S05.E07: Linda

[AimingforYoko]

Quote

Dot takes a fantastic journey.

WTF ending. So she imagined the whole thing with Linda? 

Most uncomfortable puppet show ever.

Oh Gator. If you're lucky, you'll just go down for 2nd Degree Murder. If you're not, you'll get your wish and face Munch. He's a complete waste of space, but with Roy as his dad, was he really going to be anything else?

[LadyintheLoop]

Another shot from the movie, though probably no woodchipper on the scene.

I think the restaurant bulletin board had a recipe for piccata; later the Lindas had it for dinner. 

So that's the back story to "they took me in"? Linda Tillman brought her home and groomed her to be her replacement? So Roy would let her leave?

[WaltersHair]

Unless Linda is dead, then Nadine's first marriage isn't legal either. I'm just catching up on the series, so I may have missed this detail.

I'm loving it. Feels like old times and the movie callbacks are great. I remember Juno Temple from The Brass Teapot. Great underrated movie.

The accents are awful as  usual.

[SunnyBeBe]

I’m late!  Watching tonight and will catch up by next week.  I hope this is a good season.  

[LadyintheLoop]

Quote

Unless Linda is dead, then Nadine's first marriage isn't legal either.

Or he divorced Linda before he married Nadine. And divorced Nadine for desertion before he married Karen. Unless they're a group that doesn't believe in government marriage at all, Odin would tolerate no less for his daughter.

I keep thinking, though, that Karen was the fourth wife, not the third. What if Linda is just a red herring, her fate was never a mystery, and #3 is the one who ominously disappeared?

[thuganomics85]

Took me till the end credits to place Kari Matchett as "the" Linda a.k.a. Roy's first wife who basically offered up Nadine as a replacement and then bailed on her (and Gator, her son) the first chance she got.  Yeah, I get what Roy was doing to her was hell on earth, but to basically doom someone to your fate and even abandon your own child takes self-preservation to a whole other level.  But I'm guess that the end means that Dot never actually reunited with her and this was all in her head?  I wonder if the real Linda is still out there.

Seeing Dot's story through an actual puppet show was daunting as hell.

Ah, Gator!  You plan on trying to murder Ole, but it just ends with you pretty much killing everyone who isn't him, heh.  No way Gator is making it out of this in one piece.

Looks like Wayne's attitude change includes basically giving away new cars dirt cheap by simply doing a "trade' with old ones.  I wonder if there will be more to this.

Dot and Roy finally reunite!  Uh oh!!

[Spartan Girl]

1 hour ago, thuganomics85 said:

Yeah, I get what Roy was doing to her was hell on earth, but to basically doom someone to your fate and even abandon your own child takes self-preservation to a whole other level. 

Seriously. But Dot isn’t so different, considering she got another man killed to save Wayne. 

[peeayebee]

When we got that shot of Dot looking at the bulletin board, I was wondering what she was looking at, but this was kinda like The Usual Suspects, where Verbal Kint gets his whole story from the bulletin board and other things in the police station. I noticed the piccata recipe and a For Sale flyer, but I didn't get a good look at anything else there. I'll probably rewatch that scene. 

Of course before she got to the diner the song on the radio was I'm Your Puppet, so that was the seed for her dream.

Oh and after her puppet show, Dot said, "Why am I so tired?" I wondered too. Well, it's because she's actually sitting exhausted in a diner booth. 

For a second I thought Linda was probably dead, but since she sent Dot the postcard, she must have made it out alive. Roy may be a bigamist -- Well, he is because he's married to the current wife and also Dot -- but I was thinking about Linda. With his power, I suppose he could have had the marriage annulled or just said she died, but I think he just went ahead and married Dot while still being married to Linda.

That puppet show was incredible. Well done technically, but also awful to watch. That was a good way to depict the abuse he inflicted on his wives. 

Wayne has always been sweet, but now it's like he's super sweet. Watching him with Scotty gave me the warm & fuzzies.

I wonder if Munch knew the tracker was on his car or if he just assumed that Gator would be out to get him. He must have found the tracker, otherwise he'd know there was no way Gator could find him. Luckily he had a body to act as HIS puppet. But I was shocked when Gator made that shot. How can the show kill off Munch this early!? Well, they got me.

