‘Fargo’ Season 5 Episode 6 Recap: Human After All

Let’s talk about Jennifer Jason Leigh. Underneath the Locust Valley Lockjaw accent and the power suits she’s delivering a tremendous performance, lively and mischievous. She plays Lorraine Lyon as a character who relishes each opportunity to show off, to stunt, to exert power. You can all but see a little flicker of delight in her eyes when one arises. 

But in this episode I noticed a few more things. First, and I apologize that it took me this long to notice, she is insanely sexy in this role, holy moses. Lorraine’s self-confidence alone almost erotic in and of itself, as is the feeling that this is the last person on earth whose room-service breakfast order you’d ever want to take. Like, yes, exactly. I kind of think that her impenetrable exoskeleton of casual cruelty is the armor she needed to generate to make men leave her the fuck alone when she’s this magnetic a person.

Then there’s the smile, spontaneous and unforced, that softens her face when Deputy Olmstead brings Scotty home to the Lyon estate, where she reunites with her slowly recovering dad. The two love each other so much, and Lorraine loves them both despite her lack of use for love as a concept, and the sight of two people she loves being happy makes her happy too. She wipes the grin off her own face the moment she notices Deputy Olmstead looking at her, but it’s too late. She’s seen it, and so have we.

I wonder if that gives the deputy the confidence to do what she does next: give Lorraine the full file on Dorothy Lyon/Nadine Bump Tillman, so she can see the full horror of what the man did to her before she ran. There is a human side to Lorraine after all; Olmstead has now seen it. 

Initially Lorraine shows little interest. Everyone wants to play the victim, blah blah blah, right-wing rich-people bullshit. Olmstead, who earlier in the episode endured an absolutely excruciating, practically endless dressing down about how unsupportive she is from her awful deadbeat pig of a husband, is in no mood. She tears into Lorraine, praises Dorothy, and ultimately makes the point that Lorraine is too far up her own ass to see how much in common she has with Dorothy, and how hard Dorothy has fought to save not only herself but Wayne and Scotty too. 

“Come work for me,” Lorraine replies. 

Instantly the scene is flipped on its head. Lorraine, who’d been completely unsympathetic and awful, is now the hero…kinda. She does offer to set Olmstead up with one of her company’s dubious debt consolidation plans instead of just paying the debt off entirely, but other than that? She’s offering Olmstead a white-collar job in the same basic field, acting as head of her global security team, calling the shots, making money hand over fist, getting her out of debt, and giving her a chance to make a major life decision without consulting her dumbass husband. By the end of the discussion even I was yelling “take the job!” at the screen.

This is not to say that Lorraine is now a babyface. Minutes later she completely destroys the life of the hapless banker named Vivian (Andrew Wheeler) — he’s also a stripper stalker, so don’t cry too hard — who got caught in the crossfire between her and Roy Tillman. Roy had a hook on this guy and ordered him not to do business with Lorraine or else; Lorraine said fine, but I’m reporting your very obvious corruption to the SEC and getting your son expelled from college. “Your mistake was thinking death was the worst thing that could happen to you,” she tells him over Danish’s phone in a private room in the Tender Trap. “You’re going to live the rest of your life in squalor, surrounded by the dead-eyed stares of your futureless children.” 

Jesus Christ!

There’s a lot more marvelous material in this terrific episode I could call out in the non-JJL category. There’s a brief portrait of the casually abusive, insanely misogynistic Tillman family that’s horrifying in its vision of how men like Roy want the country to operate. Scotty, neglected and scared, plays the drums manically before a hard cut to the next scene, her face visibly distraught. Ole Munch returns to collect the debt owed him by Roy, who’s paying him both to remove the curse he believes the ancient man placed on him and to finish the job with Dorothy/Nadine, and every line of his dialogue feels like a character from The Northman has some how emerged to bring dark tidings. (“When a man digs a grave, he has to fill it. Otherwise, it’s just a hole.”) There’s a whole comedy bit with the FBI agents and Wayne and his genially alcoholic father Wink (Jan Bos). There’s a torture and murder scene with gore effects straight out of Sam Raimi. 

And that music cue with the big drums that Fargo uses every season returns at last. Hooray!

But most importantly there’s the final scene, in which Lorraine, a drink or two deep, gives in, opens Dorothy’s file, and sees what’s inside. You can all but watch the woman’s old ideas about her daughter-in-law burn up and blow away, like Sarah Connor in the nuclear war dream sequence in Terminator 2 — obliterated by the fire of what everybody’s All-American Roy Tillman did to Dorothy. Leigh plays the moment beautifully, conveying sudden compassion for her hated daughter-in-law and, I think, deep but quickly covered-up shame at having gotten it all so wrong. Given that she’s already planning to sink Roy’s re-election after he sunk the bank deal by threatening the banker, there’s probably some determination to bring the guy to justice in there too.

In the end, though, I think it’s mostly the shock of recognition. Olmstead told Lorraine that she and Dorothy are similar. Perhaps in that moment, Lorraine, a woman who’s spent a lifetime getting the better of men, feels in that moment that there but for the grace of God goes she. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.