Stamp of Approval.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
"The Lord of No Mercy," one of Season 3's best episodes yet, will rightfully be remembered as the chapter where Emmit accidentally killed Ray during one last attempt to bury the hatchet and end their cruel squabbling. It was a harrowing, and wonderfully Fargo-y, accident that now changes the entire course the season. Ray's gone, an injured Nikki is hiding from a both cops and crooks, and Gloria's main suspect has transformed into an entirely new murder case.
But for me this episode was most notable for drawing strange and eerie parallels between Varga and Gloria. He's the big bad wolf that she needs to take down and this week she finally met him, receiving yet another lecture about how fickle "reality" can be when there aren't facts to back it up. Gloria as the humble small town cop and Varga as the more sophisticated and vicious criminal mastermind who thinks he can run roughshod over a parade of simpletons is textbook Fargo. But the awesome twist here is that both of them exist in the shadows - off the grid and out of sight.
For Gloria, technology shuns her and makes her feel small and invisible. For Varga, an abundance of his time is devoted to not leaving a trace of his person or identity anywhere. "I'm so rarely seen, maybe I don't even exist," he smirked at Emmit, on his way in to clean up Ray's body. Varga's not only a shadowy player, but he purposefully moves among the darkness. And all of it to ensure a wealthy future where he can live and breathe totally anonymously and avoid an upcoming plebeian uprising.
Gloria, however, just isn't on Facebook. And her police "station" doesn't have a website. And her town is just a blip within a blip. Like Varga, she values face-to-face interactions -- a nice holdover theme from her side stint in Los Angeles -- and so she's a ghost to Varga just as he's been a phantom to so many others. Gloria's "glitch," both purposeful and accidental (fitting the tone of Fargo itself), is almost her kryptonite when it comes to Varga's M.O.
Varga became more hands-on this week after discovering the true nature of the cops' interest Stussy Lots. It was clear that Ray and Nikki had to go, and so Yuri and Meemo were split up to handle two separate jobs that would work to clean up the current mess. Last week, I was so worried that Nikki may not survive her injuries, possibly even dying in Ray's arms after making it home, and look what happened! She rebounded, cunning and resourceful as ever, while Ray became the one to fall. All because, of the two, he makes mistakes while she tends to have her eye on the ball.
Oh, Nikki's still not well. Ray was sure to point out a few times this week that she needed to see a doctor, so it's possible that she still might succumb to whatever internal wounds she has, but I like her chances. She's facing some overwhelming odds here, but she seems custom made for this type of crucible. Every situation she's put in, it's almost as if she's been there/done that and knows the right course of action. Honestly, it was a tense moment, but I liked her odds against Meemo when he was hiding in her motel bathroom. She's just an awesome part of this season.
Odds and ends:
- I know not all Leftovers fans watch Fargo and not all Fargo fans watch Leftovers, but for the cross-section - that classical piece right at the end when Gloria decided to turn her car around, that sounded a lot like Max Richter's Leftovers score. I'm not sure how purposeful that was, but it did happen during a solo Gloria moment
- Sy's world is shattered week in and week out and this time around it was Varga telling him that the moon landing was faked. Varga, in that moment too, almost became a de facto narrator for the season as he recounted incidences of truth being stranger than fiction and where "perception of reality became reality." It's basically the calling card for Season 3.
- For someone who likes to fly under the radar, Varga sure does like to get in there and go after his teeth and gums. What I'm saying is those rotten teeth will stand out in anyone's mind.
- Just as I was beginning to get frustrated with both Emmit and Ray for not saying certain obvious things that would have helped to clear some of the air between them (for example, Emmit didn't know Sy got Emmit fired or that Varga's goons nearly killed Nikki), the stamp case broke and Ray was no more. All because of the way Emmit phrased the hand-over. Yes, these two were destined, perhaps since Ray's birth, to misunderstand each other at every turn.
The Verdict
If last week's episode was the season finally flashing its fangs, "The Lord of No Mercy" was an all out snaggle-toothed assault. In a shocking moment, a Stussy brother fell during what could have been a moment of reconciliation while this year's ghoulish villain began to stake his claim in a more ruthless manner. It became clear this week, thanks to some choice (and unexpected) character similarities, that the endgame here may be a collision between Varga and Gloria.
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