Fargo season 2 episode 5 review: The Gift of the Magi

Reagan has arrived

Don't play with fire (MGM)

Well that was an action-packed hour.

All the talking and teasing of the first four episodes exploded into full on violence this week with two bold and bloody sequences.

War was declared last time round, and it’s the Gerhardt family that strike first with Hanzee - seemingly the most capable character on the show - leading a massacre of the Kansas City crew, including head honcho Joe (Brad Garrett) and one of Mike Milligan’s twin enforcers.

The Native American assassin looks set to play a pivotal role in how this story pans out, with brother Bear offering him a place at the table with the family for all that he’s done for them.

Bear suspects (and is right) that evil Dodd has manipulated Hanzee into twisting the events surrounding Rye’s death to kick this war into overdrive.

Dodd stops this little chat before it gets too far, but it’s getting hard to ignore that he is turning into the real bad guy.

Sure the faceless Kansas corporation was initially pitched as the villain, and it may yet earn that title, but so far all I’ve seen is Jeffrey Donovan undermine his mother, abuse his daughter, murder some people and generally be a pretty terrible human being.

Perhaps because of his traumatic early childhood that we saw the other week, Dodd wants war — and he’s been the architect of this whole thing.

So the clash of brothers, one using foul language the other biblical, promises to be one of the central conflicts of the next few hours.

The innocents

What will ultimately sever familial alliances and set the Gerhardts against each other?

Probably whatever happens to the innocent members of the family: Bear’s son Charlie and Dodd’s daughter Simone.

Both are now more involved in this war than anyone would like.

Charlie, with one arm that doesn’t work quite right, envisions himself as a fighter for the family but reveals just how out of his depth he is when he volunteers to take out Ed the butcher.

His failure to do the job kicks off the fire-filled fight at the episode’s end, in which he is struck by a stray bullet, his handler is butchered by the butcher, and the shop is blown to smithereens.

Now he’s in custody, after Noreen (the morose Luverne teen with whom he shared an adorably awkward flirtation) insisted that Ed rescue him.

Count me surprised that both of those innocents made it out alive.

One who ultimately might not fare so well is Simone, caught now between a vengeful Milligan and a vile Dodd.

This week Floyd stops Dodd from taking his threats too far, but it’s only going to get worse — especially now she’s informing Kansas what’s happening with her family.

This can’t end well.

City upon a hill

There’s a lot of philosophy and faux-philosophy in this episode.

From Ed and Noreen’s revealing Camus conversation about the futility of life and inevitability of death to Charlie pointedly saying that Rocky actually loses at the end of the movie, there’s a lot to unpack here.

And most of it came straight from the mouth of Ronald Reagan, played by the perfectly cast Bruce Campbell.

The to-be president arrives on the scene this week to invoke John Winthrop, tell bogus war stories, and arrange that ‘rendezvous with destiny’.

When Detective Lou Solverson comes to him for advice, real advice, he spouts out platitudes about American ingenuity and exceptionalism — except there’s no substance.

America at this point is lost, and Reagan is set to seize the story and steer the ship — but his wisdom is just an illusion.

He wasn’t a soldier, he just played one in the movies.