# big love:  bread and...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 23, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413 "2009-03-23T02:19:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/21 "2009-03-23T20:57:23Z")

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> [@Smokinjbc](#):
>
> I still think it has to evolve to some point where Bill takes back the compound or has some authority there, it just seems to me to be the natural progression.

Maybe; but it doesn’t jive with the final scene (the “sacrament” of the episode title). Bill has said “screw both you guys” to the LDS and Juniper Creek, and started his own sect.

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**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/22 "2009-03-23T22:23:41Z")

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> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> WTF? Did all the directors, writers and editors go on strike when nobody was looking? This episode sucked eggs in a major way. It was disjointed and badly directed. The acting was forced and the actors didn’t seem to know where things were going. I don’t mind suspending belief for short periods, but the whole “Bill directing the DA’s office activities” was completely out in woo-woo land. A VERY disappointing effort by a team that usually produces a good show.
> 
> It really pissed me off.

Exactly! Barb’s rote, unthinking arguments to Sarah when she announced her engagement to Scott didn’t even sound like Barb. Barb’s smarter than that and because of her religion, her arguments are going to be different than an ordinary mom’s. Even the engagement plot line was stupid. Sarah knows (most of) what the family’s going through – she’d wait. Bill’s comment that he supported the marriage because it made the premarital sex okay – that was just inane, even for Bill.

It was too easy for Selma to get the kid away from Hollis. And how did Adaleen know to immediately call Roman and tell him not to trust Bill – did Adaleen even know what they were doing? That was way too convenient and for no reason, except to give us a preview with Roman and a gun pointed at Bill.

Accepting and forgiving Nicki just because she had a daughter? Nicki’s still Nicki. Nothing she’s done over the past three seasons was done to protect that daughter – it excuses nothing.

I wonder if they knew there’d be a fourth season when this episode was written. It was very unsatisfying.

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**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/23 "2009-03-24T03:33:18Z")

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Here’s a possibly crazy thought:

What about Joey as the possible future prophet of Juniper Creek? (If he gets away with Roman’s murder, I mean.) Roman is (presumably) dead, and who knows what shape Alby is in, and Joey _is_ the grandson of the old prophet just as much as Bill is.

I could see a story line where Lois tries to manipulate things to put Bill in power (much as she did with the trusteeship of the UEB), but Bill refuses (since he and his family wouldn’t want to move to the compound), so then she goes to Joey. Maybe he’d accept if he sees this as the only way to ensure his family doesn’t fall victim to the future prophet like they did to the previous one.

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**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/24 "2009-03-24T03:43:03Z")

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I wonder about that.

I think Joey is very much a dark-horse character. He could just as easily go the opposite route, forsaking the religious group entirely. Remember he said that he no longer felt any connection with God? I can’t remember his exact words but they amounted to that.

Now that Joey has cemented his role as the badass of the show, I hope we’re treated to some more incidents of him dealing out “his own brand of justice” to use a very cliched phrase. I have liked that actor ever since I saw him in Knockaround Guys as Tom Noonan’s deputy sheriff, though I’ll be damned if I can remember his name.

I always thought Joey’s backstory was kind of weird. He played in the NFL? Where would he learn to play football? I’m assuming they don’t play football on that polygamist compound where he grew up, or any other sports. Did he walk-on to a college team after running away from home and suddenly become a prodigy athlete? The scenes with Bruce Dern’s character (his father) making fun of his fumbled pass during a family dinner in the first season are absolutely hilarious. (I hope there is much more of Dern, because he steals every second of screen time he has.)

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**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/25 "2009-03-24T14:58:27Z")

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**Argent** , my understanding was that Joey got kicked out really young, like Bill did. If he got involved with one of the groups set up to help kids like that, whoever he was staying with would be required to send him to school. High schools, by and large, have football teams. (Or I don’t see any compelling reason kids on the compound wouldn’t play football. They surely play _some_ sort of physical/athletic games, just as kids always have. And it would be a cheap game for them to play; if you’ve got a ball, you can draw out your field and goalposts in the dirt, or using rocks or trees or whatever. We did it all the time as kids with various games.)

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**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\
**Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/26 "2009-03-24T23:01:30Z")

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> [@Minnie\_Luna](#):
>
> …Presumably since the house was empty, there were no witnesses to Joey murdering Roman and you know Wanda will cover for him…

Joey was touching everything (including the pillow) _with his bare hands_. :eek: His fingerprints (& DNA) are all over the crime scene. And, being Kathy’s fiance, he’s already the prime suspect.

[QUOTE=MaxTheVool]  
…I like the idea of adding a teenage daughter to the family a lot…  
[/QUOTE]

Could Nikki’s daugter be a replacement for Sarah? Amanda Seyfried’s career seems to be taking off; will she be back next season?

[QUOTE=Smokinjbc]  
…Adaleen is going to have to be nicer to Alby.. he’s the only way she’ll retain any power now…  
[/QUOTE]

She does have this whole pipe bomb thing to hang over his head like the Sword of Damocles. Of course he’ll try killing her again the first chance he gets.

[QUOTE=Argent Towers]  
…I’m assuming they don’t play football on that polygamist compound where he grew up, or any other sports…  
[/QUOTE]

Sports are only forbidden for the _girls_ (it interfears with the menses ;)). There’s no reason to assume the boys wouldn’t play sports

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**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/27 "2009-03-27T05:08:28Z")

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So is the idea of Bill taking over Roman’s role in the show complete now? Roman’s dead–Bill hasn’t taken over at Juniper Creek (yet) but he is like the prophet of his own religion now. Pretty much.

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**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2009, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/28 "2009-03-27T05:15:13Z")

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I might be totally imagining this, but it seems to me that the scenes filmed at the compound in the third season have a different kind of lighting than the compound scenes in the first two seasons. In the earlier seasons, when Roman was in charge of the compound, it was always depicted as a shady and somewhat seedy place, where the houses seemed in disrepair, the clothes were always drab, and the interior shots always seemed to be lit in a dank gray-blue-brown kind of lighting. Now, with Alby in charge at the compound, the shots at the compound seem to be filmed so that they appear brighter and more colorful. It seems like the kind of thing that would be deliberate…the same way the lighting in The Sopranos drastically changed from the fourth season to the fifth season and continuing into the sixth season - from vivid and colorful to a more dull, gray, drab sort of lighting, that fit with the decidedly darker turn that the series ultimately took.

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**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-love-bread-and/490413/29 "2009-04-03T15:26:43Z")

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I felt that way too…well, now that you mention it. Early on, the compound looked SO creepy–remember the first ep, where we are pretty much viewing it through Barb’s eyes? Ugh. Now it’s…not so bad.

Also, I really used to like Barb. Now she seems like just another MorBot. It doesn’t help that I was totally cracking up at the endowment ceremony and the fifteen minutes of heaven. I’ll take Outer Darkness, thanks.

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