By: Brandon Wolfe
We open in a dentist’s office where the dentist is a chatty, folksy sort. He tells long-winded stories and is full of good cheer. Then we follow this good ol’ boy back to his home to learn that he’s newly engaged to an attractive, adoring wife and has a decent assemblage of friends who think the world of him. This fellow is also prone to cornily exclaiming “Aces!” as an expression of approval. It’s almost a relief when we finally see this man sitting in a dark room listening to a self-made recording of a conversation between himself and another Lester-like schlep whose life he ruined by intervention because it allows our brains to officially register that this affable tooth wrangler is indeed Lorne Malvo. Our DVRs didn’t mistakenly record some obscure movie where Billy Bob Thornton played a friendly dentist; this is still ‘Fargo’.
It’s on a trip to Vegas with his new friends (one of whom is played by the great Stephen Root) that fate throws Malvo back into Lester’s orbit, though Lester is the one who ultimately forces fate’s hand. Emboldened by a seeming desire to show that mysterious stranger from long ago that he’s no longer the loser he once was (a goal one suspects he doesn’t limit to just Malvo), Lester walks right up to his erstwhile co-conspirator to say hello. Malvo claims not to know him while in character, then explicitly and forcefully instructs him to walk away. But this isn’t the old Lester, no sir. This new Lester will not be brushed off, so he forces the issue, forces Malvo to admit that he knows him, which Malvo finally does at the expense of the lives of his friends and fiancé, all of whom he impassively blows away in a truly shocking moment. Rather than help with cleanup, as instructed, Lester frantically whacks Malvo on the back of the head (in a nice acknowledgement that, unlike how it always is in movies and on TV, this doesn’t immediately render a person unconscious) and hightails it out of there. Malvo doesn’t give chase, he just calls after Lester that he’ll see him again. Soon.
It’s this encounter that casts an ominous shadow that hangs over the rest of “A Fox, a Rabbit and a Cabbage,” as Lester and his new wife Linda rush out of Vegas in the middle of the night and head back to Bemidji, Lester looking over his shoulder all the way home. He knows Malvo will come after him and we know it, too. The specter of Malvo hangs over the proceedings even when he isn’t onscreen. When Lester walks into his house and looks around nervously or scans the scary woods at the end of his backyard, both he and we in the audience are terrified that Malvo will materialize. Malvo has always been an intimidating presence, but he wasn’t a bogeyman until this week.
The Vegas encounter also places Molly back into Lester’s world, as she receives a tip from Vegas PD that Lester might have been a witness to the murders. Molly visits Lester’s home and listens to a lot of excuses, helpfully corroborated by Linda, but she doesn’t need much of a push at this point to realize that Lester is dirty. Molly also receives a visit from FBI agents Budge and Pepper, who want to nail Malvo as redemption for the slaughter he perpetrated under their noses that cost them their field duties. Because Molly is the only person around who realizes that Malvo was the secret instigator behind all those crimes, they recognize her as their best ally.
The tension in “A Fox, a Rabbit and a Cabbage” isn’t limited to whether or not Lester will be hunted down by Malvo. That might be bearable, seeing as how Lester is a weasel. But Malvo being back in town creates a threat that encompasses everyone else. Gus recognizes Malvo’s familiar face when out on his mail route, but worse than that is when Malvo stops into Lou’s Diner for a slice of pie, and to obliquely threaten Lou, Molly’s loving father, for information about Lester’s whereabouts. This diner sequence is a real nailbiter, as Malvo’s conversation with Lou is cross-cut with Molly driving to the diner, leading us to fret about what will happen when she arrives. Fortunately, Molly misses Malvo by mere seconds, but the build-up to that potential encounter is unbearable.
If any members of the audience had somehow managed to retain any trace of sympathy or compassion for Lester Nygaard, this is the episode that should officially extinguish it once and for all. Attempting to flee Malvo by heading off on an impromptu vacation to Acapulco, Lester needs to stop by his office to pick up his and Linda’s passports. There he suspects that Malvo is waiting for him inside, but rather than simply drive off, Lester sends Linda in, even dresses her up to look like him. This, of course, leaves poor Linda with a bullet in her head and Lester with a second dead wife while Malvo still lurks about in the darkness.
Malvo as a figure of pure malevolence is the engine that now fuels ‘Fargo’ as it heads into its finale. Thornton has been so much fun as this character, but this is the episode where he goes from impishly threatening to something more akin to Javier Bardem’s terrifying Anton Chigurh from a different Coen Brothers film, ‘No Country for Old Men’ (that Root’s character calls Malvo “friendo” at one point drives the comparison home). Thornton is still having some fun with the role, as with his glass-half-full declaration that the botched Vegas job was worth it for the look on Root’s face when he pulled out his gun or when he tells a man’s children that their house is haunted just for the hell of it, but this episode recasts the character as a force that now directly threatens to consume all the characters we’ve come to love. Losing Molly, Gus or those close to them would hurt terribly at this point, and that possibility looms very largely now. But good ultimately prevailed in ‘Fargo’ the film, so all we can do is hope that it will once again.
Discuss this review with fellow SJF fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJFilms, and follow author Brandon Wolfe on Twitter at @ChiusanoWolfe.
Please Leave A Comment-
Comments