Lifestyle!? With respect, I’m disappointed to see that canard taken from arguments against homosexuality to arguments against polygamy. The lifestyle of these people is to get up in the morning and go to work providing for their family. They are as ordinary in every way as anyone else except for their devotion to the plurality principle. They’re not living in secluded compounds or harming little girls. Their love for one another is a beautiful thing, and the world could use more of it.
See post number 12. 
What exactly is Juniper Creek? 
Last season I got the idea that it was just an isolated compound run by the UEB, but apparently it has it’s own municipal police? Is it an actual municipality? Didn’t we see Roman and Albi in a Humvee last season? Did anyone else notice the cross on the wall at the Embrys’ house? I thought Mormons didn’t use the cross.
They are modeled after the real-life FLDS, which owns nearly all the land in two towns in Utah and Arizona. All the municipal officers are of course loyal sect members (there’s no one to vote against them) and they have their own quasi-private security detail too.
Roman called someone in the First Lady’s office to rat them out. It was implied that Rhonda (Roman’s newest wife) may have had something to do with it – she was pissed off at Barbara for her usual psychotic reasons.
I don’t think you can equate a religious principle with homosexuality, especially when the principle has been rejected by the church that espoused it.
Besides, I think Bill’s the only one who’s really devoted to the plurality principle. Barb went along with it to please Bill, Nicki married for power, and Margene was young and impressionable.
Bill wants to grow his business, be a community leader. Barb’s unfulfilled; she wants a career. Who knows what Nicki wants – power and status? (She’s probably the most content.) Margene wants friends, attention and connections outside the family.
Their devotion to the plurality principle will hold them all back. Which is fine, if they truly believe and are willing to make the sacrifices, but I don’t think they are.
I don’t think you can equate a religious principle with homosexuality, especially when the principle has been rejected by the church that espoused it.
>>> Auntie Pam
I was not equating religious beliefs with homosexuality. Instead, I was drawing a similarily between the Hendrickson’s situation, in which strongly held beliefs are not only challenged by reality but by the individual personalities within that family and my own family situation in which strongly held beliefs (and they were strongly felt by both parents for over a decade at least) fell in favor of individual needs. The issue I find relevant is the struggle for identity (homosexual, independent, power-hungry, religious, etc) conflicting with the interest of family. Although the example in Big Love is an extreme situation for our current society, it is still relevant for many American families.
I know. I was responding to Lib. 
I like your rationale, and if I could separate the issue of polygamy from the deeper and wider issue of family v. individual, I might be able to get something from Big Love. I’ll give it another try. What you say makes a lot of sense.
Lib makes sense too.
Oh geesh… sorry… thanks… :smack:
So does Bill actually love the other wives? Or did he marry them just to follow his beliefs?
I think he does love them, just not in the same way he loves Barb. IMHO, his love for Barb is probably closest to a traditional marriage/romantic love, while his love for Nicki is tied up with his love for tradition (and power), and Margene is his “middle-age crisis” affair taken one step further.
But I do believe he loves them all, and he certainly loves all his kids equally.
I wasn’t equating the principle; I was equating the devotion. Some people do make an intellectual choice to believe in this or that, and some people don’t — just as male prisoners make do with what they have, while for others there is a compelling homosexual orientation. I’m just sick of people equating all faith with conscious choice as though people can just discard their own experiences as meaningless life-filler. Barb may have followed Bill, making an intellectual choice to be polygamous. But Bill’s devotion to the principle is born of a heartfelt orientation as real as any sexual one.
I liked the episode. I didn’t really think of it as a new season premiere as I did a precise continuation of where season one left off. More like season one never ended, was just on pause.
I thought it odd that there wasn’t a mention prior to the end of the episode of the “accountant with her panties in a wad” crashing in the parking lot.
I agree with this rationale, but I always got the impression that part of Barb’s decision was also influenced by the fact that she didn’t think she would live through the cancer. I imagine her agreeing to it, thinking that she won’t be around to actually experience it. Letting Bill take on a second wife was a way to ensure that her family was still taken care of, even in her absence. And then, surprise, she lives to regret the decision…
Of course, as far as the polygamists are concerned, they ARE the church that espoused it, and the mainstream Mormon church has gone against the commandments of God strictly out of a desire to be more appealing to the rest of the world.
Nikki’s definitely a hardcore believer – after all, she was brought up in the same environment as Bill. Margie, I agree, she’s just an impressionable youngster who decided to go along with things because she was lonely.
Nikki’s also frustrated with her lack of status. She was raised in Juniper Creek. Polygyny was normal there. Even if the “First Wife” outranks the other wives at least they were recognized as wives by the community. Nikki is not recognized as Bill’s wife. She constantly has to lie, she can’t even go out in public with her own husband.
I wonder how deep Nicki’s belief is. I know it’s just a TV show, but do you think she would have agreed to be a second wife (or even a first wife) of an unattractive old coot, or a man whose family had no status?
She didn’t have much choice. She acts like she’s daddy’s little princess, but her brother whatshisname made it pretty clear how much daughters are worth to Roman at some point last season that really brought it home how sad her life really is.
Probably not – she does seem quite ambitious, certainly. But that doesn’t mean she’s not a devout believer in the principle of plural marriage.
Yeah, which reminds me: I found it hilariously ironic when Roman was watching the news report about the hunt for the other polygamist leader, and he muttered “Stupid greedy perverts. They’re gonna ruin it for the rest of us!” Dude, you’re a skeevy guy in his seventies who’s married to a sixteen-year-old girl!
So how do they reconcile “sealed for all eternity” with “Roman can reasign wives on a whim” other than “he’s the prophet”?