Series / Fargo: Season Five

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Neighbor against neighbor, and it's a beautiful day.

The fifth season of Fargo premiered November 21, 2023. It stars Juno Temple, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jon Hamm, Joe Keery, Lamorne Morris, Sam Spruell, and Dave Foley.

In October 2019, Scandia housewife Dorothy "Dot" Lyon (Temple) gets caught up in a riot at a local school board assembly. In the course of protecting her daughter Scotty (Sienna King), she accidentally tases a police officer, and is subsequently arrested, charged and run through the system. It seems like things won't escalate and she returns home to her husband Wayne (David Rysdahl). But Dot's arrest digs up spectres from her past. For ten years ago, she escaped from an abusive marriage to Roy Tillman (Hamm), the corrupt Constitutional sheriff of Stark County, North Dakota. Roy deploys his screwup son Gator (Keery) and deeply strange hired gun Ole Munch (Spruell) to retrieve Dot, and what follows is an increasingly bloody cat and mouse game. The season also features Dot's rich mother-in-law Lorraine Lyon (Leigh) and her attorney Danish Graves (Foley), and police officers Witt Farr (Morris) and Indira Olmstead (Richa Moorjani).

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This series contains examples of:

• Abuse Discretion Shot: Very little of Roy’s physical and sexual abuse is shown onscreen, with the camera often cutting away before anything happens. This allows the scenes to focus on the effects, both physical and psychological, of his actions rather than the acts themselves. It also makes the few onscreen instances stand out more.
• Accidental Murder: Wouldn't be Fargo without one. In "Linda," Gator is attacked by the old woman Munch is rooming with while trying to retrieve the money bag from Munch's car. He shoves her down, fracturing her skull on the sidewalk curb and killing her; the look on Gator's face shows he honestly didn't mean to kill her.
• Action Survivor: Dot is quite small and has no special fighting ability, but she makes herself extremely dangerous just through grit, determination, and planning.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Lorraine's accent is a slowed-down version of the one Jennifer Jason Leigh used as Amy Archer in The Hudsucker Proxy, which was itself a Katharine Hepburn impression.
  • During Gator's break-in at Dot's house, Dot tries to attack him with a nailbat, only for it to become stuck in a column. Gator then takes the nailbat, gives it a twirl, and uses it for himself. Gator is played by Joe Keery, also plays Steve Harrington in Stranger Things, who tends to use a nailbat as his weapon of choice and is sometimes shown twirling them.
• Adopted to the House:
  • At the end of "The Tiger", Indira reluctantly agrees to take in Scotty for a few days, as Dot has things she has to do, Wayne is in no shape to care for Scotty alone, and Lorraine's mansion is already known to Roy Tillman, whereas the Olmsteads probably aren't on his radar.
  • Dorothy first met Roy when she was a teenager and his then-wife Linda found her trying to steal chocolate chips from a grocery store and brought her into the Tillman home.
• Animal Motifs: Cats, in Dot's case. She likens herself to a mother lion protecting her cubs when talking with Indira after she's arrested. Her full name invokes Dorothy Gale, who is affiliated with the Cowardly Lion. Munch likens her to a tiger when describing to Roy how he underestimated her, as does the narrator of the fifth episode.
• Armor-Piercing Question: As the milita fortifies the Tillman ranch, Roy's father-in-law asks him "Are you Hitler at the Reichstag, or Hitler in the bunker?" Roy is visibly shaken and doesn't give a straight answer... and later is seen checking his own personal escape tunnel.
  Sheriff Roy Tillman: Just in case.
• Artistic License – Politics: Danish Graves enters three new candidates into the sheriff's race all also named Roy Tillman in an effort to make it difficult for voters to select the real Roy Tillman... but Roy is the current sheriff, and real ballots make the incumbent clear.
• Author Tract: Roy as a character is essentially a condemnation of the right-wing MAGA movement. His face-off with Lorraine has him laying out the most extreme conservative political positions, which make Lorraine seem benign by comparison. His latest wife has a moment to lambast the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: Ole wears a medieval-style tunic that goes down to his knees. Roy calls him a "man in a dress."
• The Bad Guys Are Cops: The main villain of this season is the corrupt sheriff of Stark County, Roy Tillman. He hides behind the "Constitutional Sheriff" ideology as justification for ignoring any inconvenient Federal laws, uses the Old Testament of the Bible as a method of practicing law (supporting spousal abuse to a point and threatening women to stay with their abusers), funnels weapons and hardware purchased with taxpayer dollars to a powerful militia, and has started hiring criminals to try and kidnap his ex-wife. He stays in power because the state government are afraid of him and what his supporters would do if he were removed. His son Gator is no better, being an open white supremacist and guaranteed to win the sheriff's race once his dad is gone.
• Betrayal by Inaction: When Roy sends his men to abduct Wayne at the hospital, they nab the wrong guy courtesy of Dot switching his name with that of a cancer patient across the hall. Gator sees that it isn't Wayne as they load him onto an elevator, and also sees Dot down the hallway disguised as a nurse; rather than alerting his cohorts, he simply makes a "shhh" gesture to her as the elevator doors close.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Subverted. Although Lorraine's goals dovetail with Tillman's (he wants Dot back in his possession, she wants Dot to end her marriage to Wayne), when they meet in "The Tiger", she makes it clear that she has no intention of handing Dot over to a sexist pig like him. Animosity between them quickly blooms.
