Fargo takes a couple of unexpected turns in “Happy,” and we are here for them.
RELATED: Missed the last Fargo episode? Catch up here!
One of the specters haunting most of the key characters in this season of Fargo is racism. Although the Italians are free with their racist speech and ideas regarding Loy Cannon’s (Chris Rock) crew, they are only one rung up on the ladder of 1950s American society. A critical event early in the season is Josto Fadda’s (Jason Schwartzman) father being turned away from the closest hospital because he’s Italian. I’ve worried all season that no matter how clever Loy, Satchel (Rodney L Jones III) and Ethelrida Pearl Smutney (Emyri Crutchfield) are, the color of their skin would foil their efforts to succeed. Fargo‘s “Happy” gives me hope that the folks behind this fictional tale have chosen to give racism the finger and let things conclude in a manner more satisfying than reality might have been at that time.
Through a grisly opening montage, we’re shown the degree to which the war between the Faddas and Cannons has escalated since the boys from Fargo killed the Fadda matriarch. In addition to bodies piling up, nobody is happy with this war. (Except maybe Josto, who seems to be loving his newly secure spot as family head and recognized killer.) On the Cannon side, Loy and his family are holed up in a hotel for their own safety and they’re losing more men in the fighting. On the Fadda side, New York wants the war over and will send in new leadership if Josto can’t get it done. (And on the Fadda father in-law side, Josto’s planned nuptials are in jeopardy because his racist alderman FIL is unhappy with the press the war is getting.)
In this moment, Odis Weff (Jack Huston) decides to reclaim his soul. He may have killed Deafy (Timothy Olyphant) for his masters, but the withering stare the dead man gave him has clearly scared him straight. He leads a raid on the Italians, despite numerous warnings that he’s biting the hand that feeds him.
Josto’s position is that nobody turns his back on the family and lives. He and Gaetano (Salvatore Esposito) stake out Odis’ home, sending in a thug to verify that he isn’t there (and to toss the place as a message). In the car, the brothers bond as Gaetano shares the truth of why their father sent him away.
When Gaetano was 11, he pursued and won a beautiful girl in their village. He was having relations with her on the fire escape outside her bedroom (at 11!) when her father punched through the glass of the window to drag the randy boy inside and throttle him. As he was being choked by the bear of a man, young Gaetano grabbed a shard of glass from the ground and thrust it into his attacker’s eye.
After that, he was sent away to live with family elsewhere. He was left alone early in the war when his relatives were killed, and from then on he knew only violence and horror in Italy. Josto comforts his brother and reminds him that now they are in America. They are safe.
It’s then that Odis arrives home, chauffeured by fellow cops because he’s rightfully worried. When he walks in and sees the way the Faddas’ man has violated the photo of his late fiancée, he begins hearing her voice singing to him as she did in life. He leaves the apartment and gets in his car, only to have it fail to start. The Faddas’ car roars to life, its headlights blinding him. He knows he is going to die.
Odis watches Gaetano approaching him, realizing that soon he’ll be free of his painful war memories and his OCD, and that possibly he’ll be reunited with the woman he loves on the other side. As Gaetano shoots him, he smiles, and the smile lingers on his finally peaceful face in death.
Gaetano considers the dead man’s smiling face, and his expression implies that he understands. He turns to walk back to the car where his brother is waiting, stumbles and accidentally blows the top of his own head off! Josto is shocked, but that doesn’t stop him from fleeing the scene.
Meanwhile, Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley) makes her move on Ethelrida. She confronts the girl on the funeral home porch while Ethelrida is having a flirty conversation with Lemuel Cannon (Matthew Elam). To her immense credit, Ethelrida doesn’t shrink from the aggressive, racist serial killer. Instead, she fires back that she knows who the nurse truly is and has seen the evidence, to which Oraetta replies that it must frustrate the girl to be so right all the time and for nobody to care.
After this, three important things happen.
- Ethelrida goes to the library.
- Ethelrida asks Lemuel to arrange an appointment for her with his father.
- Ethelrida’s mother explains who the phantom we’ve been seeing all season is.
Let’s start with that last one. While they’re sitting on the porch together, Ethelrida asks her mother (Anji White) if their family is cursed. Her mother explains the family legend about an ancestor who killed the captain of a slave ship, and how that noseless captain has haunted their family ever since. He comes with full sound effects of a creaking ship and crashing waves.
This is important because Oraetta isn’t the type to let a black teenage girl smart talk her and cause trouble for her at work. She sneaks into the Smutney home late at night with her little black case of murder drugs, ready to see Ethelrida safely off to the afterlife. As she unzips her pouch and tests her ready-filled hypodermic, the sound of a ship at sea attracts her attention. Before she can harm Ethelrida, the ghost of Captain Martin Hanhuck (Guy Van Swearingen) creeps up behind Oraetta and sends her screaming from the house, leaving the Smutneys to witness her escape. (Maybe that phantom has been a protector and not a curse all this time?) (Also: here’s a photo of him in less phantomy days.)
Shortly after, Oraetta is arrested. Her boss has awoken from the coma she caused, and he has pointed the finger at her. She’s dragged kicking and protesting from her apartment, and the cops don’t even think to search the place.
Ethelrida turns to the microfiche machines at the library to track more of Oraetta’s victims, in particular seeking information about who the owner of the ring she took could be– and she finds it. This is what she brings to Loy Cannon.
At first, Loy is clearly indulging Ethelrida out of consideration for his son. He’s exhausted. His efforts to pull in help from other black family heads has not only been humiliating and fruitless, it led to a rival meeting with the Italians and threatening his throne. Ethelrida’s smarts get his attention, though, and when she tells him that she wants her parents’ home and business back in exchange for helping him win his war, he is desperate enough to resignedly hear her out.
She talks him through what she’s learned about Oraetta and how she deduced who the owner of the ring is before getting his word that if her information helps him he’ll release her family from his bond. He agrees, and she passes over the obituary for Donatello Fadda, featuring a photo of him wearing the ring. Loy registers what he’s looking at and what Ethelrida has told him, and then they look at each other with mutual understanding and a silent agreement that THIS is the thing that will turn the tide in the war.
I, on the other hand, do not understand how this helps, but it seems a very Fargo kind of moment.
And somewhere in Kansas, Satchel and his pup make their way home. He steals milk from porches to survive.
As the skinny boy puts one foot in front of the other, a weaving truck with two drunk racists in it pulls up to menace him. Satchel is weary. He doesn’t want to be pushed around anymore by adults who think they own him. He surprises the rednecks by drawing the gun Rabbi left him and expertly cocking it at them. Then he vents his frustration before letting them drive off at high speed. He puts the gun back in his waistband and continues the long walk home.
RELATED: Keep up with our Fargo Season Four recaps here!
- WANDAVISION Finale Recap: (S01E09) The Series Finale - March 5, 2021
- WANDAVISION Recap: (S01E08) Previously On - February 28, 2021
- WANDAVISION Recap: (S01E07) Breaking the Fourth Wall - February 19, 2021
