Fargo: Season 3 Episode 3 "The Law of Non-Contradiction"

"Tell him I saw the ocean and it was wet."

-Gloria Burgle

The third episode of season three of Fargo is an odd one.  It follows Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) as she travels to Los Angeles to look into the life of her ex-stepfather, Ennis Stussy, aka Thaddeus Mobley.  Gloria goes to the motel Thaddeus stayed at when he was in Los Angeles and incidentally gets the same room.  After her suitcase is stolen, Officer Oscar Hunt (Rob McElhenney) manages to track it down and return it to her, albeit empty.  He invites her out for a beer and is unable to give her any information on Thaddeus Mobley.  Hunt propositions her, which Gloria declines.  She then tracks down Vivian Lord (Frances Fisher), a waitress and former actress who Thaddeus has a photo of.  Vivian claims she has no memory of the 70's due to her cocaine use.  Through the Writer's Guild of America, Gloria is able to find a screenplay written by Thaddeus and produced by Howard Zimmerman (Nikolai Nikolaeff), who Gloria finds in a nursing home in poor health due to an accident he had many years earlier.  Zimmerman gives her no information.  Finally, Vivian meets Gloria and tells her the whole story.

In flashbacks we learn that Thaddeus (Thomas Mann) was a young sci-fi writer who was conned out of all his money by Vivian (Francesca Eastwood) and Zimmerman (Fred Malamed).  On cocaine, Thaddeus beat Zimmerman into a coma before fleeing Los Angeles.

Gloria realizes none of this has anything to do with Ennis' murder and decides to return to Minnesota.  On the way, she notices a worn label on her motel toilet which is where Thaddeus got the name Ennis Stussy from.  She returns home and attends Ennis' funeral, which she and her son, Nathan (Graham Verchere), are the only people in attendance.  Officer Donny Mashman (Mark Forward) gives her some information that Maurice LeFay's (Scoot McNairy) fingerprints were found at the scene of the crime, but that he was killed by a falling air conditioner.  Finding this suspicious, Gloria, Nathan, and Donny go to Arby's to plot their next move.

Intermittently, throughout the episode, we are given animated segments from Thaddeus' book, which follows an android, Minsky, who crash lands on a planet and spends millions of years watching and observing the rise of civilizations and their later destruction.  Eventually, Minsky is picked up by some aliens who download the information and tell Minsky he can shut down for good.  Minsky complies.

What Works:

"Th Law of Non-Contradiction" is a very strange episode in that we only get one of our main characters and she is sent to a completely different location.  This is extremely odd for an anthology show like this, especially since we're only on the 3rd episode.  But this change of locale made the episode very engaging as you figured out what happened alongside Gloria.  It was a nice change of scenery.

We also have some great guest stars.  Rob McElhenney is fantastic even though he is only in two scenes.  We also get Ray Wise as the man sitting next to Gloria on the plane who she later runs into at a bar.  I love Ray Wise and never get tired of seeing him on my screen.  Plus both incarnations of Zimmerman and Vivian were both excellent, so while we didn't have most of our main cast, we weren't lacking in the talent department.

I also loved the animated segments telling the story of Minsky.  It was fascinating to watch and kind of a sad story.  Minsky constantly saying, "I can help", was actually one of the more emotional things Fargo has done.  It's a great aspect of the episode and one of my favorite parts of the series as a whole.

What Sucks:

In the grand scheme of things, this episode doesn't amount too much.  They even say in the episode that none of this has anything to do with what's happening back in Minnesota.  So, for the show as a whole, I don't really get what the point was.  We don't advance the story in any way until the final scene of the episode when we're back in Minnesota.  You could honestly skip this entire episode and it wouldn't affect the overall narrative much.  It almost feels like filler, but we shouldn't have filler in a 10-episode anthology series.

The lack of the rest of the main characters is also a problem for me.  If this was a longer show that had the same characters every season this would be fine.  For example, in Dexter's 6th season, there is an episode where Dexter just goes off to Nebraska and it was probably the best episode of that season.  But there are so many episodes of that show that one night without the whole cast is totally fine.  But here, where we only get ten episodes of these characters and this story, I don't think we can really justify having an episode where almost everyone is absent.

Verdict:

I like this episode, but I liked in more the first time I watched it, when I didn't know how the rest of the season was going to play out.  Now that I know, this just feels like filler and I wish we had gotten more time with all of out main characters, especially someone like Yuri, who I think was underdeveloped.  The episode is still solid, has some great guest stars, and the Minsky animations are a highlight of the entire series, but I think this could have been handled better and been more important to the narrative of season 3.

 8/10: Really Good