American Primeval Series-Premiere Recap: Mud and Guts

It’s easy to add a sense of gravity and thematic weight to any title by adding “American” to it. Hustle becomes American Hustle. Gangster becomes American Gangster. Pie becomes American Pie. The tricky part is feeling like the addition of “American” has been earned, particularly when it modifies a word as powerful as “primeval.” The title of American Primeval, a new miniseries written by Mark L. Smith and directed by Peter Berg, sounds like an overstatement up to the moment you hit “play” on the first episode, which immediately announces itself as a story from the dark heart of a nation that was still in the process of defining itself, and discovering that the definition would be written in blood.

American Primeval takes place in 1857, a few years before the start of the Civil War but in a part of the country with dividing lines all its own. As the opening screens note, the land then known as Utah Territory was caught in a complicated power struggle among the U.S. Government; Native Americans; the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, which claimed the area as its own promised land; pioneers heading west in search of a better life; and other residents and travelers. Within these factions are sub-factions with agendas all their own. It’s complicated, but everyone speaks the shared language of violence.

In an economical bit of scene-setting, the first image we see is a literal end of the line “someplace in Missouri.” Sara Rowell (Betty Gilpin) and her son Devin (Preston Mota) have taken the train as far as it will go. Sara’s wearing fashionable clothes. Devin sports a leg brace and totes a well-read copy of Oliver Twist. Both look ill-prepared for the rough terrain beyond, but looks can be deceiving, and sometimes preparation isn’t enough anyway.

Sara looks the part of an out-of-place city woman and has the nervous demeanor to match. But she’s also a bit of a mystery. A terse conversation with her son reveals that they hail from Philadelphia, a town she’s happy to leave behind and that they’re headed to Utah to be with Devin’s father (and not, as they once discussed, California). A subsequent talk with John Frye (Clint Obenchain), the man who has promised to take them to Fort Bridger where another guide awaits them, reveals little else, apart from Sara’s impatience and willingness to speak her mind with little regard for politeness. She knows what she wants and, pointedly, what she has paid for and plans to get it.

But the frontier has other plans. At Fort Bridger, Sara expects to find the “docile, peaceful trading post” Frye has promised. Instead, she’s deposited in a muddy, (presumably) stinky place full of dirty men and broken promises, starting with the disappearance of Mr. Beckworth, the man she’d contracted to guide them to Crooks Springs. Frye offers to take them the rest of the way, an offer Sara is reluctant to take. But all this soon becomes moot when Frye’s shot dead by a French-speaking man attempting to offer his own services. There’s nothing docile about this place! “‘Civilization’ and ‘civilized’ are two different words entirely,” Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham), the fort’s founder and proprietor, informs them. (If American Primeval was a movie, that would be the perfect tagline.)

A mountain man who put down roots, Bridger is one of several historical figures found in American Primeval. As depicted here, he’s a pragmatist who seems interested in making a living and, perhaps, carving out a place that might someday be called “civilized,” though perhaps not in his lifetime. He’s willing to help Sara and Devin, but help mostly involves alerting them to the reality of their current citation. The weather’s not great now, nor are the threats posed by the violence between the Mormons, Native Americans, outlaws, wild animals, and everyone else outside the walls of the fort (however much violence they’ve seen within those walls already). Maybe they’re better off staying put. But, for whatever reason, Sara doesn’t see staying put as an option.

So what options do they have? Bridger first suggests they turn to Isaac Reed (Taylor Kitsch), a tough character who makes his home outside the fort. Though put off by Isaac’s severe demeanor and casual approach to nudity, Sara makes him an offer, but Isaac doesn’t wait long to refuse it. That means it’s time to start thinking of a Plan C.

Sara’s arrival coincides with that of a group of LDS pilgrims whose ranks include Jacob Pratt (Dane DeHaan), a man of great faith who’s making the journey in the company of his wife Abish (Saura Lightfoot-Leon). Abish is Jacbo’s first and, thus far, only wife, he tells the inquisitive (and a bit rude) Fort Bridger residents. Dissuaded by Bridger from attempting to find a guide of questionable morals or tagging along with a group of soldiers, Sara starts to see the Pratts and their companions as a solid backup plan to a backup plan.

Jacob, however, doesn’t see things the same way, at least at first. He’s told an expedition leader named Alexander Fancher of their plans to join them and doesn’t want to bring any plus-ones to the party. But a kind word from Abish changes his mind and, for the first time, we see Sara smile. “This world doesn’t seem to be a world that favors a woman on her own,” she says to Abish after thanking her. “That’s why we got married, isn’t it?” Abish replies. The look they exchange suggests both have seen just how inhospitable the world could be.

