Fargo 2.1: Good to Be Back in the Freezer

Fargo was back for its second season on FX on Monday, with a narrative that promises to be as brilliant, blackly humorous, complex, and altogether in a world of its own as what we saw in its first season.  And other than this story also taking place in North Dakota, this story seems at this point to have only one connection to the first season, which I'll get to shortly   Indeed, whereas the first season took place in the present, this second season is happening in 1979.

Let me see if I got the setup (always a question, when you've only seen an episode of Fargo just once).  There's a criminal family, the Gerhardts.   They need a judge to make a proper ruling.  One of the sons, a hothead with a gun, thinks he can convince her to do what they want.  He accosts the judge in a diner, and ends up shooting her, a former athlete now working there, and the waitress, all to death.   Then he's hit by a car, and carried along on its hood.

We learn that the driver, Peggy (played by Kristen Dunst) is a married to a guy, Ed (played by Jesse Plemons), who works for a butcher (the honest kind who sells meat, not as far as we know a murderer of humans).   This serves Ed in good stead, as he has a freezer in which to stow the killer's body (after he kills him, after the bad guy attacks him, because the bad guy wasn't thoroughly dead).  You just know that freezer with the body is going to be opened in some upcoming episode at the worst time.

Meanwhile, the sheriff and state trooper are investigating the three killings at the diner.  Hank Larson the sheriff is played by Tad Danson, always good to see.   The state trooper is none other than Lou Solverson, who will age well and be played by Keith Carradine in Season 1 (that's the one connection).

And just to top it off, and provide a little more sinister depth to this story - always a key ingredient in Fargo - the episode ends with a bigger criminal enterprise in Kansas City set to move in on the Gerhardts in North Dakota.

There nothing else quite like Fargo on television, and I'm looking forward with relish to the rest this second second (maybe some mustard, too).

See also: Fargo Debuts with Two Psychos ... Fargo 1.7: The Bungling and the Brave ... Fargo 1.8: The Year ... Fargo Season 1 Finale: The Supremely Cunning Anti-Hero



A story about another kind of killer ...  The Silk Code

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