Of all the excellent casting choices this season, Jon Hamm may be the smartest, because flashbacks to “Mad Men” make us confident in his relative infallibility on the job, even if his Don Draper proves dramatically less secure outside of time. . Hamm is such a magnetic cult of personality that comedies like “30 Rock” and the underrated “Confess, Fletch” have gone out of their way to turn him into a smiling buffoon. “Fargo” has done the same, but much more gradually, as Roy’s biblical authority over Stark County has loosened along with his grip on his emotions. His plea to his patriots: “After they kill me, then they will come for you,” sounds like Trumpian victimization. And they will obediently follow him to the precipice.
Roy’s desperation raises the stakes for a thrilling penultimate episode as Dot fights to safety at the ranch, having seen where he buries the bodies. She couldn’t have anticipated being in the crossfire between the feds and a militia full of heavily armed weekend warriors, but she knows enough about Roy’s mental state to see where things might be headed. When she returns to the house, which is full of small trapdoors and hidden passageways that she knows enough to exploit, she receives a call from Wayne before Karen points a rifle at her.
Since the season has revolved around adversarial women finding common cause, it’s a relief that Dot’s attempt to bond with Karen fails. Perhaps the show has already gone too far in softening Lorraine, and runs the risk of flattening the female characters if they are all of a similar mindset. The threat that Dot poses to Karen, who is furious that the bedroom has not changed since she left (“We slept in your dirt”), suggests that Roy is bored with the submissiveness of his current wife. That’s why he needs her to role play in bed.
While Dot finds the shadiest hiding place possible while Witt Farr and a group of agents try to locate her, poor Gator returns to the scene, led by Ole Munch, who enacts his own version of biblical justice when Gator killed. She hosted him and left with his money. Roy knows immediately that his son has made a grave mistake, but only shows disappointment when Munch drags Gator back to the ranch by the neck, having gouged out his eyes with a hot knife. With no mother or maternal figure in his life, Gator had chosen to please his father, and his reward is being left in the fog, unable to summon the sympathy of a tough, narrow, and narcissistic idol. His childish pleas for “daddy” fade into mist.
However, Munch shows mercy towards the woman who destroyed his ear. With Roy’s men approaching the “tomb” where she imagines no one will find her, Munch makes it his part to free her by taking them out and leading her to freedom. “Fighting a tiger in a cage is not a fair fight,” she tells him. Her problem with Roy seems to be resolved. Or maybe she just respects his agency. And her skill.
