Main Page: Anti-Mormonism
Jim Bennett's Reviews of "Under the Banner of Heaven"
Episode 1: When God Was Love
Sorry, folks. “Under the Banner of Heaven" is unwatchably bad.
Right from the outset, we have problems. The first thing we see are Garfield’s daughters wearing Little House on the Prairie dresses, suggesting a level of familial fundamentalism that is foreign to mainstream Mormons. Immediately, it’s clear that we’re going to see a lot of lazy stereotypes that don’t match the lived experience of those on the inside. Yes, there is a throwaway line that these are “costumes,” but it’s hard to believe that the obvious association with modern polygamist couture is unintentional. When we see the Laffertys at a picnic later in the episode, the young girls and even adult women are similarly attired, reinforcing the deliberate choice to paint Mormons as weirder than we actually are.
In fact, all the Mormon cultural references are weird and jarring, even the small ones. When Garfield says that he’s going to take the lead on the investigation and speak to the suspect “Mormon to Mormon,” he says it with the confidence of someone who assumes this is a normal thing for a Mormon to say. As an active Mormon for 53+ years, I can confidently say that it really isn’t, although I can’t quite put my finger on why. Yes, Garfield speaks his tin-eared dialogue with grace and conviction, but when he’s forced to deliver clunkers like “the Church vigorously discourages beards,” it’s not really his fault that none of it rings true. And when he bursts into the interrogation room quoting the Doctrine and Covenants from memory and barking questions about covenants and altars and temple recommends, it finally shifts from awkward to laughable.
Then we get a flashback where Brenda Lafferty talks about how much our Savior hates Democrats and how she can’t go to the ungodly cities of New York and Chicago and how Jesus wants her at BYU in Salt Lake City, despite the fact that BYU isn’t in Salt Lake City. At this point, the Simpsons episode where Bart gets married in Utah got more things right than this show does. There’s absolutely no way Church members are going to see themselves in this increasingly ludicrous narrative.
And it just doesn’t let up. “Heavenly Father knows you can’t turn an upside down cake to save your life,” Garfield tells his wife. Who talks like that? In or out of the Church? The Attack of the Clones monologue about the evils of sand sounds almost Shakespearean in comparison. In the next flashback, Brenda meets her future in-laws immediately tell her that “gossip is the devil’s playground” and she responds by saying “President Kimball said ‘stand ye in holy places,’ and BYU is a far better fit for those who want to live gospel standards.” It’s as if they lifted all the dialogue from New Era MormonAds.
The problems here, then, have little or nothing to do with the Church. It isn’t just that these characters aren’t authentic Mormons; they’re not authentic human beings. It’s impossible to care about what happens to these stilted cardboard cutouts. No human being has ever asked another human being “Do you all abide by the Word of Wisdom at BYU?” In fact, no human being has used the word “abide” in casual conversation since 1896. Given that Brenda Lafferty was a very real person, it’s sad that her death is being used as agitprop in a weirdly disturbing melodrama that is entirely disconnected from reality.
We get a bizarre lemonade party Book of Mormon reading, and then Brenda causes a scandal for leaving the womenfolk at the lemonade stand to do unwomanly manual labor. Did someone decide that the best way to research Mormon social gatherings was to watch an Amish barn raising? And why couldn’t they be bothered to get simple details right? When Ammon Lafferty announces that he’s going to serve a senior mission for two years, every member of the Church who served a mission in the 1980s knows that senior missions back then were only 18 months long. Not that it matters in terms of the plot, but it matters if they’re trying to convince me that my church is inherently violent and terrible. Why should I take them seriously when they couldn’t be bothered to do even the most casual research to figure out how my church actually works?
The first Joseph Smith flashback makes no sense at all. It shows a prepubescent Joseph wooing a prebuscent Emma with tales of his vision of God, strongly implying that he’s making it up to impress her. But Joseph didn’t meet Emma until he was 19, five years after the first vision was supposed to have taken place. That’s not a meaningless detail like the length of a senior mission. It’s a significant misrepresentation that demonstrates how fast and loose they’re willing to play with the historical record. This series has exhausted all claims to credibility in its first episode.
I’m in no hurry to watch the rest.
...
Allow me to revise and extend my remarks re: "Under the Banner of Heaven." Because, respectfully, I think those of you taking issue with my review on religious grounds are missing my point.
My problem with "Under the Banner of Heaven" is not that it is critical of the Church. My problem is not that it makes me feel uncomfortable about unsavory elements of Church history, or that it's causing cognitive dissonance, or that it's compelling me to confront polygamy and violence and misogyny and all kinds of terrible things that are part of the Church's legacy.
My problem is that it doesn't do those things.
At every turn, "Under the Banner of Heaven" falls short where it should have shined. It doesn't ask hard questions; it doesn't raise thorny problems; it doesn't make me squirm and sit with my discomfort. I wish it did. I think a show that forced faithful Church members to reckon with the worst parts of our past would be a magnificent thing. This show is not that thing. It is a missed opportunity to make us better.
Are there people who will see themselves in how Mormons are depicted in this series? Perhaps, yes. But by and large, they will not be mainstream, ordinary members of the Church. Should any of them decide to watch, they will see a caricature that they can easily dismiss; they can see legions of errors that erode credibility, and they will hear cringe-level dialogue that sounds as if it were written for Mormon-themed Star Wars prequels and nothing like actual human beings. They will then come away from the experience complacent, not challenged. It will have precisely the opposite effect from the one its champions wanted it to have.
And that's truly a shame.
Right from the outset, we have problems. The first thing we see are Garfield’s daughters wearing Little House on the Prairie dresses, suggesting a level of familial fundamentalism that is foreign to mainstream Mormons. Immediately, it’s clear that we’re going to see a lot of lazy stereotypes that don’t match the lived experience of those on the inside. Yes, there is a throwaway line that these are “costumes,” but it’s hard to believe that the obvious association with modern polygamist couture is unintentional. When we see the Laffertys at a picnic later in the episode, the young girls and even adult women are similarly attired, reinforcing the deliberate choice to paint Mormons as weirder than we actually are.
In fact, all the Mormon cultural references are weird and jarring, even the small ones. When Garfield says that he’s going to take the lead on the investigation and speak to the suspect “Mormon to Mormon,” he says it with the confidence of someone who assumes this is a normal thing for a Mormon to say. As an active Mormon for 53+ years, I can confidently say that it really isn’t, although I can’t quite put my finger on why. Yes, Garfield speaks his tin-eared dialogue with grace and conviction, but when he’s forced to deliver clunkers like “the Church vigorously discourages beards,” it’s not really his fault that none of it rings true. And when he bursts into the interrogation room quoting the Doctrine and Covenants from memory and barking questions about covenants and altars and temple recommends, it finally shifts from awkward to laughable.
Then we get a flashback where Brenda Lafferty talks about how much our Savior hates Democrats and how she can’t go to the ungodly cities of New York and Chicago and how Jesus wants her at BYU in Salt Lake City, despite the fact that BYU isn’t in Salt Lake City. At this point, the Simpsons episode where Bart gets married in Utah got more things right than this show does. There’s absolutely no way Church members are going to see themselves in this increasingly ludicrous narrative.
And it just doesn’t let up. “Heavenly Father knows you can’t turn an upside down cake to save your life,” Garfield tells his wife. Who talks like that? In or out of the Church? The Attack of the Clones monologue about the evils of sand sounds almost Shakespearean in comparison. In the next flashback, Brenda meets her future in-laws immediately tell her that “gossip is the devil’s playground” and she responds by saying “President Kimball said ‘stand ye in holy places,’ and BYU is a far better fit for those who want to live gospel standards.” It’s as if they lifted all the dialogue from New Era MormonAds.
The problems here, then, have little or nothing to do with the Church. It isn’t just that these characters aren’t authentic Mormons; they’re not authentic human beings. It’s impossible to care about what happens to these stilted cardboard cutouts. No human being has ever asked another human being “Do you all abide by the Word of Wisdom at BYU?” In fact, no human being has used the word “abide” in casual conversation since 1896. Given that Brenda Lafferty was a very real person, it’s sad that her death is being used as agitprop in a weirdly disturbing melodrama that is entirely disconnected from reality.
We get a bizarre lemonade party Book of Mormon reading, and then Brenda causes a scandal for leaving the womenfolk at the lemonade stand to do unwomanly manual labor. Did someone decide that the best way to research Mormon social gatherings was to watch an Amish barn raising? And why couldn’t they be bothered to get simple details right? When Ammon Lafferty announces that he’s going to serve a senior mission for two years, every member of the Church who served a mission in the 1980s knows that senior missions back then were only 18 months long. Not that it matters in terms of the plot, but it matters if they’re trying to convince me that my church is inherently violent and terrible. Why should I take them seriously when they couldn’t be bothered to do even the most casual research to figure out how my church actually works?
The first Joseph Smith flashback makes no sense at all. It shows a prepubescent Joseph wooing a prebuscent Emma with tales of his vision of God, strongly implying that he’s making it up to impress her. But Joseph didn’t meet Emma until he was 19, five years after the first vision was supposed to have taken place. That’s not a meaningless detail like the length of a senior mission. It’s a significant misrepresentation that demonstrates how fast and loose they’re willing to play with the historical record. This series has exhausted all claims to credibility in its first episode.
I’m in no hurry to watch the rest.
...
Allow me to revise and extend my remarks re: "Under the Banner of Heaven." Because, respectfully, I think those of you taking issue with my review on religious grounds are missing my point.
My problem with "Under the Banner of Heaven" is not that it is critical of the Church. My problem is not that it makes me feel uncomfortable about unsavory elements of Church history, or that it's causing cognitive dissonance, or that it's compelling me to confront polygamy and violence and misogyny and all kinds of terrible things that are part of the Church's legacy.
My problem is that it doesn't do those things.
At every turn, "Under the Banner of Heaven" falls short where it should have shined. It doesn't ask hard questions; it doesn't raise thorny problems; it doesn't make me squirm and sit with my discomfort. I wish it did. I think a show that forced faithful Church members to reckon with the worst parts of our past would be a magnificent thing. This show is not that thing. It is a missed opportunity to make us better.
Are there people who will see themselves in how Mormons are depicted in this series? Perhaps, yes. But by and large, they will not be mainstream, ordinary members of the Church. Should any of them decide to watch, they will see a caricature that they can easily dismiss; they can see legions of errors that erode credibility, and they will hear cringe-level dialogue that sounds as if it were written for Mormon-themed Star Wars prequels and nothing like actual human beings. They will then come away from the experience complacent, not challenged. It will have precisely the opposite effect from the one its champions wanted it to have.
And that's truly a shame.
Episode 3: Surrender
The latest episode of Under the Banner of Heaven is easily the worst of the three, and that’s saying something.
But here’s what I’m not saying. It’s not terrible because it’s a devastating indictment of the Church, or because it shows snippets of a temple ceremony, or because it’s doing Beelzebub’s labors in this mortal realm. It’s terrible because its characters don’t resemble human beings, let alone Mormon human beings. But most notably, it’s terrible because, as a piece of dramatic television, it’s boring, plodding, and devoid of all tension and suspense.
I mean, come on! We start with an armed standoff at a cabin, guns drawn! How do you make that boring? I’ll tell you how - you interrupt the confrontation with a cop launching into a lengthy expositional lecture about the 19th Century Haun’s Mill Massacre. Just like that, all tension evaporates. You know these guys aren’t in any real danger if they have time to make the 1984 equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation mid-standoff. And it’s a real pity, too, because nothing else of any dramatic potential happens in the rest of an episode that felt a whole lot longer than it was.
(BTW, the cabin standoff is also an absurd fiction, as the real Lafferty Brothers were captured in Vegas at a Circus Circus casino buffet. But I digress.)
We spend less time at the cabin then we do in a bishop’s office, where the stern patriarch hectors two eight-year-old girls about making sure to pay tithing on their gifts as well as their income, which seemed really loopy to me, but I’m sure plenty of people will proceed to tell me that’s exactly what happened to them. (Good for you!) We later find out that such interviews are fraught with peril, because if children don’t get baptized on a certain schedule, everyone will assume that they “failed” their interview. It doesn’t matter to anyone making this that real 8-year-old children are not in danger of failing baptismal interviews. It’s just one more bit of evidence that this is not a story about the compelling historical murders that are increasingly afterthoughts in this weird, languid, self-indulgent mess.
I don’t have much to say about the temple scene except to say it was ridiculous. People don’t talk in the middle of temple ceremonies. Ever. In my experience, I remember only one real-life exception to that rule. I was in the very same room that is depicted in the temple scene in this episode. (BTW, it was a pleasant surprise to see that room perfectly recreated, since the real room was gutted in the ongoing Salt Lake Temple remodel.) I remember that a guy officiating on this occasion had a pronounced limp, which prompted an old woman in the back to say, in full voice, “He’s a good-looking man, but I think he’s a cripple.” I wanted to burst out laughing, but I didn’t, and neither did anyone else, because that, too, doesn’t happen in the middle of temple ceremonies.
Back to the show, where more stuff happens; there are more disruptive flashbacks that don’t go anywhere, and people yell at each other, and the villains of the piece behave like comic book villains who snarl and hiss and do EEEVIL things. Until now, I’ve chalked up all awfulness to bad writing, but I’m starting to think the actors share some of the blame, too. They often seem to be commenting on their characters rather than inhabiting them. They probably think real Mormons are culty weirdos, so they’re constantly winking and smirking at the audience to let us know how much smarter and better they are than the rubes they’re being forced to play.
I think that may be why so many post-Mormons feel so possessive of this story. Everything about this show is deliberately designed to validate their decision to leave. So when current Church members say “I don’t see myself in this,” they get pushback from former members who insist we’re too blind or stupid to know that this is exactly what the Church is like. No, this is what you now think the Church is like now that you no longer participate. The show refuses to acknowledge the faintest possibility that someone can be a Mormon and not be a deluded, addled, ignorant zealot. Such an acknowledgement would make former Mormons uncomfortable, and I’m supposed to be the one who is uncomfortable.
