Fargo

S4 E11 type

• TV Show

network

• FX

genre

• Drama
• Crime
• Anthology

The chickens come home to roost in Fargo’s finale, bringing to a close a season of treachery and murder. If there’s a lesson to be gleaned from the fourth installment of Noah Hawley’s TV series, it’s that few criminals live long enough to retire — including Loy, who learns that the only thing worse than waging a gangland war is winning one.

“Storia Americana” opens with a montage of dead faces (set to Johnny Cash’s “What Is Man”) that then segues into the sight of Ebal and Loy sitting on the same park bench where Loy previously met Donatello, Josto drunkenly mourning Gaetano’s death in an empty room, and Oraetta languishing in prison. Loy’s men finish moving their stuff out of the King of Tears Mortuary, and Lemuel drops the keys to the place in the palm of Thurman’s hand. “Impressive,” Lemuel says about Ethelrida wrestling back control of the place from his dad, to which Dibrell remarks, “Yes she is.”

Loy gives Donatello’s ring to Ebal. Oraetta makes bail courtesy of an unknown benefactor. Dr. Harvard announces to his staff that they had “a murderess right here under our own very roof” (i.e. Oraetta). After a jazzy sequence of despairing Josto smashing stuff in his house, the Fadda boss surprises Harvard in the hospital parking lot, whacking him and throwing him into the backseat of his car alongside his bloodied-and-bound father-in-law, Milvin. On a remote road, we see Josto leaning against the hood of his car, both Milvin and Harvard dead of multiple gunshot wounds. Josto’s lit cigarette ignites a puddle of gasoline beneath the vehicle, and as he walks away in slow-motion, it goes up in flames.

At the park, Loy tells Ebal that if he wants the war to be over, he has to get his house in order. Ebal replies, “I’ll get back to you.” Ebal departs, and in his car, he sits beside Zero, whom Loy has returned to the Faddas. Loy and the boy share a thankful and knowing smile before the car drives off.

In an operatic, slow-motion-drenched sequence indebted to The Godfather, Loy stands at his Gadfly Hotel suite window as Leon approaches from behind, ready to kill. Before Leon can fire his pistol, he’s strangled to death by Opal. At the same time, gunmen execute Happy in the Spud's All Time diner. Josto is awakened by Joe and informed, “We got Cannon — it’s over. We won.” At this good news, Josto heads out of his office and into the bar, where Ebal, Oraetta, and the rest of the crew are waiting.

Josto is surprised by this reception. Ebal says Josto is guilty of crimes against the family — namely, conspiring with Oraetta to murder his own father, Donatello. Josto denies this but Oraetta, possessed with a desire to be truthful, stands firm, recounting how Josto indirectly requested that she end the wounded mafioso’s life. They bicker about their rough-and-tumble sexual liaisons. Ebal believes the root of this problem is that the Faddas have for too long been run as a family business. “We live in the new world now. We need a new way.”

Ebal accuses Josto of both having Oraetta assassinate Donatello so he could wear the crown and murdering Gaetano so he wouldn't have to share his empire. Josto hears that New York has approved this maneuver, and he’s taken away — as is Oraetta. In the backseat of a Plymouth, Josto and Oraetta continue arguing. They’re led by Joe through a field to a freshly dug grave. Josto begs for mercy from Joe but to no avail. Oraetta asks if Josto can be killed first so she can watch him die. Joe complies, and Oraetta gazes down at Josto’s body with unholy delight — followed by a shot of her warped reflection in the car, a visualization of her demented nature. She’s then executed, her corpse tumbling into the grave next to Josto.

Loy drives his family home. He finds his front door ajar and goes inside with his gun drawn. He finds clothes on the floor, and a bowl of cereal on the table. Upstairs, he discovers Satchel sleeping on his bed (with Rabbit). Loy joyfully laughs as he hugs his son. Satchel runs downstairs and reunites with his euphoric mother.

