"American Primeval": Mormons, settlers, Paiutes, and soldiers fight in a very damp Old West.

 

 I thought American Primeval, on Netflix, would be about bikers, but it's a Western: 

"Utah territory, 1857. Wild and Untamed.  The United States army, Mormon militia, Native Americans, and pioneers, all locked in a brutal war for survival."

Back story: The U.S. took control of what is now Utah during the Mexican-American War in 1846. The Mormons under Brigham Young  settled in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and proposed the new state of Deseret.  They got Utah Territory instead. Conflicts with the U.S. government over Mormon practices like polygamy led to skirmishes and eventually the Mormon War, aka the Utah War, 1857-8.

Yes, you do need to know this to understand the episode.

Scene 1: Mrs. Rowell and her son Devin, reading Oliver Twist, have been waiting forever at the end of the train tracks, in St. Joseph -- wait, St. Joseph, Missouri?  That's 1,000 miles from Salt Lake City.  

Left: as far as the railroads went in 1857.

Finally John Frye (Clint Obenchain) arrives to take them by covered wagon the rest of the way to Fort Bridger, now in Wyoming.  Then they will meet Jim Beckworth for the rest of the passage.  Devin wonders why they don't just go to California.  I agree.

Scene 2: Cut to Fort Bridger, with teepees outside. People gambling, fighting, smithying. A Shoshone girl steals a knife.  Mrs. Rowell and Devin arrive.  Shoshone kids try to sell them trinkets.  

Problem: they were delayed, so Jim Beckworth is gone.   A Frenchman keeps insisting that he can guide them, becomes violent, and kills their guide, so Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham), the head of the fort, kills him with a shovel.  Mrs. Rowell is aghast: she was told that this was a peaceful trading post. 

He suggests that she return to Boston, or at least wait until spring. Right now there are too many outlaws, Mormons, Indians, bears, and wolves rampaging, and then the Wasatch Mountains, which are impassable in winter. No, she can't wait: she has to meet her husband at Crooks Springs (not a real town).  

Scene 3: Bridger leads them to a mountain man, Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), who might want to guide them. Problem: he's shooting at them.  Bridger proves that it's really him, and leads them to his camp, where he's washing -- butt shot.  Isaac doesn't want to hang out with "a woman and a cripple" (boy wears a leg brace).  

Scene 4: Mrs. Rowell and Devin finally manage to hitch a ride in a wagon train of families from Arkansas, led by James Fancher (uh-oh, she's in trouble). She bonds with the Mormon Jake (Dane DeHaan) and his wife Abisha.

He's not really a creep -- this photo just makes him look that way.

Remember the Shoshone girl who stole the knife?  She uses it to kill her father or another older man who keeps assaulting her.  Then she stows away on Mrs. Rowell's wagon.  Looks like Devin will be getting a girlfriend.

Oh, and a little too late, a bounty hunter arrives, looking for Mrs. Rowell -- turns out that is not her name. She is wanted for murdering a man in Philadelphia.  Maybe her husband?  So who is the fake Mrs. Rowell hoping to meet?

More after the break

"Under the Banner of Heaven": Murder and a crisis of faith in a fundamentalist Mormon family with five brothers (and five dicks)

 Under the Banner of Heaven, a Hulu series about corruption in the LDS Church, was written and produced by Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, so there's bound to be some gay characters or subtexts.  Besides, who isn't interested in cute Mormon missionaries?  

Link to NSFW version

Scene 1: Establishing shot of Salt Lake City.  Jeb (Andrew Garfield), a super clean-cut nuclear family Dad, is listening to "Let's Hear it for the Boy."  A gay anthem!  So the protagonist is gay?   His preteen daughters, who wear long pioneer dresses, ask him to do loving-father activities, like lasso them.  Wife, who wears a modern t-shirt and cut-off jeans, calls him to the phone.  He has to go to work, so everyone has to do the evening prayers early.

We hear all the prayers: for the Mormon missionaries (how about a visual?), for Church President Kimball, for Grandpa in heaven, and for an Easy-Bake Oven.  "Let's Hear it for the Boy" came out in 1982, and Spencer Kimball died in 1985, 

Scene 2: Continuing to pray, Jeb the Cop puts the siren on his car and heads to a house surrounded by yellow tape and police cars.  Inside: the tv on, bloody footprints, scattered toys, a dead lady, and something in a basinet that makes him say "Evil."  The dead lady's murder was not evil?    He goes out to the yard and arrests the bloody young man who happens to be walking around.

Scene 3:  At the police station, Jeb the Cop and his Gentile (Non-Mormon) Partner do the good cop-bad cop routine on the blood-splattered suspect, Allen Lafferty (Billy Howle), who happens to belong to one of the most important familiies of the Church.  He claims that for the last year, "peculiar men" dressed like Mormon prophets have been stalking his family, so no doubt they did it.  They are probably after his brothers and their wives and kids, too.

Scene 4: While they book and strip Allen (nice body), Jeb watches, flashing back to someone he saw at church (was this a flash of same-sex attraction?).  They send a squad car out to check on the only brother whose address Allen knows: the others all moved to hide from the humiliation of having a brother who left the Church.

Scene 5: Jeb is too disgusted to continue the interrogation, so his Gentile Partner continues alone.  Stunt casting: he's played by Gil Birmingham, a bodybuilder who appeared in Diana Ross's music video "Muscles" in 1982.

Allen: if you want to know who did, check out the Mormon saints.  

