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Bye-Bye, Love

Tonight is the Series Finale of Big Love.  Since I don't have HBO, I will have to wait for the DVDs to see the finale myself. I became a fan of the show after hearing the series' creators discuss it on the NPR show Fresh Air in 2007.  I'm currently halfway through season 4.  
Personally, I think Big Love is one of the most underrated series on television.  If you've never watched, the premise is that Bill Henrickson (played by Bill Paxton) is a Mormon in Utah who was raised at a fictional polygamist compound called Juniper Creek. At the tender age of 18, he is cast out of the compound (as all boys are) and starts a new life, intending to rid himself of the questionable ethics he found in his upbringing within the cult at Juniper Creek. 

He finds success running a chain of home improvement stores and somehow, through a series of life-changing events, finds himself living a polygamist lifestyle, married to three women as he practices what the LDS church calls "The Principle".  From this broad description, the show might not seem incredibly interesting but through masterful storytelling, superb acting (yes, even from Bill Paxton), and a series of subplots that will make your head spin, the show has offered a compelling glimpse of a life that is both plausible and impossible all at the same time.

One of the things that I find most captivating about the show is that the triumvirate of  Bill's wives embodies traits (positive and negative) of every woman.  Barb (played by Jeanne Tripplehorn) is his first wife: pragmatic, organized, career-minded, and sometimes overbearing. She was a reluctant participant to the plural marriage concept but now holds her BIG family together with a take-charge attitude that is alternately craved and loathed by the sister-wives.  



Nikki (played by Chloe Sevigny) is the second wife. She was also raised at Juniper Creek and holds fast to the strict fundamentalist principles of the religion in which she was raised.  She doesn't see men and women as equals but continues to ascribe to a more old-fashioned view of the man as the provider and controller of the family unit.  Probably the most complex of all the wives, Nikki grapples constantly with reconciling the faith and values with which she was raised and the knowledge she has gained about the "real world".  She is probably the most resourceful wife, frequently displaying her talents for fixing appliances, building houses, or sewing her own clothes.  

Finally, there's Margene (played by Ginnifer Goodwin). Margene is the youngest of the wives and the only one who was not initially raised in the Mormon faith. She is the most adventurous (sexually and otherwise) but she is also the least likely to speak her mind. Margene always wants to fix problems. She just wants everyone to be happy. She wants to love and be loved.  She also struggles to break out of the huge shadow cast by her other two sister-wives and find a sense of independence and autonomy for herself.  
I find the concept of plural marriage fascinating. If you put aside the issue of one man having sex with multiple women, you see a committed family that deals with the same challenges and joys that any other American family faces. They grapple with their faith. They struggle to support their loved ones. There's never enough time to take care of the children, clean the house, fix the car, do the shopping, and still bring home the bacon.  Why not try the team approach? I've often (jokingly) told Roger that I need a sister wife to help us get everything we need accomplished.  He didn't seem to balk at the idea. It's cheaper than a personal assistant. Or a maid.  Maybe I should live on a commune...

I digress.
The other thing that I find interesting about the show is that it probably could have been appropriately titled Big Lies.  As big as their love may be for one another, deceit is rampant!  Bill and his wives must lie about their relationships to the outside world to protect themselves from persecution. The family members lie to one another to cover up misdeeds, mistakes, or their true feelings regarding one difficult subject or another.  They have become so used to living a double (or triple) life that lying to themselves is as easy as deceiving the rest of the world.  Somehow it all seems to work out in the end.

So while many will give Big Love its big adios, I'll have to wait a little while longer for the final storyline. That's ok by me. For now I'll just say: well done Mark Olsen and Will Sheffer. You've earned my "big love".  And that's no lie.   

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