I have a lot of thoughts about this season (maybe series?) finale of “Fargo,” and I plan on going more in-depth about this season in another post, because I have very mixed feelings on the season as a whole and this episode in particular. But let’s get into the recap of “Somebody To Love.”
This episode picks up shortly where we left off last week, with our friend at the IRS, Agent Dollard, going over the real books at Stussy Lots Ltd. Obviously, he is onto something big, and included in the package he received was a note claiming this evidence has come from Gloria, and offers her phone number. Right away, I knew Nikki gave this gift of damning evidence to take down Emmitt and Varga to Gloria, the only person besides Ray in this season to show her compassion and treated her like a person rather than a jailbird.
Also, I loved how the walls of that office kinda look like the mail room Charlie has connected the dots to regarding the Pepe Silvia conspiracy in “It’s Always Sunny.”
Now, we see during the opening credits that Gloria is tending her resignation from the Meeker County Police Department. And, I don’t blame her. Having Dammik as a boss would be infuriatingly frustrating. But as she is about to leave, Agent Dollard calls to talk about this Mt. Everest of incriminating evidence he thinks she gave him.
Here we learn he is having some trouble investigating this due to the fact it is being protected by the highest levels in DC, but it sure does look like the pockets of Emmitt, Sy and this V.M. Varga are being lined generously through illegal means.
Thank goodness Gloria takes that resignation letter back before Dammik got his grubby hands on it.
We then get a brief cutscene with Nikki and Wrench in a hotel room, armed to the teeth and looking like they are about to start a guerrilla war on some third world nation.
We then head to Emmitt’s house, which looks like an armed compound now with Varga’s mini-army of thugs protecting it at all angles. Varga is finishing up the last touches of paperwork for Emmitt to sign. Emmitt’s world has gone to hell.
And Varga let’s Emmitt know just where he stands in this Survival of the Fittest of High-Finance Crime: “A smaller animal going limp in the jaws of a larger animal,” Varga says. “Food knows it’s food.”
And we get a brief, shining moment of Emmitt growing a pair as he reaches for Meemo’s gun and declares “I am not food!”
It gets tense, but Varga informs Emmitt that Meemo’s gun has a fingerprint recognizer that will not allow him to pull the trigger. I don’t think it is true — Vargas is a master at BS — but it distracts Emmitt long enough for Varga to blind him with mouth freshener and for Meemo to knock him out with a blunt object.
After this, Varga informs his goons to wipe everything down, adding “we were never here.”
But before he can move on, Varga has his meeting with Nikki. The location is on the seedier side of town, and a child knocks on the car window to inform everyone to follow him to King Midas Storage.
“This is a mistake,” Meemo says. And you know what? It (REDACTED) is!
They enter the building and see written on the floor a message: “Third floor, locker 327.”
This filled me with so much glee, knowing they are entering into a slaughter of some sort.
They take the elevator up (we see a camera on them), and take their time heading to 327, anticipating an attack at any minute.
Varga, that weasel, stays behind at the elevator as Meemo and the gang check the situation out.
Well, they get to the locker and see a table with another message: “Leave the money. The drives are in unit 209.”
Just about this time, Varga gets a text informing him the IRS has his drives and he should get out. Then a storage door opens with Mr. (REDACTED) Wrench!
Varga gets the elevator door closed, but hears the carnage taking place with a frightened look on his face.
We then see the downstairs as Nikki is waiting for Varga, huge ass gun and all. We also see all of Varga’s goons who stayed behind are now dead.
The elevator door opens and Varga is gone, but his cheap suit is on the floor. I have no idea what this means or how he escaped. I chalk it up to when Malvo just vanished from Lester’s house in season one, a complete mystery we never figure out.
But they have the money, which Nikki gives the bulk of to Wrench. Nikki is now on the warpath for “the brother.”
And that brother awakes to find his house empty and the infamous stamp on his head (so it was Varga messing with him with that stamp business in his office).
After tossing the stamp as he gets into his car, he heads to the office to find he has been taken over by Realignment, a company run by the Widow Goldfarb.
So yes, she was behind Varga. She hired the man with the jacked up teeth to take take over Stussy Lots. She did say one doesn’t want a Goldfarb for an enemy. But she does add she left him a hefty sum from all of this in an offshore account.
But nobody is out safe yet. Agent Dollard shows Gloria what he has found out regarding Stussy Lots Ltd. It wasn’t a money laundering operation: Varga had been strip mining the company, gutting it financially through somewhat tricky and semi-legal means that padded the coffers of Emmitt, Ray and Varga.
And it would have been legal, had they paid their taxes, which the real books show they didn’t. This little piece of information is what can take everything down — to a degree. With Varga having vanished — presumably naked, because his suit was in the elevator — that means a lot of this will fall on Emmitt and with a little elbow work deciphering all the shell companies, maybe Goldfarb as well.
