Early on, The Sopranos made a decision, soon followed by many series it influenced, to pack most of the payoff for the season into the penultimate episode and then treat each season’s final episode as a kind of epilogue winding down each character’s arc (those who made it to the end of the season, anyway). Saving all the action into the finale would mean selling short everything but the action, leaving little time for anything else. At first, it seems as if “Bisquik,â€Â Fargo’s fifth-season finale, has eschewed this approach, so action-packed are its first few moments. Then it seems as if it’s following it a bit too well, with an episode shaping up to be less epilogue than an extended postscript. Then, its final act, “Bisquick†heads into a different, unexpected, most likely divisive direction. There’s a lot going on, in other words, and much of it would have been hard to predict at the end of the previous episode.
The finale picks up more or less where the previous episode left off, however, with the now-blind Gator wandering aimlessly through a mist-covered field (and falling on his face). His story is almost done, and it’s hard not to feel at least a little sorry for him, detestable as his behavior’s been for much of the season. Dot certainly spares some pity for him when they reunite after the shooting stops and Gator apologizes, allowing him to ask Dot if she really saw his mother. She didn’t, Dot now realizes. But she will bring Gator cookies in jail. Whatever his future holds, it won’t be the one he imagined (or, more accurately, his father imagined for him).
Even as the episode begins, before he’s fully pulled down, Roy realizes the future isn’t going to be what he hopes, either. At his private chapel he even spits on the floor while looking at Jesus. To Roy, the Big Guy has become just another hater who won’t let him get his way. With nothing much left to lose, Roy doesn’t have to be polite to Odin anymore. When the old fascist starts insulting him — and especially when he brings up the issue of Dot not yet being dead — Roy loses it and slashes his throat.
Roy finishes just in time for Karen to witness the aftermath of the murder, then chases her around a corner only to be greeted by a rifle-toting Dot. This almost certainly would have been game over for Roy if Witt and the FBI didn’t show up, giving him a window of opportunity to escape. It’s a short-lived getaway that takes him into the tunnels beneath the Tillman compound where Witt follows him. (A blood trail through the snow is kind of a dead giveaway in these situations.) They have a tense confrontation in which Roy bets on Witt not being likely to shoot him unless he absolutely has to. Unfortunately, this proves correct, allowing Roy to stab Witt fatally. But, in the end, it’s a futile gesture. After emerging from the tunnels, Roy’s nabbed by the FBI.
Back in Minnesota, Dot’s able to reunite with her family — all her family. She shares the expected tender moments with Wayne and Scotty, then an unexpected one with Lorraine, who congratulates her on shooting Roy in the stomach, saying, “That’s my girl.†But Dot sees this moment for what it is. For Lorraine, Dot’s act of violence has given Lorraine an acceptable way to express newfound fondness for her daughter-in-law. Lorraine doesn’t traffic in hugs, but Dot does. And when Dot goes in for an embrace, Lorraine doesn’t stop her (though she does call “time†pretty quickly).
One year later, Dot still feels Witt’s loss, as does Indira. Meeting at the fallen trooper’s grave, they mourn him together and catch up with what’s going on in their lives. Wayne and Dot have opened a new dealership, and they even appear together in the ads. (Dot’s more “back of the house†and Wayne’s the “people person,†which tracks.) The private sector seems to be serving Indira well, too. She looks untroubled in a way we haven’t yet seen (and those sharp new outfits look great on her).
Elsewhere, in the far-off land of Illinois, Lorraine pays Roy a visit in prison with Indira at her side — at least for a little while. The point of the visit is to explain to Roy the full depth of the shit in which he now finds himself. Lorraine knows some judges, she tells Roy. Actually, she knows all the judges, so he’ll be there for a while. Roy boasts that that’s just fine. Prison has the racial segregation and everyday violence he wants out of life. But when Indira’s out of earshot, Lorraine goes a little further, revealing that she’s essentially paid off the entire prison to make Roy’s life hell. She’s also clear about her reasoning: She’s mad about the way he treated Dot. At least she leaves him a bargaining chip, though it seems unlikely an unopened pack of cigarettes will buy him much mercy.
And with that, we’re done! We know everyone’s fate. All the loose ends have been tied up. All that’s left is to watch Dot and Scotty enjoy Wayne’s chili. Except, oh wait, there’s still the matter of Ole, the self-described nihilist contract killer who may also be a 500-year-old sin eater from Wales.
