Show 101: Big Love

By Matthew Jaffe TV.com Staff Writer TV.com - CBS Entertainment

SHOW: Big Love PREMIERES: Sunday, January 16 at 9pm on HBO THE PREMISE: Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) is just your average family guy. Except that he has three families. Born and raised at Juniper Creek — a compound of fundamentalist Mormons dedicated to "The Principle" (polygamy) — Bill long ago moved into mainstream society but still believes in many of his faith’s teachings. His first wife, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), has been joined by two "sister wives": Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), who is also the daughter of Juniper Creek’s late "prophet" Roman Grant, and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin). They live in three separate-but-adjacent households, with children ranging in age from toddler to adult. (In fact, wife Margene and Ben — Bill’s oldest son with Barb — are close in age and have been struggling with a mutual attraction.) WHY YOU MIGHT LOVE IT: At its best, Big Love is a remarkable character study of people who are striving to find themselves and live normal lives under secretive circumstances in a world that would consider them pariahs. While often darkly comic (A favorite line: "I have seven mothers and you’re not one of them!"), the series explores big ideas about just what family is and the different ways that people love. Big Love also brings to light the many issues associated with polygamy: the shunning of adolescent males, the exploitation of underage girls, and the putting-out-to-pasture of older wives as they age beyond their childbearing years. Big Love is no titillating male fantasy in which one wife is good, therefore three are triple the fun. Instead, Viagra-popping Bill definitely feels the pressure of dealing with this trio of strong-willed women who sometimes compete with each other for his time and affection but who also have their own complex relationships and shifting alliances. Much of the credit for the show’s success goes to an acting ensemble that makes these characters and all of their conflicting motivations quite compelling. Paxton gives Bill an everyman quality and an occasional messianic sense of destiny. Sevigny simmers with a decided menace but reveals Nicki’s vulnerabilities, too. Goodwin portrays Margene’s combination of a naïvete with her growing sense that she holds more power in this plural marriage than she had ever imagined. But in many respects it's Jeanne Tripplehorn’s show. The Henrickson marriage couldn’t work without Barb’s steadying hand and tolerance. And Big Love wouldn’t work without an actor who makes Barb not an object of pity but a woman of loving strength determined to keep herself — and her family — together. WHY YOU MIGHT HATE IT: Well, there are plenty of members of the LDS Church who are none too keen on what they see as Big Love’s insensitive presentation of their faith and the show’s focus on polygamy (which the mainstream church long ago outlawed). There are also plenty of Big Love fans who felt that the series veered wildly off course last season, which covered, in no particular order: the burning of bodies, the harvesting of human eggs, parrot smuggling, meth-dealing Indians, Republican politics in Utah (the horror!), Washington lobbyists, suicide, tetherball, home shopping networks, and amputation by machete. And, of course, whether lusting for one of your dad’s three wives constitutes incest. All in nine episodes. No less an authority than Sevigny herself recently declared, "It was awful... I feel like it kind of got away from itself." So Big Love is facing a lot of skepticism as it enters this final season. But boring? No way. GET CAUGHT UP: Well, how much time do you have? Bill owns a small chain of Home Depot-style improvement stores, has partnered with a local Native American tribe to open a Mormon-friendly casino, and recently won election to the Utah State Senate. But for all of his outward status as a model citizen, he keeps getting pulled back into the intrigue at Juniper Creek, where his divorced and rather crazy parents (Bruce Dern and Grace Zabriskie: ‘nuff said) and his brother Joey (who killed the aforementioned Roman) still live. Meanwhile, Nicki’s creepy brother Alby has taken control of the compound and assumed the mantle of prophet. Alby's gay lover Dale, a married attorney who had been working as a trustee on Juniper Creek, recently committed suicide. Bill had planned on bringing a Serbian woman named Ana into the household as a fourth wife — with Margene’s enthusiastic support. Ana rejected the Henricksons, but discovered that she’s pregnant with Bill’s baby. At Ana’s urging, Margene has married Ana’s Serbian boyfriend Goran so that he can stay in the country after his visa expires. While originally a marriage of convenience, Margene has acknowledged that she has real feelings for Goran, and decided it would be best to divorce. Bill won the State Senate election in spite of this exponentially complicated marital and family dynamic, and after years of concealing his plural marriages, announced to the world that he’s a polygamist at his victory celebration. Meanwhile, there were indictments coming down against a Kansas polygamist compound affiliated with Juniper Creek. Nicki’s mother Adaleen set a house on fire with Nicki’s former husband JJ and JJ's current wife inside after learning about JJ’s insemination and egg-planting scheme. Oh, and the Henricksons’ sensible eldest daughter Sarah (Amanda Seyfried) got married and moved to Portland, which seems like a most prudent move. Talk about a modern family.

TV.net Originally published January 14, 2011

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