Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 81/2/10
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, Colin Hanks, Oliver Platt, Glen Howerton, Adam Goldberg, Russell Harvard, Joshua Close, Barry Flatman, Rachel Blanchard, Peter Breitmayer, Gary Valentine, Gordon S. Miller, Spencer Drever.
When your back is against the wall, you are capable of many things. In the case of Lester Nygaard, his back is so far against the wall that his shadow is slowly suffocating and franticly using a small hammer to try and dig through to the other side.
The sixth episode of Fargo, Buridan’s Ass, may have seen Lester Nygaard, played by Martin Freeman, use his brain for the first time since the tragedy of meeting Lorne Malvo for the first time in the hospital. However, it also saw the death count of the town since the devilish Malvo first showed his charm and charismatic fascination rise to the point that even the makers of the British television series Midsomer Murders would draw a veil over and say that it would be unbelievable.
In the world of American television though, the number of dead bodies seems somehow to fit in the quagmire of the gun debate that rages between rival factions. In Fargo, the allure with the rifle, the gun and the bullet are used with unsurprising regulatory. It is the deaths that are not caused by the bullet that perhaps catch the eye more. The death of Stavros Milos’ faithful dog and Lester Nygaard’s wife being the obvious exceptions before this episode; add now death by plague of fish and it seems the innocent are killed with some sort of ritual, man-made or by which ever design helps you sleep at night. Whilst those who swear by the gun are deigned to die by the gun…or at least be damned by it as Lester Nygaard’s most cognitive thought since the tale started saw him frame his brother for his wife’s death, evidence planted in the most obvious place sees to that small problem.
As the worst storm in a century starts to strangle the Mid-Western States, the white out erases the lines that have been drawn and makes it a colourless, featureless desert, almost as if drawing attention to the purity of souls that are going to suffer in the coming battle.
The smile on Lester Nygaard’s face as he takes in the enormity of his action from his hospital bed gave the viewer the indication that the final four episodes of the series could be bloodiest yet.
Ian D. Hall