‘Murdaugh: Death in the Family’ Stars Break Down Key Moments in ‘Controlled Burn’

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Murdaugh: Death in the Family Episode 4, “Controlled Burn.”]

The newest episode of Murdaugh: Death in the Family is full of consequence and symbolism. In the episode, Paul Murdaugh (Johnny Berchtold) contends with his own PTSD over the boat wreck, and he channels that frustration into trying to clear the kudzu from the sunflower field, despite Alex’s (Jason Clarke) insistence that he burn it all down and start anew. When Paul finds out that his second mom, Gloria Satterfield (Kathleen Wilhoite), has died from her fall, and his mother Maggie (Patricia Arquette) actively concealed the housekeeper’s true condition, he lights a match.

“I love that sunflower storyline so much because I think you have a young man who is trying to pick up the pieces after doing something terrible, essentially. And he’s asking himself, ‘What do I do with this?’ And I love that sort of hands-on metaphor of he’s trying to clean up the sunflower field, and he is going through what happened with the boat crash, but also now dealing with Gloria and having a sense of hope for the first time, I think, in the story,” Berchtold told TV Insider of the scene. “When she passes, I think he completely breaks, and he goes, ‘Oh no, there is no coming back from this.’ And so that sense of burning it all down, and then where we see him after that and where he goes was, I think, crucial in telling that emotional arc.”

Alex has his own problems, too, of course. When he learns that his insurance will only cover $500,000 in a settlement with the Beach family, his domineering father, Randolph (Gerald McRaney), insists that Alex will come out of pocket with another $1 million. (As Alex himself quoted in a jury statement, his daddy’s mantra is, “Just ’cause you don’t want to pay a bill, doesn’t mean it ain’t due.”)

Is Randolph insisting on this for the right reasons or to clear the family of this negativity? “Both,” McRaney told TV Insider. “But I think primarily for the issue to go away.”

That amount won’t be nearly enough, though. The Beaches meet with their attorney, Mark Tinsley (Tommy Dewey), and they want justice to the tune of $10 million. No matter how many “bos” Alex throws at his former friend, he’s not backing down from that demand, and even Alex’s old banking buddy refuses to float him this time. He’s gotten questions about former clients.

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Here, the series name-checks real-life victims like the Pinckneys and the Plyler sisters, and the “victim-first, survivor-first sort of mentality” of that approach to honoring them was important to series co-creator Erin Lee Carr.

“I think it’s really easy to address and to just think about the perpetrator, and that’s what we as a society are interested in. But each victim was somebody. [Mallory] was not some girl that was there that day and gone the next. I mean, she had plans to live with Anthony, and they were getting more serious in real life. Mallory had loved Anthony and her boyfriend for so long, and so when you think about her and what was lost, and then Gloria Satterfield and her boys, it’s just a travesty,” she said. “This is what I tend to do as a filmmaker, is all the days that led up to the crime, not just the crime itself. And so that’s what we tried to do, to give everybody their individual sort of autonomy and their personhood.”

Whereas Alex’s usual charm, rinse, and repeat tricks aren’t working, he sees an opportunity after Gloria’s death. He devises a plan to have her grieving sons hire his best friend, Cory Fleming (Ben Begley), to sue him so they can collect from his home ownership policy. It’s a noble gesture, if only it were true. Instead, when the $3.8 million check comes, Alex gives his boys new rifles for Christmas and surprises Maggie with a Mercedes. Meanwhile, he ignores calls from the Satterfield boys as they’re evicted from their mobile home.

Disney / Daniel Delgado Jr.

“The one thing that I will never forget in researching and understanding [this case] was that Alex Murdaugh had the money for the Gloria Satterfield settlement, and Tony and Brian Satterfield were having their mobile home taken away, and they were evicted because they couldn’t pay the bills, and still Alex didn’t give [it to] them. I mean, $5,000 would have made the biggest life difference,” Carr noted.

The episode also follows Mandy Matney (Brittany Snow) as she first gets wind of the Stephen Smith case, befriends his grieving mother Sandy (Rhoda Griffis), and gently shares with her the case details she’s been searching for so long.

For Snow, the responsibility of playing Mandy in these moments was especially poignant: “I think that was the most [important], in terms of what I felt responsible for, in terms of my character,” she explained. “That this was an ongoing case with real feelings involved… There’s still not answers to so many questions, and I knew the sensitivity that needed to be taken in those scenes.” She admitted to developing a kinship with her costar akin to that of Mandy and Sandy in real life. “We had an incredible connection,” she said. “I think that really came into play, and hopefully people can see that on screen.”

Murdaugh: Death in the Family, Wednesdays, Hulu