Oh howdy there, Trash Fellas! How darn nice it is ta see ya. I gotta say. Mostly because, I’m just so darn sorry, I’ve been a bit of a lowsy recapper. The holidays got the better of me and gosh, wouldn’t ya know it, here we are and I’m three episodes behind!
No seriously I am a TERRIBLE recapper and if you’re reading this right now, I don’t deserve you and I don’t deserve Ronnie. But, let’s just all take a page from Positive Peggy’s book, forget the carnage before us, sweep it under the rug, and pretend it’s not happening! (I really am sorry!)
ERSTWHILE ON FARGO: War is declared, and it’s claimed, hoo boy, quite a load of lives. By my count, two of the major Kansas City players, Otto Gerhardt, and his sweet but slutty (and treacherous) little granddaughter. Mike Milligan is under performing on this quarter’s deliverables, but when his coworkers come to hand him his pink slip, he and Thing One (the living half of the Kitchen Brothers) terminate them in their own way. I mean they get them dead and stuff. Dodd and Bear were both out for “The Butcher’s” blood, on the hunt for poor little Ed Blumquist, who’s escaped the clutches of the Luverne Police, and running as fast as his husky little legs can carry him back home.
… and that’s where we open on Peggy, yet again in the center of a bloody mess, the unwitting and unwilling cause of it all. She’s crouched on the basement steps with her head in her hands, a corpse at her feet, and Dodd Gerhardt tied up before her.
Suddenly, in Peggy’s mind, Dodd transforms into a soft-spoken, mysterious life coach who asks her if she’s “actualized” yet. In her quiet, bizarre little fantasy, Peggy realizes that she needs to stop thinking about the person she wants to be and simply start being her.
Just then, Ed bursts in to discover her smiling dreamily. Dodd lamely tries to play dumb and insists that his wife’s crazy. Ed cuts right through Dodd’s bullshit, knocks him out, and hustles Peggy right out the front door with “nothing but the clothes on their back.”
The two dumbest people in Minnesota then make off in Dodd’s ride just as Patrick Baby and Grandpa Ted roll up in the cruiser (because “the cops’ll be looking for” the Blumquists’ car and not, say, one that belongs to the ringleader of the region’s most notorious, dangerous crime family). As the Blumquists slip out, our Super Troopers slowly creep into the basement, guns raised, and find the Gerhardts’ two dead crones. But where did Dodd go? Did I miss something? This show is so dark! I swear I haven’t even started drinking yet.
I told you I’m a shitty recapper.
Anyway, Patrick Baby surveys all the gore and decides they need a medic. Not for the bodies, but for Grandpa Ted, since it’s been clearly established lately that most cops are pussies. As GT rolls away on a gurney and PB drives off in the squad car, sneaky old Hanzee is lurking in the bushes, and slips into the house as soon as they’re gone. He finds the two soldiers in the basement, then slinks upstairs to look for clues over where Pudgy Pedgy (that’s my couple name for Ed & Peggy) may have ran off to. And because this show actualizes itself, the clues are sittin’ right there on the ugly beige fridge: one (1) hotel room reservation, one (1) ticket to Life Spring, and one (1) postcard that sings of Peggy’s wiiiiiiildest dreams (#aaaAAAahhh), California.
But, even though Ed and Peggy are too stupid to insult, they’re at least smart enough to go on the lam like normal people. Ed is naturally paralyzed with fear at their situation, muttering through his state of shock that the two must avoid major roads and high-profile lodging. They’ll run to his uncle’s abandoned cabin in some far away town near Rushmore. Peggy, on the flip side, is delirious. Finally free of the mundane prison that was her home, she’s ACTUALLY™ ACTUALIZING® and being the best Peggy she can be. It might be a murdering, careless, pathological lying Peggy who takes no responsibility for any of her actions, but hey, everything’s relative.
Welcome to FARGO.
