Fargo Recap: Season 3 Premiere, ‘The Law of Vacant Places’

Fargo is back with a vengeance, and it’s meaner than ever

The time of waiting is over! Fargo is back for season 3, and it hasn’t lost any of its creative punch. It still stands as the best show out there about Minnesota crime. This is not a show that needed time to form up – it came out of the gate knowing exactly what to do.

In its third season, it’s all the more assured, playful, and dark. The season 3 premiere, ‘The Law of Vacant Places,’ sets up the series of mistakes and poor deals that are going to eventually send everyone spinning.

This is a story about two brothers – Ray and Emmitt Stussy. Ray, a bail bondsman, feels that he has been taken advantage of by his hugely successful bother. Both Stussy’s are played brilliantly by Ewan McGregor, and watching them face-to-face is a real treat. What this really comes down to is a series of rare stamps that their father had.

Emmitt took the stamps, and Ray got the car. One proved to be far more valuable than the other. Ray now wants to get married, and he needs money for the ring, and that’s money that Emmitt doesn’t want to give. And thus begins the plan to rob Emmitt of the last stamp, which he has framed on his wall.

But the Stussy’s aren’t the only main character introduce in the first episode. We also have Gloria, the chief of police, and her son and father. Her father is a far cry from the first season’s Lou Solverson, who was caring and patient. There is a lot about season 3 that feels meaner and colder than the previous two – the characters feel isolated even when they’re together.

Image Credit: FX

To be fair, Ray’s life is not good. We are treated to a transition of urine samples that would make anyone feel for him. That changes, however, when he decides to hire his obviously burnt out friend ( a criminal, of course) to steal that sacred stamp. Watching Maurice drive to the hit while getting high and talking to his shrink on speakerphone is a perfect Fargo moment. And then he loses the directions, and we know trouble is coming.

Meanwhile, Emmitt and Sy – his lawyer and confidant – have a meeting with the deliciously slimy Varga. Earlier in the episode we see Emmitt as cocky and self-assured, but now he is everything but. He wants to repay Varga some money as quickly as possible. Varga, it turns out, represents an unsavory element, and he doesn’t want that money back. He wants to invest.

There are already a lot of balls in the air, but Fargo isn’t a simple show. So then it’s not really a surprise when Gloria’s father’s house in ransacked and he is found dead, tied to a chair. Still, it’s eerie and affecting.

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We are meant to believe that this was the work of Maurice, who got the addresses mixed up and went to the wrong house. He later confirms this with Ray, saying that when an “ex-con threatens ya…the smart money says cooperate.” He’s just telling it like it is. That’s when Gloria finds some hidden, potentially valuable items hidden under the floorboards in her dad’s house. The plot, as it always does, thickens.

Now we find both Stussy bothers involved with something wild and dangerous, far more than what they bargained for. The crowning moment is when Maurice tells Ray how low it is to want to rob your brother.

After an altercation with Ray and Nikki (by far the smarter of the two) Maurice thinks that he’s just going to saunter out of their apartment with money coming to him for this trouble. That is until an air conditioner falls on his head and annihilates him. One episode down and the body count now stands at two.

Let’s take a  moment to talk about the opening scene. A German officer interrogates a citizen about a murder that he obviously didn’t commit. But it comes down to either him being wrong or “the state” being wrong, and It is made abundantly clear which one it has to be.

It’s not clear what the significance of the scene is just yet, but it will surely play a role in the chaos that is about to come. Fargo season 3 is off to as strong a start as ever before. If you were worried about the series taking a year off in-between seasons, it’s time to put that to rest. Welcome back to Minnesota.