Flashback to his future wife Brenda winning runner-up in the Miss Twin Falls, Idaho contest in 1980, then going to Brigham Young University, to stay away from the "Democrats and crazies," and studying broadcast journalism.  She meets Allen at church.  

Back at the interrogation, Allen blames the Church on his wife's death: "My only regret is that I didn't drive her out of Zion (Salt Lake City) to protect her from our people."  

Scene 6:  Jeb the Cop continues to ruminate about how evil Allen is, to do that to a baby (and an adult?).  They're still having trouble tracking down the addresses of his brothers and their wives/kids, so Jeb calls his wife -- they went to church with the Lafferty family, so maybe she has some of the brothers' addresses.  

He returns to the interrogation: Jeb: "So, you despicable monster, was there anyone besides you who hated Brenda enough to do it?"  Allen:  Everyone hated her because she was so perfect."  Yeah, I heard that a lot in high school.

Scene 7: Flashback to Allen introducing Brenda to the family at a picnic. "Just don't say much," he warns. Patriarch Ammon (Christopher Heyerdahl, left) wants to know why she abandoned Twin Falls, Idaho for the evil Big City (Provo, Utah?).  There are an endless number of boisterous brothers, Stepford wives, and staring kids to meet. 

I have beefcake and nude photos of most of the Lafferty men,  but I won't ask you to know all their names. We'll call them Oldest Brother, Second Brother, and Little Brother (although there are two more). 

Back at the interrogation, Allen tells them that Brenda was attracted to Second Brother because "everybody was attracted to Second Brother"  Even men?  His Oldest Brother was also into her, and flirted by condemning the use of coca-cola and promoting lawn-clipping juice instead.  She raises some eyebrows by having opinions (Allen: the LDS Church killed her because she wasn't subservient enoough.)

Back at the picnic, an old man appears, yelling  "They're coming for me."  Eventually we discover that the government is planning to take his land unless he clears it of rocks by Monday, so the Laffertys must help.  That's all?  I was expecting the Angel of Death. 

Scene 8:  Flashback to the Laffertys starting the rock-clearing job.  "No one is allowed to pee until we're finished!"  Just the men work, of course; the women watch, pray, and serve lemonade.  Suddenly Brenda rushes out to help.  Everyone is aghast! 

When the job is over, the old guy prays while the men pee  (no cock shots, but use your imagination).

Patriarch Ammon announces that he's been called away to the mission field, and the Holy Spirit told him to leave his Oldest Brother (Wyatt Russell) in charge of the family business, with Little Brother as his assistant. Uh-oh, Second Brother is going to be upset.  

The Patriarch also orders Allen to "get your harlot" to be properly mousy, timid, and subdservient! 

Sceene 9:  Back at the interrogation, Allen says that after they were married, he cut off his family and left the Church, but he still misses some things about it, like the belief that "God is love."  Really?  So far the Church sounds terrible oppressive.

Flashback to Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, digging up the golden plates that he would translate into the Book of Mormon.  But here the revelation becomes heterosexual: God chose him as Prophet because he loved his girlfriend Emma so much.  I know the Mormons are all about being heterosexual, but that interpretation still seems way over-the-top heterosexist.

Meanwhile, the police get the address of Little Brother and break into his apartment: some burning books and papers, a gun chest emptied out.  "This is bigger than just a domestic."  Maybe he and his family were killed?  They put out an APB.

Scene 10:  Jeb's Gentile Partner decided to notify Brenda's parents of her death, angering Jeb, who wanted to do it.  They argue about who has the biggest cock.  Turns out to be Gentile Partner,  who has new intel: Brenda's father said that Allen was abusive.  Now who's the prime suspect?    Allen still denies everything: "My father-in-law hated me, just like Emma's father hated Joseph Smith.  It was the peculiar bearded men, I tell you!"

Later Jeb the Cop speculates that Allen may have killed his family in a Satanic ritual.  After all, he left the Church, and Gentiles are capable of anything.  This is in the mids of the Satanic panic, where they thought that thousands of kids were being abducted every week to be sacrificed or used in sex rituals.  Actually, less than a hundred kids are kidnapped by strangers every year, most for black market adoption.  

Scene 11:  Little Brother wasn't murdered: he's hiding at a cheap motel.  He runs away, and prays that God would smite his enemies, but they're not smitten, and he's arrested for the murder of his brother's family.

Scene 12: Gentile Partner suggests that, since Jeb went to church with these people, his wife and daughters may be at risk -- go home and check on them. Har-har, you really just think he's too close to the case to be objective. But he goes, and talks to his mother, who has dementia in a subplot. The end.

Beefcake:  Allen takes off his clothes twice.

Heterosexism:  Constant, of course.  What did you expect in a tv series about Mormons?

Gay Characters:  There are some flashes where it looks like Jeb is dancing with a guy and hugging a guy, but they come and go so fast that it's impossible to tell what's actually going on.  

Update: They're just a gay tease.  The only same-sex desire or practice in Utah appears in Episode 5, one of the brothers investigates a Mormon-like cult where they drink wine and practice plural marriage.  They try to get him involved in a bisexual orgy in the hot tube.  But after kissing the guy in charge, he decides that he's not into it and leaves.

My Grade:  Jeb is an extremely unpleasant character, rigid, imperious, demanding, and intolerant.  He's less worried about the murders than about the horror of Allen leaving the Church.  C.

Lots of Lafferty dicks and butts on RG Beefcake and Bonding