Home Alone 7: Fargo edition.

The episode begins with Gator and his three goons making their way to House Lyon. Two head for the back, while two go for the front door. Dot is working in the kitchen, seemingly unaware. The goons knock on the door, but getting no response, they just walk right in.

At the back, Gator slides open the screen door and catches the light bulb before it hits the ground. With the four inside, they fan out and search the home. As something heats up in the oven, Dot waits from behind a closet as Gator looks over a photo of Dot’s new family.

The smoke alarm finally goes off and a strobe light goes off in the basement. As Dot emerges, she maces one of the goons and kicks them down the basement stairs.

So one down, three to go. Dot trips the sledgehammer and gets one of the goons in the head. So two down, two to go. Actually three, as one accidentally trips and falls down the stairs.

Dot grabs the bat and misses a swing at Gator, who unmasks himself and demand that Nadine get in the car. Dot refuses, saying she’s not going back. Instead, she slips into and locks herself in the basement and heads into he vents while Gator pulls the burning mess from the oven and kicks out the smoke detector. He calls out to Dot, calling her new husband a big softy. He bashes the basement door and heads downstairs.

At the same time, one goon pulls back a shower curtain and finds…nothing. He checks elsewhere just as Dot emerges from the vents.

One of the goons pulls on a switch. Having not seen Home Alone, he’s completely caught off guard when a ladder comes right down on him. As Dot struggles with another goon, Wayne and Scotty are revealed to be hiding in the attic. Dot tells Wayne to hold the guy down so she can knock him out with the toilet tank lid.

As Gator calls out to Nadine, Dot opens fire at him. When Wayne goes for the window, he gets electrocuted because Dot kept her booby trap activated. So Wayne is down for the count as a fire starts. Dot rips down the burning curtains and the three make their way out the window while Gator bashes at the bedroom door.

With the house in flames, Dot temporarily freezes, but soon Scotty climbs down the side of the house. She flees as Dot tries to revive Wayne. Having no success, she pushes him off of the roof.

Gator and his goon squad retreat just while the fire department races towards the house. Dot drags Wayne’s lifeless body out of sight as her home goes up in flames.

Quite the ending to an otherwise uneventful Halloween, am I right?

Anyway, Roy, still in the church, speaks to the Lord about being at the crossroads. The Midnight Man with a serpent tongue is waiting. Roy met him once. He hung his wife and cut his children to pieces. Ole Baelor was sitting in his easy chair, taking it easy, but behind him, Roy swears, was Beelzebub himself- crouched low in the poor man’s ear. The good Lord protected Roy then, and Roy asks for His protection now.

Might be too late, as Roy goes to his home and sees a trail of bloody feet prints leading inside. He grabs a shotgun from a glass case and heads upstairs. He checks his daughter’s bedroom and sees a strange symbol scrawled on the wall in blood.

Scotty asks Dot if the people attacking them were demons, but Dot tells her daughter that there’s no such thing. It was just men, but they can’t talk about them because they might come back. Talking about them is apparently what brings them back. So if people ask, they have to say Dad touched some wires, and that’s what led to the fire.

The scratches on Wayne apparently came from the two of them hunting a zombie- since they’re zombie killers. That and he fell into some bushes. They tried to plug in some lights, but an accident causes the fire. Bad things don’t happen to good people. They just have to think good thoughts, like the kingdom of Heaven as their reward.

Deputies Olmstead and Farr review surveillance footage from the service station. They correctly identify Dot, but nothing on the perp. Olmstead is more confused now. She escaped being shot at and helped a sworn officer- why would she pretend it never happened? Before the two can consider this further, Captain Muscavage informs the two that there’s a fire at the Lyon house and Wayne is in the ER.

Outside Olmstead gets a call from a debt collector from medical services. The bill, from Lars, is over $2000. Those golf prices aren’t cheap!

At the same time, Lorraine also talks to a Forbes reporter about debt. The stress takes a toll on the body. People in debt feel powerless because they are powerless. Lorraine tells the reporter that she specializes in debt specialists who give people back their dignity. The reporter talks about how Lorraine turned dead ends into $1.6 million- all through timetables and empathy.

