Big Love 01.24, Teenie is back from camp

Cafe Society
21

Again, haven’t seen the show yet, but I have been invited:

Unlike Dogzilla, I was never a young woman, nor in the Young Women’s Program, though my wife and sisters were and my daughter is. But I agree that chastity and Modesty are stressed, often obsessively. As far as anything less than “mormon standard” being “walking pornography” or sex being “bad, and dirty, and dangerous”, I think that is a little over the top. Premarital sex is discouraged, but, ironically, girls are told sex, or “intimacy” is a beautiful thing, but reserved for marriage. As far as how my daughter would deal with “non-mormon standards” clothing - well she would probably look down on them (depending on the immodesty level). However, I don’t know an LDS girl who would comment, or even notice, any clothing that wouldn’t get someone in trouble at the average public high school. A Fundamentalist may have more restrictive standards, though.

I can’t imagine any proper LDS girl calling anyone “whores!” without having real concerns about her “improper language”.:stuck_out_tongue: As far as pants and shorts, I don’t know what my daughter and her friends would wear on a daily basis, then. She only wears a skirt or dress to church or when required by her high school coach on game days.

Exactly.

I would just say LDS dress standards (which aren’t exactly formally written out or anything) are significantly less restrictive than FLDS dress standards. The LDS girls I know, don’t wear short shorts (unless playing sports), sleeveless tops (short sleeves are fine, though), two piece swimsuits (though I know exceptions), or clothing that is so tight it looked painted on. The female members of the FLDS Church I know wear floor length, blousey dresses only. Really, if i showed you pictures of my daughter and her friends, and pictures of her non-Mormon classmates, you couldn’t tell them apart by their dress.

Sadly true, I’ve seen a lot of this myself. Disgusting.

If this happened too my (very proper Mormon) mom or wife, he would be a very dead JJ.

Somewhat true, though there are LDS women leaders in stake and worldwide leadership positions, including very revered Temple Matrons, Mission presidents, General Relief Society, Primary, and Young Women Leaders. Even Bishops are strictly contolled by policy and their own leaders. If a Bishop (who is always male in the LDS Church, though not in some other Mormon groups) were to undermine the decisions of a Relief Society, Young Women’s or Primary Leader arbitrarily and capriciously, they should quickly be stopped by the Stake Leadership. WOmen can and do preside at a number of meetings (at least 12 every week at the average ward), just not in the main meeting, the Sacrament Meeting.

This is very far from my experience.

Thanks for letting me comment, Dogzilla.

22

IANAM or ExMo, but I don’t see the conflict, except in Nikki’s choice of clothes for her daughter. “…Dressing in a way that’s pleasing to your husband” doesn’t necessarily mean “showing your goods.” I would interpret it as being clean, neat, attractive, etc. Not being a slob. I think Cara Lynn’s (spelling from IMDB.com, BTW. There are SO many different spellings here!) confusion comes from the family dynamics she’s learned growing up in Kansas sect compared to what she’s experiencing in the Henrickson Households. Very conflicting. And her mother’s “do what I say, not what I do” philosophy.

I think Margene just got “caught up in the moment” and nobody second-guessed her enthusiasm. Isn’t there usually some preparation & study involved in a Mormon baptism? It’s not like other Christian religions with infant baptism, right? Anyway, I do recall a scene from a previous season where Margene was told to watch how she dressed. But that seems to have been forgotten.

Again, IANAM, but I do get this impression from the FLDS sect as portrayed in the show. It always surprised me that Alby’s wife was a nurse, and I wondered how Bill’s mother got away with as much autonomy as she does – working at the gas station/convenience store off the compound, running her own business, etc.

23

My favorite moment was the look on Barb’s face when the Indian woman cursed her during the sensitivity training seminar…whenever she gets that clueless/hurt/lost look I just want to slap her hard and that may have been the most clueless/lost/hurt look ever.

And after years of build-up I love seeing Alby’s gay side out in full force.

24

I think he keeps her around because she’s the one who is most “churchy” and also has the compound political ties (don’t forget that Bill is from the compound and his family was still there until recently). Barb was his first Mormon wife, someone who was from the mainstream Mormon church and helped him get past the compound stuff. Margene is just an extremely willing piece of ass. Nikki brings with her a tie to the compound, the extreme work habits of a compound Mormon, and the know-how to be a proper compound wife (even though her true nature is fighting against it).