Poor Mama Munch.

When the nurse told Dot that her husband was there, I knew (we all knew?) that it was Roy. Boy, the dread I felt even before he walked in the room.

That windmill that Dot stopped at to dig out the postcard looked familiar. Has this been in an earlier ep or maybe an earlier Fargo? Or maybe it was used in another movie or show. Or maybe it's just one of a million windmills.

Edited December 27, 2023 by peeayebee

[possibilities]

I wondered about that spot-- what did she bury there, and why? Or was that just another part of her dream? I can't remember the sequence of events, what happened before the diner or after. I did get suspicious when she ran out of gas. Dot doesn't seem like the kind of person who forgets to fill the tank when she's traveling.

[Jodithgrace]

Wasn’t Dot’s finding of the postcard part of her dream? That means that we don’t know if Linda is alive or dead. 
More dream clues. Dot’s car died right at the sign to the shelter, and she found it unerringly even though she had never been there.

 Then, after the puppet show, she and Linda are back in her car, now mysteriously repaired.
 

Also, the other woman’s puppets were basic hand puppets, but suddenly Linda is creating this Bill Baird quality marionette with jointed hands, etc. I figured that the other puppets and sets, etc. were a fantasy as she told her story, but we saw her make that first marionette. 

I thought at the time that it was weird that the women had to carve the heads from wood. I mean, if the purpose of the puppet shows was to have the women tell their story, why not provide styrofoam balls or some other easier material? The purpose isn’t woodworking 101. 

[Dev F]

50 minutes ago, Jodithgrace said:

Wasn’t Dot’s finding of the postcard part of her dream? That means that we don’t know if Linda is alive or dead.

Yeah, it was definitely in her dream. One of the biggest clues that the whole plotline was a fantasy was the fact that she pulled the "Camp Utopia" name from one of the postcards in the diner.

I was suckered by the twist, but I wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that plenty of the series' "real" plotlines have been just as fussy and contrived—going all the way back to what most viewers consider the high point of the series, season 2, when the story spends multiple episodes teasing the fact that Peggy will end up embroiled in the Sioux Falls Massacre because she's headed to a conference there, but eventually she gives up on going to the conference and ends up in Sioux Falls by complete random chance. Like, even in this episode, was the fantasy sequence all that much more contrived than the B story, in which Gator happens to catch up with Munch right after the old woman's son shows up and tries to extort him and he ends up killing him and using his body as a decoy?

In fact, the slightly heightened weirdness of the Camp Utopia story just made me realize how much the show's usual contrivances bother me. The Coen brothers' films have a neo-noir sensibility that explores the inescapable logic of unintended consequences, but when you can see the hand of the writers too obviously nudging the consequences in a meaningful direction, the vibe changes from "neo-noir" to "morality play," which I find much less appealing.

[possibilities]

I'm wondering where she meant to be going, and would have wound up if not for the accident. Was she going to kill Roy? Or...?

[LadyintheLoop]

For all the good work shown there was something a bit creepy and cultish about the camp, which makes sense once you realize it was Dot's dream. "Saint Linda" cast herself as Dot's savior, and set her up to take her name of Mrs. Tillman.

[peeayebee]

Uh. I was sure the little windmill scene was before she got to the diner. I'll have to rewatch. I did see the display of Camp Utopia postcards in the diner, but I obviously got mixed up.

1 hour ago, possibilities said:

I'm wondering where she meant to be going, and would have wound up if not for the accident. Was she going to kill Roy? Or...?

I didn't really think about that. In the dream she was looking for Linda. IRL she still might have been hoping to find Linda, heading up to the area to ask around, though that doesn't really make sense, because if Linda had left Roy (rather than being murdered by him), then she probably would have changed her name like Dot did.

So if Dot was driving up there to kill Roy, she didn't come prepared. It didn't look like she had guns or any weapons, though that would be a fool's errand in any case.

[iMonrey]

3 hours ago, Dev F said:

Gator happens to catch up with Munch right after the old woman's son shows up and tries to extort him and he ends up killing him and using his body as a decoy?