Jerome enters and informs Lorraine that her son’s house is on fire. Lorraine, not missing a beat, talks about how Americans don’t want a handout, but an opportunity to fix it themselves.

Lorraine and Danish arrive at the hospital, looking to talk to a doctor, not Dot. She wants to talk to a doctor, believing that Dot burned the house, but Dot believes that it was just bad wiring. Well, an investigation will root out the actual cause, Olmstead says.

Olmstead and Farr arrive not far behind in hopes of talking with Dot in private. Dot doesn’t want to, and Danish tries to stonewall, but there’s one state trooper dead and an armed fugitive out there. Also, Farr says it’s great to see Dot again. Yes, Farr recognizes her from the security footage. That’s just reality, and a surprise to Lorraine. Danish says they have their own reality, but that’s not a thing.

Scotty blames the fire on Jack Skellington, but she soon leaves to get some Snickers for breakfast. Healthy food choices, I’m sure. Farr asks Dot what the fellas at the service station want with her, but before Dot can answer, a hospital employee informs her that Wayne is awake.

Wayne’s alright, but his face is scarred. Also, some guy is angry about not getting any help for the cancer he apparently has. Dot asks Wayne if he remembers what happened with him touching a wire and getting a shock. That can make you think you did something you didn’t. After trick-or-treating, Wayne went to plug in some lights and, well, you know the rest.

Dot apologizes to Wayne, saying she never meant for any of this to happen. She promises that they’ll build a new house, just like the fairy tale says. Wayne just repeats ‘my wife’ over and over, so Dot crawls into his hospital bed with him and takes his bandaged hand into hers.

Agents Meyer and Joaquin speak with a commander about Roy Tillman and what to do with him: tactical weapons are missing, and the agents think Roy gave them to his friends in the militia. An undercover agent in Tillman’s operation is dead, two of Roy’s wives have disappeared, but the agents The agents want to increase the pressure and send a message: rule of law, or else.

Joaquin just thinks his boss, who wants the mess to blow over, is in Tillman’s pocket. Their boss talks about the Chinese going to war with the sparrow in 1958. The birds were eating the people’s seeds and grain, so the people started beating on pots and pans to drive the birds mad. Death by exhaustion. Soon, two billion sparrows were exterminated, but what happens when you remove birds from a food chain?

No one’s left to eat the bugs and locust, so instead of solving a hunger problem, they made a bigger one. Hence the Great Famine, where 50 million Chinese starved to death. The boss isn’t asking for a game of 4D chess, but think one step ahead. If you go to Roy Tillman, whose fathers and grandfathers were sheriffs, and connected to a powerful militia, what happens next?

If the agents can’t answer that, they must make Roy Tillman a hobby of theirs. But then Agent Meyer tells Joaquin that they found Nadine- thanks to a hit on her fingerprints- and she’s now living in Minnesota under the name of Dot Lyon.

As we get glimpses of an enraged Roy, Ole Munch soaks in a tub and talks about freedom. When he was a boy, freedom was just a potato- freedom from hunger. He ate first so others couldn’t. He wanted nothing more because only kings have the freedom to want. Now, everywhere you look, you see kings. Everything kings want, they call their own. If they can’t have it, they say that they’re not free.

They even pretend their freedom should be free without cost, but the cost is always death. Life for life. Ole Munch, or Mama Munch. Yeah, Ole Munch isn’t alone. Mama Munch doesn’t understand what Ole Munch wants, and as he emerges from the tub, his answer is very simple: pancakes.

Well, we’ll have to wait to see if Ole Munch got those pancakes. Gator and his terror squad arrive home to find others wrapping up the body of one of the guards outside the Tillman house.

Where’s Roy? Having his morning coffee as he talks to his the married couple from before about the Lord speaking to Joshua after Moses died. Roy asks Joshua if he’s one of the good ones. Roy’s great-grandfather was also named Roy, and an Indian killer, turns out. The only American to earn four Medals of Honor, apparently.

