Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

The season begins with a definition of Minnesota Nice: an aggressively pleasant demeanor, often forced, in which a person is chipper and self-effacing, no matter how bad things get.

How spot-on. We start in Scandia, Minnesota 2019 with a chaotic fall festival planning committee brawl at Scandia Middle School, because parents don’t know anything about talking to each other anymore.

In the midst of this are Dorothy ‘Dot’ Lyon, played by Juno Temple, and her daughter, Scotty, played by Sienna King, who flee the chaos. But before doing so, Dot tases two people: the math teacher, Mr. Abernathy, and a police officer. Whoops. Two other officers handcuff and whisk Dot out of the school.

Dot is hauled out into a police cruiser Deputy Indira Olmstead, played by Richa Moorjani. As Deputy Olmstead drives off, Dot tells the deputy that she’s worried about her daughter seeing her mom carted away in handcuffs. She’s probably seen worse, I’m guessing.

The deputy wonders what the world’s coming to, with neighbor against neighbor, but Dot just wanted to get out of the school board meeting. Dot didn’t mean to tase the teacher, but the officer was in the wrong place at the right time.

Dot is taken to jail, photographed, and fingerprinted. She asks if her prints are in a national database. Not because she’s a fugitive, but she doesn’t want this to turn into a big deal.

Later, Dot is allowed to leave and meets her husband, Wayne, played by David Rysdahl, who is headed to his mother’s for the Christmas Card ordeal. On the drive home, Dot is worried about getting lice, but Wayne brought all of Dot’s materials to pretty up her hair. Dot asks if Scotty is upset, but it’s nothing some Spongebob and her Game Boy couldn’t fix.

Wait. It’s 2019 and Scotty only has a Game Boy? Not a Nintendo DS or, at best, a secondhand Game Boy Advance?

Okay, whatever. I’ll be here all day if I get into that. Dot goes over her long time in the big house, while Wayne reveals that he told his mother about what happened. Dot isn’t happy, but Wayne’s mom is the one with connections to lawyers and judges. Danish, who we’ll meet later, says a taser incident doesn’t just go away.

Time for the festivities. The Lyon family assemble at a fancy mansion, with Scotty opting for a suit instead of a dress. As Wayne talks with his father, Wink, played by Jan Bos, in enters family matriarch Lorraine Lyon, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and family attorney Danish Graves, played by Dave Foley.

Lorraine wants to put the cross-dressing Scotty- her words, not mine- in the center for the family photo. Also, the family members are given guns to hold as a show of strength. Must be part of the family tradition.

During the family dinner, politics are off limits. Good. Scotty spills that her mom zapped the police, while the family lawyer promises to look into it. Wayne was worried for Dot, but she maintains that it was just an accident. As for what Dot was doing there, it was a school board meeting and she’s on the committee for a new library. They want to expand the library.

Lorraine suggests just donating like a normal person. They just have to talk to Danish. Or Dot could wrote her own pulp fiction, now that she’s an outlaw. The hope is that Attorney General Mick Thigpen, played by James Madge, can get her off the hook. I guess it’s a good thing that Wayne voted for him twice.

Back at home, Scotty asks Dot if she’s going to jail. Not again. Just in general. Dot promises to be there when Scotty wakes up. Fat chance.

After reading her daughter a bedtime story, she joins Wayne, who asks if she wants to have a tumble. Dot is flattered, she had to sponge her pits on Lorraine’s commode like a French Lady. Also, if Wayne touches her, she’ll have to tase him, too.

Both of these things could be considered foreplay. Anyway, Wayne is content to watch Blue Bloods.

As Dot rests, we get glimpses of a barn and a certain Don Draper, but never mind him. We’ll get to him next time.

The next day, Dot makes breakfast, but no pancakes for Wayne. He wants to be at the showroom to meet the new models coming into his job. He offers to take Scotty to school, advising that Dot stay away from the school for just a few days. You know, just to be safe.