For my part, I’d prefer uncomfortable to bored.
A few added notes, apropos of nothing:
The clunky Heavenly Father-isms continue unabated, with AG saying “Thank Heavenly Father” instead of “Thank God” being the clunkiest. Weirdest random line: some random blue-haired woman says “Time to call the Brethren into service,” as if that’s the Bat-signal the Church uses to get the Elder’s Quorum to help people move.
Any bishop who openly blabs about the private medical history of every woman in his ward would be released and possibly excommunicated. And pre-Prozac women in 1984 weren’t taking anti-depressants on a large scale. Also, when AG almost has a human moment and talks about his mother’s desire to die, the bishop starts quoting the handbook about the Church’s opposition to assisted suicide. Can’t there be one simple human exchange anywhere in this show? Just one, maybe?
I found out today that Allen Lafferty, whose fictional counterpart in this show is the one who tells us that the Church “breeds dangerous men,” is still an active, believing member of the mainstream Church. I’d be very interested to hear his reaction to this.
Yikes! That’s almost a thousand words! I’ll save more rants for Episode 4.
But here’s what I’m not saying. It’s not terrible because it’s a devastating indictment of the Church, or because it shows snippets of a temple ceremony, or because it’s doing Beelzebub’s labors in this mortal realm. It’s terrible because its characters don’t resemble human beings, let alone Mormon human beings. But most notably, it’s terrible because, as a piece of dramatic television, it’s boring, plodding, and devoid of all tension and suspense.
I mean, come on! We start with an armed standoff at a cabin, guns drawn! How do you make that boring? I’ll tell you how - you interrupt the confrontation with a cop launching into a lengthy expositional lecture about the 19th Century Haun’s Mill Massacre. Just like that, all tension evaporates. You know these guys aren’t in any real danger if they have time to make the 1984 equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation mid-standoff. And it’s a real pity, too, because nothing else of any dramatic potential happens in the rest of an episode that felt a whole lot longer than it was.
(BTW, the cabin standoff is also an absurd fiction, as the real Lafferty Brothers were captured in Vegas at a Circus Circus casino buffet. But I digress.)
We spend less time at the cabin then we do in a bishop’s office, where the stern patriarch hectors two eight-year-old girls about making sure to pay tithing on their gifts as well as their income, which seemed really loopy to me, but I’m sure plenty of people will proceed to tell me that’s exactly what happened to them. (Good for you!) We later find out that such interviews are fraught with peril, because if children don’t get baptized on a certain schedule, everyone will assume that they “failed” their interview. It doesn’t matter to anyone making this that real 8-year-old children are not in danger of failing baptismal interviews. It’s just one more bit of evidence that this is not a story about the compelling historical murders that are increasingly afterthoughts in this weird, languid, self-indulgent mess.
I don’t have much to say about the temple scene except to say it was ridiculous. People don’t talk in the middle of temple ceremonies. Ever. In my experience, I remember only one real-life exception to that rule. I was in the very same room that is depicted in the temple scene in this episode. (BTW, it was a pleasant surprise to see that room perfectly recreated, since the real room was gutted in the ongoing Salt Lake Temple remodel.) I remember that a guy officiating on this occasion had a pronounced limp, which prompted an old woman in the back to say, in full voice, “He’s a good-looking man, but I think he’s a cripple.” I wanted to burst out laughing, but I didn’t, and neither did anyone else, because that, too, doesn’t happen in the middle of temple ceremonies.
Back to the show, where more stuff happens; there are more disruptive flashbacks that don’t go anywhere, and people yell at each other, and the villains of the piece behave like comic book villains who snarl and hiss and do EEEVIL things. Until now, I’ve chalked up all awfulness to bad writing, but I’m starting to think the actors share some of the blame, too. They often seem to be commenting on their characters rather than inhabiting them. They probably think real Mormons are culty weirdos, so they’re constantly winking and smirking at the audience to let us know how much smarter and better they are than the rubes they’re being forced to play.
I think that may be why so many post-Mormons feel so possessive of this story. Everything about this show is deliberately designed to validate their decision to leave. So when current Church members say “I don’t see myself in this,” they get pushback from former members who insist we’re too blind or stupid to know that this is exactly what the Church is like. No, this is what you now think the Church is like now that you no longer participate. The show refuses to acknowledge the faintest possibility that someone can be a Mormon and not be a deluded, addled, ignorant zealot. Such an acknowledgement would make former Mormons uncomfortable, and I’m supposed to be the one who is uncomfortable.
For my part, I’d prefer uncomfortable to bored.
A few added notes, apropos of nothing:
The clunky Heavenly Father-isms continue unabated, with AG saying “Thank Heavenly Father” instead of “Thank God” being the clunkiest. Weirdest random line: some random blue-haired woman says “Time to call the Brethren into service,” as if that’s the Bat-signal the Church uses to get the Elder’s Quorum to help people move.
Any bishop who openly blabs about the private medical history of every woman in his ward would be released and possibly excommunicated. And pre-Prozac women in 1984 weren’t taking anti-depressants on a large scale. Also, when AG almost has a human moment and talks about his mother’s desire to die, the bishop starts quoting the handbook about the Church’s opposition to assisted suicide. Can’t there be one simple human exchange anywhere in this show? Just one, maybe?
I found out today that Allen Lafferty, whose fictional counterpart in this show is the one who tells us that the Church “breeds dangerous men,” is still an active, believing member of the mainstream Church. I’d be very interested to hear his reaction to this.
Yikes! That’s almost a thousand words! I’ll save more rants for Episode 4.
Episode 4: Church and State
Come, Brother. Come, sister. Abide with me as we range Under the Banner of Heaven Episode Four, Church and State. Beards vigorously encouraged.
Our show opens with the cops bursting into someone’s house that’s been ransacked. We don’t know who’s house it is, and we don’t know why it’s at all relevant to the murders. So you don’t need to worry about being distracted by any tension or excitement.
While surveying the mess, Andrew Garfield says “God, I hope they got out of here before anything happened.” Surprise! This is something a normal person would say! Alas, it’s not something a normal Mormon would say, and certainly not something a fictional UTBOH-Heavenly-Father-fearing Mormon would say. Is this a way of subtly telling us that Detective Pyre is losing his faith? Or is it just one more example of sloppy, lazy writing that has plagued this entire series from the outset? Heavenly Father only knows.
Actually, no, He doesn’t, because just a couple of minutes later, Pyre’s Heavenly Fatherisms are back as he deals with the burgeoning non-scandal of a delayed baptism for an eight-year-old. His mother recklessly says “goddamn” and AG is quick to scold her for committing a “no-no,” so we know-know (see what I did there?) that the inconsistency is likely unintentional. Oh, and that Pyre is kind of a weenie for treating his mother like an infant.
Granted, Grandma Pyre is suffering from some kind of dementia, which is apparently why the next thing she says is “the Jews need baptisms,” which is supposed to be funny, maybe? Or clever? Or just make Mormons look like we’re all racist turds who would cheerfully spout bigotry all day long if our inhibitions were down? The latter is most likely, as she goes on to talk about the Jews ending up with Hitler in the next life. Because this is why audiences are tuning in - not for a compelling drama about a brutal real-life murder, which this isn’t, but for a wooden and didactic morality play about how Mormonism stinks.
And, golly, this fictional Mormonism stinks pretty bad. In the UTBOH universe, bishops don’t give a rip about the confidentiality that is their central ecclesiastical responsibility. See, Diana Lafferty apparently wrote a letter to the President of the Church - “like writing to Heavenly Father himself!” cringe cringe cringe - that complained about Dan, her husband Ron’s brother. The letter is referred back to the local bishop, who apparently shared its content with his counselors, one of whom goes against every protocol that the Church has in place by revealing both its contents and its author directly to Ron as leverage to deny him a bank loan while Diana sits ten feet away from them. Mormonism, amiright?
We then get a quick shot of one of the “Kennedys of Utah” running for sheriff with a full parade float, complete with a covered wagon, a full horse brigade, and an Angel Moroni effigy. Because that is what happens in every small town Utah sheriff’s race except for all of them. We then cut to Brother Detective Pyre, who is interrogating Robin Lafferty, who I recently learned doesn’t exist in the real world. Apparently, we need a fake Lafferty brother to set up pointless, dramatically irrelevant flashbacks, the first of which involves Governor Boggs of 19th Century Missouri getting shot in the head. Every police interrogation in Utah devolves into history lessons with weak production values.
We then cut back to Dan Utah Kennedy smoking a cigarette for some reason, which causes Ammon Utah Kennedy to appear out of the ether to have a conniption fit and slap Dan in the back of the head. Ammon then shrieks at the lady who gave him the vile tobacco, calling her “serpent woman.” Because this is how elite families in Utah always act, and nobody finds this out of the ordinary. Goodness, how could these head-slapping, shrieking lunatics ever be suspected of murder when all Mormons act like this? This could be you!
Dan Lafferty defends his cigarette transgression by announcing that “the Lord guides my political vision.” Which sounds really goofy, but it is something Orrin Hatch has said on multiple occasions, so we can chalk that one up as accurate. Ammon tells him, no, it’s the devil answering your prayers, so Papa Utah Kennedy (Papa UK for short) is going to leave his mission in Louisiana to keep his sons on the strait and narrow. One is left to assume that Papa UK is using the Force to project his image from Louisiana into the Angel Moroni parade, because real missionaries don’t leave their missions mid-mission to attend parades on the other side of the country. Also, The Last Jedi has a lot in common with this show, in that they both suck.
Dan UK is then inspired to go to the restricted section of the Hogwarts library - sorry, the BYU library - to find the forbidden knowledge about the Mormons which has been “removed from every library in Utah, including BYU.” Presumably, it was all checked out by Leonard Arrington, who was the brilliant and widely respected Church historian during this period who ushered in what has been called a golden era of Mormon historical study. Or maybe it’s all in a dumpster behind the Tabernacle. I hope the fake UK Lafferty brothers can launch a historical flashback that clears this all up.
Dan UK and his fictional brother therefore have no choice but to go to Colorado City and ply the polygamists with inexpensive construction materials. They then see young girls in Pioneer Day dresses - but the ominous music tells us IT’S NOT PIONEER DAY!! Dan UK then asks the question nobody dares ask: “Do you guys practice polygamy here?” The fictional UK brother is aghast, maybe because this is like asking a guy in a comic book store if he’s ever seen Star Trek.
Then some random polygamist they just met who looks like he is struggling with IBS announces that “If man’s law conflicts with heaven’s, then the faithful will be ranged UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN against them.” Hey, how come some rando with diarrhea gets to say the title of the show? I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never been ranged under anything and didn’t fully realize that “range” could be used as a verb. But Dan UK recognizes the ranging. “Prophet Taylor, right?” he says. “I dig it, man!”
Indeed. So dig we all.
IBS Boy tells Dan UK something about a mysterious Joseph Smith work called “The Peacemaker” before a high counselor packing heat tells them to leave. Then we cut to Andrew Garfield flabbergasted that a mainstream Mormon would sell aluminum siding to fundamentalists, because everyone knows that commerce with the “fundies” is grounds for excommunication, despite the fact that it really, really isn’t. Fictional UK demands that he has the right to a phone call, which just occurs to him for the first time after being tortured for two days with Tabernacle Choir music.
We then see Dan UK driving with his wife Matilda UK as Dan brandishes a copy of “The Peacemaker,” a 19th Century pamphlet that he purchased at an “antique book store” that somehow escaped the Mormon library purge. This pamphlet was written by Joseph Smith himself, and its thesis is that women are essentially cattle owned by their husbands, so righteous men can have as big a herd of them as they want. His wife balks at being matrimonially branded thus, prompting Dan UK to scream “Shut up and moo!” Actually, that’s not the dialogue, but wouldn’t it be cool if it was? Also, the real Peacemaker pamphlet was written in 1842 by some guy named Udney Hay Jacob who wasn’t even a member of the Church at the time, and the real Joseph Smith denounced it as “nonsence [nonsense], folly, and trash.” But so what? Shut up and moo.
Dan UK is then pulled over for speeding, which prompts him to jump out of his car and scream “Tyrants! Witness the tyrants!” This is the guy running for sheriff, remember. Or “Head Tyrant,” as they are often called. Dan is then sent to Alcatraz. Oops! I mean he is sent to a small-town Utah jail that looks exactly like a high-security federal prison. He is later released, but he’s taken off the ballot because he refused to pay a $15 filing fee, and not because he’s a psychotic whackadoodle who just did hard time for escalating a speeding ticket into a hostage situation.
While in the East Rockwell Penitentiary for the Criminally Mormon, Dan UK also tells Ron UK that he should be the leader of the family because of reasons. Then we go back to police headquarters with Andrew Garfield, who flashes back to Joseph Smith dressed in military garb that would make no sense to anyone who doesn’t already know Mormon history. Joseph tells his wife Emma that she must accept polygamy or be destroyed, and Emma tells Joseph she’s going to marry more husbands. Which, admittedly, is an interesting premise for a dramatically compelling scene, which this isn’t. Joseph receives the “be destroyed” revelation on the spot and delivers it while sneering an evil sneer, and so now the audience knows everything they need to know about the complex, contradictory, and messy origins and practice of Mormon polygamy. Ha ha! Just kidding. All they know is that Joseph Smith was a monster. Moo.
Anyway, we finally meet the guy that Fictional UK called during his MoTab respite - his lawyer. Oh, wait. Sorry. That would have made too much sense. No, the Fake UK brother didn’t call a lawyer. He called - wait for it - his stake president. And his stake president shows up to demand that Detective Pyre release Fake UK into his custody, and that if he doesn’t, Pyre’s eternal salvation is at risk.
Give the writers credit here: It would be virtually impossible to cram more doofustry into a single scene. All of it is legally, factually, religiously, and logically wrong in huge and grotesque ways. There is nothing about this moment that isn’t intellectually and dramatically flatulent. I like to think that Pyre’s prodigious barfing in the next scene was really Andrew Garfield spewing all the stupid out of his system.
