No, not at all. Do you really think Bill’s religion is that…childlike? As it goes in all christian faiths, we humans stopped naturally acting according to divine will when we were tossed out of the garden. Bill’s faith is no different. The fact that she didn’t go all Stepford Wife on the spot wouldn’t be evidence to Bill that the marriage wasn’t divinely ordained, nor should it be evidence to us as viewers that Bill is a hypocrite. It’s just evidence that Ana has the normal free will that all humans have.
That Bill kept resisting her advances and saying they needed to be married first is evidence that he’s not a hypocrite. Finally caving in and bumping uglies is evidence that he’s human. Frankly, if he hadn’t eventually caved, it would have been much less believable.
It is possible to be less than perfect without being a hypocrite. Are Catholics who go to confession hypocrites because they committed sins? Is anyone on the planet not a hypocrite based on these extreme standards?
That’s just silly. Parents are perfectly in the right to tell their children not to engage in behavior that they themselves have engaged in.
And your position is disingenuous in that to paint Bill as an adulterer is totally missing the point. He repeatedly resisted Ana, and then when she finally broke him down he was disgisted with himself for being weak. This is a far cry from trolling for one-nighters.
Even if Bill were running around cheating as much as he could – which is pretty much the exact opposite of what Bill has been doing – he’d still be able to condemn his kids for doing the same. Just like you can have wine for dinner and yet still be justified in condemning your children when they drink.
But their kids are at the age where it’s normal to have sex. When you condemn your kids for drinking, it’s because they’re not old enough to handle it. Plus, using contraceptive is, arguably, a responsible thing to do–I think Barb should have been congratulating Sarah on being responsible rather than yelling at her (not that she was on the pill…she should have been, though!). Barb’s argument was that she wanted Sarah to have sex when she met the right person, was in a spiritual union, etc. I don’t think that Bill did that with either Ana or Margene. Doesn’t it seem odd that neither Ana nor Margene has the slightest idea of what the Book of Mormon is about?
This is a good question. I think what’s bugging me is the excuses to beat up on him. They seem so petty and silly. Painting Bill as an adulterer is to really miss the forest for the trees. While true that he committed adultery, he did everything in his power to avoid it. He honestly believed that Ana was meant to be his wife, so he couldn’t just walk away.
And the Weber Gaming thing was clearly and unambiguously presented as not against his religion.
You can criticize Bill for being all high and mighty and holier than thou, but recognize that he actually is holier than thou. He’s the real deal; a true believer that does abolutely everything he can to stay true to his faith.
He has an unwavering sense of what’s right and wrong, and in every case he chooses to do what he believes is right, regardless of whether or not it’s the harder thing.
Kill him for being a fool, deluded by a misogynist faith. But don’t kill him for being a hypocrite, or picking and choosing only the “fun” parts of his faith, because he is about as pious a character as there has ever been on television.
I guess I can’t let it go because the complaints against Bill in last week’s and this week’s thread have been complaints about a character who is the exact opposite of Bill. I don’t know what show you’re watching, but to think that Bill only follows the “fun” parts of his faith is totally and completely not what the writers are presenting to us.
You changed the wording there. “Normal” and “can handle it” are not remotely the same thing. Many would say that it is normal for kids to drink, and kids aren’t old enough to handle sex. (And the drinking sure doesn’t help. heh.)
As for Barb congratulating Sarah for using birth control, are you now advocating for hypocrisy? Is it now a good thing to pick and choose which aspects of your faith you should follow? Or is it just okay for Barb, but still bad if Bill does it?
He has committed adultery. The end of last season, he has sex with Ana, and that was well before he had proposed anything, and well before he thought she was “meant to be” his wife. I don’t buy the idea that she, the foul temptress, seduced poor, pious Bill. Nope. He’s a grown man and he chose to sleep with her.
The point Freudian Slit and I are trying to make is that Bill rationalizes his lust after the fact with “if I want to fuck her, it must mean the Holy Spirit is directing me!” No, Bill, sometimes you’re just horny for a hot young piece of strange. Justifications like that are legitimizing what would otherwise be bad behavior and against his religion. That is hypocritical, because it seems clear that none of his marriages except the one to Barb is true love, or “meant to be,” or ordained from above. They are all marriages to justify having these women that Bill wants for whatever reason. And they are having problems because of it.
I totally disagree. It IS against Mormonism, of which Bill is a member. You can’t just make things up about Bill’s religion to justify your defense of him. Mormons are anti-gambling; witness his sister-in-law’s negativity towards it for proof, or ask any Mormon you happen to know. The FLDS offshoots differ with mainstream Mormonism about polygamy and issues of dogma, not about gambling. I have to ask for a cite if you insist otherwise.