Roy wants to be a good man like his great-grandfather, but Joshua is no good man. He’s just a a waste of skin, defective, wasting precious resources.

Joshua boldly pulls a gun, but Roy isn’t threatened by a beta with lipstick. Roy tells Joshua that a man with a painted face threatened his children last night. Roy isn’t fond of being threatened. Joshua fires, but his shot goes through the window. Roy’s shot doesn’t miss, though. In fact, it goes right into Joshua’s neck. Lenore, meanwhile, gets Roy a glass of water just as Gator enters.

Gator informs his father that Nadine really is some kind of tiger, but her husband is hurt and their house is on fire. Also, Roy concocts a story about how ‘Ole Munch,’ now Joshua, bragged about killing a state trooper. Shots were fired, and Gator was Roy’s backup after Lenore called Roy for help. As far as they’re concerned, this should close all loopholes and get the state off of their back.

For Lenore, there won’t be any more black eyes, but instead cash in her pocket every month. Roy never forgets a friend. Lenore agrees to the terms as the Tillmans leave.

As Gator heads off in his car, Roy decides to take his horse for a ride. He trots towards the crossroads and rising sun as the episode comes to a close.

Can we first talk about how quickly these episodes fly by? Maybe that’s just from me watching these episodes live and noticing the barrage of commercial breaks, but this season of Fargo is fast. As in literally fast. But not fast to the extent that we miss out on character development and plot progression. I imagine the season might play better once it’s all done and can be watched at your leisure.

Then again, the multitude of commercial breaks is more attributable to FX, and not a detriment on the show itself. Just thought it was worth mentioning.

First off, hell of an opening sequence with Gator Squad entering House Lyon. It was both comedic and tense, and for my money, I could have done with much more. The Home Alone-esque misadventure doesn’t overstay its welcome or take up the entire episode. Still, seeing how many badass traps Dot prepared made me yearn for her to make more traps.

It’s funny how, in a few minutes, Noah Hawley and director Donald Murphy made a better Home Alone movie than, ironically enough, Disney and Fox did with Home Sweet Home Alone. It’s the sort of violent, yet darkly funny moments you’d expect from Fargo.

Dot is a badass who has backup plans for backup plans. If this episode proved anything further, she’s plenty capable of taking whatever Roy throws at her. It helps that Gator and his goons aren’t that competent. Well, Gator isn’t, anyway.

After all, the fire that forced the Lyons out of the home was due to Wayne grabbing the window, not because the intruders did anything. Left to her own devices, I’m confident an outnumbered Dot would have prevailed.

What she can’t do forever is keep people off of her back. Dot is warding off invaders on all sides. This episode had a lot of focus on debt and owing others. Dot must owe some kind of debt to Roy. Wayne’s family has given her the house she lives in and more money than she’ll ever need, so she owes a debt to them. But more importantly, Deputy Farr owes Dot his life after she saved him.

By the way, the fact that Dot sharply rebuked Gator, saying “Shame on you,” makes me wonder about their past. But again, nothing I want to see explained. I compared Wayne to characters like Lester and Jerry, but in a way, Dot has something in common with them. She’s not morally reprehensible, but when questioned on the odd situations surrounding her, she sidesteps all interrogation.

Demons didn’t attack her family- Wayne just had an electrical mishap with the wires. Dot didn’t save Farr’s life because she wasn’t even there.

Poor Wayne, though! The man just wanted a simple family life, and his world is being rocked with each day. Now he can only repeat ‘My wife’ after taking quite the fall. Sooner or later, he’ll have to come to terms that his reality isn’t what he thinks it is. Though him being hospitalized could give Dot a cover story as to why she doesn’t want to reveal much- she needs to devote as much time to helping Wayne heal.

Dot wants to maintain the façade of having a happy home and happy life. She doesn’t owe anyone an explanation since she’s done nothing wrong, right? But as these problems pile up and police ask more questions, Dot’s bubble continues to shrink. It’s not made better now that Lorraine knows for a fact that Dot was at the service station. She’s so focused on the fairy tale life, but even monsters exist in fairy tales.

