UNRANKED: Bank creeps who got steamrolled by Lorraine and cost their children a fancy education; angry school board moms: previous and current wives of Roy; various Lindas; sin eating, generally; spooky Halloween masks; watching your house burn down; having your corpse tossed into a hole; county and/or hospital employees who didn’t do much to help the situation; anyone else I forgot; running around with bloody feet; bloody feet, generally.
18. Odin Little
Short version:
- Ran an armed militia that got blasted to hell by the government it hated
- Seemed like a guy who used a lot of slurs
- Murdered by his son-in-law on the porch
Last place.
17. Roy Tillman
ON ONE HAND: I wanted to like him at first, if only because we as television viewers so rarely get to see Jon Hamm wearing nipple rings and a cowboy hat and riding a horse and doing the whole Menacing Don Draper thing all at once, even with him on almost every television show these days.
ON THE OTHER HAND: Roy was a serial abuser and creep who poisoned every relationship he’s ever had and also sometimes murdered people and now gets to spend the rest of his life in a prison filled with people who are being paid to torment him. Not even the Jon Hamm of it all can overcome that.
16. Lars Olmstead
Just a massive loser. Duck-hooking long irons into a golf simulator in his garage in front of the drums he covered up because he probably sucked at playing those too. Running up six figures of debt and sleeping around while his wife investigates murders. Still complaining about all of it.
It is genuinely upsetting to me that dozens of people died on this show and this weenie didn’t end up lifeless in his driveway with a drumstick jammed into his brain.
15. Various goons
Disfigured by homemade blowtorches and sharp objects and smashed in the face by staircases and sledgehammers. They never stood a chance but if you gotta go, might as well give it the full Home Alone.
14. Processing your trauma via puppetry
ON ONE HAND: If you or anyone else anywhere finds peace and solace in dressing up marionettes and acting out miniature stage productions of traumatic moments in your life to help you deal with it all in a healthy way and get to a better place that allows you to find happiness and comfort again, honestly, I am thrilled for you.
ON THE OTHER HAND: Puppets have always creeped me out. Just a longstanding personal distaste. Your mileage may (and probably should) vary.
13. Gator Tillman
This kid:
- Spent his whole stupid life trying to impress the idiot father who never respected him, cosplaying as the son he thought his daddy wanted in a way that never let him be himself for a single second
- Got his eyes demolished by a creepy old drifter who may or may not be hundreds of years old
- Is going to prison for a long time
Would be ranked below the puppets if it wasn’t kind of sad. He made his own decisions, sure. But he was set up to fail.
12. Wayne Lyon
A gangly creme puff who latches onto strong women and lets them tell him how to do his life. Maybe the most spineless man who has ever been on television. Got cooked to a nice medium-rare by a booby-trapped window in his house and spent half the season trying to remember how anything works anywhere.
And yet… I love him. Seems like a great dad. Loves the hell out of his family. Gave another family a nice new car in exchange for their old used one, capitalism be damned. I’m glad Dorothy is around to protect this sweet, sweet man.
11. Wink Lyon
What we know about Wink Lyon:
- Married to Lorraine
- Appears to have no personality at all beyond “is married to Lorraine”
- Goes everywhere with a martini that somehow never gets empty
Give me a series of little webisodes that show what he was up to during this entire season. I’m serious.
10. Agents Joaquin and Meyer
I like to picture these two at some law enforcement convention 20 years from now, sitting at a table at the hotel bar, absolutely holding court with a crowd of younger colleagues standing around them and listening to them tell the story of the mysterious Dorothy Lyon and the militia showdown at a ranch compound.
They’ll never have to pay for a drink again in their entire lives.
9. Witt Farr
DAMMIT WITT
JUST SHOOT HIM
JUST SHOOT ROY
I KNOW YOU WERE A NICE MAN
I KNOW YOU WERE TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING
BUT WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN IN THAT TUNNEL?
COME ON
JUST SHOOT HIM
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE
NO ONE WOULD HAVE BEEN MAD ABOUT IT
BUT NO
YOU DIDN’T
NOW YOU’RE DEAD
DAMMIT
8. Indira Olmstead
ON ONE HAND: Great cop. Great heart. Only person other than Dorothy who stood up to Lorraine even a little. Finally left her useless husband, even if it did take catching him nude in bed with another lady to do it. Terrific accent.
ON THE OTHER HAND: Cashed out to work personal security for an evil debt collection agency, which, coupled with the death of Witt Farr (JUST SHOOT HIM), decreases the number of good cops out there and leaves me room for the Roys and Gators of the world to run around unchecked.
7. John Sasquatch
Appeared for two seconds in a short scene where he got his name changed from John Sasquatch to Roy Tillman purely for the purposes of debate shenanigans. There’s really no good reason to have him in the top 10 above actual characters who did things. But I almost put him in the top five, so let’s call this one a fair compromise and move on.
6. Scotty Lyon
Scotty Lyon:
- Loves snacks and animals
- Shreds on the drums
- Has a really cool story to tell the kids in school who think “my family went to a water park” is a big adventure
Scotty rules.
5. Pancakes and/or biscuits
I do not think I have ever seen a television show that featured this much graphic violence and gory open wounds that also made me hungry for baked goods almost every week. Between Dorothy making pancakes and biscuits in her kitchen and people ordering them at diners — see above — it was really just a parade of buttery carbs dancing across the screen between shots of people getting parts of their faces mangled by their enemies. Takes a special show to pull that off. I’m kinda hungry again now just looking at that picture.
Oh, and speaking of biscuits…
4. Ole Munch
Let’s track Ole Munch’s season:
- Got revenge on everyone who wronged him or people he cared about
- Said lots of creepy things that sounded profound and weirded out the people he said them to
- Appeared to have disposed of hundreds of years of despair through the magic of preparing and eating a buttermilk biscuit instead of doing a puppet show
Good for him.
3. Lorraine Lyon
Toughest ranking on the board.
Like, yes, her heart did grow a few sizes toward the end there, what with her acceptance of Dorothy and her string-pulling to ruin Roy in a few ways (calls to the government to put down his lil revolution, various debt relief to his fellow prisoners in exchange for making his time in prison a living hell). That was nice to see. I loved her accent. I kind of want to hear Jennifer Jason Leigh narrate audiobooks in that voice. Just a fun evil little monster whose character arc bent the tiniest bit toward goodness at the very end.
But…
She still does run that evil debt collection business. I should still hate her. Maybe I still do. It’s a miracle I put her above John Sasquatch. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll publish an update like three years from now out of nowhere that flip-flops them. Everyone will be so confused.
2. Danish Graves
The facts here are undisputed:
- The man’s name was Danish Graves and he wore a sparkly eyepatch
- Dave Foley is so good every time he’s on a show and people should take note of that and put him on more shows
- I would absolutely watch an entire Danish Graves prequel series that starts with him in law school and goes all the way up until the beginning of this season of Fargo
I’m so mad he died. What a wonderful television character.
1. Dorothy Lyon
I mean, who else was it gonna be, you know? Booby trapping homes, mangling goons, making biscuits from scratch. Tough to top that for anyone on any show. And her original name was Nadine Bump, which is… cool. Not as cool as Wink Lyon or Danish Graves or John Sasquatch, but still. Pretty cool.
