- A ruthless, manipulative man meets a small-town insurance salesman and sets him on a path of destruction.
- "Fargo" - "The Crocodile's Dilemma" - April 15, 2014
We watch a car drive through a snowy expanse. A man with a bad haircut, with severe bangs, drives.
An onscreen title card tells that what we're about to see is true story and happened in Minnesota in 2006 but the names have been changed to protect the survivors. But, everything else, it says is told exactly as it happened.
The car hits a deer and veers off the road. The trunk pops open and a chubby man, clad only in boxer shorts jumps out and begins running away from the car and the road into the surrounding snow covered field and woods. The driver, who has a head injury gets out slightly dazed and appraises the deer.
We cut to a washer in a basement that is clearly broken making a loud noise as it spins. Upstairs the owners Lester Nygaard and his wife are having lunch-- tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Lester's wife is an awful harpie who is complaining to Lester that, basically, he is not a man because he can't fix the washer, doesn't make enough money, and is not his younger, more successful brother Chaz. She figures she married the wrong Nygaard brother since Chaz's wife Kitty is always talking about how successful he is, including that he recently got a promotion after just one year. Lester says it's just slow right now and that he needs to head back to work. She tells him that he can make his own success. And that he has to try harder and maybe wear a better tie. He points out she bought him this tie. She says she would've bought him a better tie if he was a better salesman. He takes a look at the washer, in frustration.
He heads back to work and tries, unsuccessfully, to upsell insurance to a couple who are expecting. They just want to get her on his health insurance. Lester tries to scare them into buying life insurance. They don't bite.
Lester goes to the appliance store and looks longingly at new washer-dryer sets. He runs into his old high school nemesis Sam Hess. He's a big bully and has raised two dumb sons who also appear to be bullies. Sam's big joke is to make Lester's last name Nygaard sound like "nigger.' He reminisces with Lester about stuffing Lester in an oil drum and rolling him into the road and that his wife once gave him a handjob. He threatens Lester in front of his kids. Lester flinches and abruptly turns his head and whacks his face on the glass window hard. Hard enough to send him to the ER.
In the ER, he waits impatiently. While there he runs into the driver from the opening scene. We don't know it yet but his name is Lorne Malvo. Lester explains what happened to his nose and Lorne thinks it's incredibly humiliating that Lester let this bully embarrass him and if it were him he'd kill the guy. He overheard his name Sam Hess, and asks Lester if he wants him to take care of it. Lester is aghast at first, Lorne tells him just to say yes or no. Just then the nurse calls Lester's name and he says "Yah" to her but says nothing else to Lorne, just regards him suspiciously.
Local police chief Vern Thurman and deputy Molly Solverson survey the accident scene. They find the deer in the trunk. They deduce the driver likely hit their head since there is blood on the steering wheel. They then follow the footprints leading away from the car. Vern notes that his wife is about to give birth and they haven't settled on a name. They find the man from the trunk, frozen dead in the wood.
Vern heads home and chats with his very pregnant wife. They are very sweet together. He talks about the accident and says he thinks the dead guy was the driver. She says she wants to paint the nursery blue, or green. Vern says he's ready to paint whenever she decides. She says he's a good man and her sister as crazy to tell her not to marry him.
Lorne goes to see Sam Hess at the headquarters of his trucking company. He runs into his two idiot sons. Sam, and a group of large men with him, menacingly wonder what Lorne wants. He says he just wanted to get a look at him.
Lester and his awful wife go visit his younger, more successful brother Chaz and his wife Kitty and their oddball son Gordon who answers the door in a pirate hat and then slams it in their face. Chaz brags about his promotion to VP of sales and how he's getting the corner office. He bought a surround sound system with the raise. Lester's awful wife keeps pointing out how much better Chaz is. Kitty and Chaz talk about broadening Gordon's horizons and Chaz says there's more to life than Minnesota. Lester tells his brother he slipped on some ice.