• Big Fancy House: Lorraine lives in a mansion, in contrast to the humble, middle-class house where Dot and Wayne live. However, Lorraine's house is actually pretty modest for a "billionaire," especially considering that it's in Minnesota.
• Bittersweet Ending: Though far more sweet than bitter. On the bitter side, Witt Farr and Danish Graves are both murdered by Roy and Gator is permanently blind, but Gator redeems himself slightly by selling out his father and making amends with Dot. Indira is free of both her worthless husband and her debt, working for Lorraine (who uses her considerable wealth to ensure Roy's prison life is Hell on Earth). Lorraine is also finally on good terms with Dot, who finally returns to her family freed from Roy's shadow forever. When Munch shows up at the Lyon home to attempt a Sudden Downer Ending, Dot convinces him to lay his vengeance aside and helps him regain his humanity.
• Black Magic: In episode 3, Munch performs a cryptic ritual involving Latin chanting, pagan glyphs, and bathing himself in mud and goat's blood.
• Blatant Lies: What little testimony Dot gives about her kidnapping ordeal is peppered with obvious mistruths, claiming Ireland's burned ski mask was one she bought secondhand, and that apparently she went for a ten hour walk barefoot just to clear her head.
• Bondage Is Bad: Adding to Roy's creepy vibe is his BDSM based sex life with his wife, which apparently involves sex toys and her role playing as women he doesn't like.
• Boom, Headshot!: How Gator thinks he's finally finished off Munch, sniping him with a bullet to the head from across the street while Munch sits in his rocking chair. Unfortunately for him, it's actually a decoy; the corpse is a man Munch killed earlier, being rocked by a rope held by Munch himself.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • Like the film, previous seasons followed someone doing increasingly criminal acts to get what they felt was owed them. In contrast, the morally-upstanding detective figures had loving, contented homes lives. This season follows Dot Lyon, a Happily Married suburban housewife and doting mom. Any legally dubious acts she commits are to avoid being dragged back into an abusive relationship she'd run away from and keep her current husband and their daughter safe. Meanwhile, the heroic cop character, Indira Olmstead, is burdened with financial debt and stuck in a strained marriage with a slacker of a husband. Fittingly, the two women end up in positions closer to the other character type: Indira dumps her husband and starts working for the same ruthless collection agency she was in debt to. While legal and leaving her undeniably better off, this does result in her becoming something of a Punch-Clock Villain. Meanwhile, the reunited Lyons continue their peaceful lives of mundane, but happy domesticity.
  • Previous seasons feature brutal, philosophical thugs with odd hairstyles (Lorne Malvo, Hanzee Dent, Yuri Gurka), who are various levels of treacherous, sadistic, and chaotic. Ole Munch, by contrast, has a much deeper code of personal honor and refuses to harm anyone outside his criminal life, shows deep respect to worthy opponents (even rescuing his prospective kidnapping victim), and is the one who gets backstabbed by his employer instead of the other way around; when that happens, his sole focus is to get what's owed to him, instead of corrupting innocents or sowing chaos. He ultimately becomes the only hired gun who finds redemption, when Dot offers him a place at their family table to undo his sin-eating curse.
  • Previous seasons often centered on heroic, good-natured police officers who insert themselves into bad situations and see them through to conclusion. Here, we have two possibilities to fulfill this role: Indira Olmstead quits the police force before the season concludes, though she still remains involved, and Witt Farr gets killed in the climax.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • Roy Tillman makes the mistake of trying to strong-arm his enemies twice. First he sends kidnappers after Dot, who proceeds to make mincemeat of them. Then when he tries having the surviving kidnapper executed instead of paying him, Munch murders two of Tillman's men and injures his son Gator. He later comes back to murder Gator's partner and pins a message written in blood to the body making clear that he intends to collect.
  • Lorraine tries to legally intimidate Dot into leaving Wayne and Scotty. Dot drops her polite face very quickly.
    Dot: Listen, bitch. I've climbed through six kinds of hell to get where I am. And no Ivy League royal wannabe is gonna run me off just because she doesn't like the way I smell. If you want to tussle with me... you better sleep with both eyes open. Because nobody takes what's mine and lives.
  • Gator objects to Roy paying Munch off and tries to retrieve the money. He accidentally kills someone Munch cares about, which results in Munch unleashing his wrath on the Tillmans, cutting Gator's eyes from his head and helping Dot get her revenge.
  • Roy has a bad habit of this. He makes a personal enemy of Lorraine Lyon, a billionaire debt collector, and thinks he can hurt her by making a bank deal fall through. She responds by destroying his election chances in the space of one debate. And when Roy kidnaps Dot and kills Danish Graves, Lorraine wastes no time calling in a presidential favor to get the FBI and state police on his ass.
• Call-Back:
  • Agents Joaquin and Meyer's boss refuses to let them investigate Roy Tillman directly, reasoning that he's covered his tracks too well and it would lead nowhere at the moment. He recommends keeping their investigation of Roy as a "hobby" for their off-time; this is the same situation as when Molly Solverson was ordered to leave Lester Nygaard alone but kept working on the case in her spare time.
  • Ole hears Irma's son admonish her, "Don't jew me on the meat!" In the final episode, he notes to Roy that people use words like "welsh, jew, and gyp" as if their actions are a product of their lineage.
• Camping a Crapper: Ireland tries to ambush Dot by hiding in the gas station's bathroom. She instead kills him by hitting him in the face with a bag of ice, causing him to slip, fall backwards, and fracture his skull on the toilet bowl.