Why don’t you understand that we don’t agree with this? He is NOT holier than thou, and I don’t think he’s the real deal. I think he’s a human being with major flaws who wants to be faithful but also has baser desires that he gives into, and I think he’s using his religion to justify acting on his desires.
I find this just laughable. He does not have an unwavering sense of what’s right and wrong. The show is illustrating, in excruciating detail, why all of his polygamous marriages were wrong. Nicki is not happy at all, doesn’t love him, is sick of having his kids, and is in fact interested in another man. Margie was a marriage of justifying his lust for her after the fact, and to have more babies. Ana was patently wrong in so many ways.
Bill’s right v. wrong detector does not work. I’m not sure Weber Gaming was such a great idea either. They are broke now because of it, and they are failing to get the financial and governmental backing they need to make it fly. It’s caused him to be mixed up with some sketchy characters like the Greens. And he sure didn’t know right from wrong when dealing with little Rhonda. Bill is just stumbling around, trying to figure it out, and then whatever he decides is right. That’s not faith, or divine guidance.
I do think we’re watching different shows, because this is not how I see him at all, and I think my reading of Bill is amply based in the text of the show. I don’t think Bill is a bad person, but a pious man? He’s struggling with his faith and he makes a lot of mistakes, often out of greed, vanity, and ego, to which he succumbs, often. This is not the man of perfect faith you claim to be seeing on your TV.
I think your depiction of Bill deviates from the Bill on the show. The writers are presenting us with a compromised man who wants to do the right thing, but is so often falling short of the mark due to his own weaknesses. If the story were about a perfectly righteous Mormon, it would be boring. There would be no internal conflict, no family conflict, only conflict with an unaccepting society. Clearly that’s not what the show is about. So we’re at an impasse, and you’ve failed to convince me that my reading of him is as wrong as you say it is. I really hope we are not going to continue this debate every week, because I think it might well ruin my enjoyment of these threads if I have to answer to your interpretation every time it comes up.
I think their religion is absolutely nuts in the way it treats women. I suppose you’re right that Barb’s being consistent. Bill absolutely isn’t, though. I wouldn’t mind as much if he didn’t come down so hard on everyone else. If he’s really just human and flawed, why doesn’t he recognize that his teenaged son is probably going through the same issues (and worse)?
Bill may be being consistent with his religion in terms of how he treated Nicki for going on the pill, but as a human being, he disgusts me. Nicki has basically since the time she was sixteen years old been taught that she has no real rights or control over her own body. She was married off and raped by an older man, then basically told she was Bill Henrickson’s wife, and never given any chance to do anything other than have babies. I don’t think she has a concept of “I can say no” to babies/reproduction. Was it manipulative of her to go on the pill and at the same time tell the others she wanted to have another baby back in season one? Yes–but considering where she’s coming from, it’s understandable. And the fact that Bill’s solution isn’t “Why does having babies make you so unhappy”/“What do you want to do?” but rather, “Go off the pill now” and “This is the worst thing you’ve ever done” just sickens me.
And as for the Holy Spirit stuff–if Bill’s marriages with Ana and Margene were really all about living the Principle, why didn’t he marry women who actually believe in it? Margene actually instructed Ana to “pretend to pray.” That sounds really religious to me.
On a non related note, how old is the actress playing Teeny? I feel bad for her–they clearly have no idea what to do with her now that she’s hit puberty.
I rewatched the show the other night, and there is one short scene where Teeny is wearing a ball cap and her hair is pulled out into a normal ponytail. She looked normal, if not the most beautiful girl in the world, the part of a gawky teenager, not some kinda weird Pippi Longstocking.
I think Bill is definitely compromising both his morals and his faith most of the time. I do think he "means’ to do right, but considering his grandfather was a Prophet and looking at the morality of both of his parents, I’m not sure he’s equipped to make decisions that are not at least partially self serving. There were no role models in his life (or Nikki’s) that provide good examples of how to protect your family and be upright morally. I also think he has not admitted to himself that he wants Roman’s position, he does things to achieve it and then pulls back (like getting a seat on the UEB but putting his brother on it or getting a third party to administrate them while Roman was recovering from his gunshot wound). I think we are going to see some very immoral decisions from him in the future, especially as he either gets more desparate or power hungry.
I really think Barb will forgive Nikki for the birth control in the end, but Nikki is going to have to open up to Barb about how she feels. Is it possible that Nikki really was originally prescribed birth control pills for cramps (or some other female problem)? Was Sarah using any kind of birth control with Scott?
