NORMAL

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Alex

In Osaka, Japan, Oyabun (Takahiro Inoue), the leader of the Yakuza, calls a meeting of his henchman. Three of his lieutenants have failed him in a recent task, and he orders them to pay penance by each taking a blade and cutting off one of their fingers in front of him. Joe (Peter Shinkoda) and a second man do so, but the third one hesitates, unable to bring himself to remove his own finger, instead hiding it behind his hand. Oyabun decapitates him with a blade and orders Joe to go to Normal, Minnesota.

Three weeks later, in Normal, Ulysses Richardson (Bob Oedenkirk) has arrived and is staying at a local motel. It’s a very small very quaint town where everyone knows everyone – and it’s brutally cold and snowy. Sheriff Gunderson, the former sheriff, has recently passed away and Ulysses has been brought in from out of town for a temporary eight week job as interim sheriff until the town can elect a new one. Ulysses is separated from his wife Penny, but still calls and leaves her voicemails updating her on how he is doing. His junior partner, Deputy Mike Nelson (Billy MacLellan) is excited to have a new partner and buddies up to Ulysses. Ulysses finds the town’s problems pretty simple, and he meets other locals such as bartender Moira (Lena Headey), hardware store owner Maynard, and the elderly Mary Beth who owns a yarn store.

Ulysses finalizes the paperwork for Gunderson’s death, which the town medical examiner Dr. Vilie has ruled an accident – apparently Gunderson went out fishing drunk in the dead of night and froze to death. The Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler) gives a rousing toast at the memorial for Gunderson. Later, Kibner tells Ulysses that he likes how lax Ulysses is with the rules in the town, and thinks he could be a great permanent replacement for Sheriff. Deputy Blaine Anderson (Ryan Allen) makes clear he thinks he would be the best one to be sheriff. Looking out the window, Ulysses sees Alex (Jess McLeod), Gunderson’s only child, arguing with Anderson, who doesn’t let Alex into the memorial and sends them away.

Later, at the bar, Ulysses bonds with Moira, and tells her the story of how he ended up in Normal. In his previous job he had a young woman come to him and say her father was abusing her; he didn’t believe her. The abuse was real, however, and the daughter snapped and held her father at gunpoint. Ulysses tells Moira that the daughter shot her father and aimed the gun at him, and he was forced to shoot her. He says after that he got completely lost and withdrawn, even from his wife, which led to their separation. The next day at the motel, Ulysses meets Lori (Reena Jolly) and her dog Ollie at the vending machine, where he helps her dislodge an item that had not come out. She is friendly, though Ulysses notices she has a gun.

Later in the evening, Ulysses finds a car on the side of the road and stops to investigate. Alex is inside, not driving but drinking and depressed over their father’s death and the town’s rejection of them for being non-binary. Ulysses asks to have a drink with Alex and gets in the car, seeing Alex too has a gun and a Gunderson belt. The two bond, and Ulysses kindly empathizes with Alex over her father’s death. Alex explains that they went into the military to be the perfect child but then things got complicated when people wouldn’t accept them. Ulysses calmly asks Alex to hand the gun over – he then offers to take Alex somewhere they can sleep it off and brings them to the jail, where Alex can sleep the night inside and warm in one the cells.

The next day, to the shock of the Normal police force, the alarm for the local bank goes off. In Japan, the Yakuza have a drawer of small pager alarms – one goes off, marked “Normal”. Lori and her boyfriend Keith (Brendan Fletcher) are robbing the bank armed with guns. When one of the bank patrons begins to have a heart attack, Lori and Keith both stop to help him get his heart medication; they didn’t actually want anyone to get hurt. Tom, who is in Normal working as one of the bank guards, uses the opportunity to attack, stabbing Keith and holding him at gunpoint. Lori draws her gun to try to help Keith, and in the standoff shooting begins, with Lori accidentally hitting Keith and multiple guards being killed – Tom takes a blast in the chest but has a bulletproof vest.

Ulysses, Nelson, and Blaine arrive to the scene, where Ulysses sees Ollie waiting in a car outside and realizes that the robber is Lori. He approaches the scene, even as Nelson and Blaine tell him not to – Blaine gets a call from someone telling him that if Ulysses enters the bank he needs to be killed – Blaine argues a little but agrees to follow orders. When Ulysses enters the bank, Nelson and Blaine begin shooting at him in an attempt to kill him. Ulysses fires back, blowing Blaine’s ear off the side of his head. Ulysses orders the bank manager to take him to the vault, where he discovers stacks of cash, gold bars, and contraband weapons. The manager then attempts to kill Ulysses with a gun but trips and shoots himself in the head. Realizing that Lori and the wounded Keith are the only ones not in on it, Ulysses and the two of them agree to work as a team to get out alive.

Mayor Kibner, revealed to be the one calling Blaine, arrives at the scene with the rest of the police, who huddle outside the bank. Ulysses speaks to Kibner, who explains that many small towns like theirs have died off or descended into poverty. To prevent that, they struck a deal with the Yakuza, who need to move their illegal contraband through the US. Normal agrees to hold some of that contraband in their bank for a percentage of the profits, keeping the town wealthy, and essentially everyone in the town agreed to the plan. Kibner says they picked Ulysses as Sheriff because he was supposed to not care about anything anyway. Kibner says if the Yakuza find out that anything was stolen, the whole town will be killed, so Ulysses needs to die. They cut the power, but Ulysses grabs a bazooka from the Yakuza weapons contraband and fires, which blows Mayor Kibner to pieces. The Yakuza, meanwhile, board a plane to come to Normal.