• Central Theme:
  • Debt, in its various forms.
    • Roy Tillman is hunting Dot because he feels she owes him "a debt that can't be paid in money".
    • Lorraine runs an infamous collection agency and is nicknamed the Queen of Debt.
    • Munch believes Roy owes him money for the botched kidnapping and is willing to go to disturbing lengths to collect. A flashback centuries earlier to Wales shows a man who looks like Munch accepting a deal to eat a dead rich man's sins, allowing him to escape his debt to God and send the eater to pay in his place.
    • Witt Farr also wants to find Dot, but because he owes her his life.
    • Indira Olmstead is drowning in debt accrued from student loans and exacerbated by her husband as he pursues a pro golf career (and ironically she's being hounded by Lorraine's agency).
    • One year after Roy is arrested, Munch arrives at Dot's home, claiming that she finally must pay "a pound of flesh" for taking his ear. Dot refuses to fight again, simply saying that just because a debt exists doesn't mean it needs to be paid. She ends up inviting Munch to a family dinner instead, laying their grievances to rest.
  • Domestic abuse against women by men:
    • Dot is revealed to be a battered wife who fled her husband and started a new life.
    • Roy Tillman is revealed to be a serial wife abuser and murderer.
    • When Roy calls the law enforcement raid on his ranch a "witch hunt," Indira notes that the term originates from men murdering women for not being sufficiently obedient.
    • Irma's son arrives at her house loudly criticizing her and demanding she make him a sandwich (a stereotypical misogynistic demand), for which Ole promptly kills him.
    • Indira's husband is a deadbeat who drives them into debt yet also criticizes her for not doing enough to sublimate her needs for his own.
    • Dot discovers Linda at a battered women's shelter that she founded, though this turns out to be a dream.
    • On the inverse, the nicest men in the season, Wayne Lyons and Witt Farr, are notable for both having families consisting predominantly of women. Wayne's only family is a mother, wife and daughter. When Dot learns that Witt had six sisters, she comments, "No wonder he was so nice."
• Chain Pain: Attempted by Roy in "Blanket" when he tries whipping Dot with the heavy chain shackled to her ankle. Luckily, she's nimble enough to roll aside every time.
• Creepy Stalker Van: Gator and his men drive a black cargo van to Dot's neighborhood when they intend to kidnap her on Halloween. Because she had the foresight to switch around the street signs the night before, Dot sees them coming, immediately going on high alert when she sees the van driving erratically (as Gator is having to guide the driver using Google Maps), then notices it come to a stop on her street moments after passing her family as they're returning home. And as her family are headed back inside, she notices the van's occupants are wearing The Nightmare Before Christmas masks.
• Coincidental Broadcast: Roy figures out that the man his goons kidnapped from the hospital is not Wayne Lyon when he happens to see the real Wayne in a TV ad for his dealership.
• Couldn't Find a Pen: Ole Munch loves to use blood to write messages.
  • After killing Gator's partner, he uses his blood to write “You Owe Me” on a piece of cardboard and staple it to the body with a knife.
  • He later draws an abstract or occult symbol on the wall of the Tillman twins bedroom while they are sleeping as a clear threat to the family.
• Cruel Twist Ending: In “Linda”. Dot wakes up at the diner, revealing her adventure at Camp Utopia to be All Just a Dream (and meaning the real Linda Tillman is most likely dead). She exits the restaurant, only for a truck to crash into a parked car which hits her. Dot wakes up again in a hospital with only minor injuries, and a nurse tells her that her husband came to see her. She’s elated to see Wayne again… only for Roy to enter the room.
• Damsel out of Distress: Dot doesn't go down without a fight when Ireland and Munch abduct her, managing to burn Ireland's face with a flamethrower while also slicing Munch across the face with one of her daughter's ice skates (taking off part of his ear in the process) before they can corner her. Later, when they're pulled over by police, she uses this opportunity to slip out of the car and escape. She flees to a nearby gas station, followed shortly by Trooper Witt Farr, who is seeking temporary shelter and first aid since the kidnappers shot up his car, killed his partner, and hit him in the leg. Once he cuts Dot's restraints, she quickly rigs a number of traps around the store, and when the kidnappers arrive, she kills Ireland with a bag of ice and knocks out Munch with a shovel before fleeing.
• Danger Takes a Backseat: In "Blanket", Gator has an emotional confrontation with the imprisoned Dot and drives off in an angry huff… and is too upset to notice Ole Munch hiding in the back of his squad car.
• Dead All Along: Linda Tillman did not escape and was instead murdered by Roy long ago.
• Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit: Roy's solution to stopping the investigation into the events surrounding Dot's kidnapping at his end is to kill a wifebeating husband, and pay his wife to claim that he bragged about killing the state trooper and the attack at the Gas n' Go.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Throughout "Linda", Dot spends her time desperately trying to get the titular Linda, Roy Tillman's first wife, to come with her to testify against him. After a long and grueling process, Linda finally agrees and heads out with Dot. And then a semi plows into a line of cars at a rest stop, slamming Dot into the ground and putting her into a coma. When she wakes up, there's no sign of Linda (who was never even there in the first place), and the hospital has brought in Roy Tillman, thinking he was Dot's husband.
• Dirty Cop:
  • Roy Tillman is the sheriff of Stark County, North Dakota, and is very open about the fact that he's abusing his office, from openly engaging in Police Brutality to hiring professional criminals to kidnap his ex-wife and selling guns to right-wing militia groups. His abuses of power have gotten to the point that the FBI have him under investigation.
