Fargo 5.04

Insolubilia

Gator and his three assistants break in to the Lyon household. Dot is ready for them but not as effective as she hoped she would be. Wayne gets zapped by one of Dot's traps. The house catches fire but Gator and his helpers leave empty handed.

Roy comes home late at night and finds a symbol painted on the wall of his daughters' room.

Dot and Scotty talk in the waiting room at the emergency room. Trooper Witt and Officer Olmstead review the footage from the gas station. They drop that and head to the hospital when they hear about the fire at the Lyon household and that Wayne is in the ER.

Lorraine heads to the ER with Danish when she hears about what happened. She and Danish get there minutes before Officer Olmstead and Trooper Witt. First Lorraine and then Trooper Witt have questions for Dot. She claims not to recognize the trooper but he's sure.

Dot sends Scotty to get some food from the vending machine and then goes to see Wayne. He's awake but in a daze. He doesn't remember what happened but when he first sees her he calls her Nadine, which is what Gator called her during the home invasion.

FBI Agents Joachin and Meyer go to see their boss about applying pressure to Roy Tillman. Their boss rejects their idea and tells them a story about Mao. Meyer gets a text after the meeting ends indicating that Nadine has surfaced in Minnesota. 

Munch returns to the home in Bismarck where he is staying. He takes a bath and then asks the old lady of the house for pancakes.

Tillman goes to see Josh, the young man who he had to discipline in the first episode. Josh gets fed up with Roy and pulls a gun on him. Roy stays calm until it looks like Josh is going to shoot him. Roy shoots him first, in the neck. He tells Gator, who has returned empty handed, that Josh was the man who shot up the Gas-n-Go. Case closed.

Thoughts

The home invasion scene that opens the episode takes up almost a third of the episode.

At one point it is revealed that Dot/Nadine is one of Roy's two former wives. I'm thinking that she might be his second wife and that Gator's mother was Roy's first wife. Gator does call her Mom at one point during the home invasion but that just might mean that she helped to raise him.

I was worried for a little while that when Scotty went off by herself to get something to eat that she would get grabbed by Gator. It looks like I was wrong.

There isn't much more here about the mystery of Munch's past.

I have this vision in my head of a meeting between Lorraine and Gator. Her response to hearing his name is, "Gator? What the fuck kind of name is that?" I don't know that the two will cross paths but I keep hoping for this moment.

I watched this episode twice, like the last three, with the subtitles on the second time around. There were a few things that I had trouble hearing on the first watch through.

This was good. I liked it but it's a piece of a bigger story. I'm eager to see where it goes next.