What happens when you stick Ed and Peggy Blumquist and Dodd Gerhardt in a room together? Nothing good, apparently. And just where did Hanzee end up after the last time we saw him on Fargo? We’ll find out in this episode, “Loplop.” Plus, Lou and Hank are still on the murder case, so everyone’s in for some excitement in Luverne and Fargo.
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Don’t Think, Just Be When Ed returns home after running from Lou Solverson, it’s to find Peggy sitting on their basement stairs, having just tied up Dodd Gerhardt and having just had some sort of vision (hallucination?) about “actualizing fully.” She was apparently speaking during her episode, because Dodd tells Ed that his wife is all sorts of crazy, and that he was just an innocent civilian walking by when she nabbed him. Ed doesn’t buy it and punches him before he sticks the Gerhardt brother in the trunk of his car, and he and Peggy drive off.
Peggy has it in her head that in order to “actualize,” she needs to not think about things and just be the person she wants to be. She’s more than a little excited about the little adventure she and Ed are taking, though he is clearly stressed about having a murderer in his vehicle.
Ed and Peggy end up at an uncle’s hunting cabin, which is empty and lacking nosy neighbors in the off-season. There, they tie Dodd up in the cabin, and Ed decides to drive back to a convenience store up the road to call the Gerhardt family and tell them that he has their oldest son.
Peggy stays with Dodd, who at first tries to pull the innocent act, which she of course doesn’t believe. To teach him a lesson about being civil, she stabs him a couple times in the chest, which is clearly a totally normal way to deal with someone being rude. She then explains that Rye’s death was an accident, and anyway, the whole thing has just been so hard on Ed, can’t he see? I’m not sure Dodd realizes quite the level of crazy he’s dealing with here, as Peggy feeds him beans and rambles on.
Backfire
As it turns out, Dodd’s family doesn’t seem to care much that Ed has him, because the guy calls three different times to let them know and they aren’t all that concerned about the situation. After the first time, Ed returns and scolds Peggy for stabbing their hostage, before she suggests that maybe the Gerhardts are just busy with the war they’ve got going on.
Anyway, what ensues is basically an episode of the Blumquists trying to deal with having a hostage on their hands. Ed has to help the guy pee into a kettle at one point, which is admittedly pretty funny, and Ed continues to try to call the Gerhardts, chatting with the convenience store shopkeeper on one such occasion. Eventually, Ed gets fed up with them and instead makes a call to Mike Milligan, which we saw in the previous episode of Fargo.
Mike agrees to take Dodd off Ed’s hands in exchange for a little help in getting the Gerhardts to leave he and his wife alone. They agree to meet at Sioux Falls the next morning, presumably to trade Dodd off and to work out their deal. Maybe the whole thing will just go away like Ed and Peggy want it to?
Hanzee’s Search
Meanwhile, Hanzee is still out there, looking for Dodd and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. After Lou and Hank investigated the Blumquist house after Ed and Peggy left, Hanzee went in and found a hotel reservation on the fridge, which leads him straight to Peggy’s boss, Constance, at the seminar they were both excited about.
Well, he doesn’t go straight there, actually. He makes a stop at a bar, where he is discriminated against by the bartender and some patrons for being Native American. He gets fed up when some of the men follow him out to the parking lot, and in his frustration, he shoots two in their legs and lets the other one run. Then he kills the bartender when he comes outside and finally shoots the police officers who arrive on the scene. So, more than just a pit stop on his way to the Southnik Hotel.
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Constance’s Betrayal
Hanzee gets to Constance’s room at the hotel so that when Peggy eventually calls from the cabin to explain her absence, he’s able to listen to the conversation on the other end with the other woman. With the man sitting right next to her, Constance tries desperately to get Peggy to come, or to convince her to meet up somewhere, I assume so that Hanzee can find out Ms. Blumquist’s location.
Constance isn’t able to make Peggy meet her, but she does get her to reveal that she’s in a cabin near Vermillion, which is something for Hanzee to go off of. After the conversation has ended, Constance claims that she really did try, but we don’t see what Hanzee does to her before he leaves. Is she even still alive?
Close Call
While Ed is away for the third time, Peggy is distracted by a movie on the TV and doesn’t see Dodd slip from his bonds. So by the time Ed makes it back to the cabin, Peggy is lying, hurt and seemingly unconscious, behind the bed, before Dodd manages to hang him with a length of rope.
Dodd monologues a bit, as all villains do, while he hangs Ed, and Peggy wakes up and manages to crawl over and stab Dodd in the foot while he’s talking. While he’s literally stuck to the floor, she grabs a fireplace poker or something similar and knocks him out. Peggy is then able to cut Ed down and save the day, just in time.
Showdown
But the Blumquists aren’t out of the woods just yet! After Ed left the phone booth to go back to the cabin, Hanzee made his way to the same convenience store, and after some miscommunication, he’s able to get the store owner to tell him where Ed is. After Hanzee leaves, the owner recognizes Hanzee from a newspaper article and calls the police.
But Hanzee has enough time to get to the cabin, where he finds Dodd tied up and a recovering Ed, with Peggy still anxiously fluttering around. Hanzee tells them both to sit down, and Dodd is awake enough to tell him to shoot them both.
Then Hanzee calmly asks Peggy if he could have a certain haircut, which is a bit bizarre given the situation. Dodd interrupts and tells the “half-breed” to shoot the couple, but Hanzee shoots him straight in the head instead! So that’s one more Gerhardt on the list of casualties.
While Peggy has Hanzee sit down so she can cut his hair, she and Ed are shooting each other looks, trying to figure out what to do next. As it turns out, they don’t have to do much of anything because just then, Lou and Hank arrive. Hanzee shoots through the window at them, and while he’s distracted, Peggy manages to stab him in the shoulder with her scissors. She’s doing a whole lot of stabbing in this episode, isn’t she?
When Hanzee goes to shoot them, he finds that he has no more bullets, so he escapes out the back door. Lou and Hank make their way inside, only to find another dead Gerhardt, and the Blumquists standing, shocked, with their hands thrown up.
Will none of the Gerhardt brothers make it through this ordeal? There’s only a couple episodes left to find out.
Fargo airs Monday nights at 10pm on FX.
(Image courtesy of FX)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