Pyre goes into the field to find out where Bishop Lowe is - he’s apparently the guy with the ransacked house in the first scene - and he takes a moment to debrief some teenagers, one of whom claims that "Heavenly Father answered [his] prayer for a Skyhawk.” This elicits an awkward chuckle from Pyre. We can tell he’s losing his faith, because he’s becoming self-aware to how much that this dialogue blows.
We then get a scene where the Laffertys decide to become polygamists, and Detective Pyre then realizes that a previous goofy scene at the bank means something other than what we were supposed to think it meant, but I’m not sure what it was supposed to mean in the first place, so I’m going to punt on that one. Meanwhile, Pyre’s boss shows up and tells them to face the press, but under no circumstances are they supposed to mention the “fundies” that are tied up in these murders, not for the rational reason that it would be inappropriate to comment on details of an ongoing investigation, but rather for the ridiculous reason that it would make the Church look bad. However, in a universe where stake presidents have more legal authority than police chiefs, the math checks out.
So of course, Pyre faces the press, and the press conference is televised live, and instead of saying “It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation,” he blurts out that fundamentalist Mormonism is at the heart of this. He then gets fired. No, sorry, it’s much worse than that. He then gets dirty looks at church. But at least his partner says, “Sorry about the language, but I’m [Heavenly Father]-damn proud of you.” Oh, and an elderly Stepford wife greets him at the church entrance to ask why his eight-year-old daughter is postponing becoming one of the Children of the Corn.
The episode ends as a nervous young cop discovers Bishop Lowe fly-fishing. What a cliffhanger!
See you in episode 5, unless I gouge out my eyes with a dull spoon before then.
Our show opens with the cops bursting into someone’s house that’s been ransacked. We don’t know who’s house it is, and we don’t know why it’s at all relevant to the murders. So you don’t need to worry about being distracted by any tension or excitement.
While surveying the mess, Andrew Garfield says “God, I hope they got out of here before anything happened.” Surprise! This is something a normal person would say! Alas, it’s not something a normal Mormon would say, and certainly not something a fictional UTBOH-Heavenly-Father-fearing Mormon would say. Is this a way of subtly telling us that Detective Pyre is losing his faith? Or is it just one more example of sloppy, lazy writing that has plagued this entire series from the outset? Heavenly Father only knows.
Actually, no, He doesn’t, because just a couple of minutes later, Pyre’s Heavenly Fatherisms are back as he deals with the burgeoning non-scandal of a delayed baptism for an eight-year-old. His mother recklessly says “goddamn” and AG is quick to scold her for committing a “no-no,” so we know-know (see what I did there?) that the inconsistency is likely unintentional. Oh, and that Pyre is kind of a weenie for treating his mother like an infant.
Granted, Grandma Pyre is suffering from some kind of dementia, which is apparently why the next thing she says is “the Jews need baptisms,” which is supposed to be funny, maybe? Or clever? Or just make Mormons look like we’re all racist turds who would cheerfully spout bigotry all day long if our inhibitions were down? The latter is most likely, as she goes on to talk about the Jews ending up with Hitler in the next life. Because this is why audiences are tuning in - not for a compelling drama about a brutal real-life murder, which this isn’t, but for a wooden and didactic morality play about how Mormonism stinks.
And, golly, this fictional Mormonism stinks pretty bad. In the UTBOH universe, bishops don’t give a rip about the confidentiality that is their central ecclesiastical responsibility. See, Diana Lafferty apparently wrote a letter to the President of the Church - “like writing to Heavenly Father himself!” cringe cringe cringe - that complained about Dan, her husband Ron’s brother. The letter is referred back to the local bishop, who apparently shared its content with his counselors, one of whom goes against every protocol that the Church has in place by revealing both its contents and its author directly to Ron as leverage to deny him a bank loan while Diana sits ten feet away from them. Mormonism, amiright?
We then get a quick shot of one of the “Kennedys of Utah” running for sheriff with a full parade float, complete with a covered wagon, a full horse brigade, and an Angel Moroni effigy. Because that is what happens in every small town Utah sheriff’s race except for all of them. We then cut to Brother Detective Pyre, who is interrogating Robin Lafferty, who I recently learned doesn’t exist in the real world. Apparently, we need a fake Lafferty brother to set up pointless, dramatically irrelevant flashbacks, the first of which involves Governor Boggs of 19th Century Missouri getting shot in the head. Every police interrogation in Utah devolves into history lessons with weak production values.
We then cut back to Dan Utah Kennedy smoking a cigarette for some reason, which causes Ammon Utah Kennedy to appear out of the ether to have a conniption fit and slap Dan in the back of the head. Ammon then shrieks at the lady who gave him the vile tobacco, calling her “serpent woman.” Because this is how elite families in Utah always act, and nobody finds this out of the ordinary. Goodness, how could these head-slapping, shrieking lunatics ever be suspected of murder when all Mormons act like this? This could be you!
Dan Lafferty defends his cigarette transgression by announcing that “the Lord guides my political vision.” Which sounds really goofy, but it is something Orrin Hatch has said on multiple occasions, so we can chalk that one up as accurate. Ammon tells him, no, it’s the devil answering your prayers, so Papa Utah Kennedy (Papa UK for short) is going to leave his mission in Louisiana to keep his sons on the strait and narrow. One is left to assume that Papa UK is using the Force to project his image from Louisiana into the Angel Moroni parade, because real missionaries don’t leave their missions mid-mission to attend parades on the other side of the country. Also, The Last Jedi has a lot in common with this show, in that they both suck.
Dan UK is then inspired to go to the restricted section of the Hogwarts library - sorry, the BYU library - to find the forbidden knowledge about the Mormons which has been “removed from every library in Utah, including BYU.” Presumably, it was all checked out by Leonard Arrington, who was the brilliant and widely respected Church historian during this period who ushered in what has been called a golden era of Mormon historical study. Or maybe it’s all in a dumpster behind the Tabernacle. I hope the fake UK Lafferty brothers can launch a historical flashback that clears this all up.
Dan UK and his fictional brother therefore have no choice but to go to Colorado City and ply the polygamists with inexpensive construction materials. They then see young girls in Pioneer Day dresses - but the ominous music tells us IT’S NOT PIONEER DAY!! Dan UK then asks the question nobody dares ask: “Do you guys practice polygamy here?” The fictional UK brother is aghast, maybe because this is like asking a guy in a comic book store if he’s ever seen Star Trek.
Then some random polygamist they just met who looks like he is struggling with IBS announces that “If man’s law conflicts with heaven’s, then the faithful will be ranged UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN against them.” Hey, how come some rando with diarrhea gets to say the title of the show? I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never been ranged under anything and didn’t fully realize that “range” could be used as a verb. But Dan UK recognizes the ranging. “Prophet Taylor, right?” he says. “I dig it, man!”
Indeed. So dig we all.
IBS Boy tells Dan UK something about a mysterious Joseph Smith work called “The Peacemaker” before a high counselor packing heat tells them to leave. Then we cut to Andrew Garfield flabbergasted that a mainstream Mormon would sell aluminum siding to fundamentalists, because everyone knows that commerce with the “fundies” is grounds for excommunication, despite the fact that it really, really isn’t. Fictional UK demands that he has the right to a phone call, which just occurs to him for the first time after being tortured for two days with Tabernacle Choir music.
We then see Dan UK driving with his wife Matilda UK as Dan brandishes a copy of “The Peacemaker,” a 19th Century pamphlet that he purchased at an “antique book store” that somehow escaped the Mormon library purge. This pamphlet was written by Joseph Smith himself, and its thesis is that women are essentially cattle owned by their husbands, so righteous men can have as big a herd of them as they want. His wife balks at being matrimonially branded thus, prompting Dan UK to scream “Shut up and moo!” Actually, that’s not the dialogue, but wouldn’t it be cool if it was? Also, the real Peacemaker pamphlet was written in 1842 by some guy named Udney Hay Jacob who wasn’t even a member of the Church at the time, and the real Joseph Smith denounced it as “nonsence [nonsense], folly, and trash.” But so what? Shut up and moo.
Dan UK is then pulled over for speeding, which prompts him to jump out of his car and scream “Tyrants! Witness the tyrants!” This is the guy running for sheriff, remember. Or “Head Tyrant,” as they are often called. Dan is then sent to Alcatraz. Oops! I mean he is sent to a small-town Utah jail that looks exactly like a high-security federal prison. He is later released, but he’s taken off the ballot because he refused to pay a $15 filing fee, and not because he’s a psychotic whackadoodle who just did hard time for escalating a speeding ticket into a hostage situation.
While in the East Rockwell Penitentiary for the Criminally Mormon, Dan UK also tells Ron UK that he should be the leader of the family because of reasons. Then we go back to police headquarters with Andrew Garfield, who flashes back to Joseph Smith dressed in military garb that would make no sense to anyone who doesn’t already know Mormon history. Joseph tells his wife Emma that she must accept polygamy or be destroyed, and Emma tells Joseph she’s going to marry more husbands. Which, admittedly, is an interesting premise for a dramatically compelling scene, which this isn’t. Joseph receives the “be destroyed” revelation on the spot and delivers it while sneering an evil sneer, and so now the audience knows everything they need to know about the complex, contradictory, and messy origins and practice of Mormon polygamy. Ha ha! Just kidding. All they know is that Joseph Smith was a monster. Moo.
Anyway, we finally meet the guy that Fictional UK called during his MoTab respite - his lawyer. Oh, wait. Sorry. That would have made too much sense. No, the Fake UK brother didn’t call a lawyer. He called - wait for it - his stake president. And his stake president shows up to demand that Detective Pyre release Fake UK into his custody, and that if he doesn’t, Pyre’s eternal salvation is at risk.
Give the writers credit here: It would be virtually impossible to cram more doofustry into a single scene. All of it is legally, factually, religiously, and logically wrong in huge and grotesque ways. There is nothing about this moment that isn’t intellectually and dramatically flatulent. I like to think that Pyre’s prodigious barfing in the next scene was really Andrew Garfield spewing all the stupid out of his system.
Pyre goes into the field to find out where Bishop Lowe is - he’s apparently the guy with the ransacked house in the first scene - and he takes a moment to debrief some teenagers, one of whom claims that "Heavenly Father answered [his] prayer for a Skyhawk.” This elicits an awkward chuckle from Pyre. We can tell he’s losing his faith, because he’s becoming self-aware to how much that this dialogue blows.
We then get a scene where the Laffertys decide to become polygamists, and Detective Pyre then realizes that a previous goofy scene at the bank means something other than what we were supposed to think it meant, but I’m not sure what it was supposed to mean in the first place, so I’m going to punt on that one. Meanwhile, Pyre’s boss shows up and tells them to face the press, but under no circumstances are they supposed to mention the “fundies” that are tied up in these murders, not for the rational reason that it would be inappropriate to comment on details of an ongoing investigation, but rather for the ridiculous reason that it would make the Church look bad. However, in a universe where stake presidents have more legal authority than police chiefs, the math checks out.
So of course, Pyre faces the press, and the press conference is televised live, and instead of saying “It would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation,” he blurts out that fundamentalist Mormonism is at the heart of this. He then gets fired. No, sorry, it’s much worse than that. He then gets dirty looks at church. But at least his partner says, “Sorry about the language, but I’m [Heavenly Father]-damn proud of you.” Oh, and an elderly Stepford wife greets him at the church entrance to ask why his eight-year-old daughter is postponing becoming one of the Children of the Corn.
The episode ends as a nervous young cop discovers Bishop Lowe fly-fishing. What a cliffhanger!
See you in episode 5, unless I gouge out my eyes with a dull spoon before then.
Episode 5: One Mighty and Strong
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, EPISODE 5: ONE MIGHTY AND STRONG
We open on a barren moonscape that is likely the non-existent town of East Rockwell, Utah, or Utah courtesy of Siberia. We then see a statue of Brigham Young, as Macaulay Culkin’s younger brother’s voiceover intones about ruin and devastation. The bearded Culkin, playing a fake Lafferty brother, attributes the quote to “John Taylor, President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, 1876.” Andrew Garfield is quick to correct him: “it’s ‘79, actually.” Take that!
Golly, Garfield’s Jeb Pyre is a walking encyclopedia of Church history, unless knowing something about Church history gets in the way of the plot. In a previous episode, he spoke of blood atonement as something that was “only heard in whispers” and is shocked to learn of its existence, but he talks about it ad nauseam in this episode in full voice, even using it as a verb: i.e. “blood-atoning” and “blood-atoned.” Curiously, everyone he mentions it to, even mainstream Mormons with no fundamentalist ties, knows exactly what he’s talking about.
So which is it? Is blood atonement a deep secret Mormon horcrux, or is it the subject of everyday Family Home Evening lessons where the bishop kidnaps your family? More on that later - I just employed a technique called “foreshadowing,” which is a storytelling device that hints of things to come. There are many methods of foreshadowing, but the filmmakers in this show only know one: droning, monotone bass notes that tell you everything that is coming is going to be bad.
Pyre does actual detective work and catches Culkin in a lie, proving he didn’t murder Brenda but instead is doing unspeakable things to squirrels. Were 1984 forensics capable of differentiating human blood from squirrel blood? And how many acorns do you get if you blood-atone rodents?
But the poor squirrels are quickly forgotten as Home Alone Jr. speaks a phrase that Pyre and his partner have never heard before - one that could blow this whole case wide open!
The phrase?
“School of the Prophets.”
