Murdaugh: Death In The Family Episode 4 Recap: “Controlled Burn”

It really does feel like the walls are closing in on Alex… and that’s just it Fourth The eighth episode in Murdoch: Death in the family?! For starters, Alex is trying to raise money to settle it Beaches lawsuit against him. His insurance policy will provide him with $500,000 (not the kind of thing they’d probably want to highlight in a future commercial), but that’s it — between this and Paul’s previous accidents, Alex has maxed out his payout. The casual way in which Alex relays this information to his colleagues at the law firm is a reminder that Paul’s negligence was no secret, perhaps for years before that, but everyone treated those incidents as trite events to cover up, and perhaps that would have been the case this time if someone hadn’t been killed. Knowing that representatives of the bar and gas station who sold alcohol to Paul and his friends that night have agreed to pay Beaches $1.5 million in damages, Randolph says Alex will have to pay $1 million himself. Is this in addition to the $750,000 Alvarez has that Alex uses as his personal line of credit, or is that money just gone?

Gloria hasn’t been killed…yet. Maggie meets Gloria’s son, Brian, outside the supermarket where he had just started work on the morning of his mother’s fall: Gloria has had an infection since her surgery, and she could use Maggie’s prayers and visitation. This is clearly too much work for Maggie, who pulls off a Murdoch move instead, emptying the money from the plastic sandwich bag into her purse. Unlike Alex’s gaudy $100 package at the resort last episode, these bills are small and wrinkled, looking guilty even before Maggie presses them on Brian. Trying to ignore Brian’s emotional needs with money that’s not even enough for Maggie to keep in her purse is a lady of the manor move, but Patricia Arquette’s furrowed brow lets us know that Maggie still has some capacity for shame.

Paul appears to be trying to assuage his guilt by working, purging the kudzu from A Dove field On the property (and not, as Alex will keep suggesting over and over, just burning it). Maggie – who is displaying the kind of narrow-minded indulgence that helped push Paul into his current situation – is concerned that he is working too hard and suggests that he ask Anthony to help him as he did in previous years. Paul ignores his better instincts and tracks Anthony down at his landscaping job to ask her out. Anthony is in his guilty hell, telling Paul that he should have made Paul stop boating so recklessly. Now the girl he was going to marry is dead and Paul is here asking about kudzu? Paul tearfully tells Anthony that he loves him. Anthony loves Paul too, “But it’s over. It’s over.” The miracle of Johnny Berchtold’s performance is that… barely Makes you pity Paul because of his loneliness…

…until the next scene reminds you that Paul has been shielded from the consequences of his drinking problem for years, to a degree that even his friends may not know until they read Mandy’s latest reports on package Concerning a charge that his family removed from his record. pee Still Being protected, Maggie decided not to add to his current problems by telling him about Gloria’s injury, saying instead that it would mean a lot to Gloria if he went to see her. Paul refuses, ignoring that he doesn’t like hospitals (as if the rest of us look forward to visiting and taking in all the sights, sounds, and smells). But he was trying to pray the way Gloria prayed — for her, for Mallory, for people to forgive him: “I don’t know if that helps.” Maggie doesn’t pressure Paul, probably because she’s never done it before and doesn’t know how.

Elsewhere, the rest of the family is still trying to clean up the mess Paul made. Alex’s law partner Billy (Paul Schneider! As of this writing, he’s only credited as “law partner”! Sir, fire your agent!!!) offers the $1.5 million they know the other defendants paid, but Mark counters with $10 million: he thinks Alex is living well, doesn’t think Alex wants to take this to trial, and considers Alex lucky he didn’t face prison time By himself. When discussing the meeting with Billy, Randolph, and Randy later, everyone seems resigned. Alex’s attempt to respond, by once again Promoting the narrative that Paul may not even have been driving the boat elicits a violent cough from Randolph that we only see coming out of blood. A coughing fit ends the conversation for now, but how many bodies will this condition leave in its wake (no pun intended)?!

Some of the best acting of the episode comes as Maggie finally She arrives at the hospital to see Gloria in the ICU, where the flowers Maggie brought are not allowed. (One senses that Maggie has relied on Gloria in the past to help her avoid such mistakes, and that any reputation Maggie had for elegance and good taste was built on Gloria’s wisdom.) As Gloria lies unconscious, Maggie comes as close as possible to admitting how she destroyed Paul, recalling how he used to scream with Maggie as a child, but never cried with Gloria. Maggie was grateful to have Gloria there when Maggie herself couldn’t be. Arquette brings ambiguity to the line: When Maggie can’t be? Lacking the ability to be? Did he have the luxury not to be? “But I knew he felt loved,” Maggie adds. Passive voice has never been so damning.

While Maggie was pouring her heart out, Alex was at his bank with his account manager Bruce (Jason Warner Smith). The jellyfish business is doing better, but not so well that Bruce doesn’t suggest selling the beach house. That part of Margaret’s story at the resort in the last episode was clearly not an invention: Alex called it Maggie’s Haven, adding that her name was in the papers, and he couldn’t ask her questions about it. Alex wonders if Bruce can’t just pop a little something on him, but the last time he did that, they had other executives running errands about their unspecified but supposedly suspicious business. The apparent threat doesn’t give Alex the float he was hoping for, leaving Alex seething and Jason Clarke exploring just how much silent rage the actor can convey through aggressive lollipop chewing.