Oh. Somehow I didn't clock that he was using the body of the guy he'd just killed as a decoy. I figured it was just a dummy rigged to spurt fake blood in case Gator had binoculars. 

I felt cheated when I realized the entire Linda saga had just been a daydream, I'll admit. But it was still effective and informative. The entire puppet show sequence was so imaginative and original. And answered a lot of questions. 

2 hours ago, possibilities said:

I'm wondering where she meant to be going, and would have wound up if not for the accident. Was she going to kill Roy? Or...?

Yeah good question. The episode was a deliberate fake-out so I feel like it was just set up to mislead us. But Dot must have been going somewhere with a purpose and we still don't know exactly what that purpose was. Maybe there is a Camp Utopia, maybe that's really where Linda is. And half the episode was just Dot imagining what would happen once she got there.

It doesn't seem likely she was planning to kill Roy. She knows the compound but she'd be up against a lot of his goons.

[Lonesome Rhodes]

One of the most fantastical instances of episodic television I have ever endured.  I wanted and hoped...and hoped...and hoped that the 'explanations" of the goings on, e.g. the whole Linda cabin stuff, would make real world sense.  Oh, well.

How did Munch know Gator was gonna choose to shoot at him in that manner?  It's pushing it quite a bit, imo, to have Munch act as if he knew he were being tracked.  Did he really kill that ingrate son, or was it me dreaming a happy moment?

It does seem like Wayne is playing it crazy like a fox all the sudden.  Maybe more of Lorraine rubbed off on him than he has ever, ever, ever let on.   

The doll show metaphor of Dot's abuse was artful.  it was also gratuitous as hell.  We already knew FULL well that Roy beat the crap out of his "properties" all along.  We even had pictures!  What was the point of spending allllll that time setting it up and then re-enacting?  And it was all a dream.  Turrible indulgence on Hawley's part.  

Was I wrong to try to telepathically warn Dot to not use a pink Sweet & Low packet for sweetening when she was in the diner?

[SnarkAttack]

I'm getting frustrated, I find the series to be moving very slow.  Not much content.  And the damn commercials, OMG.

[cardigirl]

I just want Dot and Wayne and Scotty to end up together and safe. Not likely with this show m. 😔

[aghst]

10 hours ago, possibilities said:

I'm wondering where she meant to be going, and would have wound up if not for the accident. Was she going to kill Roy? Or...?

She left Scottie with Indira, presumably because she had a purpose?

She promised to be back in a couple of days I thought.

Yet she just wandered into a particular diner, where she'd be victimized in a random way and end up in Roy's clutches.

She's shown to be a careful planner as well as a genius, McGuyver-like improviser.

Maybe the vivid way she re-enacted her victimization in her dream shows that she still has PTSD, despite cleverly fending off Roy's attempts to abduct her?

If a part of her believes that she just needs to find Linda, convince her to go to the cops with her and it would solve all her problems, maybe she doesn't have a plan.

She learned to fight at some point and had some ideas on what to do if Roy caught up to her again.  But maybe the dream suggests she doesn't have ideas, that her self-reliance to be safe and protect her family is at an end.

At the end of the episode, she's seen as pretty helpless, quite a contrast from the tiger she's shown herself to be.  Or the one who told Lorraine to back off.

The way she ends up captured is crazy, seems like a deus ex machina not to save the hero but in this case, to put the heroine in danger, just to move the plot along to the remaining 3 episodes.

Roy and Gator are going to dare other local law enforcement to stop them -- convenient since Roy believes he is the law, even if he doesn't win that election.

So you would think it would be up to the FBI but it's clear they have their own agenda, which isn't to protect someone like Dot but to get Roy in a way that advances their careers.

The good guys this season would be Indira and Witt Farr.  Lorraine may use her resources to help Dot.  Are they going to be enough?

[possibilities]

What happened to Lamore Morris, anyway? He just disappeared?

[Bannon]

The puppet show and Roy's arrival in the hospital room were as disturbing as anything I've seen in episodic television. I can see why some found it gratuitous and not providing new information, but I think it really illuminated the depth of Dot's grim desperation, which I think is the central element of this story.

