‘Fargo’ Season 5 Episode 3 Recap: The Sin-Eater

You could fill a book with what I don’t understand about the television business; I’m only in this line of work to watch my stories. But it seems to me that if FX had an option of how many episodes you roll out as your Season 5 premiere of Fargo, they went with the exact wrong one. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed all three episodes of the season so far. But Episode 1 (“The Tragedy of the Commons”) ended with Dot returning home after that brutal kidnapping and shootout, dark secret in tow; Episode 3 ends with a new set of masked kidnappers ready to do a Halloween home invasion on Dot while her erstwhile abductor, the seemingly immortal sin-eater Ole Munch, creeps into the home where Sheriff Roy Tillman’s new wife and twin daughters sleep while covered in mud and blood and pagan runes. (Munch, not the wife and daughters.) 

Episode 2 (“Trials and Tribulations”), which in actuality closed out last week’s two-part premiere? It ends with a guy whose name I don’t know getting stabbed while pumping gas. A cool moment, but in terms of what Dot might refer “stopping power” — used here to refer to a premiere’s ability to get you to stop from quitting the show after the premiere — I’d have gone with what was behind doors number one and three instead.

This is a compliment, though, when you get right down to it. Titled “The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions,” it’s positively bristling with fun ideas, images, plot developments, song choices, blatant swipes, actors enjoying themselves — all the stuff you tune into Fargo for. 

With one notable exception mentioned above (see if you can guess which!), this episode’s plot is simple to follow. Basically, everyone involved in the pursuit of Dorothy Lyon, formerly known as Nadine Tillman, takes a deep breath and starts over again. 

Having covered up the murder of his partner, Gator gets with his dad, who chides him for his failures relatively gently considering what you might have expected. Roy orders him to take a trusted team and try the kidnapping again, this time on Halloween night, when the chaos of all those costumes and masks will make the abduction easier to get away with.

Deputy Whit Farr has seen Dorothy’s mugshots by now, having been emailed them by Deputy Olmstead. But when he goes to check out the evidence, he finds Gator, who has blatantly stolen everything connecting him to the slain kidnapper, whom he hired. For his part, Gator’s searching for ways to dig up intel on Ole Munch, of whom Roy is rightfully scared given his proven capabilities thus far.

Deputy Indira Olmstead and her boss go to see Lorraine Lyon and her lawyer Danish Graves to inquire about Dorothy. When it becomes clear they’re asking questions Lorraine doesn’t want asked, she drops even the most rudimentary façade of noblesse oblige. As she puts it while the cops leave:

“What is your function? The police. I mean, why do we need you, except as a tool to keep a certain element in line, to separate those who have money, class, intellect from those who don’t? You’re gatekeepers, standing outside the walls, keeping the rabble from getting in. But in here, inside these walls, you have no function. You should remember that.”

I’ll be curious as to where the season comes down on this fairly straightforward description of how the police actually operate in this country!

As for Dot herself, she tries and fails to stock up on guns in time for the home invasion she sees coming a mile away, but there’s that pesky seven-day waiting period getting in the way. Lord knows what “non-lethal” weapons she stocked up on instead.

And then there’s Ole Munch, whom as noted above is, and I stress this, a seemingly immortal “sin-eater” of Norse descent from 16th-century Wales. His job was to devour the food left atop the corpses of the recently deceased, by which it was believed their unrepented sins were transferred from their souls to his, clearing their way to heaven. Why he’s still alive (berserker rituals appear to be a part of it), whether he’ll murder Roy’s wife and kids, whether that really is his “mama” (Clare Coulter) he moves back in with or just some random old lady rather than a fellow immortal — all unknowns. 

Which is marvelous. Noah Hawley has paid a lot of attention to the Coen Brothers’ use of the supernatural, which crops up in their work more often than you might think, though usually with the ambiguity characteristic of their work in general. His incorporation of outright horror in Season 4 and now Season 5 — aided here by suspense-building cross-cutting, Jeff Russo’s slasher synths, and even the near-sacrilegious lift of Béla Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining enhance the feeling that this is half a horror movie, or at the very least a home-invasion thriller. Considering how much the Coens have headfaked in the genre’s direction in the past (Blood Simple, Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men), it works.

And finally: What do we think of ol’ Roy Tillman? For one thing, with his darkly handsome looks, denim-leaning wardrobe, sinister good humor, innate Americanness, and apparent track record of murdering women (his wall of wedding photos includes at least a couple young women too many), he reinforces my belief that Jon Hamm would make a terrific Randall Flagg from Stephen King’s The Stand. And that’s even before you get to him singing “Nadine.” If you know, you know.

Beyond that, though, Roy’s nipple rings, weed habit, and kinky penchant for having his wife roleplay as women he wants to punish during sex could be seen as the show scoring some cheap points about right-wing hypocrisy. (Not that such shots don’t hit the mark.) But it could just as easily be seen as a depiction of how to men like Roy, this isn’t hypocrisy. Roy is free to do what he wants, and the people of Stark County are also free to do what he wants — the completely consistent conservative definition of freedom in a nutshell.

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.