Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Fargo season 2 episode 7 review: Did you do this? No you did it!

We need to talk about the aliens

Zachary Davies Boren
Monday 30 November 2015 23:51 GMT
Comments
*I think I can I think I can I think I can*
*I think I can I think I can I think I can* (MGM/FX)

We need to talk about the aliens.

This season of Fargo has been exception… and yet.

I would like to say it is the best show on television… but I won’t.

And those dot dot dots aren’t going anywhere until Noah Hawley tells us what’s going on with all this alien business.

Fargo is a sophisticated story; it beautifully expresses ideas about power, gender and America. It has a cast of characters all of whom feel lived in, some afraid some foolish all human.

Isn’t that enough?

Not for Noah. He’s teased something extraterrestrial all season long, since way back when Rye got clattered by Peggy’s car in the opening episode.

Everything slowed down, a distinctly alien sound grew in volume, Rye closed his eyes and THWACK.

After that there were the travelling UFO enthusiasts, young Molly’s spooky drawing and Hanzee’s special moment at the spot where Rye got hit.

And now something is going with Hank aka Sheriff Ted Danson aka the guy who has weird alien script scattered across the walls of his home.

Right now I’m trusting head writer Hawley has something awesome in the pipeline, because this plotline is hanging over the show like a Deus Ex Machina Sword of Damocles.

Ted Danson is an alien (MGM/FX)

Cristin Milioti is the best at dying

It’s sort of been happening in the background this whole time, but Betsy Solverson is most definitely dying from cancer.

As her husband and her father run around the Midwest trying to catch the baddies and stop the killings, Betsy knows her time is running out — and it’s devastating.

Just as she did when she was the mother on How I Met Your Mother, Cristin Milioti is just wonderful at dying.

Her tete-a-tete with Karl Weathers was perhaps the most crushing moment so far this season.

There’s so much regret and shame when she reveals that Lou was going to marry her older sister, but settled for her; that she’s just a small-town housewife and that’s all she’ll ever be.

I’m getting sad just thinking about it.

Don’t mess with Mr Milligan

Betsy’s moment overshadowed another quite beautifully tragic sequence: the execution of Simone by her uncle.

When Bear picked her up outside of Mike Milligan’s hotel, where she had sold her family out to the Kansas City mafia, you knew almost immediately where this was going.

The younger Gerhardt brother isn’t cruel, but he is resolved. When he takes her for a drive out into the woods like Silvio on The Sopranos (you know the scene), there isn’t any question of what he’s going to do.

Simone made a choice. And in a terrific shot like something out of the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing, she’s gone.

There’s bound to be some ramifications when Floyd and Dodd find out.

But just as Simone died for her relationship with Mike Milligan, so did the much-hyped Undertaker character.

The fellow was going to replace Mike and take care of the Gerhardts who had waged a bloody war on the syndicate.

Mike doesn’t let that happen. No sooner does he say ‘hello’ in that spooky cheery manner of his that he’s blown off the elder man’s face.

He’s a bad bad man. And, as he tells Lou Solverson, he can’t be stopped — he’s the future.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in