The Box Set: "Fargo: Season 5."
Deconstructing Ep. 3, "The Paradox Of Intermediate Transactions."
These Box Set deconstructions contain spoilers and should be read after you’ve watched the episode.
If you work backward on “The Paradox Of Intermediate Transactions” and ask yourself how you’re feeling as it ends and what the episode evoked in you, the correct answer should be that Ole Munch’s backstory already has a precedent in S2 of “Fargo” where UFO’s were introduced — successfully — and that you absolutely will go along with this nuttiness and wish the fourth episode was available immediately.
That’s the smart play.
This episode also starkly focuses on what is a major theme this season — debt, and all that entails (which is a lot). So you’ve got your flashy craziness — Ole (played so off-kilter magnetically by Sam Spruell) has been around for more than 500 years in some iteration that started as a “sin eater.” You’ve got Lorraine Lyon (Jennifer Jason Leigh) as the “Queen of Debt” and a whole lot of characters who could rightfully claim, even a mere three episodes in, that they are owed some kind a debt (including, less rightly, Jon Hamm’s Roy Tillman character, who thinks his former (current?) wife Nadine, now remarried and a mother who goes by Dot (Juno Temple), owes him something…biblical).
But maybe the less obvious theme that will also run through the season — a kind of dangerously entitled white right wing MAGA anger — was also very much on display as Lorraine laid out her vision of the haves and have nots and who really matters in the world. This dovetails with Roy and random son Gator Tillman’s approach to life and also that of Roy’s father in law, espousing 1776 and the coming insurrection.
For an episode that played neatly on Halloween frights, it also proved that series creator, writer and director Noah Hawley has a lot on his mind that he wants to discuss through his characters.
Oh, and those nipple rings on Roy Tillman that were glimpsed in the hot tub scene from an earlier episode now make a lot more sense. “Daddy” has a lot of toys and fantasies he wants to play out in bed, though revenge still seems like a higher priority.
Ah, but let’s start with Ole, and munch on that a little bit first.
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