Big, Bigger, Biggest Love

Big Love started its new season Monday on HBO. I'm happy to report that our favorite polygamists are still up to their necks in intrigue with the prophet of the polygamy cult (played so slimily by the great Harry Dean Stanton), and in trying to keep themselves from being exposed as polygamists.

This all sounds familiar because I'm living right in the middle of it. The series is set in Sandy, Utah,* which is where I live. When I moved into my house in 1975 there were three polygamous families within a stone's throw of my house. At least one of the families has moved away, and I haven't seen the others for a long time, so they might be gone, also.

In Big Love reference is made to a fictitious polygamist leader who is on the FBI's Most Wanted list. The fiction is based on Warren Jeffs, prophet of the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Jeffs was caught quite a while ago in Nevada. Here's what he looked like when he was captured. He wouldn't get the job playing himself in a movie. He looks too silly to play the part of a dangerous cult leader.I love the actors in Big Love, and despite the howls from my Mormon neighbors, the dialogue rings true. Mormons really do often reference their standard works in everyday conversation, really do discuss their religion on the job, and the mainstream church has a problem with being lumped in with polygamist sects.

None of the actors are from the culture I live amongst, but they have done a good job of sounding like they are.

Bill Paxton is great in his part as the family patriarch, and each of the actresses who play the wives are perfect in their parts. When they took beautiful women like Jeanne Tripplehorn and Chloe Sevigny and made them look like women I'd see in a Sandy, Utah grocery store, I was very impressed.





I've said this before. The only thing that doesn't ring true is the family being able to keep itself from being known as polygamists. A Utah native could look across the street and with a glance know it was polygamy.

*******

I've softened my objections to the final ending of The Sopranos. I've been reading all kinds of comments, and having thought about it for a few days I'm all right with it. I think it was one of the most suspenseful, well-edited three or four minutes ever. It made me anxious as to what would happen, and then after the buildup it went to black, unresolved! Like all of the other Sopranos fans I felt betrayed, but at least I can understand the thought processes behind such an ending.

Ciao for now.

*Set in Utah, but filmed in California. Seems funny; Touched By An Angel filmed in Salt Lake City for years and the city masqueraded as many other locales, but a show set in Utah is filmed somewhere else.