‘Fargo’ recap: Ready or not, characters resign themselves to what’s coming

In “Fear and Trembling,” the philosophical tome by Søren Kierkegaard that lends this week’s episode of “Fargo” its name, the Danish philosopher examines the biblical tale of Abraham and Isaac. Of particular interest to Kierkegaard is the anxiety that surely enveloped Abraham when tasked by God to sacrifice his son and how Abraham bore the burden silently.

Kierkegaard goes on to talk about how the true forerunner to faith is the idea of infinite resignation, even going so far as to say that “anyone who has not made this movement does not have faith, for only in infinite resignation does an individual become conscious of his eternal validity.”

It’s appropriate, then, that so much of the fourth episode of “Fargo’s” second season is suffused with resignation and to the inevitability of the future. When, during pillow talk, Simone Gerhardt (Rachel Keller) tells Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) that she misses the freewheeling ’60s, he tells her that even then, you could feel the ’70s coming like a hangover.

In the greater context of the episode, it comes as no surprise when, in its final moments, Floyd Gerhardt (Jean Smart) decides that they must go to war with Kansas City. What’s curious, though, is how she landed in that particular spot in the first place.

During the meeting with the Kansas City contingent, Floyd attempts to negotiate a compromise, a suggestion that gets abandoned in part because of eldest son Dodd’s (Jeffrey Donovan) insubordinate doughnut shop attack on two Kansas City henchmen. In this moment, Joe Bulo (Brad Garrett) asks Floyd how he could trust her to keep her sons in line without threat of physical violence, and she assures him she that Dodd will be punished.

But is Dodd really punished by the decision to go to war? That moment in the meeting was Floyd’s opportunity to make a leap of faith and offer up her son to better her family, but, unlike Abraham, she flinched.

Conversely, Betsy (Cristin Milioti) and Lou Solverson (Patrick Wilson) are thrust into faith when faced with the news that her cancer isn’t responding well to the chemotherapy, leaving them with little choice but to enroll in a study for an experimental drug doctors have nicknamed “Xanadu.”

The couple try to discern from the doctor whether Betsy will be getting the actual drug or a placebo, but to no avail. So the pair are resigned to the idea that the whole of their family’s future depends on a small vial of pills that may or may not be sugar. They find faith through resignation.

Few scenes, however, capture the true devastation of resignation better than those involving the Blumquists. Ed (Jesse Plemons) talks of starting a family, while Peggy (Kirsten Dunst) surreptitiously takes her birth control pills. The pair’s argument over Peggy’s Lifespring plans, which she proceeds with, even though it endangers their opportunity to buy the butcher shop, contains a deceptively simple exchange, with Ed repeatedly mewling, “We talked about this,” until Peggy quietly responds, “If you mean you talked and then I talked, then yes.”

But the Blumquists saved their most resigned selves for the end, when it’s revealed that they’re being hunted by very dangerous individuals, involved in very dangerous things, who quite likely know they’re responsible for the death of Rye Gerhardt. This, coupled with the information that Peggy’s Lifespring seminar takes place in Sioux Falls, S.D., location of the storied Sioux Falls massacre that was mentioned in the first season and that the second season of “Fargo” is on an inevitable collision course with, turn the tale of the Blumquists into a tragedy and dooms them to an arc that leaves them little choice but to tremble in fear.

“We’re out of balance,” Lou tells Betsy. “The whole world.” He is frightened. He is resigned. He knows the future is coming, whether he’s ready or not.

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