Big Love

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Bill Henrickson leads a very full life; with his hardware store franchising, seven children to feed, wife Barb growing ever-more disillusioned with their marriage, wife Nicki addicted to online shopping, and wife Margene in over her head raising children, Bill's time is stretched very thin.

Big Love is a show that I had heard of but had never seen; through the Internet I heard mostly good things about it, but there was only one occasion where I heard real-life discussion about it, which was in the break room at work, and one of my co-workers told me that it was the disgusting work of the devil. Like me, said co-worker had never seen the show, and part of me wants to watch this series to spite her.

Eldest daughter Sarah, played by Amanda Seyfried, has a very mature view on religion, not only for her age, but for someone raised in such a devout household. She states that she's unsure of how she feels about religion, but that she agrees with the ideas of morality as presented by most churches. She's shown to struggle with her father's lifestyle, though if that's due to her concerns that she may be forced into a polygamist relationship or instead that she worries that her father might love his other families more than hers remains to be seen.

I'm glad to see that the patriarch of the family, as played by Bill Paxton, is portrayed as a busy, worn-down man. Were he to simply take everything in stride and work everything out by the end of the episode, I'm not sure that I would be able to handle watching his life play out on screen. Instead he struggles to please his wives, has issues with forgotten appointments and neglected children, and is forced to turn to pharmaceuticals in order to please his multiple wives. What surprises me most about him is that, for a man so busy, it took him so long to find need of those tiny blue pills...that and his full head of hair; the stress would have made me go bald ages ago.

When Bill is asked to return to the compound in order to see after his father, he asks first wife Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn) to accompany him despite her protests; we later see that second wife Nicki (Chloë Sevigny) has volunteered. During their trip to the compound, we learn just how much Barb doesn't agree with their teachings, how hard she fought to get out of that situation, and how horribly she was and still is treated by those that live there while Nicki is welcomed with open arms. It provides a glaring contrast between how the two wives are treated and it makes me rage that Bill would put his first wife into that kind of situation when he is well aware of her relationship with the compound in question. At first I assumed that Bill had insisted she come so as not to seem like he was choosing a favorite between his wives, but if that were to be the case then, clearly, third wife Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the least favorite, as she was the only one not asked to come along.

The compound itself was shown in such a harsh and negative light that it makes very clear to the audience that this is not a place that anyone should grow up in, but why, then, does Nicki have such a fondness for it there? Had we been shown any good to this community, or been given any reason why Nicki might enjoy spending time with these people, I wouldn't bring this up as criticism, but the only moments we see Nicki among the people here she is chastised and belittled, and I honestly can't understand the appeal that she has attributed to this place.

Every actor on this show is a great one, from headliner Paxton to guest star Tina Majorino (playing Sarah's co-worker Heather) and it's no surprise that everyone hits it out of the park. The lingering fear that their family might be found out and reported to the police is subtle, but ever-present, and acted in such a way that it feels genuine from everyone involved. Grace Zabriskie's Lois Henrickson is possibly the greatest asset to this episode as the woman who has finally cracked under the pressure of the lifestyle; desperately she tries to keep her husband from being taken to hospital, claiming that their religion would be a motivating factor for the police to arrest them, when, in actuality, there seems to be a far more sinister reason to keep her husband from seeing the doctor.

Rodrigo Garcia directs the first outing into this series and, while his work doesn't dazzle me, he does a good job of making this world seem very real and ordinary, despite the somewhat unorthodox situation.

The writing duo Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer do well juggling the amount of characters that appear during the episode, and manage to instill a great deal of back story into the first hour of this series. The characters are all written very realistically, none are blinded by so much happiness that they can't see the faults in their own lives, but none are so miserable with their situations to make it difficult to understand why they seek no change. The plot threads add up to a vast number as the hour carries on, but it never grows out of hand and the episode rarely drags on. Olsen and Scheffer prove through this script that they work well as a team.

This show has definitely grabbed my attention, and while it's certainly not perfect in every way, it's absolutely worth giving a try. There are an array of stories that could sprout from this episode, all of which could make for great television, and I've little doubt that the writing team would handle said stories with finesse.

Big Love is in the running to become the feature for Mondays. The series ran from 2006 to 2011 on HBO with a total of 53 episodes.