A montage of Kansas City set to “America the Beautiful” concludes with a meeting between Loy and Ebal at the latter’s office. Loy is ready to get back to business, but Ebal surprises him with a few small adjustments to their deal. He hands Loy a piece of paper that reveals that those adjustments are, in fact, anything but small; the Faddas are taking half of Loy’s entire operation. Loy is furious, but Ebal says this is just part of the mob’s new national plan. He puts Loy in his place by stating, “You too are a national outfit, yes? Wait, no, you are one man in one city. What do they say? Big fish, small pond. But we are the sea.” Ebal knows Loy wants to kill him but advises his rival to see all the men figuratively standing behind him — “The wave that never ends.” He suggests Loy take a different view of this situation: “We are not taking half. We are leaving half.” If Loy doesn’t accept this reality, they’ll kill him and get someone else who will.

“End of story,” proclaims Ebal.

Loy accepts his defeat, and returns home, telling Opal, “It’s over.” With a grocery bag in his arms, he approaches his house and gazes inside at his happy family, seemingly content in the knowledge that he still has them, and that’s what matters most. His blissful reverie is short-lived, however; vengeful Zelmare suddenly appears and stabs Loy first in the back, and then multiple times in the chest. She gazes crazily into Loy’s fading eyes and says, “For Swanee.”

Satchel looks up from reading Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and sees Zelmare backing away from the window. He goes to the front door and opens it. Standing still with a bloody knife in her hand, Zelmare turns to the boy, puts her finger to her lips, and goes “Shhhh.” She drops the murder weapon and departs. Satchel goes to his father, who puts his hand to his son’s face. They stare into each other’s wide eyes as Loy dies.

Over a final montage of more of season 4’s characters, Ethelrida reads her completed school report both to her parents at their kitchen table and to us from a sitting chair in front of Loy’s copy of Henri Regnault’s “Summary Execution Under the Moorish Kings of Granada.” She states:

“History is a form of memory. But what does it mean to remember? We think naturally of our own past. Our lives, day by day. And through them, we see the events of our time. We are black and white. Rich and poor. Foreign-born and domestic. And yet if our pasts are separate, then aren’t our histories separate too? Segregated? Ask yourself — who writes the books? Who chooses what we remember and what gets forgotten? My name is Ethelrida Pearl Smutny. This is my history report.”

Ethelrida gets up from her sitting chair, grabs her suitcases, and leaves the frame to the sound of a final gunshot.

Fargo, however, isn’t quite finished. In a mid-credits coda, we see a car head down a road toward the horizon. Inside is Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine), the Kansas City mob hitman from the show’s second season. As he’s driven by Gale Kitchen (Brad Mann), Milligan stares out the window, and his thoughts go to Satchel, revealing that they’re one and the same. Milligan snaps out of his daydream and begins practicing reloading his gun.

Oh Geez!

• The revelation that Satchel will grow up to be Mike Milligan is a stunning final link between this and prior seasons of Fargo. Yet it was telegraphed, subtly, by the fact that the Irish mobsters from the premiere were named “Milligan” — including Patrick, who grew up to be known as Rabbi, Satchel’s beloved caretaker. Thus, as an adult, Satchel goes into the crime trade and assumes Rabbi’s last name as his own, as a means of honoring him.
• Much. Slow-Motion.

This story originally appeared on: EW - Author:Nick Schager

Fargo

• TV Show

• FX

• Drama
• Crime
• Anthology

War has finally broken out in Kansas City between Josto’s Italian crime clan and Loy’s gangster family. That means everyone is now in immediate danger, although by the end of “Happy” — the season’s penultimate installment — a solution to the conflict materializes from the unlikeliest of sources.

Sensationalistic headlines married to dead-body photographs overlap with striking slow-motion images of gunmen firing at each other — a montage that also includes shots of Josto and Gaetano, Loy, and Ethelrida, who shares an intense staredown with Oraetta.

After gazing at one of his dead fiancée’s figurines, Weff and his men break up Josto and Gaetano’s festive meal and haul them off to jail, with Josto blowing the cop a kiss on his way out. In their Gadfly Hotel suite, Loy gets a haircut from Buel; she doesn’t tolerate him bristling at her craftsmanship.