I thought the exact same thing. Ick!

25

Alby is weird looking, but I think the guy who fucks him is even weirder. His face looks square and fake-looking because of his silly haircut. The two of them are made for each other.

I don’t buy the idea that Nikki is the most “deep” of all the characters. I don’t think there’s anything deep about her. I’ve known plenty of real people like her - whiny, selfish, and untrustworthy, and arrogant self-righteous at the same time. Yeah, she’s “vulnerable” underneath it all. Boo hoo! It doesn’t make her a deep character! She’s a B-I-T-C-H and, being an appreciator of all different kinds of women, I do not throw that word around lightly.

The deepest character on the show is Joey - also the least utilized. There is someone who genuinely has many interesting layers to his personality.

26

I saw it differently. Cissy heard her say “casino” and her eyes lit up like slot machine$. She probably had some plans for Bill’s wallet or connections.
We know that Nicki was kinda given to Bill and Barb when Barb was sick and she helped out, babysat, nursed, etc. Then somehow Bill got “the calling” to go to polygamy and convinced Barb. Bill either was snookered by Nikki at the beginning or felt he had to marry her to get the money from Roman to build up Homes Plus. He is too honorable to really divorce her afterward when he saw her true colors or got sick of her.

27

Whatever depth Nicki has comes from the different worlds she’s navigating, I think, not from the fact that she’s rude but occasionally vulnerable. For the first three seasons her loyalties were divided between Juniper Creek and Bill. Now? Eh.

He’s definitely the least utilized. Unfortunately (so far) his depth only includes many different layers of being an idiot.

28

Ah, I missed that! That makes more sense.

RE: Margene’s attire or lack thereof - I vaguely remember her bouncing into the kitchen wearing a very short bathroble with a shirtless Ben and Barb blowing a gasket over it. Margene was in the regressed I’m-your-big-sis phase with Ben. So Barb definitely said something to her about it then.

I thought Lois’s husband was far more vile than JJ ::shudder:: . She’s really going to regret not killing him.

29

Re: Alby’s appearance: He’s not bad looking but there’s something that stops him from being good looking. I don’t know if it’s makeup or lighting, but he always reminded me of DATA in not looking quite human. For comparison: ALBY - DATA.

While I miss the character, I think they may have made a good move in writing Harry Dean Stanton out. At 83 (and a half) he’s really starting to look feeble, and he’s also one of those actors like Peter Falk and Johnny Depp who smokes cigarettes even on talk shows, so he’s probably not a good bet for a long plot line. Agree though that Zeljko Ivanek (if HBO films it, he will come) isn’t up to his mantle, though I think it’s due more to the writing of JJ than to Ivanek’s acting since he’s great in other roles.

30

Alby is very pale and has a prim expression that reminds me of a ferret. I don’t think I would ever be attracted to anyone of any gender who made that face.

31

Joey has the most interesting back story and the most interesting unanswered questions.

He used to be a pro football player. How did this happen? I can’t imagine that there would be a Juniper Creek football team. Who did he play for, then, before going to play in college and eventually the pros?

There are references in the first season to him having drug and alcohol problems. When did this start? Did it have something to do with his football career (or its downfall?)

What did he do after that? Was he just an unemployed drunk, or some kind of manual laborer (I get the impression it might have been the latter.)

What kind of relationship did he have with his father? He never seemed as adversarial towards Frank as Bill did.

Where are his religious convictions? He doesn’t really appear to have any. He doesn’t initially care about “the principle” and seems content having just one wife. When he does eventually try to take another, it seems to mostly be from his first wife Wanda’s urging.

How did he and Wanda meet, anyway? Did they have an arranged marriage? They appear to actually love each other - was she always so mentally unbalanced?

32

I’m guessing marrying her was his price for coming back to the compound. As for the football team, if Juniper Creek is like Hildale/Colorado City (the real life AZ/UT bordertown compound) it does have a high school (they’re not going to miss that opportunity to bleed the beast [the term for milking the state and federal government] of lots of money) with intramural sports; Rhonda had previously entered a junior-high school drama competition of some sort. (Jonestown also had a basketball team somehow; it was being away at a basketball meet that actually saved the lives of two of Jones’ sons [one biological, one adopted].)

33

Also, wasn’t Joey kicked out like Bill was? If he got involved with an organization or even just a family that helps those kids out, he would have presumably have been enrolled in a mainstream high school and have had access to intramural sports that way.