  • Roy's son Gator has a history of stealing evidence from lockup that has made the newspapers, and an article Witt finds on him states that he was kicked off a task force that was investigating a number of suspicious disappearances near the Tillman ranch when it became clear he was trying to misdirect the task force away from the discovery of a mass grave on the property.
• Dramatic Unmask: During his invasion of the Lyons' home, Gator decides to remove his Jack Skellington mask after Dot attempts to attack him with a nailbat.
  Gator: [unimpressed] Jesus, Nadine.
  Dot: Shame on you, Gator! There's a baby in this house!
  Gator: Yeah, I saw her. She's like, nine. Now get your ass in that car and let's go.
• Drum Bathing: The Tillman property has a large elaborate outdoor barrel bath showcasing both their wealth and power, and their traditionalism.
• Ends with a Smile: This season ends with Ole Munch (The Stoic, The Implacable Man, and The Comically Serious all rolled into one brutal thug) breaking into a tearful smile when Dot offers him a homemade biscuit. It's implied to be the first time he's been happy in over five hundred years.
• Empathy Doll Shot: While hiding in the Tillmans' mass grave, Dot lingers on Danish's blood-stained eyepatch rather than looking at his dead body on the ground below her.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In the years since Dot left him, Roy Tillman remarried and has two young daughters. It's later subverted when he reveals that he doesn't care at all about them.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Lorraine is a horrible person and is perfectly willing to use underhanded tactics to get Dot removed from the picture (including having her committed against her will), but she draws the line at helping a sexist like Roy Tillman get his hands on her. She also shows surprisingly progressive views, criticizing him for wanting "freedom without responsibility" when he disrespects the idea of a social safety net. In "The Tender Trap", she is also visibly disturbed when she looks at Indira's police file documenting the horrifying Domestic Abuse that Roy had subjected Dot/Nadine to.
  • Ole Munch is a remorseless killer, but he cannot stand people who abuse the elderly. He kills a man who abuses his elderly mother and then goes ballistic after Gator kills Irma, the elderly woman whose house Munch had been squatting in.
• Eye Scream:
  • During Gator's break-in at Dot's house, Dot gives one of his thugs a blast of Mace right in the eyes; when he takes his mask off minutes later, his eyes are swollen and red.
  • In "The Useless Hand", Munch cuts out Gator's eyes with a hot knife as revenge for Irma's death.
• Expy: Ole Munch is one for Gaear Grimsrud from the original film, being a violent, vaguely Scandinavian thug hired to kidnap a housewife.
• Family Business: The Tillmans are a law enforcement family. Roy is a third generation sheriff, after his grandfather and his father, while his son Gator serves as one of his deputies.
• Failed Attempt at Drama:
  • Lorraine is introduced making a grand entrance down her mansion's staircase for the family Christmas card… followed by an oblivious Danish Graves trying to finish a conversation. She chastises him for ruining the moment and sends him back up the steps so she can continue.
  • In the finale, Munch appears at Dot's house intending to have a final duel with her, trying to be his usual intimidating self. He ends up repeatedly baffled, first by Wayne's friendly conversation (even giving Munch a soda pop), then by Dot urging him to help make biscuits.
• Family-Values Villain: Roy Tillman is first introduced brutalizing an abusive husband while simultaneously lecturing the guy's wife that she needs to be a better wife. This impression is subverted a few episodes later, when it's revealed that he's actually a wife-murdering misogynist who couldn't care less about his family.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Invoked by Lorraine when Roy tries to screw her over by threatening a bank owner into backing out of a big business deal that Lorraine had orchestrated. Lorraine finds another bank to buy and then destroys the banker's life in the span of a day by exposing his many illegal dealings to the SEC while also getting his son kicked out of college. She then calls up the banker to let him know all this.
  Lorraine: Do you want to know what your mistake was? It was thinking death is the worst thing that could happen to you. So, congratulations. The sheriff's not gonna kill you. Instead you're going to live the rest of your days in squalor, surrounded by the dead-eyed stares of your futureless children.
  • When Roy finally ends up in prison, Lorraine informs him she's paid the debts for almost every inmate in Illinois State Penitentiary to keep him company. He assumes she wants him dead; she clarifies that she wants him alive for a long, long time, suffering everything he put his wives through.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In "The Paradox of Intermediate Transactions", Witt Farr reads an article about Gator that notes that he was kicked off a task force investigating a number of suspicious disappearances around the Tillman ranch. In "Blanket", it's revealed that the well next to the ranch's windmill is a mass grave, as Roy has Danish's body tossed down the well after killing him.
  • In "Linda", Dot gets drowsy while driving from sleep deprivation and almost runs her car off the road. Her entire experience with Linda and Camp Utopia turns out to be a dream when she nods off at a diner shortly after.
  • In "The Paradox Of Intermediate Transactions", when Gator brags about how he could take Munch in a duel, Roy tells him that in reality, conflicts like this never result in a duel; Munch would just slit his throat while his car is waiting at a red light. When Munch finally decides to target Gator, he ambushes him by hiding in the backseat of his patrol car.
  • Roy verbally spits on the idea when Lorraine asks him how he feels about helping the disabled. In "The Useless Hand", he proves true to his word and abandons Gator on the spot after seeing he's been blinded.
