A thousand complications, none really believable: Big Love

"Big Love" is a totally preposterous series that is in spite of itself kind of fun to watch. This series - a very straight and ambitious Mormon businessman (Bill, running for Utah State Senate, part owner of an Indian casino) has three wives, each in a different age bracket and personality type. Lots of kids. Second wife's daughter has been raised in a Mormon cult, obviously modeled on the Texas cult broken up a few years back. She's freed, but her father is coming after her. Also some weird subplot about the cult founder who's a closet homosexual and therefore at war with himself. A thousand complications ensue, none really believable, but so what. We get the point, which is that, in an age of reality TV, when a realistic story about a polygamous Mormon family would fit right in, the only way to get extra edge is to push the plot elements way over the top, which Big Love does. As with most of the HBO series, the production values are strong, the acting is solid, the script is pretty sharp. It's just that - with so many things "on," why would you watch this one for more than an episode or two? I just don't find it compelling enough. It's a good thing it's been confined to the backwaters of HBO. I wonder how the Mormon community feels about it and deals with it. HBO was unafraid to take on stereotypes with The Sopranos, and I know the network took some heat on that, but taking on a religion is a tougher challenge, and I give them credit for believing in the show and not backing away because of the challenge. I remember a treatment I'd written about a rabbi and a cantor which was pretty roundly shunned, part of the reason being, we were told, the controversial nature of the material.