Interesting point. To me, this show has been a series of situations where Bill attempts some kind of scheme only to run into someone who is better at it than he is. His luck has improved now that he’s dealing with Alby, who is hapless and confused and no kind of leader, instead of Roman. But in the political world he is in way over his head.
That’s pretty bad. And she would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those snooping kids!
Well, he’s succeeded at having 3 1/2 wives and a bushel of kids. He’s been successfully hiding his polygamy. He’s got a very successful business and, so far, a successful casino. Despite what we’ve seen in the nitty-gritty, he is respected and loved enough in the community to get on the ballot. Where have we really seen him fail big?
Now that I’ve re-watched the episode a second time, I wondered if anyone else noticed the odd directions in some of the scenes or if it is just me. In the scene where Bill and Ana meet, while she is making toast for breakfast (presumably!), the camera focuses in on the toaster. Odd, I thought. Except that again, the focus is on the -toaster- and other out of the usual realm things. Why?! What is the point, or is there a point? BTW, that’s turned out to be one of my very favorite scenes - love Ana calling him on it, too! It’s okay for him to have more than one wife, but not for Margene to have more than one husband! LOL
I think this show proves that this is hard to manage, but not difficult to do. 
Not at all, and that’s one of the annoying parts of this political storyline. A significant number of people know they are polygamists, but suddenly it’s a big deal that nobody know the truth about them until after the election. Was it last season where Barb walked across the street and announced to their nutty redheaded neighbor that they are polygamists? Maybe it was the season before that. In fact it’s the same neighbor Barb pissed off in this episode with her comments about prescription drug use. So their neighbors know they are polygamists. Barb’s family knows, and so does everybody at Juniper Creek. J.J. knew about it, too, so it’s no secret in Kansas. Their nosy Home Plus coworker knew they were polygamists, and so did the people who disqualified Barb from that Utah Mother of the Year Contest. I think some people in the LDS heirarchy also know. Someone had to grafitti those Home Plus billboards and someone must have seen them. Despite all that, even before ran for office it had no impact on their lives, which I found really hard to believe. And somehow this season, Marilyn apparently doesn’t know about it either.
After he escaped branding by the Greens and couldn’t get Roman out of Home Plus, yes, he’s been successful.
I thought they were trying to draw attention to her pregnany body, but it did look weird.
If he does win and then does go forward with the “Surprise! I’m a polygamist! 1-2-3 girls, count 'em!” then wouldn’t Margene be open to criminal prosecution for fraudulent marriage where Goran is concerned?
Marley, how about this - like Jon Gosselin, he was successful and happy until the show started. The show is about his demise 
I’ve always assumed that they would eventually do an episode that had a flashback like the “Fall of Saigon” number in Act 2 of MISS SAIGON that explains what happened when Bill married Nicky. We know she was Nicky’s nurse/the compound helped with medical bills and the new store/etc./but what we don’t know is the whys:
In no particular order:
1- Why do you trust any offer of help from Roman Grant (who, among other things, ordered your expulsion and usurped your grandfather’s role possibly after killing him)?
2- Why was Nicky assigned to be Barb’s nurse? If she has any nurse’s training they’ve certainly never mentioned it and if she just needed a sitter you could probably get that from your own ward or hire illegals. (Alby’s wife is an RN but Nicky doesn’t seem to have left the compound other than marriage.)
3- How did he ever convince Barb to let him take a second wife?
4- Why didn’t he and Barb wait and see how the cancer goes before entering plural marriage? If more children was Barb’s concern, surely she’s heard of adoption.
5- Why did Roman help? He certainly never seemed to have any feelings of remorse about anything where Bill was concerned, and it wasn’t like Bill was a rich businessman at the time- it was Roman who helped him get funding for the store.
There’s a lot of information missing about that time that I wish they’d provide. The closest they’ve ever come were some webisodes- one in which Barb goes to visit Nicky when her first son is born and another where they decide to build the 3 houses since the wives are driving each other nuts under one big roof (which is another thing- why does he think one huge house is going to please anybody? Even Brigham Young, who lived openly as a polygamist, had problems when he had several wives in one enormous house [this one]- most, especially if they had kids, were constantly wanting their own home.)
Barb’s cancer must have been going pretty badly since they all expected her to die. When she agreed to let Bill marry Nikki she didn’t think she’d have to actually live in a plural marriage that long.
Wow this one was bad. I thought a lot of them had some bad points, but that maybe after my disappointment wore off and I saw them in reruns, maybe I’d like them. I think this one sealed it for me that it genuinely is bad.
It’s just so hard to suspend disbelief on so many of the dumb things they’re all doing and how (i say this every week) the timelines make NO SENSE.
Lois cut Hollis’s arm off last week. Are we not going to mention that?
The auditor killed himself like a week ago and they’re investigating it so thoroughly, but yet it’s been more than a week because Margie was at INS so quickly? Bill got back the night before so he couldn’t tell Nikki about Joey and Roman, but it wasn’t the night before because Nikki said she had been seeing a doctor for fertility treatment (assuming that meant more extensively than we saw last week).
All these time jumps and inconsistencies and continuity errors just confuse me so much. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on because it makes no sense.
Why would Barb just not hang up on Sissy Spacek? Why the hell were they letting the faux-Teeny dance on tv?
Nikki’s boys are SO big. They’re going to be hitting puberty and we’re supposed to think Ben is still a junior in high school this whole time? Did he stay back 6 years in a row?
This season I’ve been able to find something redeeming in all the other episodes. Nothing in this one for me.
I hope this isn’t too ignorant or stupid to ask, but so men can take viagra, anyone can take prozac, but LDS and similar can’t drink caffeine?
