I did like the Big Love premiere, and not just because I think Bill Paxton's cute and Tom Hanks is a sharp producer. I'm not the only one.

It's essentially a nonviolent (so far, though that could easily change) version of The Sopranos: a guy lives half in the shadows, and half in Suburbia, and gets bounced like a pinball between his nuclear family and his extended family and his secrets and the modern world and the forces of darkness. Except that Bill is a good deal more likeable as a character vs. Tony Soprano.

It's all good.

I'm sorry some Mormons are upset, but the show does make the sharp division clear between mainstream Mormonism and the various polygamous cults that are tied to that church's roots. In fact, most people who study counter-cultures agree that the majority of the polygamous sects live elsewhere in the West, rather than in Utah. The show only needs to be set in Salt Lake City in order to create tension between cultists and mainstream Mormons.

In real life, of course, they'd live in New Mexico or Arizona, but we need to see Respectable Mormons recoiling from polygamy, and I imagine that we will. (At least, the first episode sets such a situation up.)

The show also captures the real moral problem in these sects: the "marriages" of young girls who haven't yet reached the age of consent to grown men.

I would love to see prosecutions for polygamy strictly confined to sects that prey on young women. That would, as I see it, be a much better use of law-enforcement dollars.

My husband's line on polygamous quasi-Mormon sects: "three wives, but no coffee? No thanks." Of course, I get the impression that he thinks one wife is an awful lot sometimes. Of course, he is, um, taking the graduate course in marriage.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:19 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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