Fargo is back with a fourth season, and the premiere episode, “Welcome to the Alternate Economy,” sets up the chess board and introduces the players. Although we’re still calling it “Fargo,” the action has jumped back in time and across some geographic distance, landing in Kansas City, Missouri, in the year 1950.
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The episode is narrated by Ethelrida Pearl Smutny (Emyri Crutchfield), a 16-year-old girl with a white father, Thurman Smutny (Andrew Bird), and black mother, Dibrell Smutney (Anji White). Her parents own a mortuary, and Ethelrida is “too smart for her own good” as a mixed race girl in 1950 Missouri. She offers the viewer both a historical view of the city’s organized crime situation and brings us up to date as an observer of unfolding events– which, according to script on the screen are true.
Ethelrida’s history lesson begins at the turn of the 20th Century, making its way up to 1950. The Jews were the original gangsters for this city, until they were taken out by the Irish. The Irish were taken out by the Italians, and in 1949, the Blacks and Italians brokered a peace that history suggests will be short lived.
One of the quirks of the relationships between rival factions has been exchanging youngest sons as a gesture of good faith. When the Irish traded with the Jews, the Irish boy who would grow up to be Rabbi Milligan (Ben Whishaw) acted as a Trojan Horse and eventually helped his family enter the Jewish Mafia’s enclave to massacre them. This event culminated in Rabbi’s father forcing him to commit his first murder by shooting the Jewish boy he’d traded places with. When the Irish traded with the Italians, young Rabbi worked the other side of the street and helped the Italians punish his father for that trauma. In 1949, Loy Cannon (Chris Rock) turned his youngest son over to Donatello Fadda (Tommaso Ragno) in another trade, both fathers essentially advising their sons to keep their eyes open and watch their backs.
In 1950, Donatello is still very much in charge of his family, although his upstart son, Josto (Jason Schwartzman), is eager to ascend the throne. Loy is keeping the peace with the Italians, aware that in the greater social pecking order of the day, Blacks and Italians are equally maligned, and certain that he’ll hold supreme power in the underworld eventually. Loy dreams bigger than being a gangster and a loan shark, too. He has invented the credit card, which is proving successful in the Black community, and he aspires to taking it mainstream. Ethelrida’s parents are among his current “banking” customers, although we don’t know to what degree.
This is where the pieces are tenuously set on the board when an accident occurs that will likely drive the action for the remainder of the season. While the Italians are caravanning home from a harmonious meeting in the park with the Blacks, they are held up for an excessive amount of time at a crosswalk by an overzealous crossing guard. The lieutenants in the cars become suspicious, wary of two Black men standing nearby at a Bus Stop. As their attention is diverted, Donatello suffers what appears to be a heart attack. Fortunately, the men turn out to be harmless and the attack turns out to be gas. Unfortunately, just as the tension breaks, so does Donatello’s car window as a child accidentally shoots him in the jugular with a pellet gun.
The Italians race to the nearest hospital, where they are turned away because of their heritage. They make it to the public hospital, and Donatello is saved, despite having lost a lot of blood. It is here that young Josto meets Nurse Oraetta Mayflower (Jessie Buckley).
The audience has already met her, when she was a mourner in Ethelrida’s family’s mortuary and commented a bit too matter-of-factly on Ethelrida’s parentage and complexion. She lives across the street from the mortuary in an apartment house. And she is on duty in the hallway when Donatello is settled in his hospital room.
Josto turns to Oraetta for drugs to elevate his mood, offering to share if she’ll comply. We’ve already seen her partaking of something at the funeral, so it’s no surprise when she both agrees to his request in a supply closet and helps him hide the evidence by giving him eye drops afterwards. While they’re alone, Josto asks her to help his father with his pain…
Whether or not Josto is being cryptic with his meaning, the message Oraetta receives is that she should end Donatello’s pain. When his family-appointed guard is sleeping in a chair at the foot of his bed, Oraetta slides in and wakes Donatello with some words of comfort before shooting something into his IV. He understands what she’s about and tries to raise the alarm, and she surprises him both with responding in fluent Italian (she also speaks German and Spanish) and succeeding in murdering him without anyone noticing. She helps herself to his pinky ring and goes home, where she mutters (incants?) at the window, looking out into the night.
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What is the link between this Kansas City-set story and Fargo, ND? Oraetta is from Minnesota, and she’s the only “doncha know” accent in the bunch. Is this season really based on a true story? Bustle says no. It seems obvious that war is in the future for the rival gangs now that Donatello is out of the way, but where does Ethelrida figure in to a gang war between adults? This reporter is eager to find out.
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