[TakomaSnark]

10 hours ago, SnarkAttack said:

I'm getting frustrated, I find the series to be moving very slow.  Not much content.  And the damn commercials, OMG.

I'm with you. The performances and set pieces keep me coming back (so, an improvement on S3 and S4, both of which I bailed on very early) but compared with S1 or S2, there's just not a lot going on. There's only three episodes left!

4 hours ago, possibilities said:

What happened to Lamore Morris, anyway? He just disappeared?

Right? He better be the star of the final batch of episodes or I'm going to wonder what the point of his character was supposed to be.

[Spartan Girl]

Are we sure Linda is still alive and out there, since the whole thing was a dream? Roy could have easily killed her and covered it up, just saying…

[TakomaSnark]

42 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Are we sure Linda is still alive and out there, since the whole thing was a dream? Roy could have easily killed her and covered it up, just saying…

My assumption is that she is dead, either by Roy's hand or her own (if she felt there was no escape). 

I did appreciate the use of 'Linda'

Spoiler

as a nod to one of the last and somewhat forgotten victims of S1. Pearl was abusive and one could almost sympathize with her partner finally snapping but Linda was nothing but warm and supportive of Lester all along. 

(Spoilering in case anyone has not watched S1.)

[peeayebee]

I sure hope we find out what Dot's plan was.

I think someone here suggested Linda was buried at that windmill. If so, maybe Dot's plan was to discover the body and bring law enforcement/FBI there. In her dream she wanted to bring Linda back with her to tell the truth of what happened. So IRL Linda's corpse would tell the truth of what happened to her. 

I hope Dot didn't plan on actually bringing the body back with her because she would be disturbing evidence and the crime scene. So I think she suspected Linda was buried there -- and maybe other people? -- so she wanted to make sure of that before she talked to the police.

[Starchild]

9 hours ago, aghst said:

The good guys this season would be Indira and Witt Farr.  Lorraine may use her resources to help Dot.  Are they going to be enough?

Don't forget wild card Munch.

Gator just made it personal, and Munch's priorities are now aligned with Dot's. She may not be counting on the help of one of her would-be abductors, but she's going to get it. Probably when she least expects it.

[iMonrey]

I'd be interested to know more about Nadine's pre-Roy life. In the puppet show, she said when she got her "monthlies" the "wolves" came and she ran away from everything. What does that mean exactly? My best guess is that she was being victimized, perhaps molested, even before Roy, and ran away from home, which is when Linda found her. We know nothing about her actual parents or family.

18 hours ago, Lonesome Rhodes said:

What was the point of spending allllll that time setting it up and then re-enacting?  And it was all a dream.  Turrible indulgence on Hawley's part.  

I thought it answered quite a lot of questions. We learned how she ended up living with Roy and then becoming his "wife." We learned she had a close relationship with Gator who was a bit younger than her. We learned about Linda and how she basically offered up Nadine as a substitute for herself. It was an awful story but it told us all about Nadine and Roy's history.

[AimingforYoko]

6 hours ago, TakomaSnark said:

What happened to Lamore Morris, anyway? He just disappeared?

 

[ReclinerTurnip]

Near the end of the episode, did anyone else hear the nurse call Dot/Nadine, "Linda"?   Wondering if Roy identified her as such.  Or if I was just sleepy and heard things in my confusion. 

 

[Starchild]

I don't recall that.

[Maire]

Reddit has me convinced that Linda is dead at Roy's hand. From the time she closes her eyes in the diner to when she opens them is a dream, including digging up the postcard. The notes on the bulletin board and the music in the background are all incorporated into the dream.

Acting out the abuse with puppets was so dramatic and effective. Much more so than if we'd seen it firsthand. So well done.

[rur]

42 minutes ago, ReclinerTurnip said:

Near the end of the episode, did anyone else hear the nurse call Dot/Nadine, "Linda"?   Wondering if Roy identified her as such.  Or if I was just sleepy and heard things in my confusion. 

 

I thought she called her Linda, too. 