At this utterance, everyone gasps, and the bass notes drone even harder than before. No one has ever heard this phrase! “Is it LDS?” asks Pyre’s Paiute partner. “No, it’s very specific,” Pyre answers, as if that’s somehow a logical reply to the question. (Pyre’s Paiute partner is named Lt. Talba, by the way, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration.) Throughout this episode, we learn that the idea of a “School of the Prophets” is nigh unto unthinkable! How can there be a School of the Prophets, plural? Prophets are like Sith Lords, Highlanders, and seasons of Firefly: there can be only one.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but a guy who corrects someone when they’re wrong about the date of an obscure 19th Century John Taylor rant would surely know about the original School of the Prophets, formed in 1833 in Kirtland, Ohio. This was not something only spoken about in whispers during squirrel sacrifices. Several prominent sections of the Doctrine and Covenants describe its founding, its procedures, and, yes, its plural name. In the first episode, Pyre used the Doctrine and Covenants as an interrogation manual, quoting lengthy passages from memory. But now we are to assume he only memorized the beginning and stopped reading it altogether when he got about halfway through.
The stake president from the previous episode is still negotiating the release of murder suspects, which still makes as much sense as it did in the last episode, which is less than none. We later discover this is all part of an overarching plot by the Church to harass the police to cover up for murderers that they excommunicated. Because that makes sense, too, but only if you’re a mollusk.
Pyre brings the explosive non-bombshell of the School of the Prophets to the other fictional Lafferty in custody, worried that this abominable school will “unseat” the “One True Prophet, Spencer W. Kimball.” Because such a thing is an offense worse than murder in East Rockwell, punishable by listening to an endless loop of Jenny Oaks Baker CDs. Fake Lafferty II insists it’s just a study group where they doodle on PeeChee folders, but Pyre threatens to excommunicate him, which seems par for the course in a universe where stake presidents run the legal system. We then hear about “a man named Brady” who set the whole school up because of a “dream mine” and “Mormon gold” and a bearded guy named “Prophet Onias.” Oh, and he was busy with three boys of his own.
Alas, both fake Laffertys are still released into the SP’s custody, but before we can worry, we discover that the officer from the end of the last episode found Bishop Lowe and his wife, so the cops bolt out the door to stock footage of the real Utah Valley, which has undergone a massive construction boom in the time since the shot of the moonscape from the start of the episode.
As Pyre and Talba arrive at the Lowe home, the cop who found the Lowes inappropriately bears his testimony to Pyre on the way in, attributing all success to Heavenly Father. This earns a pained losing-my-religion smile from Pyre, who dares to remind this zealot that he deserves the credit for finding the Lowes, not Heavenly Father, because he “followed the evidence, like a good cop does.” Officer Zealot visibly flinches in the presence of Pyre’s vile blasphemy. Or maybe he’s just passing gas.
The interrogation of the animatronic bishop/wife team begins, and these robots glumly spew Church jargon and, after stiffly invoking the “confidence between a bishop and his fold” as a “sacred trust,” violate that confidence at the earliest possible opportunity, unloading all the details of why both Lafferty brothers are excommunicated. (The real Laffertys were excommunicated two years before the murders, but in this universe, nobody notices until now.) We then cut to Matilda Lafferty milking her cow, which naturally leads to a moment of butter churning, because Mormons are Amish and stuff.
May I say, however, that this next scene is likely the best scene in the entire series to this point.
Matilda walks in on her husband in bed with Matilda’s teenage daughter, and Dan calmly and quietly explains that they are now going to be polygamists, which causes Matilda to recoil in horror. He does this without ranting like a lunatic, and she responds with credible and heartbreaking emotional honesty. And for one brief, shining moment, this show achieves a verisimilitude that it has been aiming for since Episode One and has missed by a mile until now. It’s genuinely unsettling, and it feels like something that could have really happened and continues to happen whenever polygamy is practiced. Although I could have done without the line where Dan says that “God has given me a vigorous sexual spirit.” Um, ick.
Matilda, who is possibly the most fully realized female role in the series, sends her children away to escape in the dead of night, and she seduces her husband to keep him from going to investigate. And just like that, the interesting part is over. We’re back to the bishop android, who tells Detective Pyre that the kids ran right to him, so he took it upon himself to put them in a “very good home” without involving anyone with the legal authority to put kids in other people’s homes. And then the kids “ran away” from their new home and are missing, so Pyre and Talba arrest the reckless bishop for child endangerment and kidnapping. Ha ha! If only! No, they just wring their hands and give him a good scolding so he’ll think twice about misplacing children in the future.
Pyre then asks about Ron’s excommunication, and Bishop Roboto stiffly exposits that “these issues came to a head at the naming ceremony of Baby Erica.” Real people call such things “blessings,” but “naming ceremony” sounds significantly culty-er, so we’re going to run with that. After the Ceremonial Naming™, Ron confronts the bishop in the front of the chapel and asks him about his brother’s ex-ing, and the bishop feigns fealty to confidentiality before once again violating it. He confirms that Dan was excommunicated for his “studies” and tells Ron that there is “nothing of value to be learned” in reviewing Church history, which really puts the billions of dollars the Church spends on education in perspective. See, we are apparently supposed to be “humble in the face of confusion” as we inevitably discover that everything the Church teaches is laughable nonsense. The only good Mormon is a stupid Mormon.
Ron shoves the bishop and says “You think that he was going to get closer to the Eternal Father than you?” (That’s how you say “You think you’re better than me?” in Utah Kennedese.) This happens in clear view of a large chunk of the congregation milling about in the chapel, and nobody cares. We get a quick scene with Brenda, the ostensible subject of this series, who was all but absent from the last episode and gets less than a minute of screen time in this one. She shows up to repeat today’s secret word: “EXCOMMUNICATE.” This word is spoken in this episode 87,433 times, give or take.
The bishop’s wife then stepfordly counsels Brenda that when she’s in a man’s presence, she is to “sit down and shut up.” Or, in UTBOH-speak, “These solutions are not our role. Our job is to dedicate ourselves to…” and then she trails off to allow Diana Lafferty to finishes the Mormon Mother’s Mantra: “… to creating a home and environment to sustain and support our priesthood holder.” She rattles this off as if it’s some warped version of the Handmaid’s Pledge of Allegiance that all Mormon girls memorize when they are six years old. The bishop’s creepy wife nods approvingly as she gets every word right.
Back in the present, Detective Talba says that this mantra may not be the best advice to give someone living in a home with a threat of violence, which is outrageously and offensively reasonable. The indignant bishop therefore refuses to respond to him directly and speaks to Andrew Garfield instead. “I did as the Church instructed us to do, Brother Pyre,” he says, pretending the uppity Lamanite isn’t even in the room.
The detectives discover the location of the man named Brady, who lives in a house up in the hills, which is “closer to the Lord, they say.” The Bradys are cheerful buffoons who say “gosh” and “heck” and “dang” a lot as they introduce the detectives to - no joke - the “whole Brady brood.” (I mean, come ON.) Detective Talba brandishes a search warrant, and they proceed not to search for anything. They have a cheerful conversation wherein it becomes clear that Mrs. Brady is a useful idiot who wouldn’t dare speak to Brother Brady about anything substantial. Of course, they both know all the confidential details of Ron Lafferty’s church court, because in this universe, such things are likely posted in the ward newsletter.
We get a quick flashback where Ron hisses at his wife for not being a doormat to his priesthood and then punches her in the face. “You will submit WILLINGLY,” he snarls, “or I will STARVE you into obedience!” He then throws a lot of eggs on the floor, perhaps as a metaphor for how his yolk is easy and his burden is light.
Diana then gets a knife and kicks Ron out of the house, and he slinks off to the sound of ominous bass notes. He apparently made a beeline to the Brady house, and Mr. Brady tells the detectives that they made up for Ron’s felony violence with lots of scripture study. “These guys will read anything just to get out of hosing my gutters,” Mrs. Brady says with a smile, leaving us to wonder if “hosing my gutters” was a deliberate “that’s what she said” cue.
Anyway, while Mrs. Brady is in the room, they pleasantly reminisce about the camaraderie of this nifty little study group that ensued, which included a stinky “eccentric” named Onias who was “not a fan of bathing.” Mr. Brady tells his wife to “get some lemonade for these hardworking boys.” As soon as she’s gone, the detectives speak to Mr. Brady as if he’s an adult, and Talba calls Brady “doughy.” Ouch! They get him to squirmingly admit that his School of the Prophets included a lot of talk about the “old ways,” i.e. polygamy. “Don’t tell my wife,” he pleads, as if he’s asking them not to spill the beans about the flowers he bought her for Valentine’s Day.
Brady apparently sent himself a letter documenting how the School of the Prophets was compiling a list of names of people who would suffer “eternal consequences,” but the letter doesn’t identify any specific names. The cops want specific names, and when they mention Diana, Brady casually says that “she wouldn’t be the first woman to dash off something she had no right to and have it lead to bloodshed.” Oh, yeah, tell me about it. That’s a typical Thursday in East Rockwell.
No, what it is is an opportunity to give us the first historical flashback of the evening. “Brother,” Brady begins, “our greatest loss can be traced to words written by a wife who thought she knew better than her husband.” Quite the seamless segue there.
“No, we’re not going there,” Pyre says, but, alas, we go there. And “there” is to a truly loopy scenario where, near as I can tell, Emma Smith is directly manipulated by Brigham Young into killing her husband. And the “letter” she writes isn’t actually written - it’s a verbal message she gives to Cotton-Eye Joe to deliver orally, telling Joseph to come home and face justice. Joseph dutifully complies and is consequently assassinated.
Everything about this scenario is ludicrous in the extreme. The real Emma demonstrably loved her husband and didn’t want him dead, and she hated Brigham and would never wittingly or unwittingly conspire with him to kill Joseph. Brigham was also on a mission when all this went down and didn’t have the access to put the murder wheels into motion. No actual letter was written, so they invent this “unwritten” oral message of which there is no record, but somehow Laffertys and doughy Bradys know it word-for-word 150 years later. According to UTBOH, this flimsy, ludicrous, evidence-free conspiracy is the foundational sin of Mormon violence that continues to breed dangerous men well unto this day. So there.
Mrs. Brady interrupts History Time bearing lemonade made with brown sugar, which sounds gross. Mr. Brady acts like he’s going to go hang out with “these fine men” of his own free will and choice, and Pyre says “we’ll get him back to you faster than you can say ‘Lamanite’ three times fast.” Groan cringe blech. Speaking of three times fast, I’m already at 2,500 words, and I’m only halfway through the episode. I better speed it up.
Anyway, they go investigate, we get a bunch of MTV-cut flashbacks, including one where Pyre is inexplicably standing in an empty temple wearing his detective clothes. Pyre goes home to an empty house, so he pulls a gun, not assuming that maybe his family has gone to McDonald’s or something. Ominous music builds until he finds the scary, scary note that they’ve gone to the bishop’s house. They decide to do a sleepover with the bishop, which is not something that anyone does, and Talba later assumes that the slumber party is the Church trying to put a stop to the investigation of people they have excommunicated, which is also not something that actually happens.
A flashback tells us that Ron was excommunicated by the local Star Chamber, so he goes home and terrorizes his children to celebrate. The cops go to the farm where the School of the Prophets is held and find teenage girls being trafficked for polygamists. On the way back from their creepy field trip, Alan Lafferty talks about Ron going home to his parents. Papa Lafferty is dying, and Ron refuses to get him a doctor because Mormons are Christian Scientists as well as Amish. His mother, the spiritual sister of Sissy Spacek’s mom in Carrie, tells him he’s passed all of the Lord’s tests and that he’s the One Mighty and Strong. Then Joseph Smith gets killed, because it’s all connected and stuff. The end.
I wish.
We open on a barren moonscape that is likely the non-existent town of East Rockwell, Utah, or Utah courtesy of Siberia. We then see a statue of Brigham Young, as Macaulay Culkin’s younger brother’s voiceover intones about ruin and devastation. The bearded Culkin, playing a fake Lafferty brother, attributes the quote to “John Taylor, President, Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, 1876.” Andrew Garfield is quick to correct him: “it’s ‘79, actually.” Take that!
Golly, Garfield’s Jeb Pyre is a walking encyclopedia of Church history, unless knowing something about Church history gets in the way of the plot. In a previous episode, he spoke of blood atonement as something that was “only heard in whispers” and is shocked to learn of its existence, but he talks about it ad nauseam in this episode in full voice, even using it as a verb: i.e. “blood-atoning” and “blood-atoned.” Curiously, everyone he mentions it to, even mainstream Mormons with no fundamentalist ties, knows exactly what he’s talking about.
So which is it? Is blood atonement a deep secret Mormon horcrux, or is it the subject of everyday Family Home Evening lessons where the bishop kidnaps your family? More on that later - I just employed a technique called “foreshadowing,” which is a storytelling device that hints of things to come. There are many methods of foreshadowing, but the filmmakers in this show only know one: droning, monotone bass notes that tell you everything that is coming is going to be bad.
Pyre does actual detective work and catches Culkin in a lie, proving he didn’t murder Brenda but instead is doing unspeakable things to squirrels. Were 1984 forensics capable of differentiating human blood from squirrel blood? And how many acorns do you get if you blood-atone rodents?
But the poor squirrels are quickly forgotten as Home Alone Jr. speaks a phrase that Pyre and his partner have never heard before - one that could blow this whole case wide open!
The phrase?
“School of the Prophets.”
At this utterance, everyone gasps, and the bass notes drone even harder than before. No one has ever heard this phrase! “Is it LDS?” asks Pyre’s Paiute partner. “No, it’s very specific,” Pyre answers, as if that’s somehow a logical reply to the question. (Pyre’s Paiute partner is named Lt. Talba, by the way, but I couldn’t resist the alliteration.) Throughout this episode, we learn that the idea of a “School of the Prophets” is nigh unto unthinkable! How can there be a School of the Prophets, plural? Prophets are like Sith Lords, Highlanders, and seasons of Firefly: there can be only one.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but a guy who corrects someone when they’re wrong about the date of an obscure 19th Century John Taylor rant would surely know about the original School of the Prophets, formed in 1833 in Kirtland, Ohio. This was not something only spoken about in whispers during squirrel sacrifices. Several prominent sections of the Doctrine and Covenants describe its founding, its procedures, and, yes, its plural name. In the first episode, Pyre used the Doctrine and Covenants as an interrogation manual, quoting lengthy passages from memory. But now we are to assume he only memorized the beginning and stopped reading it altogether when he got about halfway through.
