#fargo meta

He was freshly blinded in a way that didnt even offer him vague light perception (on account of his eyes literally being gouged out) with no experience or tools on how to navigate with a disability like that, led to and dumped alone in a vast empty area with no landmarks to guide him and without being told where he was or if there was even anything around at all. He was unmoored, disoriented, in excruciating pain, struggling to walk straight and reeling from his whole purpose being swept out from under him moments ago and yet? Somehow steered himself right into a tiny VERY EASILY MISSABLE door that led him exactly where he needed to be to play his eventual essential part in taking down his father for good.

And Gator, as a character, we know is literally DEFINED by bad luck and failures. From the moment he's born he is branded as a flop by his father and spends ALL his screentime having his plans (all centered around being like his father of course) go awry. His already dismal odds are never stacked against him MORE than in the scene in field and somehow, in this moment he experiences the cosmic equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack. Like unfathomable levels of good luck, on the FIRST TRY. Not only that but it's quite literally the first time in the show something goes his way and it only happens the SECOND he stops trying to be Roy which i think is intentional and symbolic.

It's as if every time he made an effort to be what Roy wanted, the universe, through NOT letting him succeed, was telling him that this was not what he was meant to do and not who he was built to be. Because the second that dream shatters around him and his pursuit ends and he has no choice but to switch gears to the opposite, to actively rejecting and fighting AGAINST his father, do his efforts begin SUCCEEDING and he's cosmically rewarded with help in an impossible situation. A metaphorical light in his literal dark.

It's actually a lot more simple than it seems. The man drops two gloves because whoever finds the first one will then find the second and have a pair. 

Lorne is the first glove to be dropped. He's found first. Once you find Lorne, you end up finding Lester as well. Gus finds Lorne and then Lorne leads them to find the tapes, which incriminate Lester. Thus, they've got the pair.

Previously, I’ve discussed the similarities between Lester Nygaard and John Watson, two characters which will arguably be seen as defining moments in Martin Freeman’s career as an actor. I’ve drawn parallels between Sherlock Holmes’s role in John’s life to that of Lorne Malvo in Lester’s. However, after watching the second episode of Fargo (and watching it again for good measure) I think, at the moment, Lester and Lorne’s relationship is closer to that of John and Mary, who is his wife/assassin/rogue CIA agent. (Though I’m sure that I’ll look at the similarities to the John/Sherlock relationship at some point soon, because my brain has decided that Fargo meta is it’s new obsession).

Now, of course, this analogy isn’t perfect. Lorne and Lester aren’t married, and some would argue that there’s no evidence yet that Lorne feels anything at all for Lester. My response to that would be 1) There are a lot of episodes to go yet and; 2) Listening to the call someone made you asking for help covering up murder on repeat is indicative of some stronger feelings (though not necessarily healthy ones). Regardless, there is some sort of connection there, and that’s enough to be going on with at the moment (I’ll be expanding a bit on this shortly). But there are other, more straightforward parallels. Both Lorne and Mary enter at a moment of deep despair; Mary when John is trying to get over Sherlock’s death, and Lorne when Lester has ended up in the emergency room due to is repeated inability to stand up for himself. At these moments, John and Lester are in the midst of deep depression, and Lorne and Mary act to bring them out of it and improve their lives.

Lorne and Mary both attempt to bring them out of it by killing someone. Lorne goes after Sam, Lester’s bully from high school, and Mary attempts to take out Charles Augustus Magnussen (affectionately known as CAM) for threatening to reveal her secrets and destroy the life she has with John.  They both ultimately end up killing people; Lorne stabs Sam in the neck, and Mary, when disrupted from killing CAM by Sherlock, shoots and kills him instead (yes I know he wakes up afterwards but his heart stops and he is dead at one point).

They both offer sage advice at seemingly in opportune moments. When Lester and Lorne meet to discuss Sam’s death, Lorne tells Lester, “You spend your whole life thinking there are rules. There aren’t.” Which arguably influences Lester’s desperate actions later, and indeed the unraveling of his psyche we see in later episodes. When there’s finally a confrontation between John and Mary (more on that below), she says, when Sherlock points out that John has a propensity for dangerous people, “You did see that, and you married me. Because he’s right...it’s what you like.” They both impart these potentially-life altering words of wisdom and then....

...They both leave Lester and John to clean up the mess of their actions. Lorne, though he comes when Lester calls (having attacked his own wife as part of the chain of events sparked by Sam’s death), he makes matters worse by shooting a police officer and then disappearing. Lester’s lone option is to knock himself out by running into a wall and then try and (unsuccessfully) cover his tracks. Mary, disappears after Sherlock is shot (she may or may not have called an ambulance, this is being hotly contested in fandom as we speak), threatens Sherlock not tell John, threatens to shoot Sherlock when he confronts her, and then it is Sherlock who ultimately tells John the truth while she sits there, before Sherlock collapses again and is rushed to the hospital. Both situations, I would argue, are a bit not good.

So, who’s actions are worse? On paper, Lorne’s, because he actually kills Sam, and because the motivation came from such a brief encounter with Lester. Mary had a lot more to lose, and was protecting her life with John which included their unborn child. However, if you look solely at their respective motivations, it’s possible to cast Lester in a more favorable light. Lorne killed Same because he took pity on Lester’s miserable life (as far as we know right now), whereas Mary was protecting, more than John, herself in the actions she took. However, while there has been vicious support for Mary’s choices, I have yet to see any such defense of Lorne. Why? Is it because Mary is a more likable character? Because we know more about her so far? Because she was introduced as an ally, but Lester’s always been more of a wildcard? Is it because the relationship between John and Mary is more solidified than that of Lorne and Lester? Because Lorne is a man? And Mary is a woman? Does it have to do with who Lester is as a character? As opposed to John?

Why, when on paper both actions are arguably violent and morally reprehensible, so far, do we treat Lorne so different from Mary? I’m not sure I entirely know the answer, but I’d love to hear what you think.

  ---

Really, there are so many cliches that spring to mind when you consider the character of Lester Nygaard in Fargo. Dead Man Walking. Dead Inside. Beaten and Broken. I can’t think of a character who has better embodied defeated. This is a man who listens to his wife systematically dismantle every aspect of his character and does nothing but smile into his soup. A man who still so desperately wants her approval he misses the social faus pax of describing graphic death to a couple expecting a child. A man so terrified by his demons that when forced to face the bully from high school, even though he’s in a public place surrounded by witnesses, he flinches away from a perceived blow so violently that he does Sam’s job for him and smashes his own nose into a window (and then self consciously lies about it to almost everyone that asks).

In fact, the only person he does open up to is a man he’s never met.  He doesn’t call his wife, or his brother, or anyone else when he winds up in the hospital. Sitting alone in the ER, Lester spills his heart to the only person who will listen, someone who doesn’t know him, because his experience is that those who do won’t care. It’s no wonder he falls prey to Lorne’s games; at this point he’s so damaged that he makes the perfect patsy. He get’s sucked in, even if it’s unintentional at first, and pushed until he reaches his breaking point.

And even the breaking point is pathetic! When Lester finally snaps, when his wife says “What you gonna do?” in that tone, and Lester has had enough, yet the outpouring of anger and rage is subdued to the extreme. Yes, he hits her over and over again, but while he’s doing it, there’s no screaming or cries of anguish; all he does is almost whisper, “Oh dear, I’m sorry” over and over again. It is his lack of emotion, his lack of willpower that makes this scene hard to watch, not the brutality of it. If not for the blood, you wouldn’t necessarily realize anything awful was happening. Lester’s emotion(less) breakdown is one of the most devastating parts of the show.