I don’t think that’s true because we see her going on them right after she tells the family that she wants to bring another soul into their family. If she were on the pill just for cramps, I think she might have said something. She also lies about ovulating at certain points to get certain nights with Bill.
As for Sarah, I’m not sure. I don’t remember if she used anything…does anyone else?
I’m reminded of the punchline to that classic joke: “But you fuck one goat…”
The man’s an adulterer, and likely a repeat offender. He’s a gambler, too, and while we have no idea if he’s a repeat offender, he didn’t seem the slightest bit repentant when discussing it with his brother-in-law. He has obstructed with justice, he can be downright slimy in doing backdoor deals and double-crosses (especially with regards to Alby and his father).
I do think he’s generally a good person, but he’s also terribly inconsistent. He verifiably goes against his religious principles when it suits his purposes – not every time, of course, but probably just as often as the rest of humanity. And then he holds those same principles up as unbreakable and inviolate (e.g., Nicki, you must stop taking birth control and I say so because I am the man and our Religious Principles say that’s that). His differing standards are what make him a hypocrite.
Also, if he can break the rules when it suits him, why not when it suits anyone else? No one seems to want to have more kids. They don’t have the money for more kids. Weber Gaming is falling through no matter how much Bill wants it to work, they’ve got at least one kid to send to college soon, and something’s gotta give.
And as for the wives–Barb can’t have kids. Nicki obviously doesn’t want to. Margene has just had three children. The fact that Nicki was saying, “Bring Ana on so she can share the burden” kind of makes me think that having kids/being fruitful is something that they have to do but not something anyone really wants to do. Why not hold off on having more? At least for a few years? It disturbs me that it doesn’t seem like Bill really has time for his kids…at least not his female ones. It was sad how eager Sarah seemed to be to spend time with him. I get the sense that he’s not really that big a part of her life.
I finally got around to watching this last night. Now I as I think back on the ending this morning, I’m confused or not sure exactly what transpired with Sarah. Unfortunately I erased it after watching and can’t re-watch…
Did she just finally tell them she was pregnant, or was she telling Nicki that she had lost the baby. If the later, wouldn’t that generally involve a visit to the nearest medical facility?
I checked the episode description on the HBO website, and it was as I thought, that Sarah was having a miscarriage.
Guess I still don’t understand why that didn’t result in a visit to a doctor, emergency room, etc.
As for the story line - thumbs down to the writers. Makes me think of John Candy in his role as a soap writer (can’t remember the title of the movie) and what his reaction would have been to the changing story line. “Oh Christ, I can’t believe they’re using the miscarriage out!”
Yeah, someone in the middle of a miscarriage should be in the ER, not in a station wagon.
Back to the “is Bill evil?” debate: I know it’s not a popular point of view in the 21st century, but within the world of fundamentalist mormonism, it’s *Nicki *that has the problem. It’s not that Bill is a backward misogynist, it’s that Nicki is an apostate – if she didn’t want to pump out babies she shouldn’t have married him. And therein lies the conflict of this season, I think. Nicki is being torn away from her upbringing and her family, which we can also see in her flirtation with the guy from the DA’s office.
First of all, I don’t think anyone has said Bill is evil. A flawed, hypocritical man with a distorted sense of his own righteousness, most definitely.
Next: Since when has Nicki ever had much of a choice in anything? She’s always been a tool of some man or other, sometimes more than one at once. It’s only now, since she’s been exposed to the world outside the compound and all the options women have, that she’s rebelling. I bet she thought she did want to pump out babies until she started doing it and realized how far it was from what she thought it would be and was told it would be. I think her evolution is natural. She fronts like she’s the Good Wife, which is why no one up until now has known how unhappy and rebellious she is inside, but I think it’s about to come to a head. Despite finding her quite unlikeable, I do have some sympathy for her. When you have no formal power, manipulation and passive aggression are all you have to work with, and Nicki works with them very well.
Yes, Nicki shouldn’t have married Bill. Neither should Margene or Ana. This goes back to the question, “Is Bill making right decisions?” No. His judgment is poor and it’s not God guiding him in these decisions. Sadly, this has a larger impact than it normally would, since he’s the only one whose judgment matters in the relationships.
I don’t think she really had much of a choice. I think her father gave Bill a loan and she was basically what Bill got in exchange. Plus, look at how she’s been raised–to believe that women have no real worth outside of baby producing. In her world, a woman who’s too much trouble can be taken out of town and disposed of summarily.