The stake president from the previous episode is still negotiating the release of murder suspects, which still makes as much sense as it did in the last episode, which is less than none. We later discover this is all part of an overarching plot by the Church to harass the police to cover up for murderers that they excommunicated. Because that makes sense, too, but only if you’re a mollusk.
Pyre brings the explosive non-bombshell of the School of the Prophets to the other fictional Lafferty in custody, worried that this abominable school will “unseat” the “One True Prophet, Spencer W. Kimball.” Because such a thing is an offense worse than murder in East Rockwell, punishable by listening to an endless loop of Jenny Oaks Baker CDs. Fake Lafferty II insists it’s just a study group where they doodle on PeeChee folders, but Pyre threatens to excommunicate him, which seems par for the course in a universe where stake presidents run the legal system. We then hear about “a man named Brady” who set the whole school up because of a “dream mine” and “Mormon gold” and a bearded guy named “Prophet Onias.” Oh, and he was busy with three boys of his own.
Alas, both fake Laffertys are still released into the SP’s custody, but before we can worry, we discover that the officer from the end of the last episode found Bishop Lowe and his wife, so the cops bolt out the door to stock footage of the real Utah Valley, which has undergone a massive construction boom in the time since the shot of the moonscape from the start of the episode.
As Pyre and Talba arrive at the Lowe home, the cop who found the Lowes inappropriately bears his testimony to Pyre on the way in, attributing all success to Heavenly Father. This earns a pained losing-my-religion smile from Pyre, who dares to remind this zealot that he deserves the credit for finding the Lowes, not Heavenly Father, because he “followed the evidence, like a good cop does.” Officer Zealot visibly flinches in the presence of Pyre’s vile blasphemy. Or maybe he’s just passing gas.
The interrogation of the animatronic bishop/wife team begins, and these robots glumly spew Church jargon and, after stiffly invoking the “confidence between a bishop and his fold” as a “sacred trust,” violate that confidence at the earliest possible opportunity, unloading all the details of why both Lafferty brothers are excommunicated. (The real Laffertys were excommunicated two years before the murders, but in this universe, nobody notices until now.) We then cut to Matilda Lafferty milking her cow, which naturally leads to a moment of butter churning, because Mormons are Amish and stuff.
May I say, however, that this next scene is likely the best scene in the entire series to this point.
Matilda walks in on her husband in bed with Matilda’s teenage daughter, and Dan calmly and quietly explains that they are now going to be polygamists, which causes Matilda to recoil in horror. He does this without ranting like a lunatic, and she responds with credible and heartbreaking emotional honesty. And for one brief, shining moment, this show achieves a verisimilitude that it has been aiming for since Episode One and has missed by a mile until now. It’s genuinely unsettling, and it feels like something that could have really happened and continues to happen whenever polygamy is practiced. Although I could have done without the line where Dan says that “God has given me a vigorous sexual spirit.” Um, ick.
Matilda, who is possibly the most fully realized female role in the series, sends her children away to escape in the dead of night, and she seduces her husband to keep him from going to investigate. And just like that, the interesting part is over. We’re back to the bishop android, who tells Detective Pyre that the kids ran right to him, so he took it upon himself to put them in a “very good home” without involving anyone with the legal authority to put kids in other people’s homes. And then the kids “ran away” from their new home and are missing, so Pyre and Talba arrest the reckless bishop for child endangerment and kidnapping. Ha ha! If only! No, they just wring their hands and give him a good scolding so he’ll think twice about misplacing children in the future.
Pyre then asks about Ron’s excommunication, and Bishop Roboto stiffly exposits that “these issues came to a head at the naming ceremony of Baby Erica.” Real people call such things “blessings,” but “naming ceremony” sounds significantly culty-er, so we’re going to run with that. After the Ceremonial Naming™, Ron confronts the bishop in the front of the chapel and asks him about his brother’s ex-ing, and the bishop feigns fealty to confidentiality before once again violating it. He confirms that Dan was excommunicated for his “studies” and tells Ron that there is “nothing of value to be learned” in reviewing Church history, which really puts the billions of dollars the Church spends on education in perspective. See, we are apparently supposed to be “humble in the face of confusion” as we inevitably discover that everything the Church teaches is laughable nonsense. The only good Mormon is a stupid Mormon.
Ron shoves the bishop and says “You think that he was going to get closer to the Eternal Father than you?” (That’s how you say “You think you’re better than me?” in Utah Kennedese.) This happens in clear view of a large chunk of the congregation milling about in the chapel, and nobody cares. We get a quick scene with Brenda, the ostensible subject of this series, who was all but absent from the last episode and gets less than a minute of screen time in this one. She shows up to repeat today’s secret word: “EXCOMMUNICATE.” This word is spoken in this episode 87,433 times, give or take.
The bishop’s wife then stepfordly counsels Brenda that when she’s in a man’s presence, she is to “sit down and shut up.” Or, in UTBOH-speak, “These solutions are not our role. Our job is to dedicate ourselves to…” and then she trails off to allow Diana Lafferty to finishes the Mormon Mother’s Mantra: “… to creating a home and environment to sustain and support our priesthood holder.” She rattles this off as if it’s some warped version of the Handmaid’s Pledge of Allegiance that all Mormon girls memorize when they are six years old. The bishop’s creepy wife nods approvingly as she gets every word right.
Back in the present, Detective Talba says that this mantra may not be the best advice to give someone living in a home with a threat of violence, which is outrageously and offensively reasonable. The indignant bishop therefore refuses to respond to him directly and speaks to Andrew Garfield instead. “I did as the Church instructed us to do, Brother Pyre,” he says, pretending the uppity Lamanite isn’t even in the room.
The detectives discover the location of the man named Brady, who lives in a house up in the hills, which is “closer to the Lord, they say.” The Bradys are cheerful buffoons who say “gosh” and “heck” and “dang” a lot as they introduce the detectives to - no joke - the “whole Brady brood.” (I mean, come ON.) Detective Talba brandishes a search warrant, and they proceed not to search for anything. They have a cheerful conversation wherein it becomes clear that Mrs. Brady is a useful idiot who wouldn’t dare speak to Brother Brady about anything substantial. Of course, they both know all the confidential details of Ron Lafferty’s church court, because in this universe, such things are likely posted in the ward newsletter.
We get a quick flashback where Ron hisses at his wife for not being a doormat to his priesthood and then punches her in the face. “You will submit WILLINGLY,” he snarls, “or I will STARVE you into obedience!” He then throws a lot of eggs on the floor, perhaps as a metaphor for how his yolk is easy and his burden is light.
Diana then gets a knife and kicks Ron out of the house, and he slinks off to the sound of ominous bass notes. He apparently made a beeline to the Brady house, and Mr. Brady tells the detectives that they made up for Ron’s felony violence with lots of scripture study. “These guys will read anything just to get out of hosing my gutters,” Mrs. Brady says with a smile, leaving us to wonder if “hosing my gutters” was a deliberate “that’s what she said” cue.
Anyway, while Mrs. Brady is in the room, they pleasantly reminisce about the camaraderie of this nifty little study group that ensued, which included a stinky “eccentric” named Onias who was “not a fan of bathing.” Mr. Brady tells his wife to “get some lemonade for these hardworking boys.” As soon as she’s gone, the detectives speak to Mr. Brady as if he’s an adult, and Talba calls Brady “doughy.” Ouch! They get him to squirmingly admit that his School of the Prophets included a lot of talk about the “old ways,” i.e. polygamy. “Don’t tell my wife,” he pleads, as if he’s asking them not to spill the beans about the flowers he bought her for Valentine’s Day.
Brady apparently sent himself a letter documenting how the School of the Prophets was compiling a list of names of people who would suffer “eternal consequences,” but the letter doesn’t identify any specific names. The cops want specific names, and when they mention Diana, Brady casually says that “she wouldn’t be the first woman to dash off something she had no right to and have it lead to bloodshed.” Oh, yeah, tell me about it. That’s a typical Thursday in East Rockwell.
No, what it is is an opportunity to give us the first historical flashback of the evening. “Brother,” Brady begins, “our greatest loss can be traced to words written by a wife who thought she knew better than her husband.” Quite the seamless segue there.
“No, we’re not going there,” Pyre says, but, alas, we go there. And “there” is to a truly loopy scenario where, near as I can tell, Emma Smith is directly manipulated by Brigham Young into killing her husband. And the “letter” she writes isn’t actually written - it’s a verbal message she gives to Cotton-Eye Joe to deliver orally, telling Joseph to come home and face justice. Joseph dutifully complies and is consequently assassinated.
Everything about this scenario is ludicrous in the extreme. The real Emma demonstrably loved her husband and didn’t want him dead, and she hated Brigham and would never wittingly or unwittingly conspire with him to kill Joseph. Brigham was also on a mission when all this went down and didn’t have the access to put the murder wheels into motion. No actual letter was written, so they invent this “unwritten” oral message of which there is no record, but somehow Laffertys and doughy Bradys know it word-for-word 150 years later. According to UTBOH, this flimsy, ludicrous, evidence-free conspiracy is the foundational sin of Mormon violence that continues to breed dangerous men well unto this day. So there.
Mrs. Brady interrupts History Time bearing lemonade made with brown sugar, which sounds gross. Mr. Brady acts like he’s going to go hang out with “these fine men” of his own free will and choice, and Pyre says “we’ll get him back to you faster than you can say ‘Lamanite’ three times fast.” Groan cringe blech. Speaking of three times fast, I’m already at 2,500 words, and I’m only halfway through the episode. I better speed it up.
Anyway, they go investigate, we get a bunch of MTV-cut flashbacks, including one where Pyre is inexplicably standing in an empty temple wearing his detective clothes. Pyre goes home to an empty house, so he pulls a gun, not assuming that maybe his family has gone to McDonald’s or something. Ominous music builds until he finds the scary, scary note that they’ve gone to the bishop’s house. They decide to do a sleepover with the bishop, which is not something that anyone does, and Talba later assumes that the slumber party is the Church trying to put a stop to the investigation of people they have excommunicated, which is also not something that actually happens.
A flashback tells us that Ron was excommunicated by the local Star Chamber, so he goes home and terrorizes his children to celebrate. The cops go to the farm where the School of the Prophets is held and find teenage girls being trafficked for polygamists. On the way back from their creepy field trip, Alan Lafferty talks about Ron going home to his parents. Papa Lafferty is dying, and Ron refuses to get him a doctor because Mormons are Christian Scientists as well as Amish. His mother, the spiritual sister of Sissy Spacek’s mom in Carrie, tells him he’s passed all of the Lord’s tests and that he’s the One Mighty and Strong. Then Joseph Smith gets killed, because it’s all connected and stuff. The end.
I wish.
Episode 6: Revelation
Speaking of banners, this was more than a banner week for episodic television. Star Trek: Brave New Worlds delivered another winner and is on track to be the best Trek series since TNG, if not ever. Obi-Wan Kenobi offered its first two episodes which look promising, especially given Ewan McGregor’s considerable charisma in the lead role. And Better Call Saul’s mid-season finale was absolute perfection as it offered up the most shocking TV ending I have ever seen.
But you’re not here to talk about good television. No, you want to know what I thought of Under the Banner of Heaven, Part 6. Yes, I’m still watching it. I’m starting to think that I’m one of a rare and shrinking few who are.
Honestly, who is the intended audience for this thing? I keep being told that since I’m still an active member of the Church, it isn’t me, which is fine. But I can’t imagine a NeverMo making sense of the convoluted backstory or finding anything interesting or compelling about any of these characters.
You’re left wondering what the pitch meeting for this thing looked like.
Wonder no further.
INT. HULU CORPORATE OFFICES - DAY
A visibly crapulent PRODUCER in a grey three-piece suit is sitting behind a stately desk, smoking a Cuban cigar. DUSTIN LANCE BLACK (DLB) enters the room.
PRODUCER
There you are, kid! Hey, I watched the first five episodes of your Mormon show.
DLB
And?
PRODUCER
And they stink.
DLB
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a Mormon, sir.
PRODUCER
What? I’m not a Mormon.
DLB
Then your opinion is incorrect. Only Mormons think this show stinks. Everyone else thinks it’s a devastating indictment of violent faith.
PRODUCER
No, they don’t. They think it’s this boring yakfest with a bunch of weenies who sit around and talk and say “Heavenly Father” a lot. Have you got some violence on tap for episode six?
DLB
Well, it opens with a guy chopping wood with an ax and some water being poured on somebody. Does that count?
PRODUCER
No.
DLB
What if I told you that these were disconnected shots interspersed with Andrew Garfield looking glumly out a window?
PRODUCER
How much of this series is Andrew Garfield looking glumly out a window?
DLB
A relatively small percentage of his glumness is window-based, sir.
PRODUCER
So does anything happen?
DLB
Well, Garfield and his partner are looking around a cabin and find empty jars of peaches.
PRODUCER
Yeah, peach content is hot right now. What cabin is this?
DLB
It’s Mama Lafferty’s cabin. She’s doing a needlepoint of a thing that says “Heavenly Father” something, because we haven’t emphasized enough that Mormons can’t say “God.”
PRODUCER
I didn’t know Mormons can’t say “God.”
DLB
Well, technically they can. And frequently they do. But remember, they’re weirdos.
PRODUCER
Ah. So what does Mama Lafferty have to say?
DLB
She gets mad at Brother Brady for talking to the cops because she’s “held [him] in prayer.”
PRODUCER
What does that mean, “held him in prayer?”
DLB
It means she’s a weirdo. Also a racist. She barks at Detective Talba for being a “Lamanite.”
PRODUCER
Haven’t we already seen a lot of that?
DLB
Yes. But we also get to see a baseball bat with dents in it and an old shoe. Music plays dramatically to tell us these are important somehow.
PRODUCER
Are they important somehow?
DLB
No.
PRODUCER
Is anything important in this cabin?