So what does Dot do? Knit and watch daytime TV. A masked individual calmly walks up, takes out a hammer, and…just walks in. This is Ole Munch, played by Sam Spruell. Munch follows the ball of yarn up the stairs as he’s joined another masked individual. This is Donny, played by Devon Bostick, though we should really call him Burning Man for reasons that will be important soon.

Anyway, Donny just walks through the front door. The two slowly head up the stairs, still following the string of yarn to a door. They enter and find the yarn sitting in the middle of an empty bedroom. The two check the room for any sign of the woman when Donny of the two notices a door. He approaches and Dot gives him a face full of flame!

See?

Dot threatens to burn Munch, who just calmly backs away. Dot goes on the run and trips over the laundry basket as she takes a hard tumble down the stairs. The two wonder if the woman is dead. Well, she’s clearly not making any noise.

As Munch checks Dot, she springs to life and slashes him across the side of his face with an ice skate that she’d been hiding. The two corner Dot in the kitchen, ready to take her alive, even if that means she loses a few teeth.

Wayne and Scotty arrive to find their front door open. He tells Scotty to see if he left his briefcase in the car. Surprisingly, she finds it. Wayne enters the house and, seeing blood on the floor, calls out for Dot, but gets no response. He calls Deputy Olmstead, who advises Wayne to stay outside.

Dot’s phone is on the table, and Wayne feels it necessary to say he threw up in the downstairs toilet. Deputy Olmstead examines the blood and finds a burned ski mask in the bedroom.

The Lyon family assembles, with Lorraine, Danish, and bodyguard Jerome, played by Kudjo Fiakpui, going over what happened to Dot. Lorraine and Dot believe it’s a kidnapping with an incoming ransom demand, but Lorraine is the one with the deep pockets. She’s not ready to break the bank for Dot, but money’s not the problem.

The company is doing well, and they have kidnapping insurance: foreign and domestic. The real issue is process. Do they bring in the FBI or a private hostage negotiation team? Lorraine wants to keep things quiet.

Deputy Olmstead arrives home and goes over a ton of mail: most of which includes overdue bills. She checks in on her husband, Lars, played by Lukas Gage, and tells him about the kidnapping. Forensics came back with two blood prints: neither of them the victim’s.

Lars is playing a golf simulation and draining their finances on entrance fees but Indira suggests he pick up a few shifts as a backup option. Lars doesn’t need a backup, though.

That night, on the road now in North Dakota, Munch tells Donny partner prompts him to quit whining even though, you know, he just got a face full of fire. Donny asks Munch to take him to a vet, but Dot, in the backseat, says he needs to go to a hospital, or his burns will get infected.

At an intersection, the three pass a police cruiser who soon follows in their direction. Donny confirms that he stole the vehicle, as he was apparently advised to do. From who, though? Just some guy’s driveway.

The police cruiser turns on its headlights, prompting Munch to pull over. Dot slips out the backseat and runs off. Munch pulls out a gun and opens fire on the officers, killing one and prompting the other, Deputy Witt Farr, played by Lamorne Marris, to take cover.

Farr goes on the run and radios to other officers as he arrives at a nearby service station. At the same time, Dot, still zip cuffed, arrives at the station and gives pause to eye some pancake mix in the station.

FX, you can’t show pancakes this much in an evening episode and not expect people to get hungry for pancakes.

Anyway, from the darkness, Deputy Farr takes a bullet to the leg as he stumbles inside. He locks the door as the one hapless employee directs him to a first aid kit. Farr finds Dot trying to cut through her restraints, which Farr tries to help her with just as the power is cut. Dot tells Farr to head to the bathroom since there will probably be a window back there.

So what does Dot do? She pours some lighter fluid near the entrance, drops some glow sticks on the ground, and pulls two bags of ice from the freezer. She then heads into the bathroom and tosses one of the glow sticks towards the stall just as Deputy Farr patches up his leg. He asks the clerk if there are any weapons, but there’s nothing that would help with their current situation.

A firefight breaks out as Munch tosses a trash can through the door and opens fire on Deputy Farr, who takes cover. At the same time, Donny emerges from the bathroom stall just in time to get socked in the face with a bag of ice. Donny slips and hits his hard head on the toilet seat, killing him.

