“Fargo” exposes why America is in love with “Toxic” men like Roy Tillman

No “Fargo” character was built for romance, but if one were pressed to name names in an FMK scenario, Lamorne Morris’ Witt Farr would be the most solid choice to “marry.” Instinct and determination fuel the North Dakota state trooper’s sense of what’s right, along with an inherent goodness, all of which comes into play at the beginning of “Blanket” when Witt crosses paths with Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm).

Until that moment in the season’s eighth episode Witt hasn’t faced Roy himself only his agents, including his reckless son Gator (Joe Keery) and Roy’s other deputies, all devoted to propping up Roy’s power instead of enforcing the commonly agreed upon state and federal laws.

Witt and Roy would not otherwise be familiar with each other if not for their shared interest in Dorothy “Dot” Lyon (Juno Temple), the Minnesota housewife whose kidnapping Witt interrupted, and who he assisted in a gas station convenience store shootout. But the two happen to meet in a hospital check-in area as Roy is forcing Dot to leave with him.

To Roy, Dorothy is his ex-wife Nadine and his property. He is the reason she was almost taken, twice, succeeding a third time quite literally by accident. Halfway through “Blanket” it’s insinuated that, contrary to what the previous episode depicts, Dorothy fell asleep at the wheel while driving, ending up unconscious in a hospital on Roy’s turf. Once she’s well enough to sign herself out, Roy threatens to murder everyone around them unless she pretends to be acting of her free will.

Witt, though, recognizes what’s happening. But all the keen intelligence and noble intentions in the world offer zero protection against a brute with guns and no impulse control. Witt knows he’s outnumbered and would be killed before he can call for backup. Dorothy knows all this too, so she trades her safety for Witt’s, telling Roy she’ll only go with him if he leaves the state deputy unharmed.

“Fargo” creator Noah Hawley uses each season to examine what we know to be true about the American story. This is the spirit behind the claim opening each episode that “This is a true story…At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

Longtime viewers understand that every thread making up each season’s string of crimes captured is fiction, making those opening words dishonest, albeit of a type we’re primed to accept. Americans love our movies and TV shows, and we reserve a special embrace for theatrical crime stories.

Dorothy’s claw-and-tooth battle to stay free of Roy is the hero’s journey at the center of a whirl of other crimes – some legal, like the predatory debt that made her mother-in-law Lorraine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) a billionaire, and others extremely extralegal.

But the lash driving all the season’s worst figures and those who desire to be braids ambition with shamelessness and ruthlessness, a combo that’s proven wildly successful in modern culture, exponentially so in the United States.

This fifth season meets Roy as he’s up for reelection and secure enough in his hold over his fiefdom to shoot another abusive man in his home in front of his wife. It’s not quite the middle of Fifth Avenue, but the point is made. Roy knows the woman will say nothing about his homicide, not because her dead spouse had it coming but because if she does, Roy will kill her, too. Forcing such deals on the powerless keeps Roy on his throne. He even has something on the hospital staffer handling Dot’s hospital checkout documentation, making the “HELP ME” she enters in her signature field useless.

But Roy is charismatic, wearing the cowboy hat and rancher’s shearling coat of the “Hard Man for Hard Times” he claims to be on his campaign billboards. It’s not for nothing that the nurse attending Dot describes him as “easy on the eyes” when she thinks Roy is Dot’s devoted husband, waiting for her to wake up.

The people who bring us “Fargo” stress that the stories aren’t meant to be political commentaries but psychological, allegories examining how evil manifests in places presumed to be bastions of stalwart niceness. Season 5 provides multiple views of independence starting with Dot, who escaped from a violent marriage to Roy she was coerced into at the age of 15. Every move she’s made since has been to protect the life she’s created with her husband Wayne (David Rysdahl) and daughter Scotty (Sienna King).

Wayne, however, is fundamentally useless without his mother’s viciousness backing him. That doesn’t matter to Dot, who prizes Wayne’s gentleness with her and Scotty above all. He’s Roy’s opposite in every way, which is why she chose him to marry. In “Blanket” she promises Roy she’s going to kill him.

Since she tells him this after Roy’s chained her up in an outbuilding on his ranch, it doesn’t hold much menace. Imprisoning her is merely another quick task to complete before he heads off to the televised local debate where he’s not just the beloved incumbent, he’s the star.