  • During their confrontation at the Lyon mansion, Lorraine asks Roy who is the only person on earth with total liberty and no responsibility. When Roy answers that's the president, Lorraine laughs at the idea. Episode 9 shows that she knows the president has responsibilities partially because she was a major donor in his elections with enough sway to call in personal favors.
  • When Lars says he's going to meet his personal trainer, he spritzes himself with cologne. He's later revealed to be cheating on Indira with another woman.
  • The nurse tells Dot that her husband has arrived to meet her and that "he's a real looker." Wayne may be a nice guy, but he's never presented as particularly dashing. Roy Tillman, however, is played by the famously studly Jon Hamm.
  • Early in the season, it's established that both law enforcement and Roy Tillman are so eager to nab Dot because she spent years in close proximity to Roy's operations and could tell law enforcement "where the bodies are buried." Late in the season, Dot learns where Roy has literally been burying bodies.
• Gold Digger: Lorraine accuses Dot of marrying Wayne for his inheritance.
• Graceful Loser: Munch bears no ill will towards Dot for defending herself, and even calls her a tiger in respectful tones. At the end of “The Useless Hand”, he saves Dot from Roy's men and gives her a gun so she that can keep being a “tiger”.
• Happily Married: After escaping her nightmarish first marriage, Dot finds love with Wayne. When a Linda at Camp Utopia tries to paint all husbands as abusers, Dot immediately counters that she loves her husband and has enjoyed "ten years of bliss" with him.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: The government of North Dakota is well aware of the many crimes of Roy Tillman, and they have a solution: hope he loses the next sheriff's election. They could use state police to arrest the man, but that would anger his violent allies, including the largest far right militia in the Midwest. It ultimately takes a presidential order for them to take action.
• Heel–Face Turn: Lorraine is initially one of Dot's two main antagonists in the series. Once she learns Dot's secret, however, her efforts turn to helping Dot.
• Homage: The puppet shows of domestic violence at Camp Utopia are an obvious reference to Punch and Judy.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The first few episodes take place in the lead-up to Halloween. The second kidnapping attempt that Gator carries out happens on Halloween night itself. This is actually invoked by Roy for two reasons: the first is that it's the only night of the year where a group of masked figures knocking on someone's door won't be suspicious, and dragging Dot and her family out of the house with their heads covered might go unnoticed meaning it's a great window of opportunity. The other is that Roy thinks that All Hallows Eve is the time the dead come back to life and thus sees it as the symbolically perfect time to bring Nadine back into his life.
• Hypocrite: Roy Tillman is introduced brutalizing a man for beating on his wife, but it's revealed that Roy himself has beaten and/or murdered all three of his wives. In the end, he summons a militia to make a Last Stand with him but also plans to sneak off if things go sideways.
• I Surrender, Suckers: In the escape tunnel, while held at gunpoint by Witt and asked to drop the knife he’s carrying, Roy makes as if to slowly lower his hands to the floor to deposit the weapon, but takes advantage of a brief flickering of the tunnel lights to suddenly spring forward and plunge the knife into Witt’s chest instead.
• Implied Death Threat: After Dot goes mask-off and threatens Lorraine to leave her alone, Lorraine lands a parting shot by telling her, "You should get some iron in your diet. You look like a corpse."
• Improvised Weapon: Dot has a talent for making many objects into deadly weapons, as Munch and Ireland learn. She uses a lighter and spray can as an improvised flamethrower, slices Munch's face with an ice skate, knocks him out with a shovel, and kills Ireland with a bag of ice.
• Irony:
  • One of the few achievements Gator can brag about is being a sharpshooter, which he proves by assassinating "Munch" from a considerable distance with a sniper rifle. When a very alive and vengeful Munch has Gator at his mercy, he cuts his eyes out with a red-hot knife, depriving him of his only talent permanently.
  • Roy Tillman is a devotee of Donald Trump while Lorraine is contemptuous of him, at one point calling him "The Orange Idiot". During the climax, one of them has the influence to personally call in a favor from the president. It's not Roy. (The irony in this instance is only compounded by Roy blaming his predicament on the Deep State.)
• Jurisdiction Friction:
  • The FBI is pissed at Roy because he refuses to pursue federal crimes in his jurisdiction.
  • Since Trooper Witt Farr and his partner were shot in North Dakota, the Tillmans claim jurisdiction and start seizing all the evidence. The Minnesota cops know that the initial crime happened in Minnesota, but Dot denies that a kidnapping occurred, so their hands are tied until they can find clear evidence of what actually happened.
• Kick the Dog: Irma's deadbeat son is introduced yelling at her, demanding that she make him a sandwich, and warning her, "Don't jew me on the meat." This immediately establishes him as a waste of skin.
• Kill It with Fire: When a pair of kidnappers show up at her house, Dot lights Ireland on fire with an improvised flamethrower made from a hairspray bottler and a lighter, although it doesn't kill him.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: After Ole Munch shows just how dangerous he can be, Roy Tillman decides that feuding with Munch is unwise and pays the money he owes Munch for the initial kidnapping. He even apologizes for his actions and admits that the screwup was his fault and not Munch's. However, Gator cannot let it go and goes to kill Munch and retrieve the money. It doesn't end well for Gator.
• Last Stand: Once the FBI arrives at the Tillman ranch, Roy clearly realizes he's not going to be able to escape and prepares to go down fighting. His father in-law realizes this and is unhappy at wasting all his militia's resources and weapons to let Roy salvage his ego rather than going quietly.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Lorraine is established as a small-minded, critical and greedy businesswoman who, as the Queen of Debt, preys on the misfortunes of others to make her fortune. However, her actions are driven by simple greed rather than the extreme brand of hyper-conservatism and religious zealotry that drives Roy Tillman into much more overt acts of evil.