They head to the garage and Chaz says he thinks Gordon has "the autism" because he draws on the walls and pees in a mason jar at night. Then Chaz shows letter an automatic machine gun he bought. It's technically illegal but he says he's an American who pays his taxes. The machine is very scary. He hands it to Lester and he drops it and breaks part of it. He calls Lester a screw up and says his wife Pearl is sick of it and he's embarrassed that he's his older brother. We don't see it but we hear Lester's wife Pearl complain on the way home that Lester didn't have to hit him.
We see a realty office in a strip mall in Reno. A man is on the phone asking "Do you need it to look like an accident?" A phone, in a long bank of phones, rings. The man answers. It's Lorne who says the job is done and the delay was due to car trouble but he's going to take care of some personal business for the next few days so he will take care of "Duluth" after that.
Lorne heads to a strip club and watches Sam Hess head to the back room with a stripper. He is doing her from behind when Lorne comes in and kills him with a knife to the back of the head. Spurting blood he falls on top of the stripper, who didn't see Lorne.
Vern's phone rings and he tells his wife he has to head off to check out a homicide. She says she loves him and he returns the sentiment. Molly picks him up and they head to the crime scene.
She asks what she should put for cause of death and since the knife is sticking out of his neck Vern says it's self-explanatory. A nauseated fellow cop named Bill fidgets in the background. He says he's already thrown up, but not in the crime scene, he went outside. Vern takes a closer look and recognizes Sam Hess, which makes them wonder if this has something to do with organized crime since the trucking business is shady and Molly thinks he's tied to a syndicate of gun runners in Fargo. Vern isn't as sure as Molly, who seems excited at the idea of organized crime.
Lorne heads to a motel where a woman is berating her employee. He tries to rent a room and he gives the woman a hard time. She's trying to explain it's a different room rate if he has another person or a pet with him. He asks how much it would cost if he had pet spiders or bacteria. She gets frustrated. He says he just wants to know the policy because he's a student of institutions. She wonders if he wouldn't be better off at another motel. He says it's just him. He head across the parking lot and asks the young man why he lets the owner talk to him like that. The kids asks what he should do. He tells him a story of how he once pissed in a man's gas tank and says the car never drove straight again. He heads to his room, looks out his window and sees the kids pissing in the woman's gas tank. He calls the front desk and tattles on him. She comes running out.
Molly has breakfast at Lou's coffee shop. Lou is her dad. She tells him about the Sam Hess murder. Vern comes in and Lou invites him to ice fishing and Vern declines. Molly says she's been thinking about the dead guy in the woods. She says the car was stolen and the driver was injured and the dead guy wasn't. They talk about Hess and says the stripper didn't get a good look but she's going to run down whether the knife was bought in Bimidji. Vern says Molly will make a good chief someday. Bill has seniority but Vern thinks it will be hers when the time comes.
We cut to the living room of Sam Hess. His widow is smoking and wearing a low-cut top and push-up bra. Sam's business partner assures her that guys from Fargo are coming to take care of it. She's mad that Sam made her live in the North Pole and had the nerve to cheat on her. She says she's going to sing at his funeral. She sings and then starts to cry. The boys are freaked out. Mickey, the older son gets a phone call. It's Lorne. He's claiming he's his father's lawyer. He tells him that his dad left everything in his will to his younger brother Mo who he said he was his favorite. Mickey asks Mo to come outside and starts attacking him with a bat. The police have showed up to talk to them and ask about her Sam's business. His business partner says she doesn't know anything about the business and Sam was a pillar of the community who was voted Bimidji businessman of the year....in 1996 and 98. They note that the sons have low level rap sheet and that there might have been ties to a crime syndicate. The business partner is faux aghast that they're calling Sam a criminal in front of his widow. Molly sees the boys fighting and runs outside and tackles Mickey. The widow laughs at the scene.
Lester happens to drive by the Motor Inn and notices Lorne walking in the parking lot. He arrives at work and is told to pull the Sam Hess file since Sam is dead. Lester is dazed and notes he went to high school with Sam. The guy tells him it's a shame since it was a big policy.
