Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Waco: The Aftermath’ On Showtime, About The Branch Davidian Trial And How The Siege Radicalized Others

The 2018 scripted series Waco certainly took a sympathetic viewpoint when it came to David Koresh and the Branch Davidian sect, whose compound was raided by the ATF and FBI in 1993, killing Koresh and over 70 of his followers, including children. Five years later, brothers Drew and John Erick Dowdle are back to not only examine the trial of five surviving sect members, but examine Koresh’s beginnings in the sect as well as how Waco and other incidents may have fueled people like Timothy McVeigh.

WACO: THE AFTERMATH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “1994.” A shot of the Capital in Washington, DC. A graphic that says “DEPT. OF JUSTICE, WACO DEPOSITION” is displayed as we hear from Mitch Decker (Shea Whigham), the FBI’s tactical commander in Waco.

The Gist: More than a year after the siege at the Branch Davidians’ Mt. Carmel compound near Waco, TX, there is still a dispute within the FBI about whether their tactics were too aggressive. The bureau’s negotiator at Waco, Gary Noesner (Michael Shannon), certainly thinks so, as he was able to save dozens of residents there before Decker and his agents started knocking down walls and tossing in tear gas, leading to the deaths of over 70 people. Decker thinks that the 51 days they gave David Koresh and the Branch Davidians was more than enough time.

As the trial of five of the Branch Davidian survivors is about to begin, the opinion of the public is certainly mixed. And when he’s called into a bank robbery and hostage situation in Arkansas, Noesner finds out that the siege has fired up people like the suspect in this case, nicknamed Wild Bill (Travis Hammer). He talks about government overreach and payback repeatedly during their 20 hours of negotiations before finally surrendering.

At the trial, the defendants’ lead attorney, Dan Cogdell (Giovanni Ribisi), is planning on using the tactic that the five were brainwashed by Koresh into attacking the federal agents during the raid. But none of the five, still ardent supporters of Koresh, agree with that; one of them, Clive Doyle (John Hoogenakker), was a devotee fifteen years before Koresh even arrived.

We flash back to 1981, when Doyle lived in Mt. Carmel with his wife and two daughters, and the “prophet” was a woman named Lois Roden (J. Smith-Cameron). A young David Koresh (Keean Johnson), still going by his given name, Vernon Howell, rides in on his motorcycle, and immediately pitches in, doing work around the camp, spouting Bible verses, and pledging his support behind Roden, over the objections of parishioners who don’t feel that a woman can represent the Holy Spirit.

The U.S. Attorney offers Codgell a deal: Any of the defendants can plea to a lesser sentence if they testify against the others. The five, including Ruth Riddle (Kali Rocha), vow to stick together, but one of them caves. And when the aggressive judge, Walter Smith (David Costabile) denies Codgell’s motions to ban the use of words like “compound,” “Branch Davidians” and “cult,” and then proceeds to question potential jurors himself, things don’t look good.

Meanwhile, Noesner is introduced to the informant who led them to Wild BIll, his girlfriend Carol Howe (Abbey Lee). All she knows is that the militia he was a part of in Elohim City, Oklahoma talked about the government a whole lot, and “payback is coming.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Waco: The Aftermath is the sequel to the 2018 Paramount Network series Waco, a fictionalized account of the siege.

Our Take: Drew Dowdle and John Erick Dowdle return as the creators, showrunners and directors of Waco: The Aftermath (Shannon and Taylor Kitsch, who played Koresh in the original series, are also EPs). While there was a lot going on in the siege-focused original series, the Dowdles did their best to stick to those 51 days, as told from both ends of the story. The Aftermath is so big in scope that the Dowdle’s aren’t sure where to take the story, leading to a muddled mess.

We get why they wanted to take it where they did. Waco (and to a lesser extent, Ruby Ridge) did spark a movement among militias that were already distrustful of the government, and it’s not hard to draw a straight line between that and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. We see scenes of Timothy McVeigh (Alex Breaux) and Terry Nichols (Kieran Mulcare) listening to the trial and starting their planning of what turned out to be the most destructive terrorist act on U.S. soil before 9/11 surpassed it.

But we not only get that, we get Noesner, with the help of ATF agent Angie Graham (Sasheer Zamata) work on Howe, to see how dangerous the white separatist movement that produced McVeigh was. We also get the flashback to the young Koresh studying under Lois Roden. We get the trial, concentrating mostly on Codgell’s attempt to get Doyle and the others exonerated. And there’s still the specter of the investigation into the FBI’s handling of Waco hanging over everything.

It just feels like a lot, and an excuse to simplify all of these aspects of what are true stories. Five 42-minute episodes are not enough to cover all this ground, and each story will likely suffer because of it.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As Howe explains to Noesner that the militia inhabitants of Elohim City, Oklahoma mean it when they call for a “holy war,” McVeigh drives into the compound of that community.

Sleeper Star: Since we didn’t mention him, John Leguizamo reprises his role Jacob Vasquez, the undercover ATF agent who uncovered the cache of weapons in Mt. Carmel.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I think we created the monster we’re trying to stop,” Noesner tells Vasquez, in a line that may be real, but sounds more like a tagline to the series than a real line of dialogue.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Waco: The Aftermath has a great cast, but it’s also massive, because of all the stories the show needs to cover. And none of them will get the attention they deserve in such a short limited series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.