Arts

Discussing "Big Love"

What we love, hate, and look forward to about HBO’s polygamy drama “Big Love.”

Hanna: First, the confession: I am an FLDS obsessive. Behind me right now, in a folder tucked under a file cabinet, I have the diaries of Warren Jeffs, the polygamist Mormon prophet who is a model for creepy Roman Grant on Big Love. A couple of months ago I attended the trial of one of the men from the Yearning for Zion ranch who was accused of having sex with an underage girl (his child bride). So I am well aware that the premise for Big Love, which moves into its fourth season this Sunday, is pretty plausible. There does exist this enduring polygamous sect whose doings fluctuate between the intensely banal (feed the kids, hang out the wash) and the shocking (banish your brother, marry a 12-year-old). This duality was summed up for me in the final scene of last season, when, to christen the bizarre new Church of Bill, the family drank out of Tweety Bird Dixie cups.

We already got a lot of hints of what was coming up at the end of last season, and this week more details about Season 4 were leaked. In general, the show moves at the demented pace of a daytime soap, so they are cramming a lot in nine episodes: Nicki’s newfound daughter, Bill’s Senate run, Barb’s affair, Margene’s rise to home-shopping-network fame. Of all these, I find myself looking most forward to seeing more Margene. Nicki’s self-indulgent narcissism gets on my nerves and it feels played out. Barb is lovely, but she cannot possibly plausibly have an affair. Bill’s Senate run seems a stretch—just because you’re a Mormon does not make you Mitt Romney. But Margene’s version of peppy I could watch every week. Even when she’s annoying she’s charming. As the Big Love ads always ask, which wife are you?

Torie: I consider myself an FLDS watcher, too, albeit more from afar—I read the Plural Life, the blog of Salt Lake Tribune polygamy-beat reporter Brooke Adams, and I can’t help but watch any “shocking polygamy story” that surfaces on TV (unless it’s more fluff about the well-dressed ladies of Centennial Park, Ariz.). I’m fascinated by any closed community that defines itself in opposition of the outside world—and how its inhabitants are forced, or sometimes long, to interact with those of us whom they deem wicked. So bring on more compound drama and wife intrigue this season, Big Love producers. Bill is dull, smug, and wooden. It’s the wives and the older kids, all of whom love their family fiercely and loyally but struggle to agree with the Principle, for whom I tune in.

For the first two-and-a-half seasons, I felt the same way as you about Nicki—that she was grating and an eternal fuckup. But I came to reconsider my feelings in the latter half of the third season, when we met her creepy ex-husband (the brother of Wanda—now there’s a brilliant character we need to address) and her nearly grown daughter, whom she had to abandon to get out of her own teen marriage. The back story, which had been only gently teased previously, allowed her preachy, “Don’t you quote Scripture at me” grandstanding about the Principle while at the same time sabotaging her family, to make such acute sense. In the finale, I wanted her to take her daughter, marry the D.A., and start a new life. But then we wouldn’t have a new season to look forward to.

When you were at the YFZ trial in Texas, did you and the other reporters spend any down time discussing Big Love?

Tags: big love

Hanna Rosin and Torie Bosch are DoubleX's co-editor and Slate's Faith-Based editor, respectively.

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