DLB
The basement. It’s where the School of the Prophets met. It’s also where Andrew Garfield has disconnected flashbacks of events he hasn’t actually seen. He grills the Brady guy, and he replies in lots of weird-sounding Mormon jargon about burning bosoms. He does use the term “ward” instead of “congregation” for the first time in this series, though. So it’s really, really accurate.
PRODUCER
So far, this sounds really, really boring.
DLB
The music is ominous.
PRODUCER
Of course.
DLB
And Brady’s just getting started. He talks about how violent the scriptures are and then starts speaking in flashbacks.
PRODUCER
How many flashbacks is this thing going to have?
DLB
All of them.
PRODUCER
So more unidentified 19th Century people in bad wigs.
DLB
No, these flashbacks actually make some sense. This is the episode where I use a lengthy flashback to lay out Ron’s conversion to fundamentalism. It’s kind of like Breaking Bad!
PRODUCER
I love Breaking Bad! It’s the best character arc in the history of television!
DLB
Yes. Vince Gilligan said he wanted to chronicle the story of what happens when Mr. Chips turns into Scarface. So I wanted to do something similar by chronicling what happens when a violent, abusive family decides to become somewhat more violent and abusive.
PRODUCER
So it’s nothing at all like Breaking Bad. Walter White started out as good man who became a monster. Your characters were violent and abusive and awful from the moment we met them.
DLB
You fail to see that this is what Mormonism does to people.
PRODUCER
You fail to show how Mormonism does this to people.
DLB
I show how they give blessings in bathtubs.
PRODUCER
Do they?
DLB
No.
PRODUCER
I’m not following.
DLB
Precisely. So Ron goes and visits some weirdos who are fundamentalists, but they drink wine and stuff. So they’re actually somewhat less weird than regular Mormons. They also like to have a lot of sex, and so does Ron, so he lets them baptize him in a steamy hot tub. He then goes home and hugs his equally creepy brother Dan, and then they set up a meeting in the basement with the Prophet Burl “Onias” Ives, who says they need to marry lots of ladies and hate black people more, because Cain was into bestiality. This leads them to a snow-covered mountain, where Ron goes to find a dream mine that the Angel Moroni dug or something. The snow inspires Ron to start typing a revelation on a cool old computer. End of flashback.
PRODUCER
In this flashback, do we see any sex? Or violence? Does Ron go up into the mountains and struggle against the elements?
DLB
No. We don’t see any of that. But they talk about all of it. A lot.
PRODUCER
So we don’t see Ron do anything?
DLB
We see him type, dammit.
PRODUCER
And that’s it?
DLB
For the moment. We then watch the interrogation of Mama Lafferty, who may or may not be Anthony Perkins from Psycho in drag. She also may or may not know the names of bearded people.
PRODUCER
Sounds riveting.
DLB
Well, she’s really racist, like all Mormons. So that’s something.
PRODUCER
Brenda wasn’t racist, was she?
DLB
Who’s Brenda?
PRODUCER
The woman who was murdered in real life. The subject of your series who has gotten maybe ten minutes of screen time in the previous five episodes.
DLB
Oh, right, right, right. You’ll like this episode. She gets a lot of screen time in this one.
PRODUCER
Oh, good!
DLB
Yeah, in the very next scene, her baby is crying. And she’s arguing with her husband Alan about his creepy brothers. And he’s yelling at her a lot. And she refuses to shut up, even after Alan yells at her to shut up. So Alan hits her.
PRODUCER
Alan sounds like a jerk. All the Laffertys sound like jerks, and all of them treat Brenda terribly every time they come into contact with her. Why did she marry into a family of obviously terrible people?
DLB
Because Mormonism sucks.
PRODUCER
I don’t follow.
DLB
Brenda does. She goes to two General Authorities with her problems.
PRODUCER
What’s a General Authority?
DLB
In this universe, they are pretty much the robot Time Lords from the Loki miniseries. Old, creepy, inhuman. Did I say old and creepy? Because they’re really, really old and creepy. The point is that it is impossible to be a Mormon of any stripe and not be a culty, unfeeling, ignorant moron.
PRODUCER
So what do these robot geezers do?
DLB
They give her a blessing in the creepiest manner possible, creepily telling her to creepily stalk her creepy brothers-in-law and creep them back into the strait and narrow.
PRODUCER
Sounds creepy.
DLB
I wish. It’s mostly just boring. But the music screams creepy.
PRODUCER
Does that make it creepy?
DLB
No.
PRODUCER
I gotta say, this isn’t sounding like a winner.
DLB
But we’re getting to the best part! Andrew Garfield gives a weird, creepy blessing to his mother in a bubble bath!
PRODUCER
That’s the best part? What does it have to do with the murders?
DLB
The what now?
PRODUCER
Isn’t this a show about two real-life murders?
DLB
No. This is a show about how Andrew Garfield loses his faith because of a red book that he gets at the end of this episode.
PRODUCER
A red book? What red book?
DLB
Nobody ever says, but it looks kind of like “You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth” by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
PRODUCER
Aren’t they the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
DLB
I haven’t checked. At least there’s only one 19th Century flashback, where we show a visibly hungover Brigham Young looking at the empty Salt Lake Valley as ominous music plays.
PRODUCER
Does that have anything to do with the red book?
DLB
No. But Andrew Garfield’s wife finds him reading the red book and shows zero empathy and demands that he bear his testimony at the next church meeting.
PRODUCER
What does that mean?
DLB
It means Mormonism sucks. Can I tell you about the thrilling conclusion in the next episode?
PRODUCER
Is it thrilling?
DLB
No. But Mormonism still sucks.
Suddenly, there is an earthquake. In the distance, a cow takes a dump. The end.
But you’re not here to talk about good television. No, you want to know what I thought of Under the Banner of Heaven, Part 6. Yes, I’m still watching it. I’m starting to think that I’m one of a rare and shrinking few who are.
Honestly, who is the intended audience for this thing? I keep being told that since I’m still an active member of the Church, it isn’t me, which is fine. But I can’t imagine a NeverMo making sense of the convoluted backstory or finding anything interesting or compelling about any of these characters.
You’re left wondering what the pitch meeting for this thing looked like.
Wonder no further.
INT. HULU CORPORATE OFFICES - DAY
A visibly crapulent PRODUCER in a grey three-piece suit is sitting behind a stately desk, smoking a Cuban cigar. DUSTIN LANCE BLACK (DLB) enters the room.
PRODUCER
There you are, kid! Hey, I watched the first five episodes of your Mormon show.
DLB
And?
PRODUCER
And they stink.
DLB
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were a Mormon, sir.
PRODUCER
What? I’m not a Mormon.
DLB
Then your opinion is incorrect. Only Mormons think this show stinks. Everyone else thinks it’s a devastating indictment of violent faith.
PRODUCER
No, they don’t. They think it’s this boring yakfest with a bunch of weenies who sit around and talk and say “Heavenly Father” a lot. Have you got some violence on tap for episode six?
DLB
Well, it opens with a guy chopping wood with an ax and some water being poured on somebody. Does that count?
PRODUCER
No.
DLB
What if I told you that these were disconnected shots interspersed with Andrew Garfield looking glumly out a window?
PRODUCER
How much of this series is Andrew Garfield looking glumly out a window?
DLB
A relatively small percentage of his glumness is window-based, sir.
PRODUCER
So does anything happen?
DLB
Well, Garfield and his partner are looking around a cabin and find empty jars of peaches.
PRODUCER
Yeah, peach content is hot right now. What cabin is this?
DLB
It’s Mama Lafferty’s cabin. She’s doing a needlepoint of a thing that says “Heavenly Father” something, because we haven’t emphasized enough that Mormons can’t say “God.”
PRODUCER
I didn’t know Mormons can’t say “God.”
DLB
Well, technically they can. And frequently they do. But remember, they’re weirdos.
PRODUCER
Ah. So what does Mama Lafferty have to say?
DLB
She gets mad at Brother Brady for talking to the cops because she’s “held [him] in prayer.”
PRODUCER
What does that mean, “held him in prayer?”
DLB
It means she’s a weirdo. Also a racist. She barks at Detective Talba for being a “Lamanite.”
PRODUCER
Haven’t we already seen a lot of that?
DLB
Yes. But we also get to see a baseball bat with dents in it and an old shoe. Music plays dramatically to tell us these are important somehow.
PRODUCER
Are they important somehow?
DLB
No.
PRODUCER
Is anything important in this cabin?
DLB
The basement. It’s where the School of the Prophets met. It’s also where Andrew Garfield has disconnected flashbacks of events he hasn’t actually seen. He grills the Brady guy, and he replies in lots of weird-sounding Mormon jargon about burning bosoms. He does use the term “ward” instead of “congregation” for the first time in this series, though. So it’s really, really accurate.
PRODUCER
So far, this sounds really, really boring.
DLB
The music is ominous.
PRODUCER
Of course.
DLB
And Brady’s just getting started. He talks about how violent the scriptures are and then starts speaking in flashbacks.
PRODUCER
How many flashbacks is this thing going to have?
DLB
All of them.
PRODUCER
So more unidentified 19th Century people in bad wigs.
DLB
No, these flashbacks actually make some sense. This is the episode where I use a lengthy flashback to lay out Ron’s conversion to fundamentalism. It’s kind of like Breaking Bad!
PRODUCER
I love Breaking Bad! It’s the best character arc in the history of television!
DLB
Yes. Vince Gilligan said he wanted to chronicle the story of what happens when Mr. Chips turns into Scarface. So I wanted to do something similar by chronicling what happens when a violent, abusive family decides to become somewhat more violent and abusive.
PRODUCER
So it’s nothing at all like Breaking Bad. Walter White started out as good man who became a monster. Your characters were violent and abusive and awful from the moment we met them.
DLB
You fail to see that this is what Mormonism does to people.
PRODUCER
You fail to show how Mormonism does this to people.
DLB
I show how they give blessings in bathtubs.
PRODUCER
Do they?
DLB
No.
PRODUCER
I’m not following.
DLB
Precisely. So Ron goes and visits some weirdos who are fundamentalists, but they drink wine and stuff. So they’re actually somewhat less weird than regular Mormons. They also like to have a lot of sex, and so does Ron, so he lets them baptize him in a steamy hot tub. He then goes home and hugs his equally creepy brother Dan, and then they set up a meeting in the basement with the Prophet Burl “Onias” Ives, who says they need to marry lots of ladies and hate black people more, because Cain was into bestiality. This leads them to a snow-covered mountain, where Ron goes to find a dream mine that the Angel Moroni dug or something. The snow inspires Ron to start typing a revelation on a cool old computer. End of flashback.
PRODUCER
In this flashback, do we see any sex? Or violence? Does Ron go up into the mountains and struggle against the elements?
DLB
No. We don’t see any of that. But they talk about all of it. A lot.
PRODUCER
So we don’t see Ron do anything?
DLB
We see him type, dammit.
PRODUCER
And that’s it?
DLB
For the moment. We then watch the interrogation of Mama Lafferty, who may or may not be Anthony Perkins from Psycho in drag. She also may or may not know the names of bearded people.
PRODUCER
Sounds riveting.
DLB
Well, she’s really racist, like all Mormons. So that’s something.
PRODUCER
Brenda wasn’t racist, was she?
DLB
Who’s Brenda?
PRODUCER
The woman who was murdered in real life. The subject of your series who has gotten maybe ten minutes of screen time in the previous five episodes.
DLB
Oh, right, right, right. You’ll like this episode. She gets a lot of screen time in this one.
PRODUCER
Oh, good!
DLB
Yeah, in the very next scene, her baby is crying. And she’s arguing with her husband Alan about his creepy brothers. And he’s yelling at her a lot. And she refuses to shut up, even after Alan yells at her to shut up. So Alan hits her.
PRODUCER
Alan sounds like a jerk. All the Laffertys sound like jerks, and all of them treat Brenda terribly every time they come into contact with her. Why did she marry into a family of obviously terrible people?
DLB
Because Mormonism sucks.
PRODUCER
I don’t follow.
DLB
Brenda does. She goes to two General Authorities with her problems.
PRODUCER
What’s a General Authority?
DLB
In this universe, they are pretty much the robot Time Lords from the Loki miniseries. Old, creepy, inhuman. Did I say old and creepy? Because they’re really, really old and creepy. The point is that it is impossible to be a Mormon of any stripe and not be a culty, unfeeling, ignorant moron.
PRODUCER
So what do these robot geezers do?
DLB
They give her a blessing in the creepiest manner possible, creepily telling her to creepily stalk her creepy brothers-in-law and creep them back into the strait and narrow.
PRODUCER
Sounds creepy.
DLB
I wish. It’s mostly just boring. But the music screams creepy.
PRODUCER
Does that make it creepy?
DLB
No.
PRODUCER
I gotta say, this isn’t sounding like a winner.
DLB
But we’re getting to the best part! Andrew Garfield gives a weird, creepy blessing to his mother in a bubble bath!
PRODUCER
That’s the best part? What does it have to do with the murders?
DLB
The what now?
PRODUCER
Isn’t this a show about two real-life murders?
DLB
No. This is a show about how Andrew Garfield loses his faith because of a red book that he gets at the end of this episode.
PRODUCER
A red book? What red book?
DLB
Nobody ever says, but it looks kind of like “You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth” by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society.
PRODUCER
Aren’t they the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
DLB
I haven’t checked. At least there’s only one 19th Century flashback, where we show a visibly hungover Brigham Young looking at the empty Salt Lake Valley as ominous music plays.
PRODUCER
Does that have anything to do with the red book?
DLB
No. But Andrew Garfield’s wife finds him reading the red book and shows zero empathy and demands that he bear his testimony at the next church meeting.
PRODUCER
What does that mean?
DLB
It means Mormonism sucks. Can I tell you about the thrilling conclusion in the next episode?
PRODUCER
Is it thrilling?
DLB
No. But Mormonism still sucks.
Suddenly, there is an earthquake. In the distance, a cow takes a dump. The end.
