitely a different kind of archetype than we've seen in Vargo and in other Cohen stuff, but I think he really is in service of the idea of dead. And we even get a call out here from the SWAT officer identifying him as, oh, you were the guy from the service station, kind of prompting us, reminding us that, oh, like, the whole reason he's here is not just because he's a cop who's worried about Dot.

It's because Dot saved his life. And saved his life in a moment of kind of cowardice, that he ran from the scene of the original shootout to the service station. And the only reason he was injured was because he was standing outside, like kind of an idiot surveying the scene, and then Dot had to bail him out. So we have a bunch of characters kind of indebted to each other in different ways. You know, Monk is certainly collecting his.

Whitfar is trying to, like, fulfill his to Dot, and to get her at least out of this situation, he does seem a little shoehorned in at some points. And I have a really hard time with him and Endera specifically. Like they've been fairly prominent parts of our story. And yet right now, as far as I can tell, Whitfar's main job is to be the least equipped member of a SWAT team. And Endera's main job is to be answering the phone for Lorraine

and telling Dot not to shoot people or jump into firefights. Is that really all that these characters are going to become? I'd be kind of disappointed if that's where they are. If it's true, if like Indira has sort of arced out of her arc, like she, her arc was to get out from underneath Lars and all of that. And like, but is her destiny to become the new Danish graves?

Like is that, you know, she's not a, like it. But it also seemed a little yada, yada, yada, to her going from showing up to Lorraine saying,

I'm going to take the job to now she's just on the job. Right. In a new wardrobe. Your piece in, wearing the suit. Like, yeah. I feel like we,

that's where we missed some kind of actual character beat with Indira, even if it's just like literally her kind of getting prepared for this new work, getting dressed for this new job in a way that she's had to put on a totally different costume, a totally different affect. Oh, I love that. Yeah, Witt, I don't know. I'll see how it all plays out next week. I think it is important that there's someone here on the farm that thinks of Dot as a person.

Yes. Because she's being thought of as an asset or a burden or, you know, however it is that Roy thinks of her an asset by the feds, a tiger by monk, you know what I mean? But Whitfar is like, this is a person. She's a victim. She's not, right? In her own way, she is and she isn't, you know, because I think there are people who balk at that term victim. And I think the way in which she has fought back constantly, I don't know, that's a complicated

subject matter that I probably shouldn't have raised in the final minutes of a podcast episode. but, you know, this idea of like she's the victim, she is and she isn't at the same time. Well, especially if the cops are going to be this central to the action of the finale, it's nice to have someone who's recognizable in that party and someone who's an actual character because if anything, that's my problem with Mr. and Mrs. Joe Queen is that there's such non-characters that when they say things, it feels like a line. And where far can be heavy-handed, like, again, that line I referenced earlier is like a bit much. But that's a character we spent time with.

And we understand what he's after and what he wants. And he's had actual some growth and some ability to interact with the other, like, members of this party and members of this show over the course of the series. So that's helpful, narratively speaking. You're right. The last thing I want to talk about is one last Wizard of Oz beat before the end of all things. We got this. So, like, this episode puts such a fine point on a lot of what the season is about, which is if Fargo is always, always been an examination of the darker heart of America or Americana, then this is, I guess,

in tandem with season four, which I've already admitted I didn't finish, sort of Noah Hawley's attempt to understand the Trumpier parts of America, even though season four was set in the past, the themes were relevant. Like, how do we get where we got with Trump is sort of the question on Noah Holly's mind? How is that America fit in with our larger idea? of what America is. And so this idea of political allegory is something that our listener, Sarah, brought up with Wizard of Oz.

She says, my 11th grade teacher did not miss an opportunity to state as fact as theory, shared by some scholars, that the original book of the Wizard of Oz is itself an allegory for political and economic events taking place during the time it was written. The Yellow Brook Road represents the gold standard and Dorothy slippers, which are silver in the book,

represent the Silverite movement, etc. People have been having Wizard of Oz theories forever. And then she says, had talked about not having a great wizard comp yet in the show, but I think we see it in episode seven. Linda is the wizard. Our Dorothy goes on a journey to find Linda because she believes Linda has the power to send her home by testifying about Roy to the FBI. Before her wishing would be granted, she first has to complete a task set by wizard, Linda, make the puppet and tell her story. Our Dorothy succeeds at her task and in the process reveals that the revered St. Linda

is actually a fallible human who made choices that had negative consequences, like Toto pulling back the curtain on the wizard to reveal the conman. Then, you And just as our Dorothy's wish to go home, seems about to be fulfilled. She wakes up and the magic solution disappears like a con man in a hot air balloon. Rob, Mahoney, Linda is the wizard? How do you feel? Look, I'm willing to buy literally any wizard of Ozcoms at this point. So Linda seems like as good a wizard as any.

