Couch potatoes like me are always whining about how bored they are with summer television. Not me. Right now my DVR menu is pretty full (or would be if I had DVR; I’m stone-aged, I know). Basically it consists of whatever’s on Bravo in the 10 pm slot on any given weeknight and Big Love.
I love Big Love. I can’t get enough. It was pretty good in its first season, but this year it’s blowing up, making me laugh and cry every week. Jumping off from its weird, where-are-they-going-with-this premise - is it a wholesome blended-family drama or a psychosexual Lynchian mindfuck, or both? - the show makes its LDS polygamists shockingly relatable (having the central family be the Reform version of a more dogmatic sect was a smart move), then finds endlessly creative ways for the characters to interact with each other, and bump up against the outside world.
Take last night’s episode, in which scheming daddy’s girl Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), recently disowned by her Evil Prophet father (Harry Dean Stanton), freaks out about the “indoctrination” her son is receiving in his Catholic school. Nicki’s horror at Catholic rituals (”Why don’t they just wear electric chairs around their necks?”) was hilarious, and a prime example of the way this show is able to get you to empathize with its world. And then, at the end, when Nicki re-enrolls the kid in the school because it’s the only place that Bill (Bill Paxton) can publicly acknowledge that he’s the boy’s father - I totally lost it.
Big Love is like The Brady Bunch meets The Addams Family set in Twin Peaks, and yet you totally believe every minute of it. The entire cast is terrific (what potion, exactly, does one have to take to look like Paxton at the age of 50?), and I can’t think of another show that’s used so many previously underemployed great actresses so brilliantly: Jeanne Tripplehorn never had a movie role this good; Ginnifer Goodwin is adorable; Mary Kay Place, Grace Zabriskie, Daveigh Chase and Magnolia’s amazing Melora Walters are hilarious and terrifying; and there are even great roles for two Veronica Mars alums, Tina Majorino and Amanda Seyfried. And Sevigny, for reasons outlined here, is basically giving the most fascinating performance in television right now.
Everyone seems to be worried about HBO in the wake of The Sopranos’ end. There’s no need to worry - Big Love should be its flagship drama series for another few years. Watch it if you don’t already, bitches!
The watcher [Boston Globe]