I love answering this question because in no other Christian religion do you have to do this in order to stop being a member of that church.
If you don’t want to be a mormon anymore and you don’t want 4+ people visiting you once a month to bring you brownies and tell you how much they love you, you have to write a letter to a man named Greg Dodge in the SLC headquarters. It does not have to be notarized. Legally, the second Mr. Dodge receives your letter, you are out.
However. Mr. Dodge’s process is to forward your letter to the local ecclesiastical authority, which would be your bishop if you are a woman and stake president if you are a priesthood holder. That person is supposed to call you, threaten you with hellfire and damnation (not really, that’s hyperbole), and make double and triple sure that you know what you are doing and understand the eternal consequences (No eternal family or Celestial Kingdom for you). The stake pres or bishop rubber stamp the forms and send them back to SLC. About a month later, you get a letter from the Church office building confirming that you are no longer a member, your baptism is null and void and any blessings you’ve received or covenants you made in the temple are cancelled.
But if you want to come back, the door is always open. We love you! [/disingenuous Molly Mormon voice]
If a member does not show up for their Court of Love (or Bishop’s Court), it appears that is taken as an admission of guilt of some sort, so generally people just get exed behind their own backs. I have not yet heard an exmo story of someone who blew off the court and still preserved their membership, although there is always an outlier for every trend. I’m just not aware of any at this point in time.
There’s great controversy in the exmo community about this, in fact. Should you resign? Or should you just let them ex you? Everyone has their own viewpoint on this, but mine is that I will never let someone chase me away. If I want out, I’m taking control of my choices and I’m walking right out. You can’t fire me, 'cause I QUIT! Some people just don’t care about that sort of thing, have left any anger and bitterness on the side of the road, and just do not give a flip if they are exed, still members in good standing, whatever. You can bang on my door twice a month and leave brownies if you want, but you’re just wasting brownie mix and you’ll never make me a faithful mormon again that way. It’s different for everyone; not everyone carries around anger and bitterness about it. Some people just shrug and drop mormonism from their life, no fuss, no muss.
Correct.
As mentioned in “Escape” by Carolyn Jessop (great story of a former plyg wife who escaped in the middle of the night with her eight children), the FLDS do not subscribe to the same view in terms of the prohibition on coffee.
This is another one of my favorite topics, because even mainstream mormons differ on this. You will not get the same two answers about this subject.
First, there is a scripture in the Doctrine & Covenants (D&C 89) that is referred to as the Word of Wisdom. It prohibits smoking, hard liquor, hot drinks and eating meat (except in winter or times of famine). There is no mention of caffeine. None whatsoever. Technically, Pepsi is allowed. Some turbo mormons will not even eat chocolate because of the tiny amount of caffeine in it.
Yet, the scripture clearly states that wine of your own making is okay and that “mild drinks made from barley,” i.e., beer, are okay. Most LDS extrapolate their own interpretations and abstain from all alcohol. But they’ll gobble down a cheeseburger as though it’s manna from heaven, despite eating meat being expressly prohibited. If you read the scripture I linked to and then compare that to the behavior you see in any mormon you know, you will still not understand this. 
So if you make your own wine for church, it’s okay to drink it. Mormons cannot get a temple recommend(ation) if they admit to drinking wine, ever.
I’ve never met a mormon who bathes with booze.
Grow tobacco, use tobacco, just don’t smoke it, chew it, or snuff it.
This is the no coffee or tea thing. People read into this and pretend to derive some prohibition against caffeine from this, but I think they are making stuff up. These words do not say that.
This could be interpreted to mean that smoking marijuana is okay, but I’ve never tried to make or defend that argument with a real mormon. 
There you have it. You can have iced coffee, but not with a cheeseburger and if you want soup, I wouldn’t eat it out of a mug just in case someone thinks you have a “hot drink.” Yes, hot cocoa is technically prohibited.
That last bit implies to me that beer is just fine and dandy.
This particular revelation came after the LDS/FLDS schism, so Jessop was saying in her book that most FLDS will drink moderate amounts of wine or beer and they all drink coffee. You are probably more confused than before you asked the question. Sorry. Sometimes trying to ferret out mormon doctrine is like trying to nail jello to a wall. There was no viagra or prozac in Joseph Smith’s day, or it probably would have been in here.
This is Bill we are talking about. Any time he would have seen Nicky nekkid the big head was not the one doing the thinking.
Not that it does a lot of his thinking anyhow…
All true, all true.
Who else is getting the creepy vibes from the doctor son of JJ? He hasn’t DONE anything yet but I half expected his treatment for her fertility problems to be to try to have sex with her on the floor of his office.
Nah, that’ll happen on his desk, not the floor. 
Heh.
Incidentally Bill was called a hypocrite twice in this episode. Once by Ana when he was all about how a man has to know that his woman is his, and the second time I’m blanking on who–Marilyn? Or the woman he’s running against?
Has the subject of Bill’s will ever come up in this series? Because if he dies without one, Nicky and Margene are kinda screwed.
It has, spoke-, in season one. There’s an episode where all three wives and Bill are making up wills involving where their kids go in the event someone dies. Everyone starts redoing theirs and I forget how it concludes.
There was discussion of wills. I think it was in the second season and it involved the wives writing in mutual arrangements for the children. The drama was that Barb did not want Nickie to get her kids, or maybe it was Margene.
The lawyer that was drawing up the wills is another person who knows all about the plural marriage.
friend Freudian Slit
Good job. I was beat out by two minutes…
I’ll watch next season, but I’m immensely relieved that this season is over.
There sure is a lot of murder and threatening murder for a show about ostensibly religious people. I pine for the days when the conflicts even remotely resembled anything plausible.
