Big Love – The final season starts with a big chill

The reaction to Bill Henrickson’s decision to out his family as polygamists mere hours after he won a Utah state senate seat in last season’s Big Love finale, didn’t play out exactly as Bill anticipated it would. What’s surprising is that he didn’t seem to have really given much serious thought as to what coming out would mean to the members of his family.

Bill thought that a week or so after his announcement, the media would consider his polygamy old news and move onto something else, and that the voters who supported him and felt deceived by his family-centric campaign — when his family was depicted as being comprised of Bill, Barb and three kids — would likewise move on.

Only Margene, Barb, Don Embry and the Henrickson children seemed to have a handle on exactly how messy and ugly this revelation was going to prove in the long term, which is why Barb tried desperately to put a stop to it by trying to sabotage Bill’s campaign at the end of last season.

So, what was the fall-out which Bill initially tried to downplay as though it were nothing more than a few, inconvenient speed bumps?

Wayne was physically assaulted at school, shoved into the mud by a group of boys and had his forehead and belly scrawled with anti-polygamist epithets. Margene — who was characterized in the media as “the lying jewelry hawker” — lost her six-figure job and was told by her boss: “Your brand is trashed and so are you. You have no credibility.” A voter spit in Bill’s face at a public meeting. Home Plus employees were quitting or threatening to quit while they trash-talked the Henrickson family in the aisles. The whole Mormon-friendly casino business, which was supposed to provide them financial security in case they lost everything when they came out, is kaput as, ironically, the Indian tribe rescinded its contract with Bill because of the polygamy business. The new Republican Senate leader (the fabulous Gregory Itzin from 24) told Bill that he’s going to be a friendless pariah. Barb even sent Teenie away to live with the now-married Sarah to protect her from the madness (which is just as well because that character was annoying).

And Bill thought that a lousy box of drugstore chocolates would make his wives okay with all of this?

Meanwhile, Barb, who looked like a ghost of her former self, started hitting the bottle in the middle of the day, a la Mad Men’s Betty Draper. No word on whether she’ll ever return to grad school. Remember grad school at the University of Utah in season two when Barb left the house and was threatening to leave the marriage, but instead opted to go back to school? Whatever happened to that?

Nicki and her new haircut hasn’t changed a whit amidst the tumult. Her answer to her son being bullied was to corner the red-headed ringleader and threaten to write nasty words all over his body if he didn’t stop bullying Wayne. Of course this ended with blood, the kid accidentally knocking a tooth out and Nicki lying to the family, saying that she had spoken with the school principal. When the truth emerged, as it always does, and in full view of the media. (Bill, as a state senator-elect who was already under fire, REALLY thought that the best way to deal with his son being bullied was to make a spectacle of himself and bring all three wives along to a school board meeting? How did this man build a business with this kind of thinking?)

Bill taking to the podium at that school meeting is exactly what’s wrong with his character lately. When this series began, Bill didn’t seem nearly as clueless as he’s been acting since last season. He used to be down-to-earth. Now he’s suffering from a god complex. He has a deep ignorance of how people will respond to him in light of the polygamy news. He insisted that there’s a “reservoir of good will” waiting for the Henricksons and that the hostility directed toward him and his family isn’t “widespread.” It took Don, who Bill had coldly sacrificed last season as though Don’s many years of friendship were meaningless, to metaphorically shake Bill from his sanctimonious stupor and finally get Bill to admit, “I’ve gone and torn my family apart.”

Despite Bill’s vast shortcomings, this was an overall decent start to Big Love’s final season, though I don’t see why, with everything else that was going on, the writers persisted upon stuffing so many story threads into this episode, like Cara Lynn and Don’s son, Ana and Goran AND the compound business. In addition to depicting the Henrickson family’s experiences in the wake of Bill’s announcement, the only thing that seemed extremely pressing was some mention of what was happening at the compound. As for Cara Lynn and pregnant Ana, those storylines could’ve waited until episode two. If anything, for this last season I hope that the writers will provide some breathing room for the characters and their stories and not put the pedal to the metal in a breakneck race to the end.

What was your impression of the season premiere?

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Jan 17, 2011 @ 12:27 EST5EDT