A Polygamous Plight

National Review Online: New TV Show Humanizes Polygamy

(National Review Online) 

Between its skilled cast members, the show has everything that makes a family drama work — sex, jealousy, secrets, in-laws — raised to the third power. Its sui generis hook is watching already thought-provoking characters navigate a social landscape as exotic as the surface of Mars. When Barb and Nicki and Margene sit down to hash out who gets Bill on what nights, it's compelling in a way that doctors in an ER cannot be anymore.

That the situation occasionally seems to perplex the characters as much as the audience only makes it better. Several episodes in, Nicki storms into the kitchen and growls at Margene, "Did you and Bill have relations before he brought you home for all of us to marry?"

"No! And I don't think that's any of your business," shouts Margene back. Then melting in frustration, she wonders, "Is it?"

Is it? You do want to find out.

Creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer largely succeed in their goal of being assiduously nonjudgmental on the lifestyle. Perhaps at the expense of verisimilitude (perhaps, who has anything to compare it to?), they've made their polygamists toned, wealthy, and suburban, and detoured around the alienating theological curlicues that underlie their matrimonial choice.

The seamy side is on full display too. Geriatric Roman has a 14-year-old girl as his "pre-marriage placement" companion (the terminology is legally advantageous). The teenage Henrickson kids regard their situation grudgingly, and a trail of cinematic breadcrumbs will lead regular watchers to the possibility that even Bill may not be as into "living the principle" as he seems.

There's no need to parse dialogue and camera angles though. Big Love's polygamy doesn't seem surreally normal because Olsen and Sheffer tried to make it that way (if they have any obvious take, it's that polygamy is a tremendous hassle). Polygamy seems innocuous because its polygamists are such well-written, well-acted characters (with Nicki/Chlöe Sevigny standing out). First and foremost, you like them. Bill, Barb, Nicki, Margene, all of them. You sympathize with them. You're pulling for them to overcome their obstacles.

It's kind of unnatural, then, to try and turn your mind around and start thinking of them in fire-and-brimstone terms. You just go with it. There may be things about the characters you don't connect with, parts of them you don't sympathize with. But if the characters are strong enough — and Big Love's are — those elements recede, becoming quirks more than defects, and, really, afterthoughts. Polygamy: an afterthought.

People instinctually grasp the power of this quiet reaction. Reread Turley's sentence. The "never" and "unlikely" cancel each other out, leaving the implicit equation that appearance on TV equals the acceptance of mainstream America. Sound surprising? Probably not.

This reaction is neither good nor bad. It just is, and is powerful. Those who have the most invested in Big Love's reception are sensitive to it. Mary Batchelor, executive director of Principle Voices, a Fundamentalist Mormon organization that advocates for polygamy, tells NRO that the show has the ability to massage, for good or bad, how America feels about polygamists. She adds that interest in the series is running high among the tens of thousands of unscripted polygamists practicing throughout the West. The official Mormon church, which wants nothing to do with polygamy, is not enthused.

In the end, there are more sighs for cultural conservatives. Bad TV is painful. Then again, the better a show, the better its characters, the more gripping its story, the more effective it is at getting us to feel our way past social questions we might otherwise want to think about. This reaction could be stopped by just watching tepid, awful television; after a few hours of Big Love though, you'll have a new appreciation for it.

And at least you'll have something great to watch as everything falls apart.


Louis Wittig is a writer living in New York City.