But Gloria is called off to the massacre at King Midas Storage (probably owned by the Widow Goldfarb) and meets with Winnie. They check the security tapes and see Nikki and Varga, whom they have seen before, as well as Mr. Wrench, a face not familiar to them.
Gloria knows Nikki is on the hunt for Emmitt, the man who killed her love Ray.
And Emmitt finds himself in a bad situation. His car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and he has no cell reception. Because his day and life have gone downhill, he takes his frustration out on his phone, smashing it in a rage. And then we see a truck pull up.
Emmitt’s day is about to get worse. Because Nikki has found the man who murdered her love.
Now, I love how Emmitt is repeating “Aw, jeez. Aw, jeez” in a panic just like Lester did in season one when he was hammering his wife to death.
Nikki and Emmitt have some back and forth. Nikki wants him dead and I think part of Emmitt wants to be dead.
“This Varga fella. He plucked you like a chicken,” Nikki tells Emmitt, pointing her gun at him. “Well, he’s gone now. I’m going to finish the job.” She then recites the saying Paul told her at the bowling alley for when the time comes for her to take out evil.
Just then a highway patrolman pulls up, making Nikki hide her gun out of sight.
The cop is suspicious of what is going on. Emmitt, as usual, is all panicky and Nikki is as cool as a cucumber. Emmitt lets the officer know that Nikki has a gun as she keeps inching closer and closer to the back of Emmitt’s car.
She pulls her gun. The officer has his gun out. Shots ring out.
The officer is dead. And, unfortunately, so is Nikki.
RIP Nikki Swango. You were one of my favorite characters of the whole series. And I was kinda pissed they killed her off.
Then we get a montage of police coming to the scene of the crime after Emmitt’s car somehow starts again. Gloria sees what has happened, her witness to a lot of this mess now dead. She leaves, pulls over the school bus with her child in it and has a talk with her son.
Emmitt, broken and bewildered, finds where his wife is staying and breaks down in front of her, letting it all out.
Then we get a time jump to five years into the future.
And Emmitt and his wife are at the house we just saw them at, having dinner with their friends (and Sy, who is slowly recovering from whatever the hell Varga poisoned him with).
We have some information here to catch us up to speed:
- Emmitt Stussy declared personal bankruptcy in 2011.
- Pled guilty to misdemeanor tax fraud and placed on two years of probation.
- It is believed — but cannot be proven — that Mr. Stussy has as much as $20 million hidden in an offshore account.
Well, Emmitt is looking happy, Sy seems to be able to talk and eat food (that poor guy). Everything is looking good for old Emmitt Stussy.
He goes to the refrigerator to grab some Jell-O Salad and we see someone has not forgotten about him.
Mr. Wrench shows up to finish the job Nikki started. I like how loyal Wrench is to the people he works with. Wrench blows Emmitt’s brains out, ruining the Jell-O Salad in the process.
We then head to the Department of Homeland Security, where Gloria (with long hair now) is working. It seems they picked up a suspect of hers in Brussels and have him in an interrogation room.
Gloria has V.M. Varga.
But here he is going by the name “Daniel Rand,” who — funny enough — sells accounting software.
He doesn’t remember her, be she sure does remember him.
She informs him that Emmitt was murdered three months ago. She rolls her eyes at his waxing on the philosophy that evidence is in the eye of the beholder, that reality can be manipulated.
She has the evidence against him. Photo of him at the massacre at the storage facility, she saw him at Stussy Lots, she has him against the wall.
Varga is arrogant. But remember, he has an uncanny ability to weasel his way out of these situations.
And Gloria informs him that she will be charging him with money laundering and conspiracy to commit murder. Varga informs her one of her superiors will walk through that door and let him go. She says the superior will come in and inform he is going to Rikers as she spends the weekend with her son eating Snickers bars.
The future is uncertain.
Now this ending is ambiguous. Previous seasons ended with a family together after the chaos.
This ends in a paradox: It is a Schrödinger’s cat scenario. We don’t know what will happen to Varga until the superior walks in. It can side with Gloria or it can side with Varga. Until that person walks through the door, Varga is in a state of both freedom and prison. And we end it on that note.
Observations:
- That was a gutsy way to end this season, but I liked it. It was different from the previous two seasons and film.
- Wrench and Nikki took out a lot of bad guys at that storage place.
- “He’s a kitten now, Ray.”
- I guess Gloria and Nikki will never have pie together.
- “How ya feeling there, friend?” “”Ggggood as new.” Poor Sy. At least he is recovering.
- Ray went out kind of like Lester in “American Beauty.” Staring at photos of happier times before being shot.
- Varga asks gloria if she is familiar with the Russian saying “The past is unpredictable.” Her response: “Pretty sure you just made that up.”
The JOE-DOWN 