Dot and Scotty return to find Ole hanging out with Wayne in the living room. Ole’s, as ever, terse, scary, and darkly poetic as he talks to Dot about how “a man†can let “a tiger†go, but that doesn’t mean he’s given up on taking that tiger down out of a sense of obligation. It’s in keeping with Ole’s character, or at least the Ole we’ve gotten to know. He doesn’t believe in much, but what he does believe in — mostly killing for money and following the rules that involve — he believes in firmly. That makes Dot unfinished business, a debt that has to be paid.
Or it would if Dot didn’t refuse to be unpaid debt. Instead, she decides to get Ole talking, and he lays it all out: His past as a sin eater for the wealthy, his time in what’s now called America in the age of the carrier pigeon and the 600 tribes, his past as a soldier, and so on. When he’s done, Dot questions the underlying principles of his philosophy. Maybe debt should be forgiven. Maybe that’s a better way to live.
In the moments that follow, she keeps kindly battering away at his reason for being there and, with it, Ole’s fundamental way of looking at the world. Sure, he might have shown up with violence on his mind, but maybe he should make biscuits and listen to Scotty talk about chimpanzees. “A man has a code,†he tries to explain, but there are cooking secrets to learn and beers to drink and a whole way of living that he’s never considered. Sure, he has to tell the rest of his story, but maybe he can look at that story differently now. Maybe the code’s an illusion. Maybe he can choose to live another way. Sure, he used to have to eat fleas off rats to survive, and maybe that led to a lifetime (several lifetimes, really) of being taken advantage of by those with money, who’d first pay him to work as a sin eater and then to do their dirty work. But now he has chili, and, hey, those biscuits turned out pretty well!
There’s a lot going on here that ties up the season pretty neatly while still being as tense as any other scene this season. It’s been a story about how the haves take advantage of the have-nots and how Roy and others twisted religion to justify their abuses. But Dot and her family suggest that life isn’t always a Hobbesian struggle between the weak and the strong. They also practice a version of Christianity more concerned with core principles of redemption and equality than the need of women to serve men and so on. This season, which began in a riot, has offered a tour of the brutality just beneath the surface of Fargo’s Minnesota Nice, but maybe in some places the niceness isn’t merely superficial. Maybe it’s real enough to make even Ole smile. (Or maybe the buttermilk really does make those drop biscuits sing.)
Okay Then!
• Was this Fargo’s best season? I’ve enjoyed all of them to one degree or another. I think I might even prefer the fourth season, as untidy as it ultimately was, to the third. But between the memorable characters, universally good performances, skilled plotting, and big dares that paid off (like the puppet show), this season captured the series at its best. It’s also the season that’s closest in spirit to the original film, which also pitted the goodness of one truly nice Minnesotan (with some assistance) against the greed and violence around them.
• Singling out performances risks not saying enough nice things about those you don’t single out. But Juno Temple and Jon Hamm deserve a little extra praise for their work this season. Temple continues to show that she can stretch beyond her Ted Lasso work, and Hamm proved he can make for a truly nasty villain. The look on his face after stabbing Odin is scarily unhinged.
• RIP Witt, a truly good guy who just wanted to help (and sweetly played by Lamorne Morris). His death gives the season some of its most emotional moments, particularly when Dot asks to see “my trooper†only to realize her trooper is gone. Dot also offers a little insight into why he was so nice: He had six sisters. Witt was nice, Wayne’s a peach, and Danish had a certain kind of wily nobility about him. But the other men this season tended to be monsters, chauvinists, or saps. Nobody made patriarchy look so hot.
• “Oh no, this has nothing to do with that book,†Lorraine says as she hand-waves away the Bible.
• Unanswered questions: Where did Dot learn those survival skills? Where did Lorraine obtain an accent so unlike those around her? Will Lars ever become a champion golfer and/or famous drummer? (Okay, that last one’s got a pretty obvious answer.)
• One final note: most of this season takes place in the final days of 2019. This seemed pointed because everyone was living in a world that was about to change profoundly with the arrival of the pandemic. And yet, one year later, everyone still seems to be living in a COVID-free world. Nobody masks. Nobody social distances. Perhaps this is an alternate universe? On the one hand, it makes sense as a practical choice. Those final scenes wouldn’t have quite the impact if, say, Lorraine, Roy, Indira, and all the inmates were wearing masks. But it does make the choice to set it in 2019 feel a little less specific, even if the setting is very much that of a Trump-influenced world.