The Stussy Brothers Get In Much Deeper As ‘Fargo’ Hits The Midway Point


A review of tonight’s Fargo coming up just as soon as enemies are fornicating with our cookware…

“To be honest, I feel as if I’ve left the known world.” –Sy

“The House of Special Purpose” takes us to the midpoint of season three, and to points of no return for the Stussy brothers and their respective confidantes. Arguably, Emmit and Ray were doomed from the moments the former didn’t immediately call the cops on VM Varga and the latter sent Maurice to burgle his brother, but there is doomed, and then there is doomed to suffer the worst fate imaginable, while others around you pay terribly for your sins.

By the end of “The House of Special Purpose,” Emmit’s marriage has seemingly come to an end because of a sex tape Ray made while wearing his Emmit disguise, an IRS agent is preparing to look at the books of Emmit and Varga’s joint money-laundering operation, Ray is under investigation for the murder of Ennis Stussy (even if Moe the idiot is doing his best to prevent Gloria and Winnie from looking into it), Nikki has just barely survived a savage beating at the hands of Yuri the Cossack, and Sy has both witnessed that beating and been forced to drink a cupful of urine from the World’s Best Dad mug Esther gave him. And it’s clear that the worst is still to come.

The weight of the episode falls hardest on Emmit and Sy, and it’s a particularly powerful showcase for Michael Stuhlbarg. Sy has always come across as a beta male desperate to be perceived as an alpha, no matter how clumsy his attempts tend to turn out. But when put in a room with Varga, Yuri, and Meemo, he is rendered utterly, terrifyingly powerless, and left shaken for the rest of the episode. He briefly seems to get his mustache bristling again after Emmit — similarly lost and confused and angry following Stella’s exit — promises to take off the shackles and let Sy fix the Ray situation however he wants, but that rekindled bravado lasts only as long as it takes for Yuri to interrupt his showdown with Nikki and deploy his whip on the troublemaking parolee. By the end of it, Nikki is physically broken, but surprisingly not dead, and still filled with enough spirit to drag herself to the car, drive home, and collapse in Ray’s tub. Sy, meanwhile, is so emotionally wrecked just to witness it — and such a coward to begin with — that he can’t even be bothered to check on Nikki to see if she’s dead or in need of assistance, and simply climbs into his ridiculous Hummer to drive away and think deep thoughts of what’s become of his life.

The Emmit/Sy scene brings home how quickly this is spiraling out of control, because neither of them realizes the grave nature of the various threats confronting them. Sy is all wrapped up in feelings of humiliation, disgust, and self-loathing at what Varga and the others did to him with the mug, while for Emmit the clear enemies are his brother and Nikki, and for a while the two are just yelling past each other. Emmit briefly gets Sy to refocus on the Ray problem, but then Yuri’s attack on Nikki changes the equation yet again.

Why does Yuri let Nikki live? Why, for that matter, did he attack her in the first place? Irv’s murder aside, he and Meemo and Varga seem to prefer dominance moves to outright killing: their goal is to keep their latest mark from going to the authorities no matter what. In this particular moment, Nikki’s role in disrupting Emmit’s life and business is almost irrelevant: she exists as a tool to frighten Sy, the man the organization has a more pressing need to keep under control.

Or so it seems. Nikki’s always been a wild card in this. It’s still not clear how much she genuinely cares for Ray as opposed to how much she’s just using him. She doesn’t tell him she’s going to meet with Sy, and it seems entirely possible she could have just driven off with the money she was trying to extort from him, leaving Ray alone with his usual feelings of sibling inadequacy. (It doesn’t seem a coincidence — thematically, anyway — that he proposes to her while still costumed as Emmit.) Now that she’s alive, albeit very injured, she doesn’t seem the type to quit while she’s ahead, and I imagine she can cause many more headaches for Varga before he tells Yuri more a more permanent solution is required.

“The House of Special Purpose” is named not after a bridge strategy, but the home where Czar Nicholas II, his family, and servants were all executed following the Bolshevik Revolution. It’s the latest Russian reference in a season full of them, in an episode that concludes with an image of a black wolf mask that conjures up memories of last week’s Prokofiev motif. Will the season end the way it did for Nicholas, or will Peter and the Wolf take over as the dominant touchstone, with Gloria stopping the wolf before it causes too much damage?

Some other thoughts:

* This week’s music: “It’s Hard To Be Humble” by Mac Davis — a recording that opens with Davis telling a story to the audience, because stories are important to this season/series — (Emmit is out driving), Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, Appassionata II. Andante Con Moto” as performed by Plamena Mangova (Sy dines with the Widow Goldfarb), Brahms’ “3 Gesänge, Op.42: No.2, Vineta” as performed by Leipzig Radio Chorus (Emmit enters the parking structure), “Track Suit” by Minor Mishap Marching Band (Nikki and Sy meet), and a cover of “Ship of Fools” performed by Fargo composer Jeff Russo, with vocals by none other than Noah Hawley himself (Nikki struggles to get into her car).

* Varga goes on several food-related rants, first taking issue with the size of Esther Feltz and his racist theories that Jewish women can’t tell the difference between a pastrami sandwich and a man’s penis, later comparing his partnership with Emmit to a souffle. A lot of projecting going on from a man who goes to great pains to hide his eating disorder.

* For all that Noah Hawley protests the idea that the show uses punny names, it’s hard to look at Hamish Linklater playing an IRS agent named Larue Dollard — called Larue Dollars in early script form — and not think the man doth protest too much.

* Linklater is a carryover from Legion season one. As the widow Goldfarb, Major Crimes star (and airlocking Battlestar Galactica president) Mary McDonnell is new to working with both Hawley and FX, but I’m glad to have her here.

* I’ll keep saying it until it happens — or the season ends without it — but I am really hoping for some kind of even vaguely sympathetic turn for Moe. If he exists solely to be the stupid jerk slowing down Gloria’s investigation, that’s just cheap and lazy conflict. One of the best parts of season two was that both Lou and Hank were good cops who trusted each other’s instincts (and one of the weakest was when an outside cop turned up to steamroll over both of them in order to set up the next major turn of the plot). And of course, Marge Gunderson has complete autonomy to take her case wherever she wants, and the movie suffers not at all for that fact. (This may be one of the few obvious instances where the TV format is a disadvantage; a two-hour movie doesn’t require delaying tactics in the same way the show has deployed a few times each year.)

* After hearing Stuhlbarg say both shvantz (the Yiddish word for a key part of the male anatomy) and the name of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in a Minnesota accent, I now want to hear him say many other Jewish names and words with the same accent.

* Speaking of unusual words for this show, FX has gradually given its showrunners permission to say “fuck” and its variations over the last few years (starting with Louie), but it’s still a bit jarring to hear the Stussy brothers tossing around F-bombs on the phone — as much because it’s a violation of the “Minnesota nice” ethos as because Fargo hasn’t done it much before.

What did everybody else think?

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@uproxx.com

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