The Pilot Of Fargo And Lorne Malvo

The pilot of Fargo is quite simple, yet extremely effective. It opens with the introduction of our main antagonist Lorne Malvo. He crashes his car trying to swerve out of the way of a deer. The man he is toting in the trunk escapes, and Malvo is hurt.

We change focus to Lester Nygaard, a weak willed, mild mannered man. He is in conversation with Malvo at the emergency room after a confrontation a bully, Sam Hess. Lester talks of Hess, Malvo mistakes this as an assassination request and murders Hess. Unaware of the murder Lester goes home. His wife belittles him further, just as Hess did. Suddenly Lester can take it no longer and thumps his wife with a hammer, she dies. Lester is now not only associated with a killer, but is a killer himself.

In the periphery of this chaos, is a Police Officer and her Chief, Molly Solverson and Vern Thurman.

They have been running investigations on the car crash, the murder of Sam Hess, and have now caught a murder in progress at Lester’s house. Lester’s wife lay dead in the basement, and Lester has called Malvo with plans to kill him and frame him for the murder. Chief Thurman has come with questions regarding Sam Hess and Lorne Malvo. Malvo arrives, shooting Thurman in the back with Lesters shotgun, and then disappears. Lester is a person of interest in two murder cases.

This draft of the Fargo pilot, as it is a shooting draft, is naturally tight and difficult to comment on and criticise as it has already been through a rigorous assessment process. That being said, the strengths of this script lie in the interplay and contrast of all the characters, especially between Lester and Malvo. We see that Lester is a snivelling, weak willed, by the book kind of man while Malvo is the exact contrasting opposite to this. In one scene he blatenly says that Lester should throw out the rule book and live like an

ape.

Furthermore, the expertly interwoven story strands, the dark comedy that is littered throughout the episode, and the evocative and perfectly crafted imagery that spread throughout this screenplay add heart and an uniquely palpable atmosphere to the story of Fargo. One of the more poignant pieces of imagery is the broken washing machine Lester and Pearl share, being a symbol for their tattered and crumbling marriage. Lester even tries his hand at fixing the machine, a job that Pearl sees as one for a real man, to no avail. I, however, thought that there could have been a further efforts in the development of the character of Molly, she seems to be too good at what she is doing especially as she is painted as the rookie cop, and a higher presence of the dark comedy already mentioned. The comedy came drip fed to the audience and would have been welcome addition to one or two scenes here and there.
The most successful intersection of character goals seen in this script comes during the scene in the waiting room, starting on page ten, between Lester and Malvo. They have both been self-admitted to the emergency room for completely opposing reasons. Malvo has just come from a car crash during a attempted kidnapping, and Lester had run himself into a glass window after a fake punch from a bully. These two characters could not be from two more differing sides of the proverbial tracks. What we then see is their goals become more and more aligned during the scene, almost to the point of meeting just as Lester is called away buy the nurse. Although Malvo semi-manipulates Lester into coming to this point, Lester, for the first time, thinks about standing up for himself, about being a man. In no one moment the scene does Lester have the power, he is guided there by Malvo, and yet Lester gains from this scene. In a scene which starts on a negative for Lester, he is manipulated into leaving the scene on a positive emotional note, the thought that he may have it in him to be a man. It is a masterful scene that see’s two contrasting goals both propelled toward success. Lester’s desire to prove that he is a man, and Malvo’s desire to seemingly kill everything in his path. This is recurrent throughout the screenplay and is its greatest strength.
Another strength of the pilot of Fargo is the imagery that is littered throughout the episode. As mentioned earlier my favourite is the image of the washing machine. This imagery begins in the introduction of the Nygaard household on page two, and becomes a symbol of Lester in the episode. It is a symbol of his inferiority. His inferiority to Sam Hess, to his brother Robert, to his wife Pearl, to Lorne Malvo, and to most of the population of Minnesota. It is contrasted with Pearl saying that Robert has just bought a new surround-sound system, and that she must have married the wrong Nygaard.

Lester’s inferiority is heightened later in the script while Lester and Pearl are visiting Robert and Kitty at their house. Robert takes Lester into the garage and begins telling him to grow up, and be a man. He shows Lester his gun collection including a highly illegal, and heavy, automatic rifle. Lester drops it, dropping the challenge his brother has set for him. Once again he has failed. It reaches breaking point late in the script when Lester takes it upon himself to fix the washing machine, to fix his “own trapped heart”. Again, he fails and is reprimanded by his wife. The man inside Lester boils over, lashing at his wife with a hammer, killing her. He has finally stood up for himself but has become a murderer in the process. This use of imagery is masterful in telling a character arc for the episode. I would encourage the writer to use this type of storytelling in further episodes of the series.
An unexpected element of this script is the dark comedy it utilises in parts to tell the story. Judging from the opening pages, you would be forgiven to think that this is a straight crime thriller stories with no hidden elements. The first instance of dark comedy comes in the scene outside the appliance shop on page six. It is an incredibly tense scene where the power is pushed and pulled between Hess and Lester. Hess has confronted Lester on the street with his two boys and talks of the days when he used to bully Lester. The tension grows and grows until we think Sam is going to hit Lester, he doesn’t. Instead, he fakes a punch, Lester jolts and runs to his right and face plants a window. It cuts the tension, giving us a moment to chuckle and relax before the next scene pulls the tension back in. It also makes the next few lines resonate even more. After Lester drops the gun, Robert tells him that his friends tell him how they look up to their older brothers, be he doesn’t.

However, I think this could have been utilised more in the script, without turning it into a straight comedy. Using comedy in some of Molly’s scenes would bring her character into another dimension, as currently she is just a little bit too good at what she does, especially as she is a rookie cop.
This plays out in the murder scene in the Nygaard house on page fifty-nine.

She enters the house and sees her colleague and friend on the ground dead, but is seemingly unaffected by it in terms of her actions. The performance of the actor chosen to play the role may be able to bring a more complex set of emotions to the screen, but on the page there is a lot of telling and not much showing in this instance. “We can tell Molly is afraid, out of her league, but she keeps her wit.” I would like to see how she is afraid, and out of her league. Does she drop her gun? Or stumble over Vern’s body? Is there a movement that she prematurely shoot at? Some comedy here could bring her timidness onto the screen. Currently, as per the evidence of the actions of the character, she is a sturdy professional, nothing is telling me that she is scared and nervous. Further investigation into the character of Molly in subsequent episodes will bring a fuller experience to the audience, she is currently too on top of everything, too on the

nose.
Naturally this draft of the screenplay is tight, well thought out and well developed. The characters have clear goals and clear intentions that intersect with each other in expert ways. The imagery and character arcs are strong and well developed, and the introduction of comedy to a usually extremely series genre is a welcome refresh. However I think another look over the character of Pearl, her flaws, her worries, and ways to turn her internal character into external action is needed. Overall, this is an excellent script.