'Fargo' Recap: "The Law of Inevitability"
Cameron Lee ’20 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Spoiler Alert: This recap contains spoilers for the season 3 episode 7 of Fargo
After last week’s shocking development, Fargo has changed course and has entered its final phase for its third and perhaps final season. FX president John Landgraf said in a recent interview by the Hollywood Reporter that “there may never be another Fargo, unless Noah has an idea for Fargo that he thinks he can make as good as the prior three.” It’s worth noting that Noah Hawley is perhaps the busiest man working in television at the moment as he is not only showrunning this show but Legion and two new additional miniseries for FX. He has so much on his plate that it’s very understandable for him to take a long hiatus or possibly end the show right here.
But back to the story at hand: Varga (David Thewlis) is at Emmit’s house opening Christmas presents with a switchblade. While this opening scene doesn’t really add anything to the plot it does continue to make Varga the standout character for this season. When Emmit (Ewan McGregor) arrives home, Varga recites a nursing rhyme for Emmit that perfectly sums up the world viewpoint of the show. The rhyme goes like this: “There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a little crooked house.” Fargo has had a habit of bringing poetry and other forms of storytelling into the show. While Fargo is not exactly doing what it did in the previous seasons, it is starting to feel a bit formulaic and not as fresh as the previous two seasons. The only difference is that our main police character Gloria (Carrie Coon) knows exactly what’s going on, which is nice, as it would be useless having the great Carrie Coon piece things together so late into the season. Speaking of Gloria, she’s still trying to convince her ignorant boss (played very well by Shea Whigham) to believe her story.
Nikki gets on the prison bus and sits next to a familiar face to anyone who has watched all of Fargo. Mr. Numbers (Adam Goldberg), the deaf hitman from season one who showed up again in a cameo in season two as a child, reappears here. While it’s strange for Mr. Numbers to be the apparent lynch pin in all three seasons of Fargo, there’s no time to think about that as Yuri the Russian hitman (Goran Bogdan), who had previously caused Gloria’s partner to flee the police station earlier in the episode, has set a trap for the oncoming prison bus. He causes the bus to crash in slow motion (another Fargo trope). Yuri and his team see their way into the bus and the episode abruptly ends.
Fargo will hopefully begin to pay things off in these last three episodes because it needs some momentum right now. The show is still very good, but it’s lacking the freshness and energy that made the last two seasons the gold standards of the anthology format on television. Hopefully things turn around and the show will start to deliver some satisfying episodes again.
Episode Grade: B-