I know we have many fans of Big Love so be sure to watch and report.
Former Mormon checking in. I’ll try to do my interpretive commentary again. Honestly, though, the last season veered so far astray from any real Mormon doctrine (FLDS or otherwise) so I sort of ran out of anything much to say. We’ll see how it goes.
Thanks. We appreciate your insights.
I agree that last season went off the rails, but it’s such a good show that I’m hopeful they can pull it back together. I enjoyed your previous commentary, Dogzilla, thanks for chiming in.
Leviticus 20:14
14And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.
Not a very auspicious beginning. I like boozing Barb, and Nikki is up to her usual cattiness. Bill’s second in command finally grows some balls. Teenie is MOA as usual. Pretty bland overall.
Not a very exciting episode. The fallout from Bill’s announcement should have been interesting, but they skipped the most immediate stuff so we could get the scene of the family on the camping trip. I wonder if we didn’t miss some more interesting scenes. We still did get some of that fallout, of course. Bill continues to set new records for cluelessness, which undercuts the drama. We also got a little too much of Alby staring at the walls ominously. Barb branching out and going off on Nicki was interesting and so was Bill’s big speech at the end. But I continue to think this show is mostly an unintentional comedy because it’s been a long time since it came anywhere close to plausibility. So the line about “you burnt your husband and your sister wife to a crisp!” was gold.
I really didn’t care much for the episode and despite the good reviews I’ve seen for the season, I’m not that optimistic any more.
Yeah, Bill needs to let Don be the boss, but if an employee is openly mocking the owner to another coworker where other employees and potentially customers (and press) could hear, he kinda needs to be fired.
I don’t like that they picked up where they left off, sort of… Pick up the next morning if you insist on letting no time elapse or else pick up 6 months down the road. Hey look, everyone aged and changed their hair in just one week!
Heh, yeah I almost didn’t recognize Don at first with his longer hair. Which seemed to have magically appeared overnight as the photo of Bill and the wives was still the cover story on all the newspapers!
Like everyone else, I thought that last season was a disaster. This episode wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. I like the idea that Barb is not experimenting with alcohol the way a “normal” person would, but rather purely to have something to do other than what she’s used to.
Good to see evil president Logan from 24 again.
There was actually a lot in this episode if you were aware of mormon doctrine.
Before I get to Barb and her wine, I need to talk about Alby for a second. He went on his little vision quest in the desert and came back vowing vengeance, right? Because Bill “took everything from me.” There’s a really, really old doctrine that came about in the Brigham Young (Bring 'em Young!) days that basically says Christ’s atonement is not sufficient for some sins, such as apostasy and miscegenation (intermarrying between races or between forbidden populations, such as nonmormons). From a certain FLDS viewpoint, Bill has committed sins this egregious. My prophecy (why, we’re talking about mormonism here; we all get divine revelation) is that the Alby plotline will be all about him trying to Kill Bill (but probably no deadly viper assassination squad, sadly) and the justification will be this concept called “Blood Atonement.”
To be clear, the mainstream LDS church does not teach blood atonement as doctrine… as of 1978. One of the church leaders at that time (Bruce R. McConkie) said that, while he thought there were some sins that aren’t covered by Christ’s atonement, blood atonement can only “work” in a theocracy (which is sort of what the Utah legislature has been trying to do since day one). He didn’t actually say the mormons never believed in this and never will; basically he just obfuscated and made noises like “We’d never do that in modern society… unless you let us.”
So there’s that.
I think it’s strange that Nikki’s daughter, in the last season, was so uptight about mainstreaming and now – same day, new season – she’s working at Home Plus, talking to a boy, and pretty much acting like a normal kid. What happened? How did that work out? Oh, and btw, mormons have a very strict rule about never dating before you’re 16. It’s not doctrinal, but pretty much all parents live by that rule. I wasn’t allowed and neither was anyone else my age. So talking to a boy at 15 would be cause for alarm for Nikki, who also comes from a culture where the kids really don’t date. At age 16, the girls are married off to some old dude whom they may be distantly related to, and most of the boys are booted out to fend for themselves in the real world. Neither Nikki nor her daughter have any clue at all what “normal” looks like or how “normal” teenagers go about dating. Barb’s kids would be good help with this, as would Margene.