As Dot checks Meyer’s gun, Munch enters the store and shoots the clerk who makes good use of his airhorn. Farr opens fire, but wastes his bullets as Munch takes cover.

He retrieves a mirror and uses it to check his surrounding just in time as Dot knocks him out with a shovel. She picks up his gun and prepares to finish him off, but she hears Farr say that he’s losing a lot of blood. He figures the bullet hit an artery.

She tightens the bandage on Farr’s leg, prompting him to ask where she learned all this. Dot reveals that this isn’t her first getaway. Interesting. Farr asks for the woman’s name, but she doesn’t reveal it. When Farr asks about the first man by the front door, Dot goes to check, only to find that the man has fled. She then sees a flier about stating that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

I agree. Police sirens blare as the officers arrive. Farr rises to his feet, but by the time he gets to the entrance, Dot has already left. The deputy is left on his own while officers pull up to the station.

Back at home, Wayne tucks Scotty in for bed as he promises that Mom will be back. Let’s hope so. Wayne waits patiently by the window for his wife to return, but after awhile, he takes a seat and soaks in all that’s happened today. He falls so soundly asleep that he just barely misses when Dot arrives back home.

Not knowing who it is, Wayne grabs a bell and follows a trail of bloody footprints. He finds Dot cooking up a storm of pancakes as if nothing happened. Never mind the blood, of course.

Dot claims that she fell. Wayne asks about a possible break-in and all that happened earlier, but Dot plays it off, saying she must have cut herself. She wanted to clear her head is all. But the cops still found two types of blood: O-negative and another. Neither of which belongs to Dot.

Not to mention the scorched ski mask. Dot must’ve put it too close to the curlers. Still, the police arrived, and Wayne’s mother knows. Dot isn’t happy about that, but she just had a bad day and needed some time. Dot knows that Wayne thinks of her as a perfect woman and wife, but even she has a breaking point. Anyway, Dot asks Wayne to set the table for breakfast so Scotty can get her vitamins and minerals.

After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Dot whisks away as the episode comes to a close.

Are we back in Fargo territory? You betcha. It’s been awhile, but we’ve gotten used to gaps between seasons. With Noah Hawley working on an Alien series for FX, those gaps could get even longer. But hey, the man could balance Fargo and Legion perfectly fine, so I’m not about to start doubting him. It’s just great to have this series back and, in a way, going back to its roots.

Don’t get me wrong. I still very much enjoyed Season 4 and the change of pace that came with the setting of 1950s Kansas City. That season managed to set itself apart while still feeling very much in line with the Fargo world. But by returning to good old Minnesota, Hawley brings this world back to where it first originated in the Fargo film, but brings things further in the present than Season 3.

It’s interesting how Fargo continues to jump across time, with the third season being, until now, the most modern. Season 5 taking place in 2019 allows Hawley to capture where the world was at that point, but if you didn’t tell me this took place in 2019, I’d think it was set in 2023.

Fargo, whether on film or TV, has never really delved into politics because it never needed to do that. Here, the season presents some political undertones that give a sense of there the world was and, in a way, currently is.

The fighting among parents at the school meeting, the Lyon family posting with rifles, and Lorraine’s disdain for Scotty- who I assume is a tomboy, but I could be wrong- all serve as reminders of what we’ve seen in real life…and this is in 2019. This was before the world went crazy in fighting over toilet paper, adopted ‘social distancing’ into their vocabulary, and policed one another on wearing masks.

It’s a smart way for Hawley to weave in present-day politics without shoving it in your face or making it the focal point of the season. The examples I mentioned aren’t the focus- they’re just here to set the stage for this season. That may run the risk of dating this season when all of these moments are a mere memory, but for right now, when there’s still a lot of crazy in the world, it works.

As he’s done with previous seasons, Hawley integrates beats and tones from not just the Fargo film, but other projects from the Coen Brothers. It’s nice to have those moments in this season as well. There the obvious parallels of Dot to Jean Lundegaard, but I’ll get to Dot in a moment. The Minnesota cop in Deputy Olmstead always knows that there’s more to the story that’s being presented.

