Oh, I missed this show so much. I don't think I can properly articulate how much I missed it, but if I could interpret the feeling that the claustrophobic, nightmarish origin story(?) of dead-eyed murderer Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) gave me, I would write it down for you right now, and hopefully that would be enough.
Fargo and magical realism are not strangers to each other. The most hypnotic and stunning parts of the second and third seasons—the UFO, Ray Wise as a modern biblical figure—are based in unreality, so to watch Fargo return to this kind of storytelling is nothing short of magical. The mysterious origin of Munch is the best part of "The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions," but regardless, there's lots to like in this bizarre outing. We have more time with endlessly dim-witted Gator Tillman (Joe Keery) as he skulks around the state police's evidence room and faces off with continuously likable trooper Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris), mysteriously capable housewife Dot Lyon (Juno Temple) arms herself, and Gator's old-fashioned, quietly threatening sheriff father Roy (Jon Hamm) gives her a reason to.
Fargo has never been afraid of cramming its starting points full of content and letting its endgame sort them out, and with how much I continue to like this new cast, I'm not complaining. The main focus of this episode is arguably Dot as she continues to prepare for Roy's move, from passive measures like switching her neighborhood's street signs around to very active ones like all the guns she buys. (Funny if slightly telegraphed joke in that scene—her oblivious husband Wayne compliments the clerk's eye patch as part of the upcoming Halloween season; guy is just missing an eye.)
But Dot's defense measures were perhaps the least interesting part of the episode, underscored last episode by at least a little pushback from Wayne—it was setting up greater thematic points about the paranoia present in 2019, the time period season five takes place in. Here, it just kind of happens while the rest of the episode is comparatively great, losing this thread in the fold.
For example, the only scene in this episode that features both deputy Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani) and Dot's steely debt collector mother-in-law Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) does a lot with a little. The conservative ideas held by the season's wealthier characters haven't exactly been quiet, but Leigh's continuously fantastic performance sells her taunting musings about the police being useless to someone as well off as her beyond keeping "a certain element in line." She resembles Roy's father-in-law, who makes a brief appearance here to request more guns, in that she transcends the police. But what separates her is that she wants things the way they are—if anything, the Tillmans are the country-fed element that she wants to keep out.
That element shows up more than once in "Paradox," when Gator goes to steal evidence from the shooting Dot ended up in. He runs into Witt and things get tense in an awkward, funny way that only this show can pull off. Gator looks intimidating because poor Witt is on crutches, until he makes himself out to be childish with a "your mom" joke in the hapless officer's direction. But then he loops right back around to being intimidating when he tells an anecdote about a man he beat up in high school, making his intentions clear. Fargo has always been great at scenes like this, where the villain reveals themselves to the character while the audience already knows they're a threat, and to see them come back when season four's villain department was so lacking is a relief, to say the least.
The most sinister element at play here is Munch's aforementioned backstory. (Did you audibly react to the sudden "500 YEARS EARLIER" cut? I did!) In a Welsh house, a man that either is or closely resembles Munch is sat before another man's body. He consumes a meal left on the man's corpse in a ritual that supposedly transfers the dead man's sins to him, and his soul is damned. And that's it! From a literal standpoint, this makes positively zero sense, but Fargo loves its non-sequiturs, and the atmosphere of this scene makes it a highlight.
The dim lighting and exaggerated focus on the characters' faces make the scene feel distinctly nightmarish, and if Munch is some kind of immortal being, the pawning of his soul centuries ago definitely explains his obsession with debts in the modern day. Will this ever come up again? There's a good chance it may never, but with Roy so interested in Dot because of a debt she seemingly owes him, it at least ties in thematically.
All of these moving pieces coalesce into an intense final scene, where Munch sacrifices a goat and smears himself in dirt and blood for...some reason. Spruell's jerky physical performance here is creepy and captivating, and as he suddenly appears on Roy's porch to do who knows what in his house, it really plays into the idea that he's some sort of supernatural being. And this isn't the only home invasion that ends the episode—Gator and his goons arrive at Dot's house, getting by her simple sign switching by way of their GPS. "Paradox" is a mostly transitionary episode that ends on an exciting note, and while it may be easy to discard it as mostly filler, Fargo is a show that loves to set up its pieces and knock them all down. And I, for one, enjoy the setup as much as I do the destruction.
This episode of Fargo is now available to stream on Hulu.