Fargo season 2 episode 1 review: Waiting for Dutch

It's total chaos but it's still brilliant

Nick Offerman rants about the military industrial complex and Watergate on Fargo (MGM)

There’s a moment, one from which a story is born and takes on a life of its own.

That’s the writerly approach of Noah Hawley, the creator of the Fargo TV show, and in the first episode of the sophomore season you can tell almost instantly what was the scene that sets us on our journey.

In one of the episode’s three storylines, a number which makes for a chaotic opener, small town Ed and Peggy (Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst) are eating dinner and having what appears to be a meaningful conversation.

Then there’s a noise from the garage, and then again, and again. Ed goes to investigate only to find his wife’s car with a bloody hole in windshield. She says she hit a deer, but her jitters betray what really happened.

She hit a man, and what’s more she brought him back to the house. It’s a marvellous sequence of suspense that leads to a breathtaking climax of far-reaching consequences.

A freak accident has dragged a couple of innocents into a mess beyond their comprehension, a potential interstate war between two mobster operations — a family from Fargo and corporation from Kansas.

The trial of Job

The first part of the episode is devoted to the family Gerhardt, particularly the screw-up youngest sibling Rye (Kieran Culkin).

Like a midwestern Ziggy Sobotka, desperate-to-impress Rye fumbles his way into a disaster at an off-highway diner, and he flat-out murders three people: a fry cook, a waitress and a judge.

Before she goes, the severe (and resilient) Judge Mundt invokes the biblical story of Job — if the devil couldn’t change Job’s mind, then what could an insignificant insect like Rye do to her?

Minutes later Rye finds himself running out the diner, dripping crimson on the crisp white snow of the street. A bright light shines upon him, a pattern like something from a UFO out of Close Encounters.

The bizarre interlude is broken by Peggy’s car crashing into him, skidding to a halt, and after a moment driving off slowly. Was it an act of God?

Not your usual prequel

The triple homicide at the Waffle Hut introduces our third (and final, I expect) major storyline of the season: Detective Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) and his dying wife Betsy (Cristin Milioti).

You may remember Solverson as Molly’s dad from Season 1; the older fella who owned what probably turns out to be the revamped Waffle Hut and who speaks of a horrific happening many years ago.

Well that’s where we are. It only took me pretty much the entire episode review to say: We’re in the 70’s!

And the era, as Hawley explained to me, is really important to the story.

It’s not just for jokes about typewriters or hilarious Ron Swanson rants about Watergate; in tandem with the small-town Midwest setting, the glum of the late 70’s foregrounds the emergence of Ronald Reagan, and the dramatic change he brought about in the American psyche.

In fact that puzzling intro sequence on the film set is a glimpse into the era and its significance, it can be summed up in three words: Waiting for Reagan.

Kind of like the episode’s title.

Okay well there’s the premiere over and done with. I’ve seen the next few already, and can tell you it only gets better.

Excited?