The truth is undoubtedly Fargo's largest overarching theme. The original movie and now every episode of the show opens with text that declares that we are watching something that actually happened, and there's an emphasis put on the fact that the story is true. Objective truth played a large role in the show's third (and best!) season, and so season five has been about the opposite—it's about subjective truth. The tagline for this season reads "When is a kidnapping, not a kidnapping, and what if your wife isn't yours?" The answer in "Insolubilia" is "it is what I say it is."
Of course, I can't talk about this episode without discussing the lengthy opening, where Gator Tillman (Joe Keery) breaks into Dot Lyon's (Juno Temple) house with his goons. The teased ending of the third episode delivers hard here as they get stomped by Dot and her traps, though she doesn't exactly get her desired outcome either. The buildup to Dot's counterattack is tense in a way that only Fargo can pull off, and the way they present it immensely adds to the scene's tension. Most home invasion thrillers show the victim's perspective as the enemy tries to find them, but we stick with Gator, as though he and his men are the ones in danger of Dot. (And they are!)
While there's still not as much development for Dot as I wish there was, we at least get a reminder of just how competent she is in "Insolubilia." Her traps work pretty well (if you ignore the fact that they electrocute her husband Wayne and burn her house down), and Gator and company flee with nothing to show for their efforts. (Is it bad form in TV criticism to point out bad CGI flames at this point? Because the fire looked bad, but that's like saying grass is green.)
Her exchange in the hospital with her daughter Scotty (Sienna King) is effective and just a little sad—to see a mother try to convince her daughter that the terrifying thing she went through didn't happen is uncomfortable, and Temple pulls off how necessary of an evil she feels this is very well. (Fantastic detail: the lighting brightens when Dot says "the wicked stick to the darkness while we get to stay in the light.") There's a darkness brewing under Dot Lyon's surface, and while it's vague (and that doesn't feel unintentional, mind you), Temple plays it very well.
Speaking of darkness, we get more time with supernatural killer Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) this episode as he stalks through Gator's father Roy's (Jon Hamm) house. It doesn't reach the heights of last episode's bizarre blood ritual in terms of creepiness, but sticking with Roy as he follows the muddy footprints into his daughters' bedroom is pretty effective. (Two notes: what the hell was that bloody symbol Munch drew on the wall? And again with the more obvious villain being the one we stick with during these tense home invasion scenes.)
If you need more confirmation that Munch isn't just some guy, look at the monologue he gives to his mom (Clare Coulter). (Or I think that's his mom? He calls her "mama" and she doesn't seem as freaked out as she should with him hanging around her house.) He goes on about how when he was young, freedom was the right to eat when you were hungry, and it's quite good. Fargo has always been great at its thematic monologues, and Spruell's archaic voice and dead eyes immensely add to the scene. If he was any other character, my main complaint would be not having enough of him, but considering how ghostly and mysterious he is, I don't mind him lurking around the edges of the season.
The law enforcement gets some more time here, too—the concerns from FBI agents that Roy is funding a private military go unheard, but they get a match on Dot's fingerprints. Deputy Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani) and state policeman Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) finally team up as they review security footage of Munch pursuing Dot. (In case you didn't get that Munch is definitely not a regular human, they kind of spell it out when Witt says "ghosts don't photograph" after they can't get a good look at his face.) When they learn Wayne is in the hospital, they run into Dot at exactly the wrong time.
"The wrong time" is whenever Dot's haughty mother-in-law Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is around, a character whose performance has been so entertaining that I've been itching for more with her. (And we get more of her equally funny lawyer Danish Graves , so again, very happy about this.) She's great even before the officers show up as she demands for Wayne to have the highest quality care possible and digs at Dot's mothering skills, and she's even better once they actually arrive.
The discussion between the officers, the Lyons, and Graves is essentially Dot saying "nuh-uh" for a few minutes, but all parties present are doing such good work that it results in a supremely funny—and thematically fitting—scene. Dot insists that she has never met Witt (untrue) and that she wasn't with Munch (also untrue), and that's enough to get the police off her back for now. It's not the truth, but Dot wills it to be so.
In the episode's final scene, Roy kills some lowlife who pulls a gun on him and impulsively frames him for Munch's killings. It's for convenience's sake, so things can go back to normal and the feds will leave him alone, and it further evokes this idea of making subjective truth objective. The reality of Fargo is almost relentlessly strange, but it's episodes like "Insolubilia" that set up why it's so strange, and what people might gain but keeping it that way.
This episode of Fargo is now available to stream on Hulu.