I can see the argument both for and against Nikki being a deep character. She’s not a deep person, no, but she does stir more depth and variety of emotion than any other character on the show. Chloe Sevigny is very good at pulling off a character you love to hate and simultaneously want to rescue. Yeah, she’s a shallow, materialistic, narcissistic bitch on wheels, but if I grew up in a family where the only way I could get actual attention instead of stuff from my parents was to be useful to their plans, got sold like livestock as a teenager to someone like JJ, and then got ordered out of the only life I’ve ever known to go live something that only vaguely resembles it far away from my loved ones…I wouldn’t be Mother Theresa either, ya know?

34

The character bio for Joey on the HBO website says that he was not kicked out of the compound as a teenager (probably because he was good at football) and that as a result, he’s not as bitter as Bill. And supposedly Joey was the quarterback of a NFL team that made it to the Super Bowl (although I think his team lost the game). But his personality in the first couple of seasons was really weak, and that was inconsistent with what I expected of a football quarterback.

35

CrazyCatLady, that’s pretty much what I meant- I didn’t use the word deep either- but she is complex because she has, in my opinion, the most interesting reasons for being how she is.

In the first season, Frank does give Joey a hard time about that Superbowl Game, he apes Joey missing a key catch.

36

Harry Dean Stanton is the ultimate ferret face, so good casting. Alby will one day be a real boy though, and that will make him better looking. (I think it’s his hair, which never changes and never moves, that makes him look so androidish to me; I’ve wondered if the actor wears a rug.)

37

The only other picture I found of Matt Ross (Alby) online was from American Psycho, and his hair was not severely slicked back and he was smiling instead of sucking his cheeks. He still looked creepy.

38

I thought that Bill has placed her in the “Joy Book”, she had gotten married off, and was living in Mexico. Imagine my surprise when she was sitting there in the kitchen in some other actresses body!

39

I loved that scene! :smiley: Barb is so full of herself and patronizing. I like that little moment when she realized the woman was telling Barb what she really thought about her not just resonding to the exercise. It’s like watching Hyacinth Bucket get told off.

Well there’s the whole actually listening to her and being interested in her opinions. He’s also much closer to her age than Bill. He’s cute (& she did get a chance to see all of him :wink: last season). They’ve been building up to this since the begining. In seasons 1 and 2 we had Barb catching Ben sleeping on her couch (in just his boxers) instead of his own room and both of them frolicking in the pool and one of Barb’s poly friends assuming they were both Barb’s kids. Last season when they were on vaction Ben was getting changed in Margene’s room (which is bizarre in and of itself) and caught Margene coming out of the shower naked (& he just stood there naked without trying to cover up). Then Margene wrote him that letter that Teenie intercepted (gee I wonder if Teenie tells Barb about it next week).

Barb and Margene really could pass for a couple without rasing too many eyebrows. Margene’s supposed to be what 24/25? And I think Ben’s 17. True that age gap will raise eyebrows, but Ben can pass for older (Doug Smith is 24 IRL).

40

Agreed. I asked this in the other thread but I think it got lost in the shuffle but do we know how she got the gun? If they flew over from Utah she couldn’t have kept it on the plane…did she somehow get it in DC? Or did they not fly?

Yeah, I was wondering about the business deal thing. It does seem like she is the only one who REALLY, REALLY believes the principle and doesn’t just eye roll or give it lip service. Though Margene seems to believe more than she used to…then again, she had never actually read the Book of Mormon. And she told Ana in that episode to just put her hands together and look down when Bill wanted her to “pray” so clearly her beliefs aren’t all that strong. I guess as you say, Margene just want to be part of the family and would agree with Bill no matter what.

I didn’t either. I was assuming that Nicki would say something stupid in the bathroom and Sissy would get all, “AHA you are NOT who you say you are!” Or that she was setting him up for something. Seemed too easy.

I haven’t seen Six Feet Under but I was kind of groaning at the Roman flashbacks. It’s been done in many many other mediums.

My mom used to watch Six Feet Under and she pointed out that the opening credits are very Six Feet Under.

ETA: I’m not liking new Teeny. Lots of people on IMDb think that she was sent off to some religious camp because of the porno she was selling to the neighborhood kids–do you guys think this is true? It might explain the whole “reapers” talk she had with Ben. Teeny skeeves me.