Chapter 7: Blood Atonement
I begin my review of this final turd with a bit of housekeeping from the last turd. It’s important that you all know that “Capitalism is part of Heavenly Father's plan to help the church prosper in the latter days.” A full-time missionary solemnly proclaimed this bit of nonsense in Episode 6 as if it were the 14th Article of Faith. Brenda Lafferty, the recipient of this doctrinal offal, replies that the missionaries need to go to her sisters-in-law and "maybe just remind them that they're facing eternal separation from their families. But don't be a downer about it.”
The downer thing would be just another silly smattering of dialogue on par with the Capitalism dippiness, except for the crucial difference that the missionary is fictional, and there really was a Brenda Lafferty who very much was not. This exchange encapsulates the inherent vileness of this show regardless of where you situate re: Mormonism. Because for six hours or so, a real-life murder victim has been reduced to a caricature who spouts wooden-sounding agitprop she would never have said, all in the service of a story that ultimately has nothing to do with her. But who cares, right? Anything to make the Mormons look like idiots.
And hoo boy, are they idiots in this episode. True, they’ve been idiots in every episode, but they sink to new lows in the finale.
We start with a repeat visit to the dream mine of Yukon Cornelius Onias, who rebukes Detective Talba for dropping an F bomb. And in Brother Burl’s defense, Talba’s F bomb was completely unnecessary, unlike the one Andrew Garfield screams in the final act just to prove he’s not a good little boy anymore. Anyway, we find out about Ron’s removal revelation and that there’s a list of names, but I thought we already knew that? It’s kind of hard to keep up with the hodgepodge of procedural elements, as they’re largely incoherent. Pyre is not sure if he should go to Florida to protect Diana Lafferty, who is on the run with her kids, or if he should go to Nevada, where Ron is supposed to be, or maybe go to both? I think Wyoming comes up, too. The police chief doesn’t care where they go so long as nobody makes the Church look bad. The writer doesn’t much care, either, because this isn’t the story he’s interested in telling.
No, the primary storyline of Jeb Pyre’s creeping atheism asserts itself as Pyre confides in Talba that his wife wants him to bear his testimony “in front of our congregation on Sunday.”
“Is public speaking a problem?” Talba asks.
“It is when I don’t believe the words coming out of my mouth,” Pyre replies. “And if the Brethren smell any doubt, I’ll be single, maybe by Fall.”
Yikes! Who are these Brethren who monitor testimony meetings for doubters? Is Pyre in an arranged marriage? Otherwise, why would his wife have to wait for a doubt nostril verdict before deciding to leave? Also, how come I’ve never seen any such Brethrenic Doubt Sniffers mandating divorces in my almost 54 years as a member of this Church?
Keep in mind, too, that the term “the Brethren” is tossed around to refer to anyone sinister, Mormon, and male, which is pretty much every white person with testicles in this series. It encompasses apostles, bishops, generic General Authorities, stake presidents, and ward librarians. They’re all interchangeable.
In fact, lots of terms in this episode are used without any reference to what they mean in the real world. There’s the moment where Dan shrieks at young missionaries to “stop fornicating” as the fully-clothed innocents stand there, actively not fornicating. There’s also the weird moment near the end of this episode where Diana Lafferty shouts at her fictional sister-in-law at a gas station to try to convince her to leave her husband. “Bear your testimony!” she screams. This high-decibel counsel comes as the fake sister-in-law is sitting in a car about to drive away and be lost forever. Were Fake-Lafferty-Wife to bear her testimony at that precise moment, it might have created a faith-promoting moment for the fake couple, but I don’t think that was what Diana was aiming for. I’m confident that “bear your testimony” does not appear in any thesaurus as a synonym for “get out of the damn car.”
But let us go back to the Brethren. For it comes to pass that an unnamed Brether [sic] is featured prominently in both this episode and the last. He/it is a 726-year-old malfunctioning Billy Graham robot who gave Brenda a blessing last week and does the Holy Hokey Pokey this week.
Literally. The Holy Hokey Pokey. It has to be seen to be believed.
In fact, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take a few moments to recreate this particular train wreck, because it made me laugh harder than anything else in this dumpster fire of a series. This guy has no name and no assigned office. He is only referred to as a “General Authority,” and once by Pyre’s wife as “MY General Authority, too!” She takes ownership of him after she calls him to complain about Pyre doing his job to prevent lunatics from killing people and postponing an easily-postponed child’s baptism for a couple of weeks.
So Sister Pyre’s General Authority, who I will refer to hereafter as Mr. Brethren, shows up at the station and speaks with faux solemnity about… well, no paraphrase can do it justice. Here’s the dialogue, verbatim:
MR. BRETHREN
Brother Pyre, let us come together for the sake of our church - and for the sake of your eternal family.
JEB PYRE
Sorry, what does my family have to do with this visit?
MR. BRETHREN
In the past, you have bent man's law for the sake of the Church. When your ward considered elevating a member to Boy Scout Master [seriously? BOY SCOUT MASTER? You don't trust the audience to know what a scoutmaster is?], you volunteered investigative details from that member’s past, despite the fact that you never charged the man with anything. That’s not how justice operates.
JEB PYRE
He would have been charged with child abuse if the Church hadn't encouraged his wife to stop sharing evidence with me.
MR. BRETHREN
We were grateful, brother.
ALAN LAFFERTY
So now you want to sweep my wife and child's blood under the rug for the sake of the church's reputation? Have I got that right?
MR. BRETHREN
(ignoring ALAN completely)
BROTHER Pyre, would you please ask MISTER Lafferty to mind his tongue?
[Dramatic pause.]
I see.
[They pause every harder.]
And that is all.
[Bonus pause]
Gentleman.
[MR. BRETHREN turns and walks out the door. He then stops, awkwardly raises his left leg, and slaps his shoe like a fat flamingo with gout.]
ALAN LAFFERTY
(quoting the Doctrine and Covenants)
“Shake off the dust of your feet as a testimony against them, and know that in the day of judgment you shall be judges of that house and condemn them.”
JEB PYRE
He just condemned us both.
[Indeed he did. And… scene.]
____
For that scene to have happened on screen, something like the following would have had to have happened off screen.
Join me as we watch SISTER PYRE and MR. BRETHREN in…
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN EPISODE 6.5: MY FAVORITE BRETHREN
SISTER PYRE
(on telephone)
Hello. Is this my General Authority?
MR. BRETHREN
I’m sorry, who’s calling?
SISTER PYRE
I’m Jeb Pyre’s wife.
MR. BRETHREN
Oh, right. The detective who brazenly doesn’t let us call pedophiles to be Master of Boy Scouts. Man, were we grateful that he didn’t prosecute.
SISTER PYRE
I'd have had to divorce him if he did, right?
MR. BRETHREN
That goes without saying.
SISTER PYRE
Oh, I know. Anyway, there’s a new problem.
MR. BRETHREN
Remind me of your first name again?
SISTER PYRE
I don’t think I have a first name.
MR. BRETHREN
What’s the new problem, Sister?
SISTER PYRE
Well, my husband is busy investigating a murder committed by two excommunicated members of the Church, and he’s asked me to postpone my eight-year-old daughter’s baptism by a couple of weeks.
MR. BRETHREN
No! NO! Everyone will think your daughter is a fornicator!
SISTER PYRE
Yes, they will! So I’ve ordered him to bear his testimony this Sunday…
MR. BRETHREN
Is he going to be in a car?
SISTER PYRE
What?
MR. BRETHREN
Oh, sorry. Are you calling to ask me to come doubt sniff for you?
SISTER PYRE
No, all I want is for you to come order him to ignore the murders completely and threaten him and his family with eternal damnation if he tries to do his job.
MR. BRETHREN
Of course. Consider it done. I’ll also eternally damn the victim’s husband for some reason. No extra charge.
SISTER PYRE
Sweet! Could you bring your dustiest shoes, too?
[And… scene.]
___
What else is there to say, really? I could recount the details of how they go to Circus Circus because of a revelation that cryptically says “Circus Circus” and chase Dan and Ron through secret casino tunnels after Dan and Ron kneel in prayer at blackjack tables and publicly perform temple ceremonies for security cameras and then try to kill each other in the men’s room before Andrew Garfield comes bursting through the ceiling…
Honestly, what’s the point? Basically, it’s all a sprawling mess. Brenda’s murder happens somewhere in the middle of all that, and it’s as much of an afterthought as it is in the previous six episodes. It’s repugnant if you think about it, but the filmmakers don’t want you to think about it. You’re supposed to spend all your time thinking how much Mormonism sucks.
Two more observations, and then I’m through with this thing.
The first is this week’s PowerPoint presentation, given by Detective Talba this time, which tells “what really happened” at the Mountain Meadows Massacre because Mormons are “impervious to facts.” Ironically, the “facts” Talba provides state that Brigham Young ordered the massacre as a deliberate act of war, a thesis which is rejected by credible historians in and out of the Church, given that the evidence for it is virtually non-existent and the documentary evidence that Brigham tried to stop the massacre before it happened is irrefutable. It’s just really weird that this show trying to expose the evils of Mormon history punts the ball to the fringiest conspiracy theories at every available opportunity.
Of course, history isn’t the real focus of this series, which is Jeb Pyre’s dwindling faith. In the finale, Jeb panics in a car with Talba, wondering how Talba can go through life “without a compass.” Talba punches him in the gut to get him to trust it. Apparently, true faith is largely gastrointestinal.
With last week’s setup about the secret red book and the coming testimony bearing, I expected - h/t to Nathan Scoll for first predicting this - Pyre to stand before his congregation and lay into them, offering indictment after indictment of their sham of a religion, losing his wife, his community, and everything in the process. It would have been ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than everything pointing in that direction from the moment this series began.
But no! This stupid, asinine show doesn’t have the cojones to follow through on its own bile!
Pyre has a pleasant chat with Talba, who does some Paiute chanting that he thinks his meaningless, but it makes him feel better. And just like that, Pyre realizes that even though his faith is gone, he has a pretty wife and sweet kids, and he goes home to them, and they ignore the fact that Mr. Brethren has condemned them all to hell. All is well. The final scene is Pyre standing at a river with his anti-Semitic mother who mentions Heavenly Father one last time, and Pyre just sort of brushes it off, and they smile as they watch the sunset.
Look, I get it that people who have left the Church feel very protective of this show, and I have no problem with anyone who wants to find value or resonance here. If you’re one of those people, more power to you. Just know that that validation comes at the expense of Brenda Lafferty and her surviving family, whose wounds have been torn open afresh to give you something fun to watch.
Thank Heavenly Father there will be no season 2.
The downer thing would be just another silly smattering of dialogue on par with the Capitalism dippiness, except for the crucial difference that the missionary is fictional, and there really was a Brenda Lafferty who very much was not. This exchange encapsulates the inherent vileness of this show regardless of where you situate re: Mormonism. Because for six hours or so, a real-life murder victim has been reduced to a caricature who spouts wooden-sounding agitprop she would never have said, all in the service of a story that ultimately has nothing to do with her. But who cares, right? Anything to make the Mormons look like idiots.
And hoo boy, are they idiots in this episode. True, they’ve been idiots in every episode, but they sink to new lows in the finale.
We start with a repeat visit to the dream mine of Yukon Cornelius Onias, who rebukes Detective Talba for dropping an F bomb. And in Brother Burl’s defense, Talba’s F bomb was completely unnecessary, unlike the one Andrew Garfield screams in the final act just to prove he’s not a good little boy anymore. Anyway, we find out about Ron’s removal revelation and that there’s a list of names, but I thought we already knew that? It’s kind of hard to keep up with the hodgepodge of procedural elements, as they’re largely incoherent. Pyre is not sure if he should go to Florida to protect Diana Lafferty, who is on the run with her kids, or if he should go to Nevada, where Ron is supposed to be, or maybe go to both? I think Wyoming comes up, too. The police chief doesn’t care where they go so long as nobody makes the Church look bad. The writer doesn’t much care, either, because this isn’t the story he’s interested in telling.
No, the primary storyline of Jeb Pyre’s creeping atheism asserts itself as Pyre confides in Talba that his wife wants him to bear his testimony “in front of our congregation on Sunday.”
“Is public speaking a problem?” Talba asks.
“It is when I don’t believe the words coming out of my mouth,” Pyre replies. “And if the Brethren smell any doubt, I’ll be single, maybe by Fall.”
Yikes! Who are these Brethren who monitor testimony meetings for doubters? Is Pyre in an arranged marriage? Otherwise, why would his wife have to wait for a doubt nostril verdict before deciding to leave? Also, how come I’ve never seen any such Brethrenic Doubt Sniffers mandating divorces in my almost 54 years as a member of this Church?
Keep in mind, too, that the term “the Brethren” is tossed around to refer to anyone sinister, Mormon, and male, which is pretty much every white person with testicles in this series. It encompasses apostles, bishops, generic General Authorities, stake presidents, and ward librarians. They’re all interchangeable.
In fact, lots of terms in this episode are used without any reference to what they mean in the real world. There’s the moment where Dan shrieks at young missionaries to “stop fornicating” as the fully-clothed innocents stand there, actively not fornicating. There’s also the weird moment near the end of this episode where Diana Lafferty shouts at her fictional sister-in-law at a gas station to try to convince her to leave her husband. “Bear your testimony!” she screams. This high-decibel counsel comes as the fake sister-in-law is sitting in a car about to drive away and be lost forever. Were Fake-Lafferty-Wife to bear her testimony at that precise moment, it might have created a faith-promoting moment for the fake couple, but I don’t think that was what Diana was aiming for. I’m confident that “bear your testimony” does not appear in any thesaurus as a synonym for “get out of the damn car.”
But let us go back to the Brethren. For it comes to pass that an unnamed Brether [sic] is featured prominently in both this episode and the last. He/it is a 726-year-old malfunctioning Billy Graham robot who gave Brenda a blessing last week and does the Holy Hokey Pokey this week.
Literally. The Holy Hokey Pokey. It has to be seen to be believed.
