Basing a scripted show on a real-life criminal case means sacrificing a certain degree of potential surprise. Murdaugh: Death In The Family acknowledges this not only with its title, but also its opening scene. It’s 10:06 PM on June 7, 2021. There are two corpses on the Murdaugh property. Alex Murdaugh (Jason Clarke), sweaty and blubbering, calls 911 and reports that his wife and his child have been shot and “it’s real bad.” Death in the family Murdaugh: got it.
Then time rolls back to February 22, 2019. At first glance, this is about as far from “real bad” as you can get. Alex is with a couple of buddies trying out their new guns on some model deer. Alex’s wife Maggie (Patricia Arquette) is on the phone, arguing about how many porta-potties they’ll need for 200 guests. The local news is reporting that Randolph Murdaugh III (Gerald McRaney) — Alex’s father and law partner — is about to receive the Order Of The Palmetto, the highest civilian honor in the state of South Carolina.
But the Murdaugh family dynasty isn’t entirely unblemished. Alex and Maggie’s younger son Paul (Johnny Berchtold) didn’t come home last night, and when he does roll up, it’s with a large tree branch stuck in one of the wheel wells on his truck; everyone assumes he was driving drunk, and no one is particularly shocked about it. Alex can’t start his workday without taking a couple of painkillers from the chewing tobacco can he hides them in and sticking them under his lip. Alex is confident about the personal injury case he’s pursuing — his client was paralyzed in a traffic collision — but back at the law office, his older brother Randy (Toby Emmerich) can’t help bringing up Alex’s client’s past DUIs as prejudicial for the jury, and Randolph thinks leaving the case with them is a dice roll. When Alex complains to Maggie about Randy undermining him, she tries to redirect him by getting flirty to a song on the stereo. It doesn’t work.
Celebrating the latest family triumph — Alex and Maggie’s son Buster (Will Harrison) was just accepted to law school, having secretly applied rather than risk the many alumni in his family pulling strings on his behalf — is short-lived: Maggie is upset to see someone named Eddie calling Alex, and doesn’t want him to go deal with Eddie’s latest crisis. When Alex ignores her concerns and angrily squeals off, Maggie asks the family’s housekeeper Gloria Satterfield (Kathleen Wilhoite) if she’s found any of Alex’s medication around the house; evidently Maggie has searched herself and found nothing, but his behavior is giving her pause.
Of course, we know Maggie’s right about that, and she’s right about Curtis “Eddie” Smith (Mark Pellegrino) too: the situation Alex has to handle for him is a jellyfish harvesting operation in the process of getting raided by the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. Alex tells Doug Brailsford (Chris Greene), the ranking agent busting the company, that their permit from the county is pending, but “pending” and “approved” aren’t the same and Doug’s going to need Eddie and his staff to release all the fish on their boat. Alex wonders aloud what might happen if he said “fuck y’all” and continued what they were doing, but Doug says he wouldn’t do that, and Alex tells Eddie to shut it down.
The next day, the whole family gathers for Randolph’s award ceremony. Maggie’s sister Marian Proctor (J. Smith-Cameron) is also in attendance, and in Maggie’s room as she gets ready for the party she’s throwing for Randolph that afternoon. When Maggie finds a new bracelet Alex has gifted her for the occasion, Marian comments that she hopes Alex doesn’t think he can buy his way out of trouble. Maggie hisses that “it” — infidelity, it seems, with a real estate agent who moved back to Charleston and with whom Alex is no longer in touch — was a year ago and that Alex knows it was wrong. Besides, Maggie has forgiven him: “Alec was not himself. All those painkillers he was on.” (Maggie, like everyone else in the show, calls her husband “Alec” despite his being publicly known as Alex to this day.) She claims they came out the other side of that mess stronger. Marian just hopes Maggie’s taking as good care of herself as she does Alex.