The discussion of scouting. Mormonism and the Boy Scouts of America have had a long and incestuous history together and I think that’s about two things: 1) The mormon church doesn’t have to come up with it’s own Boy Development curriculum because they can co-opt scouts and sponsor scouting troops. The troop leaders are “called” to serve as troop leaders (It’s a lay clergy, so everyone “volunteers” to do jobs. Nobody actually volunteers; the bishop asks you – or calls you – to serve a given calling. That means that LDS Boy Scout troops are just that. They get merit badges for participation in some church activities and the leaders are all mormons. If you have a nonmormon kid in Utah, good luck finding him a secular Boy Scout troop. The problem I have with this (personally) is there is no similar relationship with the Girl Scouts. My opinion is the reason for that is because Girl Scouts teaches leadership skills and self-esteem. Mormons do not want uppity women who will think for themselves and question authority when they grow up. There is a girl development program called “Personal Progress” but 100% of the activities (you don’t get badges or anything, maybe some bookmarks whenever you hit a goal) are homemaking and wife-and-mommy related. There is no “set up a lemonade stand and learn how to run your own business” sort of enrichment for girls. The boys are expected to grow up and get jobs and support their many children and the girls are expected to be wives and mommies and little else. No need to learn how to camp, girls; the menfolk will take care of everything for you.
Anyway, that’s what all that heat about Boy Scouts was all about.
Now. Barb and her drinking. I laughed out loud when we saw Barb take two tiny itsy bitsy wee little sips of wine (and acted like she was doing shots of Everclear) and later in the episode Nikki announced “She’s an alcoholic.” They sort of hinted that maybe Barb has had a problem with alcohol in the past, but if that’s true, then Tripplehorn didn’t act very well. If she’d ever had a drink before, she wouldn’t have been so afraid of a sip of wine and she wouldn’t have acted like it burned going down. That was just the guilt, not the wine. Mainstream mormons adhere to a doctrine called The Word of Wisdom. I’ve discussed this many times before, I think, but the way the WoW is practiced today has very little to do with the actual scripture involved. Barb addressed this when she pointed out that wine was never prohibited until the 20s (when the church went along with Prohibition and started pointing to this one scripture as their justification). Every mormon, mainstream and LDS, has a completely different take on how the Word of Wisdom is supposed to be practiced. Ask ten mormons and you will get ten different answers.
Bottom line, however, is we were taught from the pulpit that any alcohol at all is a slippery slope. Some mormons won’t even eat chocolate because of the caffeine. For Barb to blatantly pour a glass of wine and then admit it to Bill is HUGE. For Nikki to jump straight to “she’s an alcoholic” is just classic. My stepmom once hid the Tylenol from me because she thought I was getting addicted. :rolleyes: (I have allergies and had daily sinus headaches. It never occurred to my parents to have me tested and treated for allergies. They just told me to get over my cold already and then hid the Tylenol so I wouldn’t become an acetominiphen junkie. We all know Tylenol leads straight to heroin. 
And so does wine, by mormon thinking. Note how Margene was nonplussed by the wine drinking and by Nikki’s daughter hanging out with that boy: she was not raised in mormonism and does not have the same hangups.
That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll watch the episode again this week and if I notice anything else, I’ll be sure to post it here. In the meantime, anybody have any questions that might be mormonism related?
Note to the devout, believing mormons who may show up here: As with last season, I do not claim to be an expert on mormonism at all. Your point of view is welcome here and I will not “bash” or debate with you. I’ll present my opinions based on my experiences within the church and you are welcome to post yours. Because this is a thread about a TV show, I see no need for anyone to make things personal. Let’s agree to live the 11th Article of Faith, shall we?
Dogzilla: Nice post. I sort of sensed everything you said while watching this episode, but it’s nice to have it spelled out. I think that it’s a testament to the good writing that it was pretty easy for an outside like myself to sense what the Mormon background was without actually knowing it.
I did think that Nikki’s blurting out that “Barb’s an alcoholic” was the best line of the night. It was so Nikki and so understandable on any number of levels.
Can the Senate of Utah really just refuse to seat Bill? 
I really hope the whole thing with Adaleen comes out, in a big public way. The media would just love that. The evening news probally has a story along the line of "Henrickson attacks Boy Scounts at school board meeting, “Wife” #2 assualts 10 year old boy, “Wife” #3 launchs into profane rant. I knew Margene would end up out on her ass; her boss would’ve been meeting with her lawyers the day after.
I’m curious how Bill was able to get a deal with ICE re Goran. :dubious: I mean what does he have to offer them? And surely if they decided to prosecute Goran they’d prosecute Margene too. Bill wouldn’t like that so his threats to Goran seemed counterproductive. Is that public knowledge yet? Around here every time a marriage licence is issued or a divorce sought there’s some kind of brief notice in the local paper (nothing beyond the couple’s names and town of residence).
Speaking of gays and lesbians. Presumably Bill would be in favour of allowing plural marriages government recognition; have him a reporter interview and ask him how he feels about same-sex marriage. Either way his answer should be interesting, but would piss of most of Utah. Wasn’t implied that he had to resort to prostitution to survive after being cast out?