‘Fargo’ Season 4 Episode 5 Recap: The Doctor Is Out

The first thing we should talk about when it comes to this week’s episode of Fargo (“The Birthplace of Civilization”) is the last thing that happens in it. As the lights flicker and fade around the dead body of Loy Cannon’s consigliere Doctor Senator, shot dead by Gaetano Fadda’s button man Constant Calamita, Jeff Russo’s grandiosely melancholy Fargo theme—absent from the entire season until now—comes roaring in on the soundtrack. It’s as if series creator and episode co-writer (with Francesca Sloane) Noah Hawley is sending us a signal: The real show is about to begin.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Fargo‘s fourth season is how straightforward it’s been up until this point. Sure, there are twists and turns at the margins, but the main story is this: After a freak accident, an Italian mob boss is secretly murdered in the hospital by an “angel of mercy” serial killer. The Italian’s Black counterpart decides to take advantage of the leadership vacuum by moving in on an Italian-controlled business. In retaliation for this perceived overreach, the dead boss’s belligerent younger son goes behind the back of his older brother to open up a shooting war with the Black mob.

That’s all there is to it!

Yes, there’s a headfake here (escaped cons Zelmare and Swanee coincidentally sticking up one of Loy Cannon’s businesses) and a swerve there (remember Mr. Snowman?). But the central gangster plot is as simple as it gets. We’re a long way from V.M. Varga’s elaborate financial schemes in Season 3, or the clash between a corporate-style mob and mom-and-pop gangsters in Season 2, or even the pure chaos represented by Lorne Malvo in Season 1. Even the unusual son-swapping subplot has remained just that, a subplot. (Though it seems pretty clear that Satchel Cannon will grow up under Rabbi Milligan’s watchful eye to become Mike Milligan, the garrulous mob lieutenant from Season 2.)

All you’ve really got to know here is that unlike the more cautious Josto Fadda, Loy Cannon, and Doctor Senator, Gaetano Fadda is a psychopath with a taste for killing. If he can’t immediately get his hands on Cannon’s outfit, a bartender and the kid who sweeps the floor for him will do just fine—but make no mistake, he will get his hands on Cannon’s outfit, and indeed he does so by episode’s end, sending Calamita to gun down Doctor Senator in the street.

None of this is to suggest that Cannon has been sitting on his hands while his enemy makes his move. (Actually, make that enemies: In addition to Gaetano’s open belligerence, Cannon has to deal with Josto’s more low-key approach of using the Kansas City police force, led by his PTSD-afflicted pet detective Odis Weff, against him, especially once the ploy lands his older son Lemuel in jail.) Cannon prepares for all-out war by selling hundreds of guns to Fargo mob boss Mortie Kellerman at a low price, in exchange for loyalty against the Italians. And he muscles Thurman Smutny, whose business he takes over as punishment for paying off his loan with Cannon’s own stolen money, into revealing where Zelmare and Swanee, the two women who stole the money in the first place, are holed up. Not to kill them, mind you, but to forcibly enlist them in the battle against the Italians—as unknown quantities, they’ll be harder for the Faddas to see coming.

In doing so, he beats U.S. Marshal Dick Wickware to the punch by mere seconds. By threatening poor Ethelrida Smutny—who’s been struggling to figure out a way to alert the sinister Nurse Mayflower’s current employer about her bloody past—with expulsion from school (“Your life, or hers: One of them’s getting ruined, which one is up to you”) he manages to track Zelmare and Swanee down to their hotel room…just in time to watch through the window as Loy loads them into a car.

In addition to the plot mechanics, this episode is heavy on monologues. Loy reveals Odis’s troubled war history as a minesweeper whose failure got an officer killed. (“Boom! They gotta send him home in a tureen!” Cannon says, before adding in a parenthetical aside that’s the episode’s funniest gag, “That’s a pot they put soup in.”) Odis follows up on this with Wickware, telling him how receiving word that his fiancée was raped and murdered affected him on the battlefield. Josto tells the arrested Cannon men that America will never warm up to Black criminals the way it has to Italian mobsters, because in America’s eyes Black people commit crimes not to get ahead, but as an end in itself. Gaetano rants about America’s shitty coffee and feminized portraits of Jesus. Loy shouts at his wife and mother-in-law about their ingratitude for the lifestyle his criminal ways have provided for them when they dare to question his judgment. Rabbi impresses upon Josto the need to keep Gaetano’s side of the power struggle isolated and divided (and promises Satchel they’ll run away together the moment the shooting starts). Even Ethelrida gets in a little lecture about how Africa is the birthplace of human civilization (hence the episode’s title) when Wickware shows up to intimidate her.

But based on the end of the episode, with Doctor Senator lying in the snow as the theme song plays, there’s a strong possibility that from this point forward, the time for talking is over.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Fargo Season 4 Episode 5 ("The Birthplace of Civilization") on Hulu