Welcome back to Fargo (or more accurately, the broader midwestern United States that serves as the setting for Fargo)! It’s been a while. We last visited the crime-ridden, Noah Hawley–created world spun off from Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film, Fargo, back in late 2020 for a crime story set in 1950s Kansas City. Now we’re heading back to the general area of where it all started, a Minnesota filled with polite manners and bad behavior, and closer to our present for a story set in the waning days of 2019.
“The Tragedy of the Commons†doesn’t waste any time getting to the bad behavior. Or the irony: To the accompaniment of Yes’s 1971 hit “I’ve Seen All Good People,†a bunch of everyday citizens of Scandia, Minnesota, wallop the tar out of one another at a meeting of the Fall Festival Planning Committee. Why? Fargo doesn’t answer that question here, and it’s unclear if it ever will. But it does provide an introduction to one of the scene’s main characters amid a dangerous situation. It won’t be the last time it puts her there or illustrates her ability to get herself to safety while also getting deeper into trouble.
Meet Dorothy “Dot†Lyon (Juno Temple), who is, by all appearances, a nice Midwestern mom. She’s attending the meeting with her child, Scotty (Sienna King), and is willing to tase those that would block their escape. That includes, though she doesn’t realize this until it’s too late, a cop. Her mistake lands her in the back of a police cruiser driven by a deputy named Indira (Richa Moorjani). As Fargo tells us, once again, we’re about to see a true story. (We’re not.)
Dot’s ride to the station provides the episode with one of the series’ most direct echoes of the film that inspired it. Specifically, it references Marge Gunderson’s “It’s a beautiful day†speech. It’s not the series’ finest moment. Fargo (the series) has always worked best when it’s kept a bit of a distance between itself and Fargo (the movie). It’s usually at its finest when it’s working as a loose remix of the original film and other Coen-y elements. Direct quotes, or near-direct quotes, like this invite eye rolls. It’s not Moorjani and Temple’s fault. It’s just that we’ve seen this before, and the moment can only suffer in comparison to the original, even if it seems significant that Dot’s response is quite different from Peter Stormare’s Gear Grimsrud in the film.
Happily, the episode is soon back on solid footing. Dot’s scarcely been booked and jailed before she’s sprung, but not before she’s been fingerprinted, a development that concerns her for some reason. Picked up by her husband, Wayne Lyon (David Rysdahl), she’s then whisked away to The Lyons’ massive family home for a photo op. It’s Halloween season outside. But inside the Lyon home, it’s Christmastime. Wayne’s mother, Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh), has gathered them to take a Christmas-card photo.
The picture-taking begins as Lorraine descends the stairs, an entrance interrupted unwittingly by family lawyer Danish Graves (Dave Foley, sporting an eyepatch). Lorraine greets her son and Dot tartly but saves her sharpest barbs for Scotty, whom she’d prefer to see in a dress rather than a suit. “How progressive,†Lorraine says, which is not intended as a compliment. For the photos, she hands everyone, Scotty included, an automatic rifle. “It’s about strength,†she explains. “A projection of our values as a family.†(What might have looked like a ridiculous bit of over-the-top satire in another era now just prompts a nod of recognition.)
It’s not yet clear where the Lyons family’s money comes from or what they do, but it is clear that Lorraine calls the shots. Her husband, Wink (Jan Bos), might pipe up now and again, but he mostly just feeds the dogs as Lorraine talks to their guest, Attorney General Mick Thigpen (James Madge), about possibly getting Dot off the hook. Danish tries to keep the conversation within legal parameters, but his efforts prove futile.
Dot mostly wants to put it behind her, getting back to her routine of reading to Scotty and tonight, at least, gently fending off Wayne’s invitation to “take a tumble.†(It’s fine. He has Blue Bloods to watch on his iPad.) Meanwhile, Dot flashes to another family dinner, one with a character played by Jon Hamm at the head of the table. (It’s the last we’ll see of him in this episode, but he’s sure to figure prominently in what’s to come.)
The next morning, Dot doesn’t have time to finish making Bisquick before Wayne leaves with Scotty for school, gently suggesting that it would be better if Dot doesn’t make an appearance there for a bit. That leaves her plenty of time to watch TV and knit. And get kidnapped.
