Jerry (William H. Macy)’s Timeline and Summary

Jerry's a hapless car salesman in serious financial trouble who's hatched a crazy scheme to get out of the whole.
In Fargo, Jerry hires Carl and Gaear to kidnap his wife for $80,000 and a brand-new Cutlass Ciera. He plans to make a bundle by cheating the kidnappers and telling his father-in-law that the ransom was a million dollars.
Back home in Minneapolis, he tries to convince his father-in-law, Wade, to help him with a real-estate deal. Wade seems interested, and Jerry tries to call off the kidnapping, to no avail.
But it turns out Wade wasn't going to give him the deal he wanted anyway. So Jerry feels much better about the kidnapping, and Carl and Gaear pull it off.
Jerry's plan quickly disintegrates. Carl and Gaear end up murdering a state trooper and two innocent bystanders and demand all $80,000 from him.
Jerry keeps trying unsuccessfully to get the scheme to work out even as everything keeps going wrong.
His father-in-law takes control of the situation and insists on paying the ransom in person on his own.
He shows up at the ransom location to find that Carl's murdered Wade.
Marge starts to figure out that Jerry's involved, and returns to the dealership to interview him.
He sees that Marge has figured things out, and takes off.
Police officers eventually track Jerry down to a motel and arrest him.
Jerry ends up in way more trouble than he started out. He's lost everything because of his harebrained scheme.