Fargo Season 1 Episode 2 Review: "The Rooster Prince"

“You don’t get to be the supermarket king of Minnesota without making a few enemies, all right?”

-Stavros Milos

The second episode of Fargo begins with a pair of hitmen from the Fargo syndicate arriving in Bemidji.  Wes Wrench (Russell Harvard), who is deaf, and Grady Numbers (Adam Goldberg) his interpreter.  Numbers and Wrench are there to investigate Sam Hess' murder from the previous episode.  The manage to track down a man who likes quite a bit like Hess' killer, Lenny Potts (Paul Braunstein), a regular at the strip club.  But they learn Lenny is not the actual killer.  And in the best scene of the episode, they whack Lenny in the most Minnesotan-mobster way imaginable.  They take Lenny out onto a frozen lake, handcuff him, drill a hole in the ice, and drop him in.  Now that's how you murder someone!

Meanwhile, Sam Hess' actual murderer, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), starts his next assignment in Duluth.  After an excellent scene where he subtlety threatens a post office worker, Lorne meets up with Stavros Milos (Oliver Platt), the supermarket king of Minnesota.  Milos is being blackmailed by someone who claims to know about his money, and he wants Malvo to get rid of the blackmailer.  Malvo investigates Milos' soon to be ex-wife, but quickly figures out that the blackmailer is her personal trainer, Don Chumph (played by the excellent Glenn Howerton of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia).  Milos' head of security Wally Semenchko tries to threaten Malvo away from the case, thinking he can handle it himself.  But in another great scene by Billy Bob, Malvo starts to use the toilet mid-threat, completely undeterred by Semnechko.  It's a really great scene, and Billy Bob steals the show every time he is on screen.

Back in Bemidji, Bill Oswalt (Bob Odenkirk, Breaking Bad's Saul Goodman) has been promoted to the new Chief of Police and he is terrible at his job.  He and Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) go to Lester Nygaard's (Martin Freeman) to ask him a few more questions.  While Molly tries to ask him pointed questions, certain he is more than just a victim, Bill goes soft on Lester, because they went to high school together, and he was a complete wimp.  Later, when Molly goes to question Lester some more, Lester calls Bill and tells him Molly is harassing him.  Bill then takes Molly off the case.

We don't get much of our fourth lead character, Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks).  We just get a character scene between him and his daughter, and we learn his neighbor likes to undress for him, but he really isn't a part of the main story yet.

What Works:

A lot of craziness happened in the first episode of Fargo.  As is the case with many second episodes, The Rooster Princes slows down quite a bit.  The stuff we get is all still good, it's just not as exciting as the first episode, as we spend most of the episode picking up the pieces of what transpired and setting up what is to come.  We meet a lot of new characters, and all of them are memorable in their own way, and the characters that we have already established are still great.

Like I said above, the scene where Numbers and Wrench drop Lenny in the lake is the highlight of the episode and is the last thing we see before the credits.  It's a fantastic way to end the episode and might be the most Minnesotan-mobster thing to ever happen.  All we were missing was a pair of cement shoes.

What Sucks:

I have two minor critiques of the episode.  The first is, simply by being the episode after the insane pilot, it can't hold the same amount of tension.  This is a slower episode and we have to wait to build up the tension again.  It's not a terrible thing by any means, but by simply being what it is, it can't be as good as the brilliant first episode.

Finally, we aren't given much of Colin Hanks.  He has two scenes in the first episode, but I would have expected we get more of him here.  He seems so separate from the main plot, and all of what he does in this episode is character building.  It's not bad, but it is the weakest part of the episode.

Verdict:

The Rooster Prince is another strong episode and Fargo is still doing great.  I love all of the new characters and every time Billy Bob Thornton is on screen, he brings it.  With another memorable death, this episode, though not as good as the first, is still well worth your time.

 9/10: Great.