History Recap / FargoS01E04EatingTheBlame

* CaughtWithYourPantsDown: {{Downplayed}}. When Lester calls his brother to tell him he's been kidnapped, Chazz is in the middle of watching porn. As the conversation continues, he keeps peeking at it until Lester passes it off as a prank and he just goes back to [[ADateWithRosiePalms doing his thing]].

Meanwhile, Lester Nygaard is abducted by Numbers and Wrench who intend to kill him, but he escapes. Fleeing, he finds a police officer issuing a ticket for a car parked on the side of the road. Nygaard punches him to get arrested. Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers witness this and later stage a bar fight to get arrested, and end up in the same cell with Lester.

* AgeCut: A MatchCut from young Milos in the flashback to present day old Milos.

In a flashback to 1987, the Milos family runs out of gas along a deserted highway in winter. Stranded and heavily in debt, Stavros Milos prays for help. Stepping outside the car, he finds a briefcase of money buried in the snow and takes it as a sign from God. In the film Fargo, the suitcase had been buried there by Carl Showalter, who was later murdered without having revealed its location to anyone else.

Nineteen years later, Chumph, disguised as a plumber, tells Stavros that everything appears normal in his pipes, and suggests the shower of blood is similar to a biblical plague. Stavros grabs Chumph from his neck and tells him off. Chumph tells him he is crazy and leaves, while Stavros worries about what Chumph said. Outside, Lorne Malvo was watching from a distance. Gus Grimly spots Malvo by Stavros' house and arrests him. He informs Molly Solverson, and when she requests to go to Duluth, Oswalt refuses her and goes instead. Malvo produces identification as "Frank Peterson," a Lutheran minister from Baudette, and has an alibi. Molly learns Malvo's name and calls Grimly, but Malvo (as Peterson) has already been released.

Malvo and Chumph release hundreds of crickets into Stavros's supermarket, simulating a plague of locusts, to further entice Stavros into paying the blackmail money. Meanwhile, Lester Nygaard is abducted by Numbers and Wrench who intend to kill him, but he escapes. Fleeing, he finds a police officer issuing a ticket for a car parked on the side of the road. Nygaard punches him to get arrested. Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers witness this and later stage a bar fight to get arrested, and end up in the same cell with Lester.

'''Season 1, Episode 04:'''
!!Eating the Blame
!!!Written by Noah Hawley

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/untitled_4_3.jpg]]

->''"Did you know that the human eye can see more shades of green than any other color?"''
-->--'''Lorne Malvo''', under the guise of "Frank Peterson"

Minnesota, 1987. Stavros Milos, his wife, and his son drive down an empty road when his truck runs out of gas. Exiting the vehicle to think, he tries signaling down a tractor trailer, only for it to ultimately ignore him. Desperately, he starts praying to God to get his family out of this mess before spying a red windshield scraper sticking out of the ground by a nearby fence. Upon further investigation, he finds a briefcase buried beneath the scraper filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars. This leads him to adopt a strong belief in God.

Minnesota, 2006. A plumber investigates Milos’ shower pipes and finds no trace of blood. Gus responds to a call placed about a murdered pet dog and passes Malvo standing on the side of the road. Stopping, he places him under arrest and drives him to the station. Molly, who’s looking over the Lester Nygaard files, gets a call from Gus about having brought Malvo in. She tells Bill, who’s in the middle of a meeting about a huge upcoming blizzard, and he tells her that he’ll go to Duluth instead of her since he’s the officer in charge of the Lester case.

Lester’s wound, meanwhile, has become horribly infected, and he receives a threatening call from Numbers at his house. Numbers and Wrench argue at Lou’s diner about making sure Lester is the one who murdered Sam Hess before they take him out. They agree to grab him and get him to confess before they do the deed, then head out to take care of business.

In custody, Malvo places his one phone call to Don Chumph and tells him to pick him up in a couple of hours. The Duluth officers receive Bill, who discovers that the only evidence they have on Malvo is the grainy security photo from Molly’s case file. Bill and Schmidt interview Malvo under his very calm alter ego of Reverend Frank Peterson as Gus watches helplessly from the two-way mirror.

Molly interviews the owner of the motel that Malvo stayed at the night of the murders, who informs her that the man’s name was Lorne Malvo. She calls Gus to tell him while Bill and Schmidt check "Peterson's" story and find that he has references in town. With no other choice, they set Malvo free, but Gus follows him out to try and get him to break character. Malvo responds with a riddle, asking him why the human eye can see more shades of green than any other color.

-->'''Gus:''' Just—Just hold on.
-->'''Malvo:''' When you figure out the answer of my question, then you’ll have the answer to yours.

Malvo meets Chumph, who’s got a car full of locusts, and Lester receives a call informing him that his vehicle is under a routine forensics examination. Just then, Mr. Numbers calls out to Lester, who’s caught off-guard and easily stuffed in the trunk of his and Wrench’s car. Lester calls Chazz while he’s in the trunk, but when his brother offers to call the police, Lester passes off the kidnapping as a prank and realizes he still has the Taser from Chazz’s house.

Numbers drags Lester out onto the frozen lake and tells him to confess to the murder of Sam Hess, but Lester refuses, saying there was another man. When Numbers leans in to hear the name of the other man, Lester uses the Taser on the side of his face and knocks him over. While Wrench is still drilling the hole, Lester escapes into the woods and runs back to the road, where he sees a cop ticketing Wrench and Number’s car. He punches the cop in the face so as to be arrested and taken back into town, and the two men watch from the woods as he’s driven away.

In Milos’ office, his drugs are making him fidgety and stressed out. He scolds his son and makes him cry before locusts begin appearing all over the inside of his store and scaring the customers. Milos gets a call from the blackmailer, who demands the money be handed over, and Malvo watches him and his associates run out to their cars from the roof of the supermarket.

At a bar somewhere, Numbers gets drunk and starts a fight with Wrench, destroying the interior of the bar in the process. Molly meets Gus at Lou’s diner, where he tells her the story about how Malvo was set free. He recites the riddle that Malvo told him before he walked out, and she immediately tells him the answer.

-->'''Molly:''' 'Cause of predators. Used to be we were monkeys, right? And in the woods, in the jungle, everything’s green, so in order to not get eaten by panthers and bears and the like, we had to be able to see them in grass and trees and such.

They contemplate their next move, and Molly states that they’ll have to put their focus on Lester. Lester, meanwhile, sits in a cell where Numbers and Wrench are now being moved into.
----

-->--'''Lorne Malvo under the guise of "Frank Peterson"'''

-->--Lorne Malvo under the guise of "Frank Peterson"

-->Written by Noah Hawley

-->''"Did you know that the human eye can see more shades of green than any other color?"''
--->--Lorne Malvo under the guise of "Frank Peterson"