Loy and Buel meet with a cigar-smoking African American man in a dapper suit named Lionel “Happy” Halloway (Edwin Lee Gibson), who’s accompanied by a lackey holding pictures of two older African American gentlemen (presumably, his superiors). Loy begins by confessing that what happened to Happy’s cousin Leon (i.e. that he was belt-whipped by Loy) deserves a conversation. Happy hears Loy is losing the war, to which Loy replies, “You’re always losing ‘till you win. That’s why it’s called an underdog.” Happy opines that where he’s from, they take the counsel of their elders, “like a rock knows it’s river.”

Happy conveys that his people — fathers, grandfathers, sharecroppers, “men born to bondage” — think Loy is getting a big head for attempting to escape the darkness by stepping into the light. Loy objects to this perpetual-servitude-style thinking. Buel says Happy and the Cannons are family (she and Happy’s wife are “like sisters”), and she asks for Happy’s help in the campaign against the Faddas. Loy needs short-term muscle from the country to make himself look formidable. He doesn’t think he can push the Faddas out of town, but he needs them in their place and suspects New York won’t tolerate this war much longer.

Following Buel’s declaration that the Italians killed her son (she still believes Satchel was murdered by Constant), Happy confers with his photographs. He agrees to Loy’s proposition (“Two weeks”) and asks Loy to make things right with Leon. Once Happy is gone, Buel states they need to finish the Faddas off quickly. Loy worries that if Josto and Gaetano are killed, New York will simply send others to replace them. Buel doesn’t care: “I want justice for my boy. And then we make a deal.”

Post-train station shootout, Weff returns to applause at the police station. Captain Martin Hanhuck (Guy Van Swearingen) informs him that the mayor called to congratulate him, but warns Weff about double-crossing the underworld (“If you bite the hand that feeds you, you’re going to feel the burn”). Weff gets a call from Josto, who threatens to deliver a personalized bullet to him, as well as to send records of his payoffs to the mayor. Weff hangs up on him, which sends Josto — in his office now — into a rage.

Ebal tells Josto that New York wants this “noisy” war wrapped up. Gaetano agrees, cautioning his brother that the battle is bad for business (“You make it personal. It can’t be personal”). Josto believes they need to kill Loy and replace him with someone more manipulatable; when Ebal’s New York-sent henchman Joe Bulo (Evan Mulrooney) asks what this means for Loy, Josto replies that it probably rhymes with “flurder.” As for Weff, Josto sneers, “Nobody turns their back on us and lives.”

As Satchel steals a milk bottle and makes his way down a long country road, Ethelrida scans through old newspaper obituaries. Later, on the funeral home porch, she asks Dibrell if she thinks Aunt Zelmare is okay; Dibrell replies that there’s no trap her sister can’t squeeze out of or hole she can’t fit into. More pressing, Ethelrida asks if the family is really cursed. Sighing, Dibrell recounts the story of Ethelrida’s great-great-grandfather, who came to Mississippi in chains via a ship captained by evil Theodore Roach, who laughed as a raging storm threatened to kill all of his slaves. Ethelrida’s great-great-grandfather strangled Roach to death, and ever since, the family has been haunted by his specter. Dibrell says she smells and hears him more than she sees him — he’s the scent of low tide and the sound of creaking ropes and waves — and Ethelrida admits that she’s recognized his ghostly presence as well.

Ethelrida asks if they can cast Roach out, and Dibrell muses that Zelmare once tried to take him, but was unsuccessful because Roach likes “sunshine.”

The two are joined on the porch by Lemuel, who’s finished with his work, but willing to stay and keep guard. Dibrell warns him not to get any ideas about Ethelrida and then goes to make dinner. Ethelrida tells Lemuel that she wants to see his father, Loy, because she’s worked out how to get her house back. Oraetta appears in an all-white coat, fancy hat and gloves, and demands that Ethelrida come to her apartment for a discussion. When Ethelrida refuses, Oraetta makes a crack about Lemuel being her boyfriend (he claims he’s more of a “suitor”) and then freaks out, demanding that Ethelrida return Donatello Fadda’s ring.

Oraetta’s threats make no impact on Ethelrida, who’s ready to go to the police about the nurse’s stash of poisons and victim mementos. “The devil’s got a special place in hell for small minds who betray their betters’ trust and take advantage of their charitable acts,” spits Oraetta, snidely remarking that there’s a particular “word for you” (i.e. the n-word). Ethelrida says that term doesn’t apply to her; it was invented to make those like Oraetta feel bigger.