I was also puzzled when Dot was talking about her husband, Wayne, and the nurse didn't correct her. I can't imagine Roy introducing himself with  anything other than his full name and title as a way of asserting authority in any situation, and the nurse said they had to track down who Dot was, so she should have picked up on the different husband's name. 

 

FWIW, I'm putting this as a spoiler, it's an article with  the writers talking about the episode.

Spoiler

https://screenrant.com/fargo-season-5-dot-puppet-dream-explained-writers/

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by rur

[LadyintheLoop]

Quote

My best guess is that she was being victimized, perhaps molested, even before Roy, and ran away from home, which is when Linda found her. 

Right. Who escapes unwanted sexual attention by running away and hitting the streets? Someone who's in more danger at home.

I'm still trying to figure out whether Roy had three wives or four. There were four wedding portraits on the bedroom wall; could one have been of Roy's parents? And when the Feds are talking to their boss about people disappearing from Roy's orbit Meyer includes "two of his wives," not "his first two wives." The twins are young enough that there could have been a brief marriage between Nadine and Karen.

Maybe Roy consented to a divorce from Linda so that he could marry Nadine. In that case #3 could be the missing wife, Linda wouldn't have to hide, and Dot might indeed have been on her way to meet her.

[peeayebee]

3 hours ago, Starchild said:

Don't forget wild card Munch.

Gator just made it personal, and Munch's priorities are now aligned with Dot's. She may not be counting on the help of one of her would-be abductors, but she's going to get it. Probably when she least expects it.

And Gator took the money back, so Roy hasn't paid the debt for Munch's job of capturing Dot. That's even more incentive for Munch to help her.

 

48 minutes ago, rur said:

I thought she called her Linda, too. 

I was also puzzled when Dot was talking about her husband, Wayne, and the nurse didn't correct her. I can't imagine Roy introducing himself with  anything other than his full name and title as a way of asserting authority in any situation, and the nurse said they had to track down who Dot was, so she should have picked up on the different husband's name. 

I just rewatched that bit. It was Dot who said, "Linda?" as she was waking up in the hospital bed.

Maybe the nurse didn't correct Dot referring to her husband as Wayne because, as the nurse said, Dot had hit her head hard, so maybe the nurse just let that slide because of a possible concussion.

[Irlandesa]

The more this sits with me, the more I like this episode.  I also think Linda is dead, but Roy told everyone that Linda had run away. As a regular viewer of Dateline, that often happens when a spouse kills their husband/wife.  They say the person just left everyone behind until their skeleton is eventually found buried in the backyard. 

So for a long while, I think Dot has believed that Linda ran away or at least wanted to believe it but deep down she knows the truth.  Either just out of suspicion or she saw things she wants to forget. She might feel like Linda was killed because Roy decided he wanted her.  Even though Dot is a victim too, she may have residual guilt about that. 

[peeayebee]

If/When Linda's body is found, I hope that Gator is there to witness it. How would he react?

[aghst]

1 hour ago, peeayebee said:

If/When Linda's body is found, I hope that Gator is there to witness it. How would he react?

 

Gator is an irredeemable villain at this point.

He may have been a victim when he was a kid as depicted in the puppet play.

But he threw in his lot with Roy and has probably killed many more than what's been shown.

His attempt to kill Munch wasn't his first rodeo and even though he didn't intend to kill Mama Munch, it's still on him.

 

So would he turn on Roy at that point?  Would he still care that Roy killed Linda?

Other than possible helping to take Roy down, Gator's reaction may not matter since he's probably a multiple murderer.

[jenn31]

On 12/27/2023 at 5:48 AM, Spartan Girl said:

Seriously. But Dot isn’t so different, considering she got another man killed to save Wayne. 

Think she did the world a favor.

Edited December 28, 2023 by jenn31

[TakomaSnark]

31 minutes ago, aghst said:

 

Gator is an irredeemable villain at this point.

He may have been a victim when he was a kid as depicted in the puppet play.

But he threw in his lot with Roy and has probably killed many more than what's been shown.

His attempt to kill Munch wasn't his first rodeo and even though he didn't intend to kill Mama Munch, it's still on him.

 

So would he turn on Roy at that point?  Would he still care that Roy killed Linda?