• Loony Laws: Roy invokes this when he tries to justify himself to the FBI who are investigating him for abusing his office. His jurisdiction has hundreds of old, antiquated laws and part of his job as sheriff is to decide which laws need to be enforced and which can be ignored. The FBI agents do not buy it and the audience has already seen that Roy is corrupt as it gets and his selective enforcement is for his own benefit rather than some greater societal good.
  Roy Tillman: Well... did you know that in North Dakota, it is illegal for a charitable group to hold more than two poker games a year? And similarly, it is illegal to keep an elk in a sandbox in your own backyard. I shit you not. Now, if you were to own a tavern and serve beer and pretzels at the same time, I could arrest you. And in Waverly, the law forbids horses from sleeping in bathtubs. You beginning to get the drift here?
• MacGyvering: Dot uses household items to plant some impressive traps around her house. She uses old phone cords to make a live electrical wire protecting the windows, breaks drinking glasses and glues the shards to exterior door handles, and rigs up a sledgehammer above the front door with some clothesline to fall on the next poor bastard who tries to turn on the lights.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: After Munch kills one of Roy's deputies to send a message to him, Roy's way of covering up the murder is to have Gator stage the death to look like a car accident, and lean on the county coroner to report the death as such. The FBI agents looking into Roy find it suspicious that the deputy was buried within twelve hours of this "accident".
• Mama Bear: Dot's troubles begin when she accidentally tazes a cop while trying to protect her young daughter during a fight that breaks out at a middle school committee meeting.
  Dot: We were just trying, me and my girl, to get out. School board meeting, my A-S-S. And then Mr. Abernathy, the math teacher, he came at me like something from a zombie movie. Which, don't come at a mama lion when she's got her cub.
• Manchild: Lars Olmstead still hasn't gotten over his childhood ambition of being a pro golfer. He spends all of his time in his garage man-cave, racks up debt by contributing nothing to the household, and eats kids' cereal.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: This season has two main possibly supernatural elements.
  • Dorothy/Nadine and Roy both occasionally dream of each other, sometimes including visions of things that will happen but have not yet. Additionally, Dorothy receives a call from Roy while he's praying and reminiscing about their relationship, but there is no obvious telephone near him at the time. Roy believes there is a divine connection between husband and wife. Are the dreams a result of their connection or just the dreams and nightmares of two people obsessing over each other? Was the call a regular telephone call meant as a threat or another manifestation of their connection?
  • Ole Munch is either a vindictive hired thug or a 500+ year old Ambiguously Human entity capable of gaining power through Black Magic who works as a vindictive hired thug. Characters who face off with him seem unsure if he is some kind of vengeful spirit or just a very terrifying man, but nothing he does is clearly supernatural and even his black magic ritual might just be a way to work himself into a frenzy and intimidate his enemies.
• Me's a Crowd: To retaliate against Roy for sabotaging the bank deal, Danish pays three debtors to all change their name to "Roy Tillman" and enter themselves into a debate between Roy and his actual opponent. They dress identically to the real Roy and repeat everything he says, right down to throwing down their podiums in sync after Roy does so while storming off the stage in anger.
• Minnesota Nice: The season opens with a screen that gives a definition of the term. It also describes Dot pretty well, as she keeps insisting that everything's fine even as it's clear that events are spiraling out of her control. In the final scene of the season, Ole Munch returns to the Lyon home to get revenge on Dot for taking his ear off. He is defused by the Lyon family's genuine hospitality and kindness toward him.
• Mugged for Disguise: To escape the psychiatric ward that she's been committed to in "The Tiger", Dot overpowers the orderly in the room and secures him to the bed, then overpowers a nurse who enters the room and steals her uniform. Later, while she's switching the nametags to trick Roy's henchmen into abducting Jordan Seymore instead of Wayne, she steals his coat to wear over her uniform to avoid further detection.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • Munch lampshades the fact that he was hired to kidnap a housewife and planned accordingly. He instead encountered a "tiger" who injured Munch and killed his partner, and thanks to the two of them shooting a pair of cops (killing one of them), the police are going to be extra-committed to looking for him. If he was warned that Dot might be dangerous, he would have hired better help and approached the job more cautiously.
  • Munch becomes the monster in the equation when his landlady's verbally abusive son comes around, insulting her and threatening Munch if he doesn't start paying rent. Munch responds by burying an ax in his face, and then using his corpse as bait for Gator to shoot.
• My Beloved Smother: Wayne clearly has been (and continues to be) under his mother Lorraine's thumb for years, even managing a car dealership she owns so she can keep him in line. His sole act of rebellion appears to have been marrying Dot because he loves her, rather than "someone with papers" as his mother would have preferred, and Lorraine actively tries forcing Dot to leave when she gets the opportunity.
• Naked First Impression: FBI agents Joaquin and Meyer first meet Roy while he is bathing in a large outdoor barrel bath on his property. He spends the entire conversation fully nude as just one of many ways that he shows he doesn't respect them and only covers himself with a towel (that has one of his campaign posters printed on it) when Meyer requests it, making sure to stand up first so they both see him fully naked.
• Nice Guy: Wayne Lyons is a very nice, gentle, supportive guy, in stark contrast to Dot's previous husband, the brutal Roy Tillman.
