Rabbi and Satchel lay low at an eccentric hotel in Liberal, Kansas as Calamita continues his pursuit.
Tropes present:
- Ambiguous Situation: It is presumed that Rabbi and Calamita were killed in the storm, but Never Found the Body leaves their fates ambiguous.
- Arc Words: Discussed by Rabbi and the man putting up the billboard. When it finally reads "the future is now," both men are confused as to what it refers to.
- Canine Companion: Satchel ends up taking in a dog he finds in the hotel dresser.
- A Day in the Limelight/A Death in the Limelight: This episode takes place far away from the gang war and follows Rabbi and Satchel as they stay in a strange hotel. By the end, Rabbi has been sucked into a violent vortex, presumed dead.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The episode plays out in black and white up until the end after Satchel is left abandoned at the hotel.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Subverted. The dog Satchel finds is named Rabbit.
- Foreshadowing: This episode is shown through a framing device in the wreckage of a building. The ending reveals that this building was ravaged by a tornado.
- Forgotten Birthday: Satchel is disappointed that Rabbi won't let him keep his new dog because he wanted just one thing for his birthday. Rabbi is flustered to learn that it's Satchel's birthday at all.
- Framing Device: The "History of True Crime in the Midwest" book makes a return at the episode's beginning, this time without a narrator.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A lot of stuff in this episode, in classic Fargo fashion, but mostly the scene by the end of the episode where Satchel confronts a seriously injured man, next to a what seems to be a Mad Scientist, played by the same actor of Yiddles Milligan, Rabbi's father, who "cursed" him long while ago, just a moment before his death at the hands of his own son.
- Never Found the Body: See Ambiguous Situation above.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Rabbi decides to buy Satchel a cupcake for his birthday, a decision that leads him into the path of Constant Calamita, Omie Sparkman, and a tornado that swallows all three of them up.
- Once a Season: Shares similarities with's third series episode Law Of Non Contradiction. Both episodes deviates notoriously from the season's and overall series's norm, it presents a auto-conclusive story that almost can be enjoyed out of context and serves as Day in the Limelight for specific characters and both are divisive among the audience (
while being critically acclaimed). Altough Series 1 and 2 doesn't strictly have an episode like this, it's has become a very common feature for the show to employ a plurality of narrative and audiovisual devices for the purpose of a more enriched storytelling. Such as the third person narrator on Series Two's The Castle that relates the episode as some kind of historical tale. - Running Gag: Rabbi's unfounded irritation at the billboard.
- Shout-Out: The vortex near the end is an inversion of the vortex at the end of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. In that movie, it threatens the main characters' son, whereas here, it leaves a young boy without his guardian.
- The classic folk tale Goldi Locks
- Whole-Plot Reference: The Wizard of Oz but backwards. Is more evident once Satchel opens the door of his room after realizing that Rabbi won't come back and the episode switchs from black and white to color.
