Funny / Fargo: Season Three

The Law of Vacant Places

• While sitting down in private in Emmit's study, Ray says he needs money to buy a ring for Nikki. Sy pointedly asks Ray if he met her at work. Cut to Nikki coming in for her interview wearing a low v-cut shirt and popping bubblegum, Ray staring at her cleavage, and Nikki pushing the arm of an officer cuffing her after getting her mugshot taken.
  Ray: At work, yes.
• After a while of Ray and Nikki celebrating their success in the wildcat tournament with a Candlelit Bath, and how they're on their way to ruling the sport, it turns out they're making such a big deal out of finishing in third place.
  • Nikki standing up in the bath to distract Maurice, who is threatening her and Ray with a gun. He's Distracted by the Sexy, but so is Ray, and Nikki ends up having to prompt him to ambush Maurice. He's so slow on the uptake that Maurice manages to fend him off. The whole scene is doubly funny when you take into account how Nikki's twice mentioned what a great team the two of them make.
  • Maurice's death may be Nightmare Fuel, yet there is still something about it that is so Looney Tunes that it also can't be taken seriously.

The Principle of Restricted Choice

• Emmit's lawyer, Irv, sums up Emmit's discussion of his "deal" with Varga.
  Irv: You borrowed a million dollars from a guy without knowing his first name. I'm not asking a question, I'm just assessing the level of stupidity.
• Irv's almost cartoonishly bad computer skills. He needs his secretary to tell him he needs to hit the enter key on a Google search, and show him where it is.
• V.M. Varga asserts his control by driving up to a Stussy lot in a Cadillac (containing Varga himself, driven by Meemo) and a giant big rig (driven by Yuri) and intimidate the parking lot attendant:
  Varga: Zdraveyte, as the Bulgarians say!
  Attendant: Pardon?
  Varga: Ni hao is the Chinese. The Corsicans use the simple salut, and guten Tag, if German's your thing.
  Attendant: [glancing at the giant semi truck behind Varga's car] Is that...are they with you?
  Varga: Surmise.
  Attendant: What?
  Varga: Because we arrived together, we are together. Surmise.
  Attendant: Well, are ya?
  Varga: [whispering] Yes.
  Attendant: [shakes his head] Can't park that here. We got...the city's got an ordinance.
  Varga: No, it's perfectly fine. Mr. Stussy himself gave me permission.
  Attendant: Who?
  Varga: Your employer. You do see the sign above which you stand, and how a man with a keener sense of reason might extrapolate a connection with the name I just mentioned? Your boss?
  Attendant: Look, mister-
  Varga: [to Meemo, in the driver's seat] We're done here. [Meemo drives into the lot, Yuri following them with the truck]
  • The attendant calls Sy, who hesitantly rehashes the same "gave me permission" spiel as Varga just for the sake of not contradicting the shady crime lord's. Sy goes to talk to Emmit about the situation in his office. Emmit is reading the news of Ennis's death in the Saint Cloud Herald, and hilariously doesn't think it strange that the deceased shares his first initial and last name:
    Emmit: Did you see this bullshit in the paper? Some old-timer out in the country, they push in his front door, tie him up. He-he runs a general store, and some hopped-up junkie thinks he takes the register money home. [sighs] Ennis Stussy. Eighty-two years old. Not the Minnesota I grew up in, I'll tell you that.
    Sy: It's a tragedy.
  • The conversation segues into a discussion as Sy and Emmit wonder just what Varga carries in his big rig:
    Sy: Oh, uh, there's, maybe a problem, not sure yet. Just, this Varga fella? I got a call from the Oakbridge lot.
    Emmit: The raised one?
    Sy: No. The ground lot, under the highway. Doesn't get a lot of traffic.
    Emmit: Right. [beat] Why'd we buy that one again?
    Sy: Sprawl-wise, you thought it'd be a good investment long-term. Maybe turn it into condos one day.
    Emmit: Right. We should talk to Stan Grossman about that. Test the waters.
    Sy: Yeah. I'll make a note. Anyway, it seems there's a big rig parked there now.
    Emmit: In the lot?
    Sy: Mmm-hmm.
    Emmit: Well, that's against code.
    Sy: Well, okay. There's that, too. But more, uh, to the point, what's in it? And I'm a little troubled by the escalation. Money loaned is one thing, but this? A truck full of...well, it could be anything. Booze, guns? The kind of demeanor this fella has...
    Emmit: You think maybe it's... I don't wanna say it out loud.
    Sy: Slave girls?
    Emmit: [horrified] What? NO... I was gonna say drugs...do you think it's slave girls?
    Sy: ...No. I mean, he's capable, this Varga fella, don't you think? Just from the one meeting.
    Emmit: We should probably drive over there, take a look.
    Sy: Or, and this is the other way to go, not. See, I'm thinking about deniability. What they call "plausible". 'Cause if we - look, if Irv's right, and we [mimes "go to investigate for ourselves"] ...then we know. Which, in a court of law-
    Emmit: Got it. That's—you're—good thinking. So, what do we-
    Sy: I think we gotta wait and see what Irv turns up. Then, whatever dirt, we use to extricate ourselves overall.
• Moe Dammik, the new Sheriff, and his perfectly understandable exasperation at Gloria and Ronnie's explanations for the Eden Valley police station being so outdated as far as technology is concerned.
  Moe Dammik: This is the problem right here. It's not even a proper police station. Where do you keep prisoners?
  Gloria Burgle: There's a store room, computer boxes, paper towels, or we drive 'em 10 miles to Paynesville.
  Moe Dammik: Wait, you said computer boxes. Where are the computers?
  Donny Mashman: They're in the boxes. Chief doesn't like computers. Well, old chief. [to Gloria] Sorry, Chief.
  Moe Dammik: Oh, you don't like them?
  Gloria Burgle: It's not that I don't like them. I don't like them, but that's not...the old way works just fine. Type out a report, send it via telex.
  Moe Dammik: [with a "You're shittin' me" face] You do know what year it is, right? The future. We don't use-who uses telexes anymore?
  Gloria Burgle: So that's why no one ever writes me back. [sigh] The point is, if I need a record search or priors run, I just call Jerry at County.
  Donny Mashman: Yeah, or Lou-Ann, if Jerry's sick or out or something.
  Moe Dammik: I'm sorry to be doing this today, with the loss of your father and all-
  Gloria Burgle: Stepfather.
  Moe Dammik: ...but you need to get with the program. It's not the '50s anymore where people don't lock their front doors.
• Nikki's bizarre leaps of logic to convince herself that Emmit is a wily and creative Worthy Opponent for her criminal skills, when he was just having the stamp's frame fixed.

