Big Love

HBO’s premier of their new series Big Love proves you need more than a titillating premise to make good TV. But who’s not going to check out a drama where a guy has three wives living in three adjacent houses that share a backyard pool and where seven kids from infancy to seventeen populate the premises? Bill Paxton plays Bill Henrickson, a businessman, somewhere in Utah. He  is sort of a normal guy except for his unusual household. Apparently he grew up in a cultish environment led by “the Prophet” who is played by Harry Dean Stanton. (Harry Dean is one of David Lynch’s favorite actors and the Prophet gives hints of being Lynchian). Bill is alienated from his parents who still live with the Prophet (whose newest wife is fourteen). The Prophet, it turns out, staked Bill to a grubstake that allowed him to open his first and second home improvement stores. In the premier a third store is about to open and Bill is cutting the Prophet out of this opportunity setting up a conflict which will no doubt continue in subsequent episodes. Bill is browbeaten into returning to his parent’s home, located in a compound that looks kind of nineteenth century, to help his sick father who we learn is dying of arsenic poisoning. Is his crazy mom the poisoner? Another set up for next week. But, actually, we aren’t too interested in this. What we are interested in is how a polygamous relationship might actually work. In episode one we don’t learn very much. We meet the wives (one, two and three). One is a substitute teacher, has had cancer and a hysterectomy offering a possible motivation for agreeing to the additional wives. Two is the Prophet’s daughter who might have come as part of the loan or to watch out for her father’s interests. She has a spending problem and needs to go on Oprah’s “Debt Diet.” Three is very young, not very capable and horny. The ladies have a schedule they agree on where Bill alternates nights. He is, understandably, having some equipment difficulties. That’s about all we learn about the logistics of polygamy. Certainly there is more to it but Big Love, episode one, made it seem kind of routine. The wives get along though there are undercurrents of competitiveness. We meet the kids who seem normal enough. We learn the family isn’t that active in church. But they do practice the  Family Home Evening favored by LDS.
The Big Problem with Big Love besides the writing (in one scene Wife Two reads her entire credit card number over the phone) is the casting. Everyone seems a bit too sophisticated to be polygamous Mormons. Jeanne Tripplehorn, the oldest wife, is also the most attractive. She says they all agreed to this relationship but never lets us know why. We don’t learn the motivation for their coming together in this large menage. One would expect a complicated household like this one to be a bit more complicated. But Bill’s big issue, besides ED, is to get Wife One to hand over her check as a substitute teacher for the month. This request, from a guy who is opening his third home improvement store and having paper signing meetings in big time attorney offices, doesn’t make much sense. Surely the writers could have come up with more compelling issues. Tony Soprano has a much more interesting time with one wife than Bill Henrickson does with three and my prediction is that Big Love won’t join the ranks of HBO’s superior series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and Entourage. Those shows all seem real. This one seems like cardboard cutouts.