There are many of them here. Roy, who believes Dot owes him a debt, is a calm monster. For all of his power, we haven’t seen him get angry or enraged at anyone. That has the potential to make him much more dangerous because, like Dot, he keeps his anger in check. We haven’t seen the true monster, and it’s a credit to Jon Hamm’s performance that he maintains this aura of authority, when he could snap at any time.

Again, he doesn’t blow a gasket or have a fit when he finds out that Nadine bested Gator because at this point, he’s not surprised. I wonder if part of him is impressed that, after she escaped, she’s still a hell of a fighter. Certainly adds credence to Ole Munch and now Gator calling her a tiger. Roy still calls Nadine his wife, so chances are he sees her as still one of the good ones instead of the bad.

After all, he’s one of the good ones. He self-righteously proclaims himself as one before putting down Joshua. It demonstrates power on his part, as well as Joshua’s failure to learn a lesson, but I thought there was a third meaning for this killing. Two of Roy’s wives have escaped. I wonder if he wants Lenore as one of his new wives.

She owes Roy in exchange for him killing an abusive husband, and as Roy said, he doesn’t forget his friends. But I believe Roy wants to be more than just friends. But like Dot, Roy is also facing challenges on all sides. Not just from him owing Munch, but he’s still got the Feds on his ass. Nice to have him talk about crossroads earlier on, and then the episode has him literally heading for the crossroads.

There’s a hole in Roy’s plan. Sure, he plans to pin all of Munch’s actions on Joshua, but sooner or later someone will have to find out how Much looks. I don’t know if he showed up on the surveillance footage that Olmstead and Farr reviewed, but just like Lester trying to pin his wife’s death on someone else in Season 1, this plan will only work for so long.

Ole Munch, as a sin eater, still has a debt to pay by virtue of the sins he’s taken. Perhaps he meets his end by the time this season finishes, but he’s making life hell for Roy.

I have no idea what the symbol that he left on the wall is, but I think it’s much more menacing that he didn’t kill Karen or the daughters. I actually thought that he was talking to a kidnapped Karen towards the end before the reveal that it was Mama Munch, but still, Munch made his point clear. Another point? He wants some damn pancakes. Dot makes pancakes.

Do I smell a Nikki and Mr. Wrench-style team-up? Probably not, but the two have a common enemy in Roy, so it’s not completely impossible! Roy sees himself as a king who wants it all, including the one who got away. He believes in freedom, but as Munch said, freedom comes with a cost: death. Do I think Roy will die by season’s end? Not entirely. I think his empire could crumble, which would be a much worse fate.

After all, Agents Meyer and Joaquin aren’t going to just rest on their laurels because their boss says going to war with Roy would be disastrous. Like the deputies, the agents are obliged and took an oath to do what’s right, damn the consequences. Outside of Roy and Gator, they haven’t interacted with anyone, so I’m curious how their presence could cause further complications for the Roys.

Going back to freedom and power, Lorraine is all about holding onto power. She reminded the police last time that within her walls, they have no power. But she fancies herself a Robin Hood-type, wanting to return power to the powerless. True, people in debt often feel powerless, as exemplified with Olmstead being powerless in the face of her husband’s growing debt weighing down on her.

Also, side-note about Olmstead, but the overhead shot of her walking to her cruiser felt reminiscent of a similar shot of Jerry walking to his car in the film.

Maybe that’s just me?

Lorraine believes in the individual having power to make their own decisions, without any outside influence. She and Roy have a lot in common, but she can’t contend with a wild card like Dot. The idea of not being in control mystifies her because, in her station, power and control should be a given, not a request. She has her own reality where her word is law, but that’s going to clash with, well, the actual law.

This episode might not have the plot forward much, but it provided an entertaining opening with its Home Alone-style antics, and now with so many eyes on Dot, she won’t be able to talk herself out of her actions for long.

Still, there’s always pancakes.