Lester goes to see Lorne, who feigns surprise to hear that Sam Hess is dead. Lorne implies Lester gave the word to kill him. Lester says he never said yes to killing him. Lorne says he never said no. Lester says that would never hold up in court. Lorne says no one's talking about court and he tells Lester his problem is that he spent his whole life thinking there are laws when they're aren't. He says the truth is Lester is more of a man today than he was yesterday and that he has to stand up to the grind of the everyday and the shit that bosses and wives make us eat or else we'll be washed away.
Vern's wife calls and says she thinks the nursery should be white. Even though it already is. She wants a fresh coat. He says he'll stop by the hardware store and pick up some options. She says it's finally sinking in that they're having a baby. He says he can't wait.
As he's leaving the hardware store Molly calls and tells him that Mickey is pretty banged up and that also, she was talking to one of the nurses who told her that Lester Nygaard was talking to a man with a cut on his head in the ER the day before and that she heard them mention Sam Hess. Vern says he knows Lester and will go over to his house and talk to him. Molly offers but Vern says he's got it covered.
Back at Lester's he thinks he's fixed the washer. But then he turns it on and it's not fixed after all and is in fact worse. Awful Pearl taunts him and emasculates him and says he's not a man and she should've never married him and her mom thought he was a loser. She says he won't even face her during sex. He says that's her. She says it's so she can picture a real man. He can't take it anymore and he grabs a hammer and she wonders if he's going to hit her. He whacks her right on the head with it. She is dead. He is freaked out. And then he keeps whacking her. Spraying blood on the walls. He freaks out some more. And then he begins to clean up the crime scene, taking off and bagging his clothes and wiping and hiding the murder weapon. He then calls Lorne to ask for help. Lorne asks if he's been a bad boy. Lester says he has and Lorne says he's on the way.
Lester goes to get his shotgun and practices pointing it out the door saying "you killed her!" Apparently, his plan is to kill Lorne and frame him for Pearl's murder. But before Lorne arrives, Vern arrives to talk to Lester about Sam Hess. Lester says he doesn't remember talking to someone else about Sam Hess. Vern notices the blood trail up from the basement and asks Lester to get on the ground. Vern looks down in the basement and sees Pearl as Lester says he didn't do anything. Vern calls for back up just as Lorne enters and Lorne shoots him in the back. Lorne asks if there are anymore cops. Lester says no and that he didn't tell him anything. Lorne heads for the basement. Lester pulls more shotgun shells out of his pocket and notices an injury on his hand from the hammer. Molly arrives outside. Lester runs to tell Lorne in the basement but he's gone. Lester runs himself headlong into the wall knocking himself out so he can say a man came in attacked him and his wife and then killed Vern. Molly sees Vern on the ground and busts in. Molly heads to the basement and sees that Lester is alive but that Pearl is dead. Bill arrives and gets ill at the sight of the blood and heads back upstairs.
More police arrive to Lester's house. Molly watches them pull a sheet over Vern's head. She heads outside and sees the paint cans in his cruiser. She heads to his house and gives Vern's wife the very bad news with a shake of her head and hands her the paint.
We cut to Duluth. A young cop named Gus Grimly is sitting in his cruiser chatting back and forth with his daughter about the Vikings game and homework on his walkie-talkie. A car squeals by and Gus takes off after it. Inside is Lorne Malvo, who overhears when Gus's daughter tries to call him on the walkie. Lorne convinces Gus that he should just go get in his car and drive away and his daughter is what is important and it's in everybody's interest if Gus just lets him go. He says every few years Gus will look at his daughter's face and think of this moment and know that he is alives because he chose light instead of darkness and didn't go down this road. Gus is taken aback by this, but he does let Lorne go. He seems shaken and disappointed in himself.
Lester wakes up in the hospital and again notes the small wound on his hand.
Molly is prepared to go ice-fishing with her dad. But when he asks her to be a hostess in his restaurant and give up being a cop and she declines, he says he knows people are less inclined to shoot a hostess than a cop. She says that's true and then says she's changed her mind on fishing and heads back to her cruiser.
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