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by R.J. Carter Published: December 27, 2007
Bill's "own thing" involves following "the principle" set down by Joseph Smith, a decision he made when his wife, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn) miraculously survived cancer after being attended by a Juniper Creek nurse. That nurse, Nicolette (Chloë Sevigny), became Bill's second wife as the Henrickson's embarked on the road to polygamy. Now a husband to three (the third being Margene, played by Ginnifer Goodwin), Bill runs a successful but small chain of home improvement stores. However, he's financially tied to the leader of the Juniper Creek polygamists, a backward and dangerous group. Their prophet, Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton) won't let Bill expand his store without larger financial cuts. Oh, and good old Roman also happens to be Bill's second father-in-law. In season two, in an effort to finally sever ties with Juniper Creek and get in a healthy dose of revenge on Roman for crimes committed against Bill's grandfather (the former prophet -- the Henricksons used to be in charge of Juniper Creek, and Bill was thrown out on the streets at the age of fourteen), Bill attempts to hijack an attempt by Roman to purchase a video gambling company, Weber Gaming. For Bill, it's a win/win scenario. It gives him freedom from Roman, provides a steady and needed income for his plural family, and allows him to operate with businessmen from whom he no longer needs to hide who he really is. But Weber Gaming is also being sought by another branch of polygamists -- a family right out of "Deliverance" that makes the Juniper Creek compound look like Little House on the Prairie! The Greenes -- Hollis (Luke Askew) and his "brother" Selma (Sandy Martin) -- are really big on "blood atonement" and before the season reaches its climax, agents of the Greenes end up putting three bullets into Roman, paving the way for Roman's psychotic son, Alby (Matt Ross), to ascend to power. The season also focuses on Bill's two teenaged children, Ben (Douglas Smith) and Sarah (Amanda Seyfried). Neither of the teens was born into the polygamy lifestyle, and they hold divergent views on the matter. Ben, who wants to be righteous, has trouble keeping his hormones in check and succumbs to sex with his girlfriend -- who later checks out when she learns that Ben has a hankering to live "the principle" and follow the polygamist lifestyle. Sarah, on the other hand, is dead-set against ever living in polygamy, and attends support groups for former Mormons, where she hooks up with a boyfriend who's ten years her senior. Spicing up the mixture is the show's true snake in the grass -- young Rhonda Vollmer, played Daveigh Chase, who voiced Lilo in all the Disney cartoons. Rhonda is pledged to become the next fourteen-year-old bride of old Roman, but escapes to live with the Henricksons (before bailing on them as well). Due to Rhonda's scheming ways, Barb was outed as a polygamist at the end of the first season. This season, Rhonda worms her way into living with the parents of Sarah's best friend, Heather Tuttle (Tina Majorino), manipulating people by telling them all different stories: she sets the Tuttles against the Henricksons by telling stories of abuse; she controls Heather by threatening to tell of Heather's romantic attraction to Sarah (which must be real, since it's enough to put a fear into Heather), and she forces a meeting between Sarah and a polygamist-survivor counselor (herself an escapee from polygamy) that threatens to turn Sarah against her family. Big Love is a big guilty pleasure. The characters are unique from each other, and the situations continue to evolve into trainwrecks that you simply can't turn away from. It's one of the few series that I have to watch from beginning to end, to the exclusion of all other programming, when I get the DVD. This particular DVD also includes three bonus mini-episodes on the last of the four discs. These episodes, running just a few minutes each, show slices of history taken at points 5 years, 3 years, and 14 months in the past, showing Nicolette's meltdown after having her first child, the introduction of Margene as the family babysitter, and the unification of the wives against Bill to move the family into the three separate houses they now share in the suburbs. Big Love is bigger than life; it's family dysfunction times three, and completely engrossing.
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