Fargo recap: It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world

You have to give Fargo credit: It always finds new ways to innovate its narrative structure.

To wit: This week's "Loplop" jumps backward in time to fill in the Blumquist-sized gaps in the narrative from last week's episode, turning episodes seven and eight into two halves of one major chapter of this crime saga. Unfortunately, the density and ambition of the storytelling isn't enough to make up for a few glaring problems.

It doesn't really make sense that Hank didn't think to check on Peggy before he left the Blumquist home. It doesn't really make sense that Dodd leaves Peggy alive and unshackled while he waits to ambush Ed. It doesn't really make sense that the local newspaper is running a massive story on Mike Milligan — complete with the name of the hotel where he's staying. You can feel "Loplop" straining to justify some of those lapses in logic.

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But "Loplop" isn't without its own distinct strengths. By focusing almost entirely on Ed and Peggy — pivoting away from both the larger gang war and the police force's valiant attempt to contain it — Fargo infuses an entire episode with an unnerving claustrophobia. Just look at the split-screen dividing them as they sit right next to each other in the car, driving toward what they believe might be their last hope. These characters aren't just doomed; they're alone, unable to do anything to save themselves or each other.

As "Loplop" begins, Ed and Peggy take the hogtied Dodd to a remote cabin while they decide what to do with him. Over the course of the 24 hours or so that the episode compresses, Peggy is stuck watching Dodd in the cabin. Meanwhile, Ed endures the maddening, Groundhog's Day-like repetition of driving to a pay phone, calling the Gerhardt compound, and being told that no one is interested in cutting a deal to get Dodd back.

"Loplop" is an episode about madness, and any conversation about madness in Fargo's second season has to begin with Peggy Blumquist. Peggy, as Hank Larsson gently put it earlier this season, is a little touched in the head. From the moment she was introduced, making Hamburger Helper while a man she struck with her car bled out in her garage, it's been obvious that there's something wrong with her.

But the full extent of Peggy's mania isn't really clear until the beginning of "Loplop," when she hallucinates that a man is giving her a Lifespring-style interrogation as she sits on the stairs, just feet away from a corpse. "Do you feel cold sometimes even when it's hot?" asks the hallucination. "Do you understand the difference between thinking and being?" To Peggy, this is the breakthrough she's been waiting for; if she gets out of the messiness of her own warped mind and commits to taking concrete action, she'll be the fully actualized woman she so desperately wishes to be.

It's also terrible advice. Not thinking, after all, is what got Peggy into this mess in the first place — driving home with a dying man stuck in her windshield without considering what the consequences would be. In "Loplop," Peggy is operating purely on instinct, which makes her every action both impulsive and erratic. When Dodd is rude to her, she just stabs him until he clams up. When she gets bored, she starts chattering away to anyone who will listen, giving both Dodd and Hanzee the information they need to gain the upper hand. And when she gets immersed in the events of an old Ronald Reagan movie on TV — an effect Fargo simulates by pulling the camera all the way in until the movie displaces Fargo itself on your TV screen — she fails to notice that her very dangerous captive has managed to escape his bonds.

Ed, Peggy's dim and devoted husband, is apparently blind to the depth of her madness. And while Ed's grip on reality is much more stable, he's also begun to buy into his own misleading press clippings. When Fargo's second season premiered, Ed was the butcher of Luverne — a friendly, doughy man who would sell you steaks or burgers over the counter in a small-town meat shop. Now, Ed is the Butcher of Luverne — an increasingly notorious killer with the blood of several men on his hands.

Of course, Ed isn't really a hardened murderer. He's a dope, trying to keep his head above water in the midst of a conflict he can't even understand, let alone win. And if Ed has any sense at all, any grand self-delusions about being the Butcher of Luverne disappear the moment Hanzee arrives at the cabin.

Hanzee is one of Fargo's most enigmatic and intriguing characters. Our rare glimpse into his brain — a childhood memory of a rabbit being pulled out of a hat at a magic show, intercut with a rabbit he killed in the present day — told us all we needed to know about the way he views the world. When he does talk, it's usually about the Vietnam War. Earlier this season, Hanzee told Sonny about his horrific experience during the war: searching tunnel after tunnel for booby traps while cutting the ears off the enemy soldiers he encountered. In "Loplop," when he enters a bar seeking information and endures open racism, he quietly protests on behalf of his service: three tours, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Star. "You're welcome," he says, before he's pushed hard enough to retaliate with open violence.

Underneath his stoic demeanor, Hanzee's mind is clearly roiling. After interrogating a gas station attendant in a scene that consciously recalls a similar moment from No Country for Old Men, he arrives at the cabin. Instead of rescuing Dodd — who expresses his gratitude by referring to him as a "half-breed" and a "mongrel" — Hanzee puts a bullet in his head and asks Peggy for a haircut, which he clearly believes will be the next step toward making himself into something besides a contract killer. "I'm tired of this life," he says, sounding like he means it.

But in Fargo, escaping the consequences of your actions isn't as simple as changing your appearance and running away. (Just ask Lorne Malvo.) When Lou Solverson and Hank Larsson show up at the cabin, Hanzee fire off a few bullets before running away, leaving Ed and Peggy to face the lawmen. There are just two episodes left in Fargo's second season, and with so many loose ends left to be tied up, this may be the last episode in which we spend any significant time with the Blumquists. Once again, they've managed to escape from a nightmarish situation with their lives — but it's hard to imagine a Fargo in which their luck extends any further.

Read more Fargo recaps:

• Fargo and the weapons we choose
• Fargo and the fog of war
• The structural audacity of Fargo
• The radical women of Fargo
• Fargo and the myth of Sisyphus
• The truth is out there: The UFOs and aliens on FX's Fargo, explained
• Minnesota Nice vs. Evil: The moral universe of FX's remarkable Fargo