‘Waco’ Forgot to Focus on One Big Detail — The Branch Davidians

There are a lot of good moments in Paramount Network’s Waco. The six-episode limited series does good work when it comes to depicting the FBI’s internal battle between reasoning with the Branch Davidians and resorting to brutal violence. But for Michael Shannon and Julia Garner’s great performances, there’s always something lacking. Waco is so concerned with depicting the horrors of the 51-day siege it completely neglects how anyone got to this point in history.

The first episode of Waco starts just days before the 1993 standoff between the Branch Davidians and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. The series does a solid job of depicting the concerns of authorities. From the series’ first moments the cops and federal agents are portrayed as people who are worried about what’s happening to underage girls within the walls of Mount Carmel. The way Waco tells it, targeting the organization for their rumored illegal firearms was just an excuse for the government to interfere in what they suspected was a dangerous organization. Yet even when discussing cults there are two sides to every story. And Waco largely ignores that of the Branch Davidians and David Koresh (Taylor Kitsch).

The broad strokes are there. It’s clear that Koresh has a devoted following who believes he is the messiah and parts of his teachings are explained. Through heated sermons and hushed conversations, the Branch Davidians’ rules about polygamy, abstinence for all men who aren’t Koresh, dedication to the Bible, and ruthless preparation for the apocalypse are explained. But these explanations often feel like a cold list of rules rather than the foundation for a religion many people sacrificed their lives to pursue. In this way Waco rarely looks past the shock factor of discussing a cult to dwell on the humanity underneath. There are rare exceptions like Julia Garner’s Michelle and Rory Culkin’s David Thibodeau; but most members of the Branch Davidians are presented as emotional, borderline mindless followers who appeared from nowhere.

That’s a shame because the full story of how Koresh came to lead the Branch Davidians is far more interesting than what occurs in those few episodes. The Branch Davidians were meant to be led by George Roden, the son of the division’s founder Ben Roden. But between his claimed gift of prophesy and his intimate relationship with the widowed Lois, David Koresh challenged Roden’s position of power. Koresh was never a person who rose from nothing to command hundreds. He fought, manipulated, and charmed his way into leading the Branch Davidians.

There are tons of shocking details entangled in Koresh’s rise to power. At one point he and his followers were exiled to Palestine after being driven out of Waco, Texas by gunpoint. Later Roden challenged Koresh by asking him to raise a corpse from the dead. The only reason why Koresh was able to completely take control of the Branch Davidians was because of Roden’s own madness. After one of Roden’s followers claimed that he, like Koresh, was the messiah, Roden murdered him with an axe, a crime that sent him to a psychiatric hospital.

These details aren’t just jaw-dropping and perfect for television. They completely alter what Koresh and the Branch Davidians represented. When the whole story is examined, Koresh becomes less of a madman and more of a calculating devil. And the people who followed him gain a lot more sympathy.

Many of the Branch Davidians were born into the movement or into the church that spawned it, the Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church. They grew up believing that the second coming of Christ was on the horizon and that the end times were near. They weren’t the soulless sheep of Waco. They were complicated people trying to follow a religion they truly embraced; yet trapped between two toxic leaders. Some of the Branch Davidians didn’t even trust David Koresh, as shown by the character of Steve Schneider (Paul Sparks) in the series. Many of them were born into the movement and so entrenched in it by their friends and family they felt they had nowhere else to go. This movement did kill four officers and standoff against the government for nearly two months, but there is sympathy to find in this ethically murky organization. Cults are, after all, made of humans.

Plenty of true crime dramas have managed the balance between showing both sides of the story and not glamorizing the criminal at their center. FX’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story did a magnificent job painting Andrew Cunanan as a serial killer without ever sacrificing his complicated humanity. Hulu’s The Act took a devastating crime between a mother and daughter that could have had a clear villain and transformed it into something more complex. You can tell both sides without diminishing the horrors of these cases. If Waco would have kept that in mind and lended a bit more time to the rise of Koresh, it would have been so much richer.

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