This looks like it’ll be a good show. So they aren’t Mormon, but belong to a breakaway group. The compound and Rhonda was plain creepy, especially the fact that the only people seen working were women. The Hendricksons seem pretty normal by comparsion. I look forward to seeing the logistics of the family. Do all the wives and children have his name or just Boss Lady (I think she’s his legal wife)? If so then how do they keep things secret, especially since they send their kids to a regular school? Did the compound invest in Bill’s stores or are they blackmailing him?
Series Pilot
I must admit, I had no advance knowledge of this series as I haven’t been paying much attention to HBO recently and have not seen any of the promos.
Not sure what I think at this point. About 15 minutes in a found myself looking at the clock and then checking to see if it was a 30 or 60 minute program which is not a good sign. But the story line did seem to pick up some steam with the trip to visit his father in “the compound”.
Can’t even imagine how this guy is keeping 3 house afloat financially and it’s obvious that without chemical assistance he’s not keeping up with the 3 wives in the bedroom either.
I’ll watch again, but I’m not enthralled. This may be the 2nd new HBO series that I have no interest in watching (Entourage being the other).
It’s interesting. I like how they show the skeezy side as well as they decent side. The whole Prophet with the 15 year old was just baaaad, and I liked how the eldest wife said so.
Has some potential… especially with the Prophet trying to get the father back into the church (so he can get the 15% of the new store).
Oh, and almost forgot… they got the “Napoleon Dynamite” girl! YAY! Wonder how Napoleon is going to cope
Is the older blonde daughter the same girl who played Lily Kane in Veronica Mars?
I liked the show. There’s some good individual stuff going on, in addition to the simmering conflict between the wives.
I liked seeing Mary Kay Place again, and the woman who plays Bruce Dern’s wife.
I merged alphaboi867 and flickster’s threads, which should explain why it looks like there’s two OPs.
I like Bill Paxton but I yawned out of this show at about 20 minutes. I couldn’t like any of the characters or relate to them or sympathize with them. I don’t care what they do next week, I’m turning off the tv after The Sopranos like I should have tonight.
All the sex of Rome, none of the cussing of Deadwood.
I watched tonight’s premire and found it intriguing. Lots of characters to flesh out in one episode. There were some interesting hints of future conflicts that seem sure to come to the forefront. I’ll follow this one for several more episodes.
I read a review of the series, I think in the NYT, that said it doesn’t really start to come together until the 3rd episode or so.
We will see.
Just the eldest, according to the series website: http://www.hbo.com/biglove/
I haven’t heard any reaction from Mormons yet. I wonder if they’ll get upset. (Technically this family is not part of the official, mainstream Church of LDS, but still . . .)
You know, it just occurred to me: Although polygamy is illegal, Bill is probably not committing any crime by keeping three “wives” in separate households, if he only purports to be legally married to one of them. (Unless adultery is a crime in Utah, as it is in few states – in which case Bill commits it every time he sleeps with one of his junior wives.)
But, man! How expensive it must be to support three separate households!
There’s an old saying about polygamy: If a man has more than one wife, either they will get along with each other or they won’t. If they don’t, he will find himself cast in the thankless role of referee. If they do, they can get absolutely anything they want from him, by working on him in shifts until his resistance is completely worn down. So it’s not necessarily all that great.
Mark Twain, at a party, once was arguing with a Mormon over polygamy. Finally the Mormon said, “But can you point out a Scripture which actually forbids polygamy?” Twain replied, “Certainly! No man can serve two masters!”
See this GD thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=240189
I watched the show last night. I knew nothing about it ahead of time. I like many of the actors in it. The idea is interesting but I found the show very boring. They probably lost me already. I wouldn’t have watched it at all if the Sopranos had not been on before it.
Jim
That seems to be the case with most dramas, I’ve found, especially one with such a large cast of characters. If it was just Bill and the 3 wives (and various kids) that’s one thing, but it seems the mom & pop will be big in the story. The brother will have a part to play, I’m sure. And the Prophet seems to be the big bad guy. Some of the kids are old enough as well to have their own stuff. The eldest daughter was trying to get Bill’s attention the entire episode, so I wonder what she had to tell him.
Is that Harry Dean Stanton’s character? He came across as the Mormon Godfather! (Of course that would the first thing everybody would think of . . . the show airing right after The Sopranos . . .)
Well, it is the series premiere, folks. I didn’t think I would like Deadwood, but it’s one of my faves now. Perhaps it needs a little percolation time.
The only thing I knew was from a friend who knew a writer (or maybe it’s a producer) who sold her on how funny it’s supposed to be. Needless to say, I’ll be making a call today to get clarification, cause…not funny.
Because of the above post, I may give it three episodes…
Any show that has the luscious Lyndsy Fonseca say “I’m not a Mor-bot … I let him finger me” has got to be good.
I hope they continue to focus on the effects of living in Utah but not in the LDS church has on the kids; I really like shows set in a real physical place and time.
That group of girls that came into the burger joint dressed in identical black outfits (inviting derision from the crew) – are they Mormons, or some other church?
I really liked this show. It’s a hell of a lot better than anything else that’s on Sunday nights (except the Sopranos and Deadwood of course), so I think I’ll stay on board.
I liked it enough to keep watching it.
First episodes are tricky. Deadwood is my favorite show but I’ll freely admit the first episode is pretty mediocre.
They are going to have to do a lot to make the middle wife Nicky at all toalerable. She’s terrible.
I did like the backstory of how they became Polygamists.
I’m 90% sure it isn’t Bruce Dern’s head wife poisoning him. Roman gave her a pitcher of ‘bug juice’ and told her to keep making him drink it. I think this is largely a ploy to get Paxton’s character back in the fold.
I thought it was interesting that her cahracter was the only woman at the compound wearing pants.