Season 5, episode 8: ‘Manta’
When Dot was kidnapped earlier in the season and then just returned home as if nothing had happened, it was absurd on its face. No one, other than Wayne, could believe that she had gone out for a while and gone back in time to make some Bisquick for her daughter. And although she knew her kidnappers would return to lay siege to the house, she was determined to enjoy Halloween with her family, even while she set booby traps like Dustin Hoffman in “Straw Dogs.” She’s the kind of determined fantasist who believes she can bend reality to her will.
That bubble is pierced in two lines in this week’s episode, when Roy finally has her back at his ranch in North Dakota, chained to the ground like an animal. “You’ll end up just like Linda,” she hisses. “I’ll bury you right next to her.” We’d just spent most of the previous episode at Camp Utopia, the women’s shelter that Dot had conjured up in a daydream about pancakes, which seemed at the time like a clever way to fill in a crucial part of her backstory. But now it’s clear that he was clinging to the idea that Linda had fled Tillman Ranch to save herself and maybe one day might reappear to make amends with Dot and become a mother again to her wayward son, Gator, who has gone overboard. dark side. in his absence.
In the time before Roy’s revelation about what really happened to Linda, Dot is still determined to return to the fantasy life she almost managed to make a reality. She needs to order an ice cream cake for Scotty’s birthday. She has the duties of her as den mother of a girl scout troop. She has 13 seasons of “Call the Midwife” left to finish with Wayne. However, the incontrovertible truth about Roy is that he is a badge-wearing killer, free from the laws of man or the influence of a powerful lawyer like Danish Graves, who smugly assumed he had the upper hand in a negotiation. From her shelter at the ranch, Dot can see that body disposal is so routine for Roy that she has a well on site for it.
At this point, it’s perhaps worth asking how sincere “Fargo” is about domestic violence. As skillfully as the show’s creator, Noah Hawley, has woven his serious comedic thread this season, it can be difficult to reconcile the show’s glib, knowing and referential tone with the content warnings that have marked the last two episodes. As Roy makes his long walk back to Dot at the shelter, following her humiliation at the county sheriff’s debate, a Lisa Hannigan cover of Britney Spears’ hit “Toxic” covers the soundtrack and hits a bad note. . “Dark” versions of pop songs have become a staple of movie trailers, and here’s the next attraction to a type of abuse the show isn’t sober enough to handle. What worked for the puppets in Camp Utopia feels more like exploitation of the genre here.
It doesn’t help that the prelude to the violence is so extravagantly silly. Lorraine and Danish’s scheme to ruin Roy’s re-election campaign is surely the strangest of the onerous debt consolidation options offered by Redemption Services. For the plan to work, Danish has to get three Roy Tillman name changes approved, secure spots for each of them on the debate stage for Stark County sheriff, and so cleverly provoke the real Roy Tillman. let it melt and hit the woman. moderator. It seems like a lot of unpredictable variables, but the scene itself is reasonably funny, with the fake Roys echoing the real one like brothers pulling a prank on their older brother.
Now that the Roy-Dot-Linda situation has been cleared up, can we get some puppet-assisted backstory on how Indira and Lars Olmstead once became a couple? Because whatever Lars brought to the table when they fell in love and got married, there’s no evidence of it now. Indira catching Lars with another woman adds infidelity to a long list of defects that she details one last time before kicking him out of the house. Throughout the season, Indira’s problems at home have been contrasted with Dot’s happy marriage to Wayne, and have offered a different picture of domestic toxicity than Dot’s abuse at the hands of Roy. They are both women fighting for their own happiness and the show has created an unspoken bond between them.
The final shot of Dot staring out a small broken ranch window, fully aware of Roy’s capabilities, introduces a genuine fear we haven’t seen in her yet. “You don’t have a plan, do you?” she asked him before. She intended it as a rhetorical taunt, but perhaps she now realizes that him not having a plan is a terrifying proposition. He will assert her authority over her. He hasn’t planned anything after that.
3 cent stamps
-
But knowing the truth about what happened to Linda increases the likelihood that Gator will turn against his father, especially given the vulnerability he shows at any mention of his mother. However, he will first have to survive Ole Munch.
-
It’s good to see Deputy Witt Farr resurface at the hospital, where he tries to free Dot from Roy’s clutches. He’s already shown a lot of courage in standing up to the Tillmans, but it’s his insistence on repeatedly calling Dot “Mrs. Lyon” which is moving in this context. He wants her (and Roy) to know that he recognizes who she really is.
-
A Coen reference in this episode: When Indira opens the bedroom closet door to Lars’ lover, she remembers when George Clooney discovers Brad Pitt hiding in “Burn After Reading.” However, the lover comes out a little calmer.
-
Another little cinematic reference: the creaking windmill above the place where Roy dumps his victims seems like a nod to the famous beginning of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” where that creaking is among the new sounds we hear in the moments of pregnancy. before three outlaws ambush Charles Bronson at a train station. It’s also a callback to the place where he hid Linda’s postcard in her daydream.
