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Every week on "Aw Jeez: A 'Fargo' podcast," hosts Tracy Mumford and Jay Gabler recap the latest episode, and interview experts about the mayhem, the mob and the Minnesota moments in season two of "Fargo."

"Fargo" is making a splash on the TV scene for many reasons. Its a successful adaptation of a movie — not an easy project to pull off. And it just jumped 26 years back in time for its second season. Again, not a standard TV move.

This episode, we talk to NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans about where "Fargo" fits in the shifting television landscape. But first: What happened last night?

The second episode of "Fargo" opens with a scene that could be right out of "Godfather Part IV: The Prairie." 

The Kansas City gangsters we met at the end of episode one have piloted their trusty Oldsmobile all the way to Fargo, N.D., for a little meeting with the Gerhardt crime family. They pull into the compound and we get the full Coppola treatment: the stately house, the ailing patriarch, the grandchildren underfoot while everyone's packing a gun.

The Gerhardts are each doing what they do best: Grandma Floyd's calling the shots from the kitchen, Bear is outside inexplicably sharpening his axe medieval style, and Dodd is torturing the ears off a nameless fellow in the barn. 

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The Kansas City contingent is there to make the Gerhardts an offer they can't refuse: Take a buy-out, and keep running the region as employees.

"The worlds' becoming more corporate," Floyd says. "And in this world there's no room for family business." 

It's hard times, apparently, for a mob-and-pop operation.

The Gerhardts agree they don't want to take a buy-out. But they can't agree on who gets to make that decision. Otto's not coming back from his stroke, and the vacuum of power leaves Floyd fighting for control against Dodd, whose obvious distaste for women grows in every episode. They decide to settle it with steely looks across the kitchen table, surrounded by an inexplicable amount of bread.

"I'm your mother, you'll eat with me." Midwest mothering at its finest.

Dodd lets Floyd think he's ceding control, but the Gerhardts are irrevocably split — just what Kansas City wanted. 

"First Gehardt to surrender gets a shiny new apple," Kansas City's Joe Bulo schemes, back in the Oldsmobile. (Clearly Brad Garrett is loving the material, a shade darker than "Everybody Loves Raymond.")

Meanwhile, everybody's looking for Rye. Floyd, Dodd and the Kansas City mobsters are all wondering where the youngest Gerhardt brother has run off to, for their own reasons.

And the only people who really know are busy cleaning all his blood off the garage floor: Ed and Peggy Blumquist. 

Well, Ed's doing most of the cleaning. Peggy heads into town for her job at the salon, sporting the accidental black eye from all the confusion the night before. Ed stays home as the most morbid incarnation of Cinderella ever, down on his hands and knees scrubbing the floors. When he's done, all of his clothes go into the flames, down to his tighty-whities.

In town, Peggy tells the butcher shop that Ed won't make it in today — bad clams, you know how it is — and then meets up with her hyper-feminist co-worker at the hair salon. Now we understand where all that Lifespring seminar talk was coming from.

"Don't be a prisoner of 'we'!" her co-worker tells Peggy as she tries to back out of their plans. Peggy might have been ready to ditch the life domestic last episode, but her life has become infinitely more complicated in the last 24 hours, and she's got more than Lifespring on her mind now.

No one on "Fargo" is having a good day, it seems, including our friend the toupee-wearing, aspiring typewriter salesman — also known as Rye's would-be business partner. Mike Milligan, one of the Kansas City mobsters, has the salesman's neck tie tangled up in the scrollbar of a typewriter and is clack-clack-clacking at the keys. Torture by typewriter.

For anyone that loves evil characters, Milligan is going to be a delight. His pop-culture-saturated speeches are heavy with threats. His typewritten tirade against an automatic coffeemaker from Sears was one of the most chill-inducing moments of the night.  

Confronted with ten more hits on the "return" key, the typewriter salesman squawks: The last time he saw Rye, he was headed "to talk" to some judge.

We know how that worked out. The judge is one of three bodies in the Luverne morgue at the moment, from the great Waffle Hut Massacre of 1979. 

Speaking of the Waffle Hut, trusty trooper Lou has his family in the car for a rare lunch date and he pulls right into that infamous parking lot. Nothing like taking your family for a quick tour of a crime scene to show you care.

Clearly, this isn't Betsy's first rodeo. She takes Molly out to play in the snow while Lou looks for clues, and she manages to find the murder weapon. Makes you think Betsy would've made a great cop, if that had been an avenue open to her. (Season one fans know her daughter grows up to fulfill that legacy.)

During this touching family moment, the Kansas City mobsters cruise by the Waffle Hut and Lou gives them his best state trooper stare. Something tells him they're up to no good. Luckily, Hank is already on the case. (That's Ted Danson in his majestic white beard, in case you don't remember.)

Hank pulls the mobsters over farther down the snowy road. (The ensuing scene is a new spin on the Lorne Malvo and Gus Grimley traffic stop of season one.) Hank has been obsessing over that shoe he found in the tree at the Waffle Hut. He's been turning that white leather loafer over in his hands all day. So, he asks: "What's your shoe size?"

Cue another disarming speech from Milligan — who likens little Luverne to the town from the Flintstones — and some more screen time for his eerie mobster twins acting as back-up. In matching white leisure suits, they move in perfect unity, even when giving Hank the finger. 

They get the "get outta town" speech from Hank, but I don't think following directions is their strong suit.

Peggy's also on the road, getting a ride home from her co-worker and breaking the first rule of crime scene maintenance: Never have a friend over until you're done cleaning up. The co-worker doesn't catch sight of any blood, but she does discover another of Peggy's secrets: She's a toilet paper kleptomaniac.

All the toilet paper that's been missing from the salon is stuffed under Peggy's bathroom sink. 

"You're kind of a bad girl," the co-worker coos, making a pass at Peggy. Peggy politely declines, but her co-worker is on to something. We've only seen the beginning of Bad Peggy.

Meanwhile, on Main Street, the scene we all knew was coming arrives: Ed pulls up to the butcher shop with Rye's body in the back of his pick-up truck. What "Fargo" the movie did for the wood chipper, "Fargo" the show does for the meat grinder. Luverne residents should avoid any burger cook-outs or tater-tot hotdish until this is all over.

Ed's handiwork is interrupted by Lou Solverson, who makes a late night stop at Bud's Meats when he sees the light on. Just your regular late-night bacon run. 

This is the moment it could all go south: Parts of Rye are strewn across the back room and one of his fingers has even made a break for it across the shop floor. But Lou's taste for small-talk keeps him distracted long enough for Ed to get him his bacon and get him back out of the shop. 

As we draw back from the quiet chaos of small town life, a familiar voice comes on: Orson Welles, narrating his supernatural masterpiece, "War of the Worlds." Welles expounds on alien surveillance as the strange lights from episode one dance across the windows on Main Street...

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Aw Jeez: A Fargo Podcast

Tracy Mumford

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In episode two, the Kansas City mob comes to Fargo, N.D. -- and everyone might want to avoid the butcher shop for a while.

In episode two, the Kansas City mob comes to Fargo, N.D. -- and everyone might want to avoid the butcher shop for a while. We also interview NPR TV critic Eric Deggans about how "Fargo" fits into the changing TV landscape.

'Fargo' recap: Are you listening to me?

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