‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ Episode 4 Recap: Putting It Together

How do you solve a murder? You take a mess of facts and rearrange them until the picture makes sense. That’s the approach of Under the Banner of Heaven Episode 4, “Church and State.” Directed by Courtney Hunt from a script by Gina Welch (this is the first episode not written or co-written by creator and showrunner Dustin Lance Black), it adopts a clever formula for depicting its detective work. In a smart maneuver, the episode’s flashbacks, gleaned from conversations with figures both central and tangential to the crime, are shown out of order, the better to reflect the process by which Pyre and Taba gathered the information to begin with. Only after a full day’s work does Pyre lay it all out in order.

First, Dan Lafferty brings his brother Ron into alignment with his views on both politics and faith, subjects that for him had become inextricable. Dan has begun digging into old, largely suppressed LDS teachings, particularly regarding not just tolerance of polygamy, but the need for polygamy in order to enter the highest level of Heaven. After a business trip (at least on paper) to a rogue Fundamentalist LDS group, one infamous for marrying off children to men as old as 70, Dan greets the subject of plural marriage with an enthusiasm to match his anti-tax crusading. 

Next, Ron Lafferty’s wife Dianna and Allen Lafferty’s wife Brenda work together on a letter they sent to the Church’s Prophet, begging for help with their husbands, whose resistance to the government has them concerned regarding whether or not such behavior is in line with LDS teachings. Ron finds out about this from a bank official who denies him a loan he needs to keep his business afloat.

Then Lafferty patriarch Ammon melts down when he catches Dan smoking a cigarette and smooching a woman in a cowgirl costume who paraded down the street with Dan as part of a campaign stunt. Shortly thereafter, Dan gets so animated behind the wheel of his car while berating his poor wife Matilda about the need for plural marriage that he blows the speed limit, then pulls away from the cop that pulls him over, leading to a high-speed chase that derails his campaign for sheriff.

Finally, while in jail, Dan tells Ron it’s clear that he’s not meant to be the leader of the family, nor is their father, who’s aging and ailing—it’s got to be Ron. This seems like music to Ron’s ears, though Pyre is quick to point out in his recounting of events that Ron’s wife and his father alike both oppose what Ron and the brothers are up to.

Running parallel to all this is the general sense that where the characters live, there is effectively no privacy, as conversations with Church leaders can be passed from one to another, all in the guise of everyone trusting everyone else to follow Heavenly Father’s teachings. You see it when Ron is denied a loan because of his wife’s letter and his brothers’ behavior. You see it again when Robin Lafferty, still in custody, uses his one phone call to enlist his stake president, a high-ranking Church official who shows up at the police station expecting to have the brothers released into his custody. In the episode’s most surprising moment, Jeb is so shaken by standing up to an LDS bigwig that he literally gets sick to his stomach.

The stake president then talks to the Pyres’ bishop, whose wife digs in the screws on Pyre’s wife Rosemary, painfully reminding her of her miscarriages and encouraging the Pyres to drop the delay on their daughters’ baptism, which Jeb has postponed due to the Lafferty case.

Finally, the chief of police returns and attempts to force Jeb not to cite Mormon fundamentalism as a possible motive in the case because it will reflect badly on the Church. Jeb ignores this during a press conference, earning him his partner Bill’s praise but doing him no favors with his coreligionists. 

It doesn’t all work as well as the dizzying flashbacks or the portrayal of the LDS panopticon. I’m not fully sold on the historical flashbacks to the lives of Joseph and Emma Smith, which play like an overwrought costume drama. Gil Birmingham’s winning performance as the Native American detective Taba—the way he spits the word “charming” when he finds a stereotypical “chief” statue in a missing Mormon bishop’s home speaks volumes—papers over a lot of wise-old-cop clichés that function as copaganda. And Australian actor Sam Worthington’s American accent as Ron is all over the place.

But these are largely just quibbles. Overall, I remain very impressed with Under the Banner of Heaven—with its fine cast, its depiction of the Lafferty family’s sort of group psychosis, and its sensitive but unsparing exploration of perhaps the most American of all religions. It almost plays like a lost season of American Crime Story, which is about the highest praise I can give a true-crime TV show. And despite knowing that the facts of the case are online for anyone to see, I find myself holding off, waiting to see what comes next.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.