Jessica and I watched this tonight. A little racy for TV — the central joke of the first episode is that the husband needs Viagra — and I would say because of that not for Mormon consumption, but it wasn’t particularly heretical. They do make it clear, in dialogue and in a disclaimer at the end, that the characters, after all, aren’t “recommend” Mormons to begin with.
The show follows The Sopranos on HBO, and there’s definitely an attempt to turn Harry Dean Stanton’s patriarch character into a sort of Mormon mafia don, which they’ll need to preserve the audience lead-in. He’s not really that different from the press accounts of people like Rulon Jeffs, such as depicted in the Krakauer book, and I’m sure he’s modeled after him.
There are very few actresses I dislike more than Chloe Sevigny (really, there’s only Juliette Lewis and Sean Young, and neither seems to be working these days). I can’t really put my finger on why I hate her. Maybe because she’s a terrible actor — her affect is flat, her face a blank — and she always looks sleepy. I don’t really like Bill Paxton either. I don’t think either were terrible in this, and they won’t keep me from watching the show.
Some of the dialog seemed realistic Utahn. I was very happy they worked an “Oh my heck” in there, and the highlight of the first episode was a conversation between a regular Mormon teen trying to suss out what ward her chaste-but-polygamous coworker is in. “Are you in MIA Maids or Laurels?” Nobody actually sounds like they are from Utah, though. Everyone sort of talks like they’ve seen Raising Arizona a few too many times.
None of the polygamous characters wear garments. I thought that was weird, but maybe they don’t in real life. Anybody know?
In looking for polygamist reaction to the show, I found this: Principle Voices - What Do You Think of Big Love?. The first (and so far, only) response to the question has nothing to do with the show, but raises concerns about legalizing polygamy, and particularly polygyny, that hadn’t occurred to me: If people start practicing widespread polygyny, will it create a society of outcast angry loser men who can’t get women because all of the non-loser men will have snatched them up, so to speak, by the threes and fours?