The Law of Non-Contradiction

The Narrow Escape Problem

• When Winnie Lopez visit Emmit Stussy's office to talk to Sy about him hitting a few cars with his Humvee, Yuri and Meemo staring at Sy with him extremely distressed by the thought they might suspect him of informing the police on them.

The House of Special Purpose

• Ray proposes to Nikki just before they make their sex tape.
  Nikki: For Pete's sake, I'm wearing a hooker wig!
  • After she accepts, she caps it off with this little gem:
    Nikki: You have made me the happiest woman ever. [puts her wig back on] Now let's make a sex tape.

The Lord of No Mercy

• Varga is bemused by Sy's protests on the IRS looking into their business and trying to double the company's size in three months.
  Varga: I'm beginning to think high finance is just a hobby for you.
• After half a season of Varga being a terrifyingly Crazy-Prepared force of nature, he's stymied by the technophobic Gloria's complete lack of an online footprint.
• Meemo posing as an attorney to thwart an IRS inquiry into Stussy Lots. He even trolls Agent Dollard by wearing identical attire and mirroring the man's mannerism and the organization of his pens and papers to a tee.
  Meemo: Section 41C of the US Tax Code affords my client the right to licensed representation in the face of any IRS inquiry. As counsel, I'm filing here with you an official protest to this baseless and...cockeyed inquiry, and demand you withdraw immediately and file by mail the statutory-required 30-day notice listing the exact documents you require and personnel you wish to interview. Until that time, we demand you vacate our offices. Immediately.

The Law of Inevitability

• When the police arrive at the restaurant to question Sy and Emmit and break the news about Ray's death, Emmit has been coached in what to say to establish an alibi. Perhaps too well. Emmit slowly approaches Winnie, a humming sound drowns out everything else and he ignores the Widow Goldfarb apparently talking to him. It looks like he's about to play it natural and establish his innocence:
  Winnie: Mr. Stussy, your brother...
  Emmit: I've been here since 6:00!
• Sy's response to Emmit's truly absurd suggestion - planted in his head by Varga - that Sy is in league with Ray:
  "You really think I'm...in the face of all logic, that somehow I decided, me, the partner in a multi-million dollar corporation, that I decided to what, turn on you? Join forces with your leptard brother and his syphilitic floozy, so I could turn millions into thousands? What's the math there?"

Who Rules the Land of Denial?

• When Yuri, Meemo and Golem initially get into the bus and Golem goes after Nikki with a knife, Mr. Wrench suddenly stands up and proceeds to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown...as Yuri and Meemo watch in bewilderment and concern even sharing a look between them both before Yuri promptly reaches for his knife as Golem is clearly losing said fight.
• When Yuri and Golem are tracking Nikki and Mr. Wrench through the woods, Yuri barely avoids getting shot in the head by a crossbow bolt on account of a son-father duo out hunting and mistaking Yuri's wolf mask as a real one.

Aporia

• Varga is waiting in his office, only to see the usually cool and collected Meemo rush in with mussed hair and an anxious look, having just escaped the attack and hijacking by Nikki and Mr. Wrench. The camera focuses on Varga's look of confusion, disgust and annoyance, his contorted mouth hanging comically agape. The phone rings, on cue, and he spins slowly in his chair to glower at it with the same expression.

Somebody to Love