Following Chazz Nygaard's arrest, Lester Nygaard consoles his sister-in-law, Kitty, who believes her husband is guilty. Shortly afterward, Lester tosses out Pearl's belongings, beginning a new life. Later, Gina Hess, accompanied by her sons, angrily storms into Lester's office, demanding payment from Sam's canceled insurance policy and accusing Lester of duping her for sex. Lester sternly rebuffs her and her two boys, impressing his co-worker Linda Park with his newfound assertiveness.
Meanwhile, Solverson returns to work and unsuccessfully attempts to reopen the Lester Nygaard investigation. At the Duluth hospital, Malvo kills a police guard and then tells Mr. Wrench that he killed Mr. Numbers. Malvo gives Mr. Wrench the handcuff key and invites him to look him up later if he "still feels raw" about Mr. Numbers' murder.
In Fargo, FBI Agents Pepper and Budge, who were on surveillance during Malvo's 22-homicide rampage, are demoted to filing clerks. A year later, Grimly, now a mailman in Bemidji, is happily married to Solverson, who is pregnant. In Las Vegas, Nygaard, who has married Linda, receives an award for salesman of the year. While at the hotel bar, Nygaard spots Malvo, who has changed his appearance and name.
Tropes:
- Asian Airhead: Lester's second wife, Linda, sure isn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
- Bumbling Dad: Greta seems to expect this from her own father judging by her greeting when he gets home.Greta: You forgot the food, didn’t you?
- Deadpan Snarker: Seems to be the way Budge copes with his partners' ramblings.Pepper: Take one body out of a cemetery it’s still a cemetery, but a cemetery with no bodies—what’s that?Budge: Condos.
- Camping a Crapper: Malvo strangles a cop taking a leak in the hospital bathroom.
- Contrived Coincidence: Bill Lampshades how finding the lost boy from Sudan in a shop in some city he was visiting was sheer luck.
- The Determinator: Even almost a year after the case with Lester was closed, Molly is still trying to contact the FBI about all the loose ends that haven't been tied up.
- Expy: Molly already started off as one of these for Marge from the original movie, but now that she's also a Happily Married Pregnant Badass, it becomes all the more obvious.
- Happily Married: Molly and Gus have become this by the time skip. Lester and Linda also look like this at first glance, but it's clearly one-sided from Linda's perspective, as Lester likes to flirt around with other women.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Linda was asking Lester on a date when Gina barges in and loudly berates Lester for having sex with her in exchange for services he never intended to perform. After Lester frightens her off and staples her two sons in the face, Linda is only even more impressed with him.
- Improvised Weapon: Lester uses a stapler against Gina's sons.
- Innocently Insensitive: At the celebration of Molly's return, Bill happily expresses to her and Ida that having everyone back together again is like one big happy family, only to sheepishly leave them alone after he remembers he's talking to the recently widowed Ida Thurman.
- It's All About Me: Kitty condemns Chazz much more for supposedly cheating on her than for allegedly killing Lester's wife.Kitty: Well I mean, look at me. I was Miss Hubbard County, for Pete’s sake. You don’t cheat on Miss Hubbard county.
- Karma Houdini: Wrench escapes without having to do time for any of his crimes.
- Manly Tears: Tahir expresses that Bill cried when he found him at the supermarket.
- Motor Mouth: Pepper once again displays this trope when he goes on a tangent about what to call the file room if you take all the files out one by one.
- Pregnant Badass: Molly has become one of these after the Time Skip.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: After Budge and Pepper's colossal slip-up, they're moved to the file room to work for almost a year.
- Standard Snippet: Ode to Joy is playing when Lester cleans out his house.
- Suspect Is Hatless: All Budge and Pepper can come up with is a photo from an ATM that identifies the suspect as a "white male". That said when we later get to see the shot, it's clearly Malvo.
- Time Skip: A little over halfway through the episode, the story fast forwards from 2006 to 2007, with the anniversary of the incident that killed Vern about a week away.
- Too Much Information: Gina's sons are disgusted when hearing details about her and Lester's intercourse.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: Pepper's idea of removing files one by one from the file room until it's no longer a file room is called "sorites paradox
," and also "paradox of the heap" — hence the name of this episode. - Viva Las Vegas!: Lester's trip to Las Vegas is having a huge impact on the plot.
- Whatever Happened to the Mouse?: Malvo sets Wrench free, and he doesn't appear for the rest of the season. He returns a little over halfway through season three.