• Noble Demon: Subverted by Sheriff Tillman, who claims to be only concerned with giving justice to his constituents whether the Feds agree or not. During a conversation with a battered wife, even though he punishes her husband for his abuse, he still reveals himself as a misogynistic son of a bitch who believes she brought it on herself and should be a better wife. He claims he wants to find Dot as an act of balance when really he just wants to punish her for escaping him. In the end, Munch proves to be the true Noble Demon, having an unshakable moral code that places him in direct opposition to the Tillmans..
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Following Roy's public humiliation, Karen (fearing being on the receiving end of more physical abuse from him) convinces him to vent his frustrations by going to the shed and beating the hell out of Dot (thankfully offscreen). Subverted when she turns out to be playing possum and attacks him herself, turning the beatdown into a Brutal Brawl.
• Notary Nonsense: The Clerk of the Court of North Dakota is initially surprised when Danish Graves submits paperwork to change three of his clients' names to "Roy Tillman", before shrugging off the weirdness and rubber stamping the files.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Indira rants that the reason Lorraine is so irritated by Dot is that Dot reminds her of herself: a strong woman constantly having to defend her interests against men trying to tear her down. Lorraine notes Indira is in the same position, and thus offers her a job leading Lorraine's security team.
• The Oner:
  • In the first episode, when the Lyons go to Wayne's mother's house to pose for the Christmas card photo, there is a long continuous shot as Wayne and Dot help Scotty with her necktie, Lorraine comes downstairs (while chastising Danish for "ruining her entrance"), and they all line up to pose for the picture.
  • The second episode ends with a 2.5-minute-long continuous shot as Gator and Nugent pull into the Gas 'N Go. Without any cuts, Gator goes inside to get some jerky and use the bathroom while Nugent gasses up their vehicle, and as soon as Nugent is done, he is ambushed and stabbed to death by Munch. Munch then flees as Gator emerges from the store and discovers Nugent's body, and a note written in blood that is pinned to Nugent's chest reading "YOU OWE ME".
  • In "Blanket", upon returning home from being humiliated at the debate, we get a 95-second-long shot focused on Roy's face as he gets out of the car, makes his way across the ranch to the shed where he's holding Dot captive, and prepares to take his frustrations out on her.
• Open-Minded Parent: Unlike Lorraine, Dot and Wayne are very encouraging of Scotty's preference for suits and "boyish" interests. It quickly becomes apparent that Dot has more in-common with her daughter than her Minnesota Nice housewife demeanor suggests, with the two bonding over booby-trapping the house together.
• Or Was It a Dream?: Most of Dot's plotline in episode seven is a dream about visiting a community of women who have escaped domestic abuse founded by Linda, Roy’s first wife. After waking up, she slowly comes to accept that it all was a dream, but some details turn out to be true in reality. For example, in her dream, she found directions hidden in a small hole under an abandoned windmill. In reality, Linda is buried under a similar windmill on the Tillman property. This and her other possibly prophetic dreams throughout the season make it an open question if it was just a dream or a vision.
• Pet the Dog: Munch has a strangely affectionate relationship with the woman whose house he invades. He calls her "mama", doesn't harm or imprison her in any way, and protects her house like a guard dog in lieu of rent. When Gator accidentally kills the old lady, Munch is genuinely distraught.
• Practically Different Generations: Gator is Roy's son by his first marriage, and is in his late 20s / early 30s, and in fact is very close to Dot's age. Roy also has two younger pre-teen daughters by his third and current wife Karen.
• Prison Rape: As his Laser-Guided Karma, Lorraine pays half the prison to do to Roy everything he did to his wives. She notes that the prisoners she pays can use the money to buy Vaseline. Roy himself implies he's been participating in this, but those days are likely over with Lorraine turning the whole prison against him.
• Properly Paranoid: Wayne thinks Dot is indulging in overkill when she rigs up their house with booby traps, ostensibly because of her experience at the school board riot. Her actual paranoia is quite justified, as she now has Roy and his goons on her trail, as well as Lorraine plotting to have her removed. Sure enough, Roy sends Gator and a couple of hired thugs to their neighborhood on Halloween with the intent of snatching her. Turns out that Dot was not paranoid enough.
• Really 700 Years Old: Ole is 500 years old, having apparently gained immortality when eating the sins of a lord.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Roy Tillman is decidedly not this, of course, but he clearly thinks he is. There's a striking scene early in the season where Tillman is chastising a man for abusing his wife, with Roy patiently explaining that while a man must sometimes strike his wife, he must never take pleasure in it, and he must only do so in order to discipline and educate her. Again, Roy turns out to be full of shit (we see him taking great pleasure in beating his wives), but in the moment it's clear that he sees himself as both eminently reasonable and even compassionate.
  • Deputy Witt Farr is an example played utterly straight, being a reliable, compassionate, determined police officer.
  • The federal agents who surround Tillman's compound at the end of the season are both utterly determined to bring Tillman to justice and committed to avoiding unnecessary bloodshed in doing so — they give Tillman and his gang plenty of chances to surrender peacefully.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: Among Roy Tillman's many crimes is his funneling guns to a right-wing militia group that's made no secret of its intention to use those guns for terrorist violence.
• Road-Sign Reversal:
  • In an attempt to slow down future kidnappers trying to find her house, Dot goes out the night before Halloween and switches around the street signs in her neighborhood. It's a logical approach given that the locals already know their way around to not bother looking up at the signs, while the kidnappers aren't from the area and will be primarily trusting the GPS on their phones to minimize interactions with locals who might remember them. With it being Halloween when everyone is wearing masks and acting weird, it allows Dot to spot Gator and his men when she notices a van driving erratically on her street (because Gator is having to use Google Maps to guide the driver).