Maggie returns home and finally tells Paul the truth about Gloria, admitting that she doesn’t think Gloria will leave the hospital. Her mentioning to Alex that they must do something for Gloria’s children irritates Paul, who yells at them for talking about her as if she was already gone and accuses them of causing her death. Maggie screams again that he needs rehab. Great insight. Maybe a few years too late. Here, Alex’s friend, Doug from the premiere, tells him that the incident has led to an audit of all matters related to Murdaugh, so Doug can no longer undo Alex’s jellyfish business: this will have to be shut down immediately.

Gloria’s funeral, at the modest country church she attended with her children, is a mixture of the sacred and the profane. Seeing the simple set of snapshots may have been the first thing that made Paul realize that she was living a whole life of her own outside of his parents’ home. When Buster tries to console him, Paul blasphems, “If all this doesn’t work out for her, what’s the point?” Paul sounds as if he wants to crawl out of his skin to escape the family, yet conceptualizing religious faith in such utilitarian terms is downright absurd.

Alex at least has the decency to get out before introducing Brian and Tony to a lawyer named Cory Fleming and explaining his latest scheme: Cory can represent the Satterfields in a lawsuit against Alex’s insurance company; Alex will own up to the fault, and the insurance settlement will cover their bills and a little more. Brian falls into Alex’s arms with relief and gratitude.

to packagein which Mandy and her colleague Liz (Alicia Kelly) lose the story they’ve been working on for months to a “middling guy” — and not, one assumes, the kind of reporters who notice that all the commentators on their latest Murdough story mention the family’s deserving justice Stephen Smith, who apparently died in a suspicious hit-and-run.

Back at the Murdaugh house, Maggie tries to convince Alex to abandon his idea of ​​cutting his painkiller intake to one a day when they hear their dogs are going crazy outside. Finally, Paul, still wearing his funeral suit, takes Alex’s advice and sets the dove field on fire, standing close enough to give himself a preview of the inferno he seems to think he’s headed toward.

Somehow, this isn’t the end of the episode: months pass until we reach the winter of 2020. Alex, Corey, and Bruce celebrate a $3.8 million insurance settlement in the Satterfields’ lawsuit – closed in Alex’s office, pre-coronavirus vaccine; Do I even need to say there’s not a mask in sight?

Now that Alex Satterfields has this windfall, it’s time for another meeting with Mark (in which he brags to Randy about the big cat he just killed on a hunting safari in Botswana, in case you thought there was a lawyer on at least one side of this lawsuit may Don’t be pure garbage.) Mark generously opens up by offering to set Alex up on a payment plan.

You can see, in Clark’s precise, precise expressions, the moment he decides he’d rather pin it on Mark for suggesting he’s broke than end the proceedings: Shocking even his lawyer, Alex announces that $1.5 million is his best and final offer. This would give Mark a reason to look into Alex’s finances, so: probably not the outcome Alex’s various criminal conspirators were hoping for.

Believe it or not, Which It’s not the end of the episode either, because: It’s Christmas! Unsurprisingly, the Murdochs celebrate this holiday with a disgusting display of, say, custom-made $4,500 shotguns for Buster and Paul. While Randy fails to sell Alex on the idea of ​​antagonizing the beaches, the ladies have a chat. Brooklyn asks Alex’s mother Libby (Cindy Carr) how she and Randolph met. Demented Libby doesn’t remember, although she remembers the time she saw her obituary in the newspaper. One of Maggie’s sisters-in-law drives Libby along quickly while Brooklyn asks the obvious follow-up question. Maggie explains that when Alex and his siblings were children, Libby found out that Randolph was cheating on her; She threatened to leave him and take the children. A few days later, people started calling to pay their respects, because of her obituary He was In the paper. Brooklyn, perhaps slow enough on the uptake to be Murdough’s perfect wife, asks who called her. Randolph, the perpetrator, claims he thought it was funny, but Maggie herself always thought it sounded like a warning to her. Anyway, Merry Christmas!

Staying in South Carolina for the holidays, Mandy brings Steven Smith’s mother Sandy (Rhoda Griffis) a flash drive full of crime scene photos, provided by a peer at a local news station who is openly trying to hire Mandy away. There is also a recording of Todd Proctor, who heard that Stephen was gay but didn’t think that meant he deserved to die. Todd adds that Steven wasn’t killed by a car, and that he’s not afraid of the Murdoughs.

Back at the Murdaughs’ house, Maggie has just found Alex’s latest secret pill stash when he calls her downstairs and ushers her out the front door to show her that he bought her a new Mercedes SUV. Maggie is distraught at the conflicting emotions coursing through her, and Alex is too busy basking in the adulation of his other relatives to answer a call from Tony, who is currently being escorted out of Gloria’s trailer by “the guy from the bank.”

At the Smith house, Sandy and Mandy listen to Todd say that you don’t usually see the Highway Patrol investigating a murder, which is Steven’s death. Buster is on their radar to talk to. Mandy wonders why no one did.

On Murdaugh’s balcony, an oblivious Buster shows off his new gun to Brooklyn, who we watch silently convince herself that this is a good thing.

TV Without Pity, Fametracker, and former.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mail Magazine, Collider, and The All, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (detailed episode-by-episode analysis of Beverly Hills, 90210, and Melrose Place), Listen to Sassy, ​​and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She is also co-author with Sarah D. Ponting’s A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes from TV’s Most Iconic ZIP Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.