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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Big Love

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

22:53 / 14.03.06

So, did anyone stop rolling around on the floor in shock long enough to catch this new show after Los Sopranistas?

Bill Paxton is a mormon who's married to Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, and the third one. I found to be a decent show. More compelling in its premeire than some other recent HBO series premeires.

The thing that interests me the most is the dynamic time frame of the marriages. He marries Barbara (Tripps) first, clearly the one he has the strongest connection to. And she's pretty lapsed mormon (if at all) so you can see that while he was brought up on a compound, it's not the lifestyle he's interested in. But hold on, he marries Nikki (Sevigny) later. We find out that Nikki is the daughter of the head honcho of the compound (Harry Dean Stanton) and also helped Bill get his hardware store off the ground. So, did he marry her to get the business going? Did he basically cash out his desire for autonomy to succeed in business? It was probably a pretty big step, to wander back into those waters of polygamy. And then Margene (the third one) comes along and he figures, why not go for broke?

It's a pretty fascinating dynamic, mostly held together by Tripps, who is really fantastic in this show. So's the third lady. Chloe, well, she's not as irritating as usual? Throw in Melora Walters and Lily Kane off Veronica Mars and it's a pretty tight ensemble. I wish it wasn't so caught up in the Evil Hills Have Eyes Mormon Compound as a foil to Bill's ambitions but I have a feeling they'll go the way of Krohner if the show lasts. I'm much more interested in watching the family members stumble around and try and provide basic human needs for each other then seeing the big bad Mormon Preacher hound Bill for his cut of the franchise.

23:11 / 14.03.06

Just to make it very very clear—Paxton et al are explicitly referred to, in the show, as not being Mormons—i.e., members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—but members of a small offshoot sect led by Harry Dean Stanton's character. The LDS church is at pains to explain that it abolished polygamy in 1890, and any Mormon taking more than one spouse is sujmmarily excommunicated.

This is pretty true-to-life, BTW—there are several little Utah towns that are essentially run by fringey little polygamist cults that are a law unto themselves, and they give the LDS people conniptions.

Keith, like a scientist

23:30 / 14.03.06

I'm much more interested in watching the family members stumble around and try and provide basic human needs for each other then seeing the big bad Mormon Preacher hound Bill for his cut of the franchise.

Yes indeedy. This is what I like about the show's basic plot the most. Er...the second thing I like. To me, the idea that the members consider their family to be one big family with 3 subsections is providing the most interesting interpersonal dynamics. My favorite scenes were the 3 wives consulting with each other.

I can't imagine being in a situation like this, but there is something comforting in the characterization of this family. A kind of platonic bond that seems to cut through any of the obvious jealousies that pervade monogamous relationships.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

23:34 / 14.03.06

Gothca, Jack. My bad.

16:03 / 16.03.06

Jack, from my recent readings at Jesus' General, I've come to learn that the Mormons banned polygamy when they did only as a means of ensuring that they could become a state. In fact, when Wilford Woodruff signed the order (or whatever they call it) still had multiple wives at the time and beyond. The man who writes as Jesus' General, btw, is a descendent of Woodruff.

While it is Mormon canon now that polygamy is wrong, it apparently hasn't put much of a stigma on polygamy which, according to the General, is "still fairly widely practiced and accepted within Utah."

16:11 / 16.03.06

In Utah? Sure. Among recognized members of the official, mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—that is, among self-defined Mormons? No.

Let me put this another way. Are there people who reject the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and consequently still say the Mass in Latin? Sure: Mel Gibson is one, for instance. Are these people Catholics? They may say they are, but the Pope sez they ain't.

11:21 / 26.11.06

Bump!

So did anybody actually watch this show? I just finished watching the first season yesterday (downloaded it). The first episode or two I wasn't convinced, but by the end the series I was completely hooked.

I loved lots of little things about it, like seeing some of my favourite Veronica Mars actors, and cheeky references to gay culture (it was written by two gay men), but the best thing about it was definitely the relationships between the family members, especially the three wives.

I was also interested by the pretty explicit links that it drew between gay relationships and polygamy - it was suggesting that alternative family formations are all ok, so long as they are between consenting adults. For me this is kind of 'well duh', but I think it was pretty interesting to make those connections in the context of an otherwise extremely conservative, religious family.

The relationship betweend Roman, the old Prophet, and the 15 year old Rhonda as his umpteenth wife, on the other hand, was portrayed as pretty horrible (but strangely tender too).

It did something strange to my sense of my own family (there's just the two of us and an embryo at this stage) - it suddenly seemed way too small! A couple of nights in a row my partner and I went to bed and felt like there was someone missing. That said, I doubt very much we would ever be in a polygamous relationship (too possessive of each other) but it does make me want heaps of children, despite the massive overpopulation of the world etc etc...

22:45 / 26.11.06

I watched the whole first season and it did grow on me. The cast was great, one of the best bunch of actors ever assembled on a television show, and the premise was surprisingly flexible. I found myself in an odd relationship with what was going on, unsure of whether I supported Bill's family arrangement or saw it as imprisoning for those involved. Margie is the least ensconsced, and her arc had a lot of great moments, particularly the awkward times with her neighbor.

Anyone know when the second season airs?

Disco is My Class War

12:03 / 30.06.07

Season Two is screening at the moment, the fourth episode is on HBO on Monday night. Anyone else watching? So far, I was underwhelmed by the first two episodes, and then struck down by how much I love this show in last week's killer ep. The writing was the tightest it's ever been. Everything fell into place: the passive-aggression of every single interaction at Roman's house, and especially at the picnic, in the same breath as they all expectorate about the importance of family; the subtle revelation that Nicky knows all about her brother's 'problem'; Bill's 'conversion' to poker machines; Rhonda's stowaway mission.

At first I thought I really liked the show because it grasps the banality and everydaynes of the negotiations of non-monogamy, even a form of non-monogamy so heavily over-determined by theology. But now I think I was grasping at the wrong thing -- Big Love is great not despite the theology but because of it. The writers presents the subtextual sexual content of almost every relationship (both those that actually involve sex and those that don't, and which can't). These people are really religious, but also really sexual; they're not 'puritans' by any means. It's an interesting contradiction, which feels very Foucauldian: all that crazy discourse around regulating sex, turning it into an articulation of 'the principle', turning it into 'God's work', just makes every character think about sex more. Even if they don't know it.

18:16 / 05.07.07

anybody know where one can watch previews for forthcoming epidsodes each week? this past week's was killer and i'm spazzing out without even a little trailer for next week!