‘Fargo’ Season 4 Episode 7 Recap: I’m a Fool to Do Your Dirty Work

Cannon by name, but not by nature. No, Loy Cannon, Kansas City crime boss, does not live up to his explosive surname. (Not yet, anyway.) The story of “Lay Away,” Fargo Season 4 Episode 7, is of Loy’s restraint in dealing with his Italian rivals, despite ample motive and a myriad of potential targets, presented to him nearly gift-wrapped by the Italians themselves. The big question is, will refusing to sink to their level sink him in the end?

Because the Italians are counting on him to do their own dirty work. Summoned to a sit-down to adjudicate the killing of Cannon family consigliere Doctor Senator by the hotheaded Gaetano Fadda and his cold-blooded killing machine Constant Calamita, boss Josto Fadda surprises his own consigliere, Ebal Violante, by announcing that Loy’s son Satchel has been killed. (In reality, he’s absconded for safety’s sake with his minder, Rabbi Milligan, for whose integrity Loy surprisingly vouches.) Josto knows that this could cost the life of both of his brothers, who are in Cannon custody—and that’s what he’s planning on.

Not the death of little Zero, necessarily, though he doesn’t seem like he’d be particularly broken up about it. His focus is Gaetano, who—in contravention of the orders Ebal received from the bosses back in New York—he wants Loy to murder. It’s a peace offering, along with control of the stockyards and a pair of lucrative trucking routes. And oh yeah, he pins Satchel’s “death” on Calamita—after ordering Calamita to kill his way through the Cannon home, a plot thwarted only by the quick thinking and shotgun-wielding of Loy’s wife Buel (J. Nicole Brooks). Thus would a pair of loose cannons (no pun intended) be silenced, and in such a way as to appear that Josto is doing Loy a favor rather than the other way around.

But Loy isn’t going to bite. Oh sure, he’ll order Calamita killed, that’s a no-brainer. But Gaetano? Loy sets that mad dog free rather than executing him, instructing him to deliver Josto the message that the stockyards are now Cannon property. And Zero? Loy either fantasizes about preparing to choke him to death with a jumprope or actually prepares to do so—it’s unclear—but in the end he lets the innocent boy live. He even puts his erstwhile muscle, Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capps, on the next train to Philadelphia rather than involving them in a potential shooting war with the Italians. He’s an enlightened despot.

Too enlightened for the world that surrounds him, perhaps. While being driven around the day after he breaks the (fake) news about Satchel to his devastated wife, he instructs his driver to pull over so he can examine a billboard. The advertisement is for Diners Club—a credit card, just like the one he and Doctor Senator had been pitching to local banks, to no avail. Beaten to the punch, by a white-owned operation. It’s a sad story he’s accustomed to hearing.

Not everyone in Kansas City, it should be said, shares Loy’s restraint. In the face of accusations of corruption by the omnipresent U.S. Marshal Dick “Deafy” Wickware and the pressure of pleasing both his Black and Italian masters at once, Detective Odis Weff is prepared to skip town completely, until Cannon family soldiers press him into an as yet unnamed mission.

Then there’s the chaos agent known as Nurse Oraetta Mayflower. In an act that might please Josto should he ever learn of it, she poisons hospital adminstrator Dr. Harvard, then loots his desk for the anonymous letter warning him of her past misdeeds. Actor Jessie Buckley beautifully performs Oraetta’s performance of shock and dismay when she decides to finally call for help, no doubt too late. (It’s my second-favorite bit of acting in the episode, second only to Chris Rock absolutely screaming “Get out!” at Josto and Ebal.)

And finally, there’s mean old Mr. Snowman, last seen in last week’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Ethelrida Smutny’s birthday party. Yes, the frostbitten dead man is back, peering out of a coffin at Loy’s son Lemuel shortly after the kid meets cute with Ethelrida in her family’s funeral home. Does his appearance mean Lemuel is marked for death? Does his appearance “mean” anything at all? It’s one of the season’s most intriguing mysteries.

So, too, is the question of whether or when the battle between the Cannons and Faddas will reach the level of all-out war. For the first time on the show since Season Two, two heavily armed organizations find themselves on opposite sides—and this time, pointedly perhaps, there are no “good cops” present to intervene, just crooked and traumatized Odis and fanatical Dick Wickware. The show’s laconic pace is no doubt frustrating to many viewers; I’ve encountered a few myself, and they’re wondering when the real action will start. I’ve got no answers on that score. But one viewer said to me recently that Fargo has a rhythm and tone all its own, and that’s something to be celebrated. You can feel the control at work here, a control nearly as painstaking as the one Loy Cannon exerts on his criminal cohorts. (At one point he whips his dogsbody Leon brutally for his reckless advocacy for al-out war.) I don’t know where this season of Fargo is going; I just know I feel like I’m in expert hands on the way there.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch Fargo Season 4 Episode 7 ("Lay Away") on Hulu