There is a massive firefight, and Ulysses, Lori, and Keith flee together through the streets of the town, now in the middle of a massive snowstorm. They get separated, with Ulysses getting blasted through the window of the hardware store and Keith and Lori taking cover in the yarn shop, where Lori tends to Keith’s wounds. Mary Beth tries to kill them, but Lori stabs her through the face with one of her knitting needles. Maynard and Ulysses get into a violent brawl in the hardware store, but eventually Ulysses is able to shove a nail into Maynard’s eye, then kick his face into a wall which pushes the nail all the way into his head. Ulysses makes a plan with Lori and Keith to get to the police station to retrieve a snowplow to escape town.

The corrupt police pursue, but Ulysses has retrieved Maynard’s exploding flares from his locked cabinet in the hardware store – Mike picks one up and snuffs out the fuze, thinking he’s a hero, but it explodes, killing him. At the police station, Keith is able to drive the snowplow, but before they can leave, police station receptionist Sally holds them at gunpoint. Ulysses stops her, and she is accidentally crushed by another car in the squad garage. Ulysses tells Lori and Keith to take the gold bar they took from the vault and go and start a new life. They worry about him, but he says he has business to take care of. They get Ollie out of the car they left him in and escape town together to start over.

At the police station, Ulysses is suddenly shot from behind by Moira. He’s wearing a vest but is a sitting duck with no weapon. Moira tells Ulysses she knows he was lying about the end of his story, and Ulysses confirms it’s true: he’s the one who shot the girl’s father, not her. He admits he’s been lost ever since. He tells Moira he’s figured out she was the one who killed Gunderson – drugging him at the bar then taking him out into the cold and watching him freeze to death. Moira admits that Gunderson didn’t want to go along with the Yakuza plan, but even more than that wanted to have his child back and make things right with Alex even though the town was bigoted. As Moira prepares to kill Ulysses, Alex, having heard everything from the jail cell, uses her father’s belt to stop Moira’s arm from being able to shoot Ulysses, then Alex grabs the gun and shoots Moira dead.

Ulysses appoints Alex to be his deputy sheriff and comes up with a plan. Alex takes a vehicle – running over Dr. Vilie on the way – and returns to the bank, where they arm the entire Yakuza fortune with C4 explosives. Ulysses contacts Blaine and the remaining townspeople with a deal, threatening to blow up the fortune with the C4: since the Yakuza will kill all of the town anyway for messing up with their profits, he says they should all work together to restage the town like nothing happened and that there were no deaths or shootouts or robberies. Once they convince the Yakuza everything is ok, they can all go on their separate ways in peace. Seeing no better option, Blaine agrees, and the town gets to work.

When the Yakuza arrive the next day, Blaine and Ulysses take them to the bank where everything seems to look normal. To celebrate, they take the Yakuza to a local restaurant for a welcoming dinner. The waiter uncorks a wine bottle, and the cork flies into the wall and knocks one of the guns off, which falls to the floor and goes off, shooting Oyabun in the head and killing him. A massive gunfight breaks out and the Yakuza and the Normal residents begins killing each other. Ulysses and Tom get into a brutal one on one fight in the kitchen, which Ulysses eventually wins and kills Tom. He brings a pie from the kitchen out into the restaurant, where he shares it with Alex and Blaine, the only survivors of the gunfight. He gives Blaine his sheriff badge, giving him the job now that he’s leaving.

One month later, things seem okay in Normal, where Blaine is now sheriff – though he does see a mysterious and threatening looking man, indicating the Yakuza saga may not be over. Ulysses is in Placid Springs, Texas, doing another interim fill-in sheriff job, and he has brought Alex with him as his deputy. He calls Penny again to leave another voicemail update, and this time she finally picks up.

Ulysses Richardson (Bob Oedenkirk) is brought in to small town Normal, Minnesota to be the interim sheriff after the previous Sheriff Gunderson has died seemingly by accident. He has separated from his wife after a police shooting made him spiral into depression. At first things seem typical and boring, but it turns out that the entire town of Normal is working with the Japanese Yakuza to store their contraband for a percentage of the profits. When Gunderson did not want to go along with the plan, they killed him.

Almost the entire town attempts to kill Ulysses once he discovers the secret, but he manages to stay alive with the help of two bank robbers named Lori and Keith as well as the sheriff's adult child Alex (Jess McLeod). Many of the corrupt town members, including Mayor Kibner (Henry Winkler) are killed, but Ulysses manages to convince the rest of the town to stop because the Yakuza are coming and will kill them all for their screw-up. Ulysses helps Lori and Keith escape then convinces the town to work with him to fool the Yakuza, but an accidental gunshot kills their leader, leading to a brawl that leaves only Ulysses, Alex, and Deputy Blaine (Ryan Allen) alive. Blaine becomes the new sheriff of Normal, while Ulysses goes to Texas for another interim sheriff job with Alex as his deputy - and his estranged wife finally starts talking to him again.