Fargo: Season 2, Episode 9 “The Castle” (B+)
Did that really just happen? Somehow, a UFO showing up over a bloody hotel battle in a South Dakota sky doesn’t seem all that out of place on this show where it might on other series. It’s still crazy, but it felt right in a way in this episode that suddenly switched to having a storybook narrator summarize and contextualize its events. The whole shootout was extraordinarily well staged, and it seems that Hanzee just really wanted to stick it to the Gerhardt family for unknown reasons, and he didn’t care about all the collateral damage incurred by having them blast their way into a motel filled with police thinking they were from Kansas City. The whole plan to have Peggy and Ed go in wearing a wire to arrest Mike was poorly thought-out from the start, but Lou managed to get himself escorted out of the state for being too pushy with his lawmanship. Peggy is most clearly the ringleader, doing crazy, brash things, and then forcing an all-too-willing and personality-free Ed to help clean up the mess. Naturally, the first thing to do when a shootout was happening is to knock out the cop charged with protecting you. I suspect their fate will be similar to Lester’s in the first season, doomed to an untimely death because they couldn’t comprehend the seriousness or slippery nature of their situation. Hank being ready with his gun when the Gerhardt henchmen burst into his room was impressive, and it’s a shame that Ted Danson didn’t earn a Golden Globe nomination for his performance this season (Patrick Wilson and Kirsten Dunst did, and are both certainly deserving). Fantastically, this show has been renewed for a third season, which will be set in the present day. I can’t wait!
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