More Big Love

In the latest episode, Bill, a plainly attractive successful man who already has three respectable, smart, and beautiful wives, turns jealous, even a little belligerent, when he discovers Ana, his potential bride #4-to-be, kissing a younger, scruffier man in the doorway to her apartment. And who wouldn't—be jealous, that is? He and Barb, wife #1, were simply bringing her Jell-O—which, in my book, is always a good sign when you are trying to figure out if the person you are dating is "the one"— when they found Ana in the hallway with a man she had been "trying to break up with."

Barb's pretty disturbed herself. I mean, come on, they were just starting to trust her! They were hoping Ana would come around, stop being so picky, and join their family, here and in the afterlife. It's a pretty good deal all around.

(Ana left, and Margene, right)

After Ana is reprimanded by Bill, she confronts Barb. Angry and confused, she asks, "How can Bill be jealous? Doesn't the hypocrisy bother you?" It's a well-earned question. She's referring to the fact that the women don't get jealous of each other, or aren't allowed to show it, and aren't allowed to have other spouses, or potential spouses, while Bill does.

Barb says, "At first it did," and offers no more than that. By this we can only assume—we in the monogamous straight, and I don't mean heterosexual world, that is—that Barb is driven more by her faith than by her emotions. Or is that making her sound too holy? Can supreme faith in God, or in Barb's case living The Principle of plural marriage, override something as pedestrian as jealousy?

We'd like to think so, perhaps.

I've heard scientists say that jealousy is really an outdated emotion, that there really is no biological reason for it. It sort of hangs around like nipples on men. And, it just happens to be the thing that keeps us all monogamous, at least for as long as we can be. So is it Barb's higher power that keeps her from questioning the hypocrisy, allows her to invite more women into her marraige, keeps her from getting jealous of her sister wives? Who knows, really.

But I think it is an interesting question to ponder. Is it possible to override jealousy at all? And hypocrsiy, well, we're all guilty of that at some point, aren't we? Prejudice, sure. Aren't most of us filled with a little prejudice while watching the show? That's really what it's all about.

Can the Native American gamer get over his anti-polygamist bias so that he can go into the casino business with Bill?

Can the neighbors stop treating the Henrickson family like their homosexuals and just let them live in peace?

But on to darker subjects. Bill's father is being murdered by his mother, and there probably isn't a person watching Big Love who doesn't believe he deserves, at the very least, to be begging for his life. He is one of the most hateful, abusive characters on the show. The kind of guy who really gives patriarchy a bad name. So disgusting is he, that I have grown to wonder how I will ever admire actor Bruce Dern again. He's an extremely convincing mysogynist who happens to have a handful of wives, all of whom he treats like cattle.

More than once he's threatened Bill's mother, played sassy, humorous, and extremely likable by Grace Zabriskie, one of my favorite characters on the show. She's a polygamist victim who hardly seems a victim at all. In fact, she's pretty powerful. And when, after nearly being choked to death by him, she finally ties Frank to a chair, digs his grave and rehearses suffocating him with a plastic bag.

We don't get to see him die in this episode. In fact, we only get to see him struggling for breath. But I must admit I got a secret thrill out of watching him struggle. As much as my politics dictate that everyone should be forgiven, there is something about Frank's particular brand of sexist, abusive evil that I think I am not alone in wanting to witness it disappear, especially in a flood of revenge.

It's all getting a little Sopranos-ey, which is just fine with me.

Next week we will find out just how deeps Bill's mother's hatred is. All the people who find themselves outraged, politically, morally, emotionally, by the idea of system that allows men to have as many wives as they desire, at any age they desire, and treat them all like servants, will delight in this part of the storyline. It's full of spite, retribution, and tough women who have had enough.

I just love it because I love the unlikely combination of Lois (Grace Zabriskie) and Frank (Bruce Dern). Even when Lois is trying to kill her husband she makes me laugh. She's that good.

Then there's the pregnant daugther. That's right. Bill and Barb's daughter, who is barely out of high school, is knocked up. And we all know there will be no abortion in her future. So what's gonna happen?

And there's Margene's mother's ashes that get delivered one afternoon, along with the sudden news that she has died. "She was just an alcoholic loser who fell down a flight of stairs," Margene tells her plural family members during a benediction.

And there's Bill's brother Joey. He's just taken his second wife, and it's not going so well. The two wives are not feeling so keen about each other.

In this episode, there are several interesting monologues about being forced into marriage that will make everyone in the morally outraged category feel justified in watching the show. It's those occasional moments, sanwiched in between a business owner and father's real economic struggle, a religious leader who shows no mercy from his prison cell, and women who are trying their best to support each other and live what they believe in, even if it is not popular with the rest of the world, that we get to the real depth of the show.

Understanding oppression, how it creeps into people's lives, how it can seem normal when it is not, how we all at least have the ability to relate to participating in things that are "bad" for us, this is one of Big Love's greatest achievements. I keep watching it to find those moments, and because I love watching people come out of the closet.