Other than possible helping to take Roy down, Gator's reaction may not matter since he's probably a multiple murderer.

I'm going to reserve judgment until I see how they land the plane.

Gator may seem irredeemable but, to link back to S1

Spoiler

, perhaps if/when he sees harm about to come to his *sister* Linda (Dot) - someone who was never unkind to him (until he came to kidnap her back to the ranch) - and connects her behavior with the disappearance of his mother Linda, he will do the opposite of Lester Nygaard and not allow her to be a sacrificial lamb to a cold-blooded killer.

Am I perhaps giving him too much credit? Sure. But I find this season has been so slow moving with its parts that we are due for major course corrections in the coming final hours. If we don't get some jaw-dropping character surprises among the secondary set of players, I'm not sure where this season is going to take us.

[peeayebee]

I don't agree that Gator is an irredeemable villain. Yes, he's done terrible things, and yes, he continues to be bad, but like TakomaSnark, I'm reserving judgment. Anyway, I suspect we'll see him react to Linda's dead body and realize that his father killed his mother, and that will be interesting to see, as well as satisfying since he LIKELY will turn on his father whose approval he's long been seeking.

[Starchild]

8 hours ago, peeayebee said:

And Gator took the money back, so Roy hasn't paid the debt for Munch's job of capturing Dot. That's even more incentive for Munch to help her.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think Munch is consciously going to try to help Dot. I do think he's going to strike at Roy and Gator at some opportune moment, distracting them and indirectly giving Dot an unexpected but critical advantage.

[peeayebee]

Maybe, but seeing Munch defend Mama like he did, I can imagine him defending Dot. The only reason he had for kidnapping her was that Roy was going to pay him. So if he sees Gator or Roy or any of Roy's men trying to grab her, I think he might do something.

Or not. It certainly could be as you said, with Munch's focus being on getting back at Gator (and Roy).

[CJinSD]

This is two weeks in a row that the show relied on easter eggs for the hardcore fans to carry episodes. I gave up on the 4th season after two episodes. This time I made it through seven.

[iMonrey]

17 hours ago, peeayebee said:

I don't agree that Gator is an irredeemable villain. Yes, he's done terrible things, and yes, he continues to be bad, but like TakomaSnark, I'm reserving judgment.

I don't need Gator to be "redeemed" but I kind of hope he ends up helping Dot. I think it's interesting that in Dot's daydream, she told Linda that Gator wants to be good, but he wants more than that to be like his father. 

[DMK]

I don’t normally like “it never happened” themed episodes but I liked this one because of how much we learned about Dot’s backstory and what’s going on in her head. From her perspective, she felt like Linda brought Dot in to be her replacement so she could escape. 

In reality, it’s most likely that wasn’t the case, I bet Linda brought Dot in just because she was teenage kid that needed a home, Roy swooped in and preyed on her, when Linda confronted him about it, he killed her and told Dot and Gator she left them. 

[Spartan Girl]

2 hours ago, DMK said:

I don’t normally like “it never happened” themed episodes but I liked this one because of how much we learned about Dot’s backstory and what’s going on in her head. From her perspective, she felt like Linda brought Dot in to be her replacement so she could escape. 

In reality, it’s most likely that wasn’t the case, I bet Linda brought Dot in just because she was teenage kid that needed a home, Roy swooped in and preyed on her, when Linda confronted him about it, he killed her and told Dot and Gator she left them. 

I’d like to believe that’s true, but this is Fargo, where people do terrible things all the time.

[peeayebee]

4 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I don't need Gator to be "redeemed" but I kind of hope he ends up helping Dot. I think it's interesting that in Dot's daydream, she told Linda that Gator wants to be good, but he wants more than that to be like his father. 

I don't need Gator to be redeemed either, but what exactly do each of us mean by that? For me, I expect him to 'see the light,' i.e., see how terrible his father is. He witnessed this as a child, which we saw in the puppet reenactment, but he was raised to respect his father and, like all children, he wanted his love, so he (I would say) put this memory in a little box and focused on pleasing Roy.

If it happens that Linda's body is discovered and Gator realizes that Roy killed her, he may not do anything except acknowledge to himself that Roy is evil and not one to be emulated. That, to me, is a redemption.

