I love this movie, still my favorite by the Coen Bros. I think Marge's character is the reason this film did so well. Her pure character draws the audience in almost immediately, and the fact that she's pregnant just hammers her innocent appearance home. She is dealing with issues that are well beyond anything we could see a person like her coping with. As you said, truly a case of tortoise defeating the hare. The one question I have about this script is Marge doesn't seem to really change as a character and that's kind of the point, but how did it work so well for the Coen's? She uncovers this murder plot and even shoots someone, but then comes home to her artist husband just like any night before the incident.

Garrett, this is one of those movies which flip our perspective on what a Protagonist usually is. If the Protagonist is the character through whose point of view the story is told and the character who goes through the most significant metamorphosis, then in Fargo wouldn't it be Jerry? The movie starts out with Jerry meeting Carl and Gaear. It's his plan to have his wife kidnapped. It's his business plan presented to his father-in-law. He's the one who sets into motion everything in the Plotline. Moreover his character does go through a metamorphosis, from an opening state of Disunity [successful businessman and pillar of the community harboring grand and ultimately illegal ambitions] to Dissolution. Add to that: In the script Marge isn't introduced until P. 31. Thus if Jerry is the Protagonist, doesn't this make Marge the Nemesis, as she is out to solve the mystery and eventually bust Jerry? [Similarly I view Norman Bates to be the Protagonist in Psycho]. Once again proof of how interesting and valuable it is to use character archetypes as an analytical tool. And further evidence of how distinctive the Coen brothers are as filmmakers: Making the Nemesis the most sympathetic character in this story.

Thanks for the fresh look at the script, I've always viewed it as a split story between Marge and Jerry since we are really taken through the story between the two of them. Leave it to the Coen's to make the nemesis the one we root for!