Villains who get away with their crimes can become heroes, their sins remade to reflect the independent streak that burnishes our identity. A recent poll conducted by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland confirms this, finding that three years after anti-democratic rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, Republicans are less likely than ever to believe its participants were violent or that Donald Trump was responsible for instigating the violence.

That’s why a major party’s presumed nominee in the 2024 presidential race is proudly bragging that he’s been indicted more times than “the great Alphonse Capone,” a mobster responsible for who knows how many murders, none of which stuck to him. Only a tax evasion conviction ended up putting Capone behind bars.

That’s why Roy Tillman, a sheriff who murders with impunity and crows about his godly ways, is such a horror.

Roy loves reminding any who question him, including and especially federal agents, that he was duly elected by the local citizens to “protect and serve.” At the debate hall, scores of those citizens cheer Roy as he takes the stage, smiling but confused at what awaits him.

See, while Roy was antagonizing Dot, he also awoke Lorraine’s ire by threatening a local banker with whom she wants to do business, simply because Roy can’t live with losing to a woman. And the Queen of Debt does not lose. Roy compels local vigilantes to secure his business. Lorraine has access to an array of federal government entities. Handling Roy is an in-house job though, accomplished by her fixer Danish Graves (Dave Foley).

In a move worthy of a camera prank show, at the top of the episode we witness Danish getting three men who it is implied are contending with crushing debt to agree to legally change their names to the same one. It is only when Roy gets to the debate that we see which name Danish chose for them: Roy Tillman. Roy takes the stage flanked by his actual challenger and three men with his name who are dressed like him and who repeat what he says verbatim, making the audience break into laughter.

This enrages Roy, who pushes over the podium and storms offstage with the other Roy Tillmans following him, aping his every gesture and statement. He’s so infuriated that when the beloved local newscaster moderating the event places her hand on his shoulder to coax him into staying, he turns around and punches her in the face. All of this is captured on multiple cameras.

While Roy drives home with his tail between his legs, Witt, who was driven from the gates of Tillman Ranch by an emasculated Gator, happens into another chance encounter — this one with Danish, fresh from slicing into the thin skin protecting Roy’s fragile ego. Witt is unsuccessful in trying to get to Dorothy by asking for proof of her wellbeing, but recognizes that someone skilled in bending the law to his will might have a better shot.

Danish, fresh from politically gelding Roy in public, recognizes this advantage too. What he doesn’t is that having a legal and financial upper hand doesn’t matter to men like Roy.

In previous episodes, Dorothy makes oblique references to Roy’s weakness, not his machismo, saying that men like him get off on pinning down smaller things to make themselves feel big. We see this when the shorter Witt stares Roy down. We see it when he returns to his ranch and, after his wife and father-in-law belittle him, the camera locks onto Roy’s menacing mug as he strides purposefully toward the shack where he’s holding Dot.

---

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

Director Sylvain White employs the perfect needle drop at this moment, by the way – a sinister verse and refrain snippet from Jeff Russo’s cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” the cadence decelerated to a painful languor, matching Roy’s slow, steady gait toward the act we and Dot fear and know to be inevitable.

We see him enter the shack and hear Dot’s screams from a distance. When she comes to, she fights him and has the upper hand for a moment, nearly strangling him with her chain. Before he can retaliate with his full fury, he’s interrupted by one of his men telling him Danish is at his door.

Unlike Witt, Danish is allowed an audience with Roy and confidently offers to buy the sheriff’s political resurrection in exchange for Dot’s release. He wields Lorraine’s endless money and influence, virtually unassailable assets in any other confrontation. What he doesn’t have is a gun. Roy counters Danish’s proposal by shooting two holes in him and having his henchmen dump Danish in a hole at the base of a windmill Dot recognizes as the one from which she believes she retrieved a postcard from Linda.

Dot’s saga is a fantasy, a fiction written in chapters by Hawley and others, but that outcome feels disconcertingly truthful. We’ve seen true crime versions of it and feel hints in the atmosphere as we enter an election year. As Britney’s hit explains, America has gotten too many tastes of poison paradise not to be in love with men like Roy Tillman, selling a vision of might and fortitude and death to his enemies. We’d slide him into the “F” category of the game in a heartbeat.

Many of us also hope that what Witt tells Gator moments after he refuses to recognize his authority is also accurate. “I know you don’t think they’re coming – consequences – but they’re almost here.”

New episodes of “Fargo” air 10 p.m. Tuesdays on FX and stream the next day on Hulu.