Oraetta leaves after whispering, “What does it feel like to be so sure you’re right and know that nobody cares? I’ll see you in your dreams.”

Josto meets with Happy and Leon, the latter of whom is going to be Josto’s handpicked replacement for Loy. Leon is sad he can’t kill Loy twice, and Happy demands all of Loy’s territories, as well as the east-side slaughterhouse, as compensation for this treacherous takeover. Before Josto can agree, his future father-in-law Milvin bursts in and causes a scene. Moving to the bar, Milvin profanely announces he’s calling off Josto’s wedding to Dessie. Josto is stunned that Milvin is too stupid to take advantage of the situation to get more out of their arrangement. Milvin continues with the racist barbs until Gaetano punches him in the face, twice — which wins over Josto.

Loy hears from Opal that Weff raided the Faddas’ Apex Vending Machine Company and that the Italians later met with Leon (“skunk’s gonna skunk”). Staring out a window, Loy muses about how Buel birthed Satchel without making a sound. “On my best day, I’m half as tough as that. And this ain’t my best day. No siree. That’s behind me, I think.” Satchel is also pretty tough; confronted by two racist hayseeds in a pick-up truck, he scares them off by pulling a gun on them and proclaiming, “This is my world. I’m the boss. I tell you what to do.”

Chauffeured home by fellow cops, Weff is haunted and panicked by the sounds of Loy, Josto, and Defy’s voices in his head. He’s right to be paranoid since Josto and company are stationed at his house. While waiting, Gaetano recalls being strangled by the father of his first love at the age of 11 and killing the man with a shard of broken glass. Josto understands that this is why Gaetano was sent away as a kid to Sardinia. When the war broke out, Gaetano was orphaned and forced to eat bark from trees for three weeks, wearing a dead man’s shoes. Josto comfortingly reminds him, “We’re here now” and gives him a hug.

Weff finds his apartment ransacked. Noises from outside indicate he’s still in imminent peril, and he flees out the back of the building to his car. There’s no escape, though; sitting in the driver’s seat, Weff hears his dead fiancée singing to him as Gaetano approaches. Three shots later, Weff is dead. On his way back to Josto, Gaetano stumbles and falls, which inadvertently causes his gun to go off and blow his brains out. Josto is stunned and flees.

A POV shot leads us into the funeral home, past slumbering Lemuel, up the staircase, and into Ethelrida’s bedroom. There, Oraetta looms over a sleeping Ethelrida, holding an enormous syringe. Before she can use it, Roach’s ghost appears behind her, causing the nurse to scream and run back to her apartment, where she finds the cops waiting to arrest her for the attempted murder of Dr. Harvard (who’s apparently awakened). Ethelrida watches from her porch as Oraetta is taken away.

The next day, Ethelrida visits Loy in his hotel suite. She impresses him with her knowledge of the painting he has — a copy of Henri Regnault’s 1870 work “Summary Execution Under the Moorish Kings of Granada.” She asserts that her parents earned the right to their house, and still own the deed and pay taxes on it. Loy doesn’t budge at this, nor at the bill she presents him for funeral services for the 27 men he’s lost in the gangland war.

To convince him, Ethelrida hands over Donatello Fadda’s ring, elucidating that its pricelessness has to do with its prior owner, Oraetta, who had a fondness for pocketing keepsakes from her murder victims. She says that if Loy returns the house to her parents and forgives their debt, “I’m going to help you win your war.” He promises that if she can do that, she can have anything.

At that, Ethelrida shows him the Donatello Fadda obit that proves it is, in fact, the late mob boss’ ring, and they smile at each other.

Oh Geez!

• Ebal’s New York henchman, Joe Bulo, will one day grow up to be the same character played by Brad Garrett in season 2 of Fargo.
• While being taken out of her apartment in handcuffs, Oraetta lets out an “Oh geez!” — a nod to the original Fargo’s use of that exclamation, which also serves as the title of these very footnotes.

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Fargo

Author:Nick Schager - Source: EW