There’s drama elsewhere in Fort Bridger, too. Moments before we see Sara and Devin’s arrival, we witness an Oglala Lakota girl, whom we’ll later learn is named Two Moons (Shawnee Pourier), successfully stealing a knife. Later that evening, she puts it to use, murdering a man as he attempts to sexually assault her. Their relationship is unclear (played by Sheldon Silentwalker, the credits identify the credits only as “Arapho Man”), but what is clear is that this isn’t the first time Two Moons has been attacked. Two Moons’s mother tries to talk the man out of attacking her daughter but chastises Two Moons after his death, saying, “Now we have nothing.” “I’ve had nothing forever,” Two Moons gestures back with her hands before fleeing into the night. The next morning, she turns up in Sara and Devin’s wagon, a discovery Devin will keep to himself.

Devin’s not the only one with a secret. Back at Fort Bridger, a tough-looking man named Virgil Cutter (Jai Courtney) watches as a bounty hunter with a wanted poster for a woman named “Sara Holloway” talks to Bridger. Holloway, who carries a $1,500 bounty for murdering her husband, looks an awful lot like Sara Rowell. Bridger sees the resemblance but plays dumb anyway. That’s good news for Sara (at least for now). But the good news may not last much longer. (And the whole business turns out to be bad news for the bounty hunter when Virgil and his men murder him and start the pursuit on their own later that night.)

The Pratts and their companions arrive safely at the Fancher camp, but a development starts to threaten that safety almost immediately. As they settle in, Fancher (Peter Berg, stepping in front of the camera) finds himself welcoming a group of armed Mormons, the Nauvoo Legion led by James Wolsey (Joe Tippett), and accompanied by a member of the Paiute tribe. They’re in a territory controlled by Governor Brigham Young, and Governor Brigham Young doesn’t like uninvited visitors, even those who promise to depart at first light. In fact, Young has declared martial law on account of all the abuses faced by his people in the past. After a tense conversation in which Fancher states his unwillingness to leave (and throws in some anti-Mormon insults and unmistakable threats), James and his men depart. Expecting trouble, Fancher orders his men to stand guard and to put the newly arrived Mormons on the perimeter as a deterrent, assuming that James will not want to kill his own people. (This may not prove to be a safe assumption.)

As the sun sets, the travelers exchange stories over dinner. Sara’s is, of course, a fabrication, but Jacob earnestly tells of how he married Abish after the death of Abish’s sister Eden, his betrothed. “God took Eden from us and delivered my Abish to me just in time for this journey,” Jacob tells her. Though Jacob seems onboard with God’s plan, Abish, talking to some of the other wives, doesn’t seem quite so convinced.

Still, despite the lies and misgivings, it’s a peaceful, hopeful scene until it erupts into violence with the arrival of an arrow through the skull of one of the Mormon women. In the chaos that follows, a group of hooded men and Native Americans (and hooded men dressed as Native Americans) kill everyone in sight. This does not include Sara and Devin, who escape to some nearby brush where Isaac has been keeping an eye on them. Their escape does not go unnoticed by James and the Nauvoo, who want to leave no witnesses behind (though Two Moons’s escape does go unnoticed). That includes female survivors like Abish, though it’s decided that leaving them for the Paiutes will be as good as killing them. Nearby, a rough night awaits Sara and Devin, who are told by Isaac they can’t build a fire if they want to survive. And an even rougher night awaits Jacob, who, though scalped and left for dead, has somehow survived the massacre. Bloodied and dazed, he stands up and begins his search for Abish.

Bullets and Arrowheads

• The massacre scene both gives this premiere its centerpiece and confirms, if it wasn’t clear already, that American Primeval will be a rough ride. Western tales tend to fall somewhere on the spectrum between classic good-guys-versus-bad-guys conflicts and grimy, demythologizing revisionist takes on the American West. Caked in mud and blood, American Primeval falls firmly on the revisionist side (though even Sam Peckinpah might have blanched at some of its images). But the story being told and the decidedly not civilized setting seems to demand the graphic approach.

• Specifically, American Primeval is inspired by actual events, and none of them lend themselves to a sanitized telling. The actual event that’s come to be known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre took several days. Here, it’s been streamlined into a single attack, but the Nauvoo Legion, in the company of Paiute fighters, did take out the Baker-Fancher wagon train and attempted to disguise it as a solely Native American attack. The massacre was part of a longer string of violent incidents as the government, the Mormons, Native Americans, and others vied for control of the land. American Primeval shouldn’t be taken as straight fact, but it’s not pure fiction, either.

• American Primeval marks a reunion for Berg and Taylor Kitsch, one of the stars of Friday Night Lights, the TV series Berg developed after directing the big-screen adaption of Buzz Bissinger’s book. It’s a reunion with Explosions in the Sky, too. The instrumental rock band wrote the score to Berg’s film and the series featured its music on occasion.

• Smith, who created the show and writes all six episodes, has a filmography that includes a pair of films directed by George Clooney (The Midnight Sky and The Boys in the Boat) and this summer’s hit Twisters. But, for obvious reasons, The Revenant (which he co-wrote with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu) looks like American Primeval’s most direct precursor.

• When Devin asks Bridger, “How do you get a fort like this?” His reply, “You build it,” squeezes a lot into three words that resonate beyond Fort Bridger and speak to the series as a whole.