And it's also probably worth noting that when Dodd is in the basin, she seems to eye what looks like maybe some kind of necklace or something that I'm going to assume is some tie-in to Linda. I hoped it was, but I think it's Danish's. eye patch. I think it's blood. That was the eye patch? I think it's blood dripping off of Danish Graves eye patch. I don't know how the eyepatch would have gotten caught on that nail in that way, but like, who's to say the trajectory? But I was like, is this a Linda clue? And then it was, I think it's the eye patch, but it could be wrong. So it confirms something that Dot already knew to be true, which is that Danish Graves dies because she watched him be thrown into that particular

basin. Literally already saw him. I was surprised by her reaction to that. I also don't know why how she knew that he was there for her. Right? Lorraine's like, what was he? doing there. She's like he was there for me. I mean, it's a fair assumption to make, but one that Lorraine could have made as well, so I don't really know. So I think we have some quibbles with this episode,

but honestly, that's often the case with me for a penultimate episode, and it really all depends on how the finale rolls. But I think on this Wizard of Oz comp, when we think of the couple of flashes we got from Don this episode, one was at the windmill, of a high, I know we're all high,

sort of moment. But then there's the the shot of Scotty and Wayne standing on the steps of their home as like when her life is flashing before her eyes. That's what she sees. There's no place like home. So we'll find out what show we're watching. Does Dodd get to go home or not?

We don't know. Well, on the home front, I thought this was an interesting there's no place like home episode because I think we've seen with Dot when she gets in these hairy situations, there's kind of two types of escapes for her. There's the ones where she's cornered out in the world

where it's a service station, It's a hospital. She's kind of running circles a little more chaotic than usual. But then we get episodes like this one, or like her original home invasion, where she knows the landscape. And I thought it was in light of our conversations about home. Very interesting to watch her navigating this house, knowing every in and out, knowing every secret door, which I now have to ask, does every house in the Midwest have secret doors and ladders going up and down? Is this just a thing?

Is it a laundry shoot? This one seemed like just a ladder. I, yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. If you're listening and you know about, if you have a secret ladder shoot in your house, please let us know. But in particular, when she's creeping up the stairs of the Tillman house, felt very specific to me of like, oh, this is someone who has had to make this creep before, who's tried their very hardest to not make a single bit of sound as they've tried to sneak by Roy, as they've tried to sneak by Roy, as they've. tried to sneak in or out of the house. It just felt like a place she had been before.

And I feel like Karen underlines that when she's like, all of your stuff is still here. Your pictures are on the wall. I'm living with your ghost all the time. Yeah. Ooh. Karen. How many years has it been?

Just get new sheets. Karen, I really hope you wake up and you leave. That's my hope for you, Karen. I'm sorry that you've been brainwashed at a thing you have to stay. Anything else I want to say before the finale? I mean, any hopes or dreams or thoughts or wants for the finale? I want Gator to be missing at least one eye. Okay.

Do you need to see the socket or? I'm fine taking their word for it, but I feel like it would be narratively unsatisfying. And frankly, I would understand Monk less, a character I really like, if his ultimate revenge for this old woman's death was some kind of like metaphorical severing of a relationship between father and son. Okay. I love monk and his presence in this episode. I'm a little worried we're not going to see him again. But I really like kind of him as this baffling element, this like interloper in a war zone where no one really knows when he's coming

or what he's there to do or what to do with him. So I hope we see a little more monk, but I'm worried we may not. Just like Tony Shalub's agent, you're like, give me more monk. Oh, Jesus Christ. I'm sorry, I don't know. It's been a weird day for me, Rob. Do you think that Tillman's are watching Monk? I noticed in their bedroom they had like a VCR DVD combo.

I was trying to think like what do they have on their shelf? That's a family that owns like six DVDs and one of them is like grown-ups too. No, I was thinking like Roy loves his old like John Wayne. There's definitely John Wayne. There's a Gary Cooper shout out in this episode. The Great Escape is on there. American sniper I think is maybe in that collection. Dirty Harry.

What else do we got? For my, my wish for the finale since we spent so much of this episode rallying the troops and slinking around the farm and all this stuff, like, I hope the whole finale is not just like, you know, a war. A shootout on the farm. Yes. Like, that sounds kind of boring to me. So, like, I hope there is something else to, as you say, much more character-based. Yeah. To sing in too.

Well, especially the more and more it's a shootout, the less we see of Lorraine. the less we see of Wayne. You know, like, we want to spend time with these characters who just are not going to show up guns ablazing. That's true. All right. Well, that is it for this episode of the Prestiasee TV podcast covering Fargo. Again, we will be back with both Fargo and True Detective next week.

So excited for that. So grateful that Rob has let me just sort of strong harm him into another show. I just know about your passion for law enforcement, and I'm here to support you. Well, if Blue Blines is getting canceled, what else can we do? Sean Fentissie and I just did an episode on like four episodes of The Curse, and then we'll be back for the finale next week with the curse. So there's a lot going on the prestige feed. We're hoping to have a special guest for the Fargo finale episode.

I never like to announce it before we've done the interview. But we're hoping that that will all come through next week. Let me tell you, Jack Skelington's publicist is a, real jerk to work with. Yeah. Very tough guy to get on the line, it turns out, Jack Skellington. Thanks to Kai Grady as always, but in this episode, Sasha Schell stepped in to cover. So thank you so much, Sasha.

By the way, Barry a ringer hive, very strong across the four of us. Thank you so much. We'll see you next week. Bye.