"Loplop" took a short jump back in time to replay the events of "Did You Do This? No, You Did It!" through the eyes of this week's four central episodes, and in some ways that nixed the momentum Fargo had had up until this point. Considering we knew where these threads would lead -- Ed calling Mike Milligan to tell him he had Dodd, and Hanzee shooting up the bar in Sioux Falls -- there wasn't the same sort of "what's going to happen next?" tension that been so excellent in the previous few episodes.But even if "Loplop's" choice to hone in on these characters didn't keep Fargo chugging away at the same pace it's been at for the middle episodes of Season 2, it did deliver a nice change of tone from those high drama storylines. "Loplop" is probably the funniest episode of the season, from Ed's throwaway butcher threat "I'll show him which part's the flank steak" to Peggy's off-handed "foot's on the other shoe now." It also offered a rare chance to see who Peggy and Ed want to be when they've "actualized," which was only doable when they were separated from the rest of the ensemble and were going up against the loathable Dodd.
Peggy is fully nuts by this episode, which opens with her having a conversation with an imaginary leader of her seminar. It's during that conversation that she has a revelation on how to actualize fully -- the self-fulfillment she's been after all season -- and that the audience sees she's fully lost it. Dodd does too, and though he points it out to Ed, the Butcher of Luverne is blind or willfully ignorant when it comes to his wife's declining mental state and general sociopathic tendencies.
Fargo does an excellent job of showing how she's coming apart by nailing the small details: the roots of Peggy's hair are showing. She and Ed can only communicate when they're sitting next to one another in the car while they're separated by split screen. She says that they're finally free, to which Ed notes that they're leaving behind their home. And best of all, when Peggy clings to her new "actualized" status to make the best of their situation, she stabs Dodd twice in the chest to teach him manners.Peggy and Ed aren't as empathetic as, say, Simone, who died in last week's episode, but they're certainly more likable when we get to spend an hour and a half largely alone with them than they are when they're interspersed with the heroes of Fargo. Hanzee gets similar time in the spotlight as we see his exhaustion with constantly being attached to his "Indian" identity, first in the bar when ingrained racism trumps the respect he deserves for three tours in Vietnam, and later when he asks Peggy for a haircut to lose that tie to his heritage. When he says, "I'm tired of this life," you feel the fight slowly coming out of him.
Relatively little happens on the plot side of things this week, with the two big exceptions being that Hanzee killed Dodd (called it!) and that Lou and Hank capture Peggy and Ed (hooray!). Hanzee is still on the run, and with Mike Milligan and the Kitchen Brother coming to make a trade for Dodd in Sioux Falls, it's easy to see the pieces falling into place for the massacre that we know is coming. With only two episodes left in the season, I see Fargo ramping up the pace again and delivering two big episodes that demolish us. If that's the case, I'm OK with the show taking a week to go heavy on the humor and give us some time to breathe.