At the party, Alex seems keenly aware of putting on a show. He claims he passed on South Carolina solicitor — an office held by several Murdaughs before him — because there was no money in it, but that he’s counting on Buster headed in that direction. When Doug shows up, Alex abandons Maggie moments into a dance to one of their special songs so he can serve Doug a plate of jellyfish. (The most polite thing anyone seems able to say about it is that it has a distinctive “texture.”) Alex asks what it will take for Alex not to lose the couple hundred thousand dollars he already has invested in product he can’t move. Before Doug can answer, Alex calls over the governor and talks Doug up to him as a future department director. This ends up mollifying Doug, and when Alex offers to pay for the environmental impact studies required for the jellyfish operation to be approved, it seems they have a deal.
Maggie is also working her angles, taking advantage of a dance with her father-in-law to ask him to take Alex’s side the next time Randy tries picking at him. Randolph thinks Alex could benefit from having someone to look over his shoulder. He’s been thinking about what the Murdaugh name will mean after Randolph is gone: one thing he knows for sure is that Alex brought Maggie into the dynasty, and Randolph couldn’t be prouder about it.
Opposing counsel in Alex’s case calls about a settlement. Upstanding Order Of The Palmetto honoree Randolph has no compunction about keeping Buster in the room — “Listen in, see how it’s done” — for a speakerphone conversation without disclosing that he’s there. Coming down from the $1.1 million Alex is seeking to a settlement offer of $600,000 lands the two parties at $750,000. After they hang up, Randolph declares that they’re going to take it, getting something out of this “bum case.” When Alex continues arguing for taking a chance with the jury, Randolph blurts that he’s retiring at the end of the summer. Since Randy has no reaction, Alex correctly guesses he already knew. Who will replace Randolph as managing partner? Randolph claims he doesn’t know — what he does know is that Alex has to call opposing counsel and take the deal.
Paul and several of his friends are getting ready to take a motorboat out to Paukie Island for a bonfire when Buster joins them to say hello. Paul, who’s already had a few, makes a sarcastic toast to Buster for making it into the same law school every man in his family attended completely on his own merits. It turns into a wrestling match their humiliated parents have to break up. Buster apologizes as Paul drives off, but Maggie assures him that they all know how Paul can get.
Maggie tries to steady herself by having an oyster shot with Marian, who suggests that they take a trip! Maggie’s not against it, but cautions that Alex is pretty busy with his cases. Marian, trying to get Maggie to think about what might make her happy outside keeping up appearances as a Murdaugh, says she meant a girls’ trip for the two of them. Maggie sharply shuts her down, but has just tried to soften the moment with a toast “to sisters” when Gloria calls her away…
…to show her the plastic bag containing dozens if not hundreds of pills, which she just found taped to the bottom of Alex and Maggie’s bed frame. Maggie puts the bag in her pocket and asks Gloria not to mention it to anyone.
Over to the bonfire: Mallory Beach (Madeline Popovich) and Anthony Cook (Ryan Paynter) are flirting when a much drunker Paul inserts himself doing an impression of Timmy from South Park. No one is charmed.
Back home, Alex tells his client to take the offer, then hangs up and seethes, snapping at Maggie when she tries to get him to join her in saying goodbye to their guests.
Amid thick fog, a very drunk Paul pilots the boat back from the island way too fast, ignoring his friends as they beg him to slow down.
Alex takes more pills.
Maggie rolls Alex’s secret pills up in the bag her new bracelet came in, and hide it in a hat box in her closet.
A dock suddenly appears and Paul speeds toward it as his friends scream.
Maggie is in a hot bath when Alex materializes and drops several jellyfish in with her. She screams and hops out as Alex hysterically laughs that they’re dead, but she’s furious, yelling at him for spending so much of the party with his “deadbeat cousin” Eddie, adding that she knows Alex has been lying to her. But they can’t get into it: Randolph calls.
Smash cut to Alex and Randolph at a hospital ER. Alex doesn’t have to wait for the nurse at admissions to tell him where Paul is; he can follow the sounds of Paul being a drunken problem for the medical professionals trying to look after him. What we can see of Paul seems largely unharmed, and he defends himself to Alex by saying it was “foggy as fuck.” Then he manages to bleat, “Did they find her?”
“Did they find who?” Alex asks.
“Mallory,” moans Paul.
Randolph breaks in: “One’s still missing.”
Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.