In fact, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to take a few moments to recreate this particular train wreck, because it made me laugh harder than anything else in this dumpster fire of a series. This guy has no name and no assigned office. He is only referred to as a “General Authority,” and once by Pyre’s wife as “MY General Authority, too!” She takes ownership of him after she calls him to complain about Pyre doing his job to prevent lunatics from killing people and postponing an easily-postponed child’s baptism for a couple of weeks.
So Sister Pyre’s General Authority, who I will refer to hereafter as Mr. Brethren, shows up at the station and speaks with faux solemnity about… well, no paraphrase can do it justice. Here’s the dialogue, verbatim:
MR. BRETHREN
Brother Pyre, let us come together for the sake of our church - and for the sake of your eternal family.
JEB PYRE
Sorry, what does my family have to do with this visit?
MR. BRETHREN
In the past, you have bent man's law for the sake of the Church. When your ward considered elevating a member to Boy Scout Master [seriously? BOY SCOUT MASTER? You don't trust the audience to know what a scoutmaster is?], you volunteered investigative details from that member’s past, despite the fact that you never charged the man with anything. That’s not how justice operates.
JEB PYRE
He would have been charged with child abuse if the Church hadn't encouraged his wife to stop sharing evidence with me.
MR. BRETHREN
We were grateful, brother.
ALAN LAFFERTY
So now you want to sweep my wife and child's blood under the rug for the sake of the church's reputation? Have I got that right?
MR. BRETHREN
(ignoring ALAN completely)
BROTHER Pyre, would you please ask MISTER Lafferty to mind his tongue?
[Dramatic pause.]
I see.
[They pause every harder.]
And that is all.
[Bonus pause]
Gentleman.
[MR. BRETHREN turns and walks out the door. He then stops, awkwardly raises his left leg, and slaps his shoe like a fat flamingo with gout.]
ALAN LAFFERTY
(quoting the Doctrine and Covenants)
“Shake off the dust of your feet as a testimony against them, and know that in the day of judgment you shall be judges of that house and condemn them.”
JEB PYRE
He just condemned us both.
[Indeed he did. And… scene.]
____
For that scene to have happened on screen, something like the following would have had to have happened off screen.
Join me as we watch SISTER PYRE and MR. BRETHREN in…
UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN EPISODE 6.5: MY FAVORITE BRETHREN
SISTER PYRE
(on telephone)
Hello. Is this my General Authority?
MR. BRETHREN
I’m sorry, who’s calling?
SISTER PYRE
I’m Jeb Pyre’s wife.
MR. BRETHREN
Oh, right. The detective who brazenly doesn’t let us call pedophiles to be Master of Boy Scouts. Man, were we grateful that he didn’t prosecute.
SISTER PYRE
I'd have had to divorce him if he did, right?
MR. BRETHREN
That goes without saying.
SISTER PYRE
Oh, I know. Anyway, there’s a new problem.
MR. BRETHREN
Remind me of your first name again?
SISTER PYRE
I don’t think I have a first name.
MR. BRETHREN
What’s the new problem, Sister?
SISTER PYRE
Well, my husband is busy investigating a murder committed by two excommunicated members of the Church, and he’s asked me to postpone my eight-year-old daughter’s baptism by a couple of weeks.
MR. BRETHREN
No! NO! Everyone will think your daughter is a fornicator!
SISTER PYRE
Yes, they will! So I’ve ordered him to bear his testimony this Sunday…
MR. BRETHREN
Is he going to be in a car?
SISTER PYRE
What?
MR. BRETHREN
Oh, sorry. Are you calling to ask me to come doubt sniff for you?
SISTER PYRE
No, all I want is for you to come order him to ignore the murders completely and threaten him and his family with eternal damnation if he tries to do his job.
MR. BRETHREN
Of course. Consider it done. I’ll also eternally damn the victim’s husband for some reason. No extra charge.
SISTER PYRE
Sweet! Could you bring your dustiest shoes, too?
[And… scene.]
___
What else is there to say, really? I could recount the details of how they go to Circus Circus because of a revelation that cryptically says “Circus Circus” and chase Dan and Ron through secret casino tunnels after Dan and Ron kneel in prayer at blackjack tables and publicly perform temple ceremonies for security cameras and then try to kill each other in the men’s room before Andrew Garfield comes bursting through the ceiling…
Honestly, what’s the point? Basically, it’s all a sprawling mess. Brenda’s murder happens somewhere in the middle of all that, and it’s as much of an afterthought as it is in the previous six episodes. It’s repugnant if you think about it, but the filmmakers don’t want you to think about it. You’re supposed to spend all your time thinking how much Mormonism sucks.
Two more observations, and then I’m through with this thing.
The first is this week’s PowerPoint presentation, given by Detective Talba this time, which tells “what really happened” at the Mountain Meadows Massacre because Mormons are “impervious to facts.” Ironically, the “facts” Talba provides state that Brigham Young ordered the massacre as a deliberate act of war, a thesis which is rejected by credible historians in and out of the Church, given that the evidence for it is virtually non-existent and the documentary evidence that Brigham tried to stop the massacre before it happened is irrefutable. It’s just really weird that this show trying to expose the evils of Mormon history punts the ball to the fringiest conspiracy theories at every available opportunity.
Of course, history isn’t the real focus of this series, which is Jeb Pyre’s dwindling faith. In the finale, Jeb panics in a car with Talba, wondering how Talba can go through life “without a compass.” Talba punches him in the gut to get him to trust it. Apparently, true faith is largely gastrointestinal.
With last week’s setup about the secret red book and the coming testimony bearing, I expected - h/t to Nathan Scoll for first predicting this - Pyre to stand before his congregation and lay into them, offering indictment after indictment of their sham of a religion, losing his wife, his community, and everything in the process. It would have been ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than everything pointing in that direction from the moment this series began.
But no! This stupid, asinine show doesn’t have the cojones to follow through on its own bile!
Pyre has a pleasant chat with Talba, who does some Paiute chanting that he thinks his meaningless, but it makes him feel better. And just like that, Pyre realizes that even though his faith is gone, he has a pretty wife and sweet kids, and he goes home to them, and they ignore the fact that Mr. Brethren has condemned them all to hell. All is well. The final scene is Pyre standing at a river with his anti-Semitic mother who mentions Heavenly Father one last time, and Pyre just sort of brushes it off, and they smile as they watch the sunset.
Look, I get it that people who have left the Church feel very protective of this show, and I have no problem with anyone who wants to find value or resonance here. If you’re one of those people, more power to you. Just know that that validation comes at the expense of Brenda Lafferty and her surviving family, whose wounds have been torn open afresh to give you something fun to watch.
Thank Heavenly Father there will be no season 2.
Postscript
Finished “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey” on Netflix last night. Terrifying. Bone-chilling. Creepy beyond words. Very, very well done. It’s what “Under the Banner of Heaven” wanted to be, thought it was, and really, really wasn’t.
I thought I was finished writing about “Under the Banner of Heaven,” but I wanted to add this postscript in light of the recent pieces from the show’s defenders berating those of us who dismiss it as inaccurate. UTBOH auteur Dustin Lance Black went on the Salt Lake Tribune’s MormonLand podcast and was only willing to concede that he’d used the term “Heavenly Father” too much. The UTBOH defender consensus is that anyone criticizing UTBOH is straining at gnats and swallowing camels, because citing minor issues like Heavenly Father overusage ignores all the amazing things that UTBOH got right.
It is therefore worth taking a moment to review what UTBOH got significantly and profoundly wrong. And it goes way, way beyond silliness like saying “Heavenly Father bless you” when you sneeze or weirdly implying that Mormons can’t eat French fries.
According to UTBOH:
1. A mid-teens Joseph Smith fabricated the First Vision to score with a mid-teens Emma Hale.
Given that Joseph didn’t meet Emma until she was 21, this departure from reality seems completely unnecessary unless you’re trying to establish that Joseph’s entire religious motivation was sexual interest in young girls.
2. Joseph’s murder was the product of a shadowy collaboration between Emma and Brigham Young, both of whom wanted Joseph dead in order to pick the next leader of the Church. Brigham wanted power for himself, while Emma wanted Joseph Smith III to succeed his father and end polygamy.
Everything about this scenario is the opposite of the truth. It’s also the premise of a recent fringey conspiracy theory movie that has been rightly lambasted by credible historians in and out of the Church. The reality is that Brigham and Emma adored Joseph and despised each other, respectively.
3. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was ordered by Brigham Young as part of a deliberate war on “gentiles” entering the state of Utah.
The real Brigham Young sent a letter to the perpetrators of the massacre telling them to leave the Baker-Fancher wagon company alone, but it tragically arrived too late to prevent the slaughter.
It’s worth remembering these historical howlers when reading articles about how meticulous the production was about making sure the Joseph Smith Nauvoo Legion costume had the right color braids and the Carthage Jail set had the right number of bullet holes.
Moving beyond historical hooey, let’s focus on how UTBOH depicted the modern Church, or, at least, the Church circa 1984.
According to UTBOH:
1. The Church was actively and openly working to thwart the investigation of the Lafferty murders, going so far as to have one of the top leaders of the Church perform a religious ritual condemning the Mormon detective and the murder victim’s widower to hell.
Because, you know, reasons.
2. The Church’s power in Utah is such that stake presidents function as legal counsel and threaten Mormon detectives with hellfire if they don’t release excommunicated murder suspects into their custody.
Makes perfect sense.
3. Bishops reassign custody of the children of excommunicated members to other families without informing Child Protective Services, and when those children run away and are missing, the bishop just shrugs his shoulders, and nobody cares.
Oh, yeah. That happens all the time.
4. The Church routinely excommunicates those who study Church history, even going so far as to remove all references to polygamy and fundamentalism from every public library in Utah.
If you say so.
5. Commerce with polygamists is grounds for excommunication. Bearing an insincere testimony on Fast Sunday is grounds for excommunication and church-mandated divorce. However, a bishop casually sharing confidential, personal information about ward members anytime and for any reason is no big deal and not nearly as bad as having a beard, which, while perhaps not grounds for excommunication, is “vigorously” discouraged.
Yeah. That all checks out.
Anyway, the next time you tell me the only reason I didn’t like UTBOH is that I just can’t handle the truth, I’ll invite you to watch “Keep Sweet” with me. Or “Murder Among the Mormons.” Or “Mormon No More,” which is next up in my viewing queue. If you botch history and current practice as badly as UTBOH did, you don’t get credit because you got the number of Carthage Jail bullet holes right.
Main Page: Anti-Mormonism
I thought I was finished writing about “Under the Banner of Heaven,” but I wanted to add this postscript in light of the recent pieces from the show’s defenders berating those of us who dismiss it as inaccurate. UTBOH auteur Dustin Lance Black went on the Salt Lake Tribune’s MormonLand podcast and was only willing to concede that he’d used the term “Heavenly Father” too much. The UTBOH defender consensus is that anyone criticizing UTBOH is straining at gnats and swallowing camels, because citing minor issues like Heavenly Father overusage ignores all the amazing things that UTBOH got right.
It is therefore worth taking a moment to review what UTBOH got significantly and profoundly wrong. And it goes way, way beyond silliness like saying “Heavenly Father bless you” when you sneeze or weirdly implying that Mormons can’t eat French fries.
According to UTBOH:
1. A mid-teens Joseph Smith fabricated the First Vision to score with a mid-teens Emma Hale.
Given that Joseph didn’t meet Emma until she was 21, this departure from reality seems completely unnecessary unless you’re trying to establish that Joseph’s entire religious motivation was sexual interest in young girls.
2. Joseph’s murder was the product of a shadowy collaboration between Emma and Brigham Young, both of whom wanted Joseph dead in order to pick the next leader of the Church. Brigham wanted power for himself, while Emma wanted Joseph Smith III to succeed his father and end polygamy.
Everything about this scenario is the opposite of the truth. It’s also the premise of a recent fringey conspiracy theory movie that has been rightly lambasted by credible historians in and out of the Church. The reality is that Brigham and Emma adored Joseph and despised each other, respectively.
3. The Mountain Meadows Massacre was ordered by Brigham Young as part of a deliberate war on “gentiles” entering the state of Utah.
The real Brigham Young sent a letter to the perpetrators of the massacre telling them to leave the Baker-Fancher wagon company alone, but it tragically arrived too late to prevent the slaughter.
It’s worth remembering these historical howlers when reading articles about how meticulous the production was about making sure the Joseph Smith Nauvoo Legion costume had the right color braids and the Carthage Jail set had the right number of bullet holes.
Moving beyond historical hooey, let’s focus on how UTBOH depicted the modern Church, or, at least, the Church circa 1984.
According to UTBOH:
1. The Church was actively and openly working to thwart the investigation of the Lafferty murders, going so far as to have one of the top leaders of the Church perform a religious ritual condemning the Mormon detective and the murder victim’s widower to hell.
Because, you know, reasons.
2. The Church’s power in Utah is such that stake presidents function as legal counsel and threaten Mormon detectives with hellfire if they don’t release excommunicated murder suspects into their custody.
Makes perfect sense.
3. Bishops reassign custody of the children of excommunicated members to other families without informing Child Protective Services, and when those children run away and are missing, the bishop just shrugs his shoulders, and nobody cares.
Oh, yeah. That happens all the time.
4. The Church routinely excommunicates those who study Church history, even going so far as to remove all references to polygamy and fundamentalism from every public library in Utah.
If you say so.
5. Commerce with polygamists is grounds for excommunication. Bearing an insincere testimony on Fast Sunday is grounds for excommunication and church-mandated divorce. However, a bishop casually sharing confidential, personal information about ward members anytime and for any reason is no big deal and not nearly as bad as having a beard, which, while perhaps not grounds for excommunication, is “vigorously” discouraged.
Yeah. That all checks out.
Anyway, the next time you tell me the only reason I didn’t like UTBOH is that I just can’t handle the truth, I’ll invite you to watch “Keep Sweet” with me. Or “Murder Among the Mormons.” Or “Mormon No More,” which is next up in my viewing queue. If you botch history and current practice as badly as UTBOH did, you don’t get credit because you got the number of Carthage Jail bullet holes right.
Main Page: Anti-Mormonism