The entire sequence at the service station was full of the tension and dread that often cuts in between the lighthearted moments in Fargo. It also evoked strong vibes of No Country for Old Men with the buildup of anticipation, lack of music, and how resilient Ole Munch was. He comes off like a cross between No Country’s Anton Chigurh and Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo from the first season. But with less dialogue.

Again, it’s a nice way for Hawley to tell his own story, but always pay homage to the projects that inspired this series in the first place.

Everyone fits in their roles well and feel in line with this universe. Richa Moorjani I think has more in line with Molly from the first season. Not to say that Frances McDormand’s Marge from the film wasn’t proactive and didn’t ask questions. She very much did. But Deputy Olmstead is quick to ask questions and follow-up on things that just don’t seem right instead of just assuming nothing more sinister after the kidnapping.

Seriously, though, people in the world of Fargo should know that you can’t pull a fast one on a Minnesota cop.

Wayne feels like the same sort of sad sack that Lester and Jerry were. Hell, as we’ll soon learn, he even works at a dealership like Jerry did in the film. He’s supportive, but doesn’t have the loving presence that Norm did. I’m not drawing comparisons to stack one against the other, but more so to note how dynamics have shifted. Though at least he’s more involved with his wife’s life than Olmstead’s husband.

Wayne is more of a background character and, for now, has less presence than the aforementioned.

That could be because his mother has such a dominating presence. Jennifer Jason Leigh is great as matriarch Lorraine. She’s sitting on mounds of cash and has nothing but disdain for Dot and Scotty. She doesn’t want to break open the bank for Dot and prefers to keep law enforcement involvement as minimal as possible. She’s very much someone who must stay in control of a situation, and her money.

This brings us to unassuming housewife Dot Lyon. First off, great job by Juno Temple as she slips into the role of the caring woman who has much more going on than we know. Looks can be deceiving. Dot comes off at first like the mother and wife who just wants to be there for her daughter, watch some TV, and make pancakes on occasion.

But unlike Jean’s kidnapping in the film, Dot is a little more than prepared. While that kidnapping had Jean running for her life, this character feels like someone who has seen some shit. After all, Dot tells Deputy Farr that her being kidnapped isn’t her first getaway.

What the hell does that even mean? How much history did that one line hint at? When the season starts, Dot is whisking Scotty out of a volatile school board meeting. Then she tases two people, worries about her fingerprints being in a national database, sets a trap for two people set for her kidnappers, gets the drop on them at the service station while killing one, and runs barefoot from North Dakota to Minnesota.

All in the span of about a few hours. How did she run all the way back to Minnesota barefoot with no trouble whatsoever?

Whatever. These are the actions of someone who has seen a lot in her life because nothing before the attempted kidnapping gives any indication that Dot is so battle-ready. Yet Dot is preparing the sorts of traps and surprises that would impress Kevin McCallister. Dot doesn’t want to be the center of attention or draw attention to herself, as evidenced by her brushing off what happened when she returns home.

Towards the end of the episode, Dot tells Wayne that even she has a breaking point. I don’t get the sense that Dot is someone who has been bullied her entire life, but I do think she’s someone sitting on a lot of rage. Again, this will be more evident in the next episode- as the first episodes aired in one night- but Dot’s actions raise a lot of questions.

But they’re questions that I don’t want answered. Why? Because less is more with a character as intriguing as this one. I’m sure future episodes will clue us into Dot’s past, but I prefer that as much of her backstory remain shrouded in mystery. I just want to fill in the blanks on how this innocent looking wife can double as an all around badass who checks a gas station for entry points and calmly sets traps like she was just knitting.

The long wait was worth it as Fargo kicks off another season in a big way. The series returns to its Minnesota roots with a kidnapping gone wrong and a humble wife who has more secrets than we’re led to believe. With strong lead performances, good tension, and good blend of drama and humor that remain a staple of Fargo, the fifth season is off to a strong start.

With that said, welcome back to Fargo.