  • In "The Tiger", Dot is forced to delay her escape from the hospital when she sees Roy's goons arriving and looking for Wayne. So that they'll leave Wayne alone, she swaps the name tag on Wayne's room with that of Jordan Seymore, a cancer patient across the hall who happens to have a similar appearance to Wayne. They have no idea that they've captured the wrong person until Roy happens to see a commercial for Wayne's car dealership.
• Running Gag: People keep getting the two "Mrs. Lyons" confused.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • How Roy Tillman has been able to remain in power while actively flaunting the law and selling weapons to a far-right militia. The state of North Dakota knows what he's doing and wants to stop it, but also knows that if they try to remove him from power, the militia will start wreaking havoc, and they've decided that Tillman is the lesser of two evils in that case. Of course, Lorraine Lyon has far more powerful connections than a mere militia, so when Roy kills her right hand man and kidnaps her daughter in law, she's able to call in a favor from the president himself, getting the state police and FBI to finally go after him and his militia buddies.
  • Lorraine's political contributions and business connections mean she has virtually every power player in the nation on speed dial. She can cut through quite a bit of red tape with a phone call. For example, you might wonder how she entered three new candidates onto the sheriff's ballot with the election already in full swing, but when Roy tries to question the local election official at the debate, the man is nowhere in sight, clearly having been paid off to bend the rules.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Roy Tillman takes this position as a "Constitutional Sheriff", believing that the law of the land is precisely what he deems it to be, even over federal law.
• Shout-Out: Found here.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: A montage of heavily armed right-wing militiamen assembling for a Last Stand is set to The Village People's "YMCA," a silly disco song. The macho-gay personas of the band members is a sly dig at the militiamen's performative masculinity.
• Stealth Pun: When Indira finally gets fed up with her husband she explains all his flaws to him and his mistress in the time it takes for her to get changed for work. She is dressing him down while she dresses herself down.
• Stop Copying Me: Danish has three random debtors change their names to "Roy Tillman" and appear in a debate between the real Roy and his opponent. They proceed to humiliate Roy by repeating every single thing he says until he storms off the stage. They even throw down their podiums in choreographed fashion to copy Roy doing the same.
• Summon Bigger Fish: When Loraine realizes that Roy cannot be dealt with through peaceful means, she calls in a favor from the President of the United States, resulting in the FBI getting warrants for the Tillman compound and sieging it.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Dot is a survivor and extremely good at utilizing everything around her as a Improvised Weapon. When Munch and Ireland break into her house, she is able to surprise them and injure them. However, she fails to disable them and she does not have the training to fight off two strong men without the element of surprise. She is cornered and captured.
  • Though Dot rigs the house with many traps in anticipation of a second home invasion, it doesn't lead to an expected Curbstomp Battle a la Home Alone; knowing how dangerous she is, Gator and his goons approach the job more cautiously than Munch and Ireland, and are able to avoid the broken glass trap and use greater numbers to their advantage. Though Dot gains the upper hand several times, she's always on the run due to fighting alone. Also, one of her traps backfires, shocking Wayne and setting the house on fire.
  • In "The Tender Trap", Tillman intimidates one of the bank owners to not go through with the deal to sell to Lorraine. When she finds out, far from being damaged at all, she simply pulls the deal herself and financially ruins the bank owner, before turning her attention to destroying Tillman in the upcoming election. Turns out trying to inconvenience a woman with bottomless financial power and a mean streak a mile wide is a bad idea. When he still refuses to negotiate, he finds out just how well politically connected a millionaire like Lorraine can be.
• Tomboy: Dot's daughter Scotty prefers boy's clothing and stories about pirates.
• Unexpected Kindness: When Ole shows back up at the Lyons' house, he's not expecting them to simply invite him to dinner.
• Wanted a Gender-Conforming Child: Or grandchild, rather; in the pilot, Lorraine Lyon is displeased to see that her granddaughter Scotty has shown up for a family photo dressed in a boy's suit. She snidely refers to Scotty as a crossdresser. In a later scene, Lorraine hopefully asks if Scotty is wearing lipstick, but it's just ketchup residue, much to Lorraine's disappointment.
• Wife Husbandry: Dot reveals Roy took her in when she was fifteen. They married when she was seventeen.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Dot may seem like a harmless housewife, but she's actually more than physically capable of handling herself in a fight, whether verbal or physical. Lorraine outright name-drops the trope in episode 3 when discussing her plans with Danish regarding Dot after they're questioned by the police.
  Lorraine: She's a wolf in sheep's clothing, that one. We keep her close for now.
• You Have Failed Me: For Munch's failure to bring Dot to him and for also bringing on heat through killing one state trooper and wounding another (Witt Farr), Roy decides to have him executed. Munch, however, is fast on the draw, overpowering Gator, breaking his wrist, and using his gun to kill a few of Roy's muscle before fleeing.
• Would Hit a Girl: Roy advocates men "correcting" their wives by beating them and certainly practices what he preaches. He viciously beat his first wife Linda and eventually murdered her, beat Dot badly enough that she was hospitalized, slaps his current wife for nicking his ear during a haircut, and when he gets humiliated by the fake "Roy Tillmans" at the debate, he instinctively punches the female moderator in the face.