 

3 hours ago, DMK said:

I don’t normally like “it never happened” themed episodes but I liked this one because of how much we learned about Dot’s backstory and what’s going on in her head. From her perspective, she felt like Linda brought Dot in to be her replacement so she could escape. 

In reality, it’s most likely that wasn’t the case, I bet Linda brought Dot in just because she was teenage kid that needed a home, Roy swooped in and preyed on her, when Linda confronted him about it, he killed her and told Dot and Gator she left them. 

I think it IS the case. Linda may have started out simply wanting to help Nadine, but at dinner she slyly compliments Roy at how good he is at different subjects and therefore should teach Nadine. Linda could have taught Nadine herself, I'm sure, so I agree with Dot/Nadine that Linda did this deliberately to redirect Roy's attentions elsewhere. Unfortunately, he still beat her.

I'll add that it's possible Linda had only good intentions and didn't mean for Roy to go after Nadine, but I'm leaning the other way.

When Linda is gone and then returns, I first thought she had been healing somewhere -- hospital? with Roy's relatives? -- after the beatings, but maybe she did just go to visit her sister. 

[DMK]

17 hours ago, peeayebee said:

I don't need Gator to be redeemed either, but what exactly do each of us mean by that? For me, I expect him to 'see the light,' i.e., see how terrible his father is. He witnessed this as a child, which we saw in the puppet reenactment, but he was raised to respect his father and, like all children, he wanted his love, so he (I would say) put this memory in a little box and focused on pleasing Roy.

If it happens that Linda's body is discovered and Gator realizes that Roy killed her, he may not do anything except acknowledge to himself that Roy is evil and not one to be emulated. That, to me, is a redemption.

Yeah, I don’t expect Gator’s redemption to mean he realizes the error of his ways and suddenly becomes a goody two shoes. He’s not the grinch who returns all the stolen Christmas presents and all is forgiven. But he can have an epiphany about how truly heinous Roy is and turn on him and still pay for the things he’s done himself. 

Quote

I think it IS the case. Linda may have started out simply wanting to help Nadine, but at dinner she slyly compliments Roy at how good he is at different subjects and therefore should teach Nadine. Linda could have taught Nadine herself, I'm sure, so I agree with Dot/Nadine that Linda did this deliberately to redirect Roy's attentions elsewhere. Unfortunately, he still beat her.

I'll add that it's possible Linda had only good intentions and didn't mean for Roy to go after Nadine, but I'm leaning the other way.

This is still Dot’s perspective. To her in hindsight, thinking Linda bailed, it seems like Linda maneuvered her to spend extra time with Roy. Or Linda, having only lived in the house with Roy and Gator and no teenage girls to that point, and didn’t realize Roy would have such a predilection, simply wasn’t able to teach Dot STEM material and thought Roy would be better at it. 

If Linda is truly dead like I believe she is, we may never know what her true intentions were but I believe that at the very least, she wouldn’t abandon her son like that, let alone condemn Dot to the same fate. 

Edited December 30, 2023 by DMK

[aghst]

Even if he does something heroic in the end, Gator at least killed that old woman and intended to kill Munch.

But it's unlikely his first rodeo.

So he'd have to answer for at least the one murder we saw on screen.

 

 

[peeayebee]

I'm 99% sure Linda is dead, so I agree that she didn't abandon her son.

Of course the dream is all Dot's perspective -- the notorious unreliable narrator -- but I believe her view that Linda edged Roy toward Dot, and I think we're meant to accept it. There's no way to refute it (if indeed Linda is dead), and no way to confirm it. But Linda was a clever woman, as we saw by the way she spoke to the manager in the store. To Roy she said, "I can read with her, but Roy, you're so much better at math and science and the like, so really, you should teach her." Linda wasn't stupid. She was appealing to Roy's ego here to get him to be Dot's teacher and to give herself some space from him. Even if she had no idea that Roy would rape Dot -- and I believe she was choosing not to think about that -- she knew that he was violent, not only toward her but toward Gator. If she was really concerned about Dot, she could have taught her herself.