In another scene echoing the original film, Dot becomes the victim of a mid-day home invasion perpetrated by a pair of masked toughs of questionable competence. Unlike poor Jean Lundegaard, however, Dot puts up a fight, scorching one, Donny (Devon Bostick), with an improvised flamethrower. Though his partner Ole Munch (Sam Spruell) puts up a stronger defense, Dot nearly slips away anyway, hampered only by, well, a hamper at the top of the stairs.
When Wayne returns home, he’s understandably thrown into a panic upon finding his home’s front door open and the floor covered with blood spots and other signs of chaos. “I threw up in the downstairs commode,†he says to Indira by way of a greeting. Indira’s investigation raises more questions than it answers: a burnt ski mask? Blood of two different types, neither of them Dot’s? What?
At home, Indira finds herself confronted with different problems in the form of unpaid bills. Some, maybe all, of the problem can be laid at the golf shoe-clad feet of her husband, Lars (Lukas Gage), an aspiring golf pro who’s holding onto his dreams and depleting their finances with entrance fees and a wall-size electronic driving simulator. (“I need it for the winter months.â€) She wants him to develop a Plan B. He’s “so close†he doesn’t want to hear her.
Meanwhile, over at Lyons HQ, with Lorraine’s mom seated under a painting of the word “NO,†she, Wayne, Danish, and Lorraine’s body man, Jerome (Kudjo Fiakpui), discuss options. Expecting a ransom request, they determine it’s best to keep the matter quiet. But to get a ransom note, Dot’s kidnappers will first have to get her to their destination somewhere over the North Dakota line. That’s not too easy. When they’re pulled over by a pair of North Dakota patrolmen, Dot makes her escape and a firefight erupts. One of the officers won’t figure too prominently in the story, going out in a hail of bullets. But the other, Witt (Lamorne Morris), looks likely to play a part over the long haul.
The conflict changes venue to a nearby service station, where Dot takes shelter while Witt stands outside, making him an easy target and sending him inside with a badly injured leg. The events that follow confirm Dot’s resourcefulness. Cut loose from her zip tie by Witt, she immediately starts checking the station for vulnerable points. Finding one in the form of the restroom window, she sets up a Kevin McCallister–worthy booby trap that, in time, takes poor Donny out of the picture. But not Ole, who shows up and gets knocked out but slips away while Dot makes a makeshift tourniquet for Witt then slips back into the night.
When she returns home, tracking bloody footprints into the house in the process, Wayne naturally has a lot of questions. Dot doesn’t have good answers. In fact, she has a lot of lousy answers about hair curlers, seasonal changeover prep, a need to clear her head, and other hand-wave-y explanations. “I know you think I’m this kinda perfect woman … wife … mother,†she tells him. “But, you know, even I’ve got a breaking point.†Then she whisks and whisks so Scott can count on Bisquick and all its vitamins and minerals in the morning.
With that, another season commences. It’s an intriguing one so far, one that raises a bunch of questions. “Who is Dot?†is chief among them, followed by “What does she mean when she says ‘It’s not my first getaway’?†But there’s a lot we don’t know. Where, for instance, does the Lyons’ money come from? Deputy Indira’s last name is “Olmstead,†which was also Marge Gunderson’s maiden name in the film. Even if there’s no real connection there, how does this season fit into Fargo more broadly? Answers are presumably coming, but not soon. In the meantime, there’s plenty to enjoy in this taut, focused kickoff, which has offered only glimpses of the man who would appear to be the season’s primary antagonist: Jon Hamm’s Roy Tillman.
Okay Then!
• “We’re trying to raise money to expand thrillers and mysteries. Lee Child and the like,†Dot tells a disapproving Lorraine, who’s unaware of what genre her life has veered into.
• The versatile Jeff Russo provides the score for this season, with some clear nods to Wendy Carlos’s music for The Shining.
• Bostick’s dry delivery of the line “I need my brain†is probably this episode’s funniest moment. RIP, Donny.
• It’s hard not to read some significance into the moment in which this story is set. We’re months away from the pandemic and subsequent lockdown but, based on the opening scene, at a high point for Trump-era incivility. It should be interesting to see what the season does with this.
• A brief note on Scotty: I did not watch ahead before writing everything above, but I have since then. I avoided using gendered pronouns to refer to the character, but Dot uses feminine pronouns in the second episode. Unless the story steers in a different direction, I will likely do the same in future recaps.