Last week’s episode had me nervous, because of how quickly Deputy Molly Solverson and Grimly were piecing together the various pieces of the Lorne Malvo mystery, and how it connects to the strange occurrences happening in the normally-boring town of Bemidji. I wasn’t worried about the quality of the show, by any means, but for the characters themselves. We’ve seen what good police work can do to someone, and I had grown rather fond of Molly and Gus in the last few weeks.
However, this is Fargo, after all, and things aren’t as cut-and-dry as you might think. Just as Molly and Gus get one step closer to Malvo, they’re forced to take two steps back; not only because of the incompetence of those around them, but because of the calculating nature of the man himself.
Once Malvo was arrested and brought to the station, I had a sinking feeling in my chest that things weren’t going to go well for Grimly. There was simply no way that Malvo would be caught this soon, and this chance encounter just managed to raise the stakes considerably.
On one end, we have Grimly, who just last week confessed his sins to Molly and his boss in an attempt to right the wrongs he’d committed and bring justice to those who had fallen in Malvo’s wake. Because of this eagerness to catch Malvo and make things right again, he jumped the gun considerably when arresting him.
On the other end, we have Malvo, who complies with the arrest without putting up a fight or admitting that he’d ever met Grimly. When he’s taken to the police station, he plays along and adopts the meek demeanour of a baffled priest who had been wrongly accused. So many crime shows that deal with the manhunt end once the cuffs go on the perpetrator. Here, Fargo flips that on its head, showing us that getting Malvo in handcuffs was only the beginning, and only managed to make catching him considerably harder. Grimly and Molly may have been able to put together a compelling argument before the arrest, but now Grimly has been humiliated (again), and Malvo has won over both police chiefs in a way that expels him from any further suspicion on their part.
That leaves Molly and Grimly with only one option: Forget Malvo and go after Lester.
