Tuned In

Big Love Watch: Kiss of Death

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Before you read this post, turn off that home-shopping network and watch last night’s season finale of Big Love. 

 

“We’ve lived as exiles from a church that rejects us and from an abusive splinter group we cannot abide. This night, I claim for us the seeds of our own community, and the authority to administer to it. I claim the keys. This night, from this moment on, we are a new church, born of necessity and born anew into God’s kingdom.” 

One question that Big Love has always dealt with, whether it’s in Bill’s business dealings or Barb’s excommunication from the LDS church, is: is it possible to get by alone? (Even if “alone” means four spouses with three houses full of children.) To what extent to you need the community you are born into—family, church, business—and to what extent can you go it alone? If you are disappointed with the teachings of the churches you come from, or alienated from the family you were born into, can you make a clean break and establish your own base of support, your own group with your own rules? Or is that foolishness that will leave you rudderless—are you better off muddling through as best you can with the tribes you were given, built up over generations? 

Bill, we’ve seen since his plan to launch the casino and before, is a go-it-alone type. He genuinely believes in The Principle, yet can’t support how it’s implemented at Juniper Creek. And he decides that, if he can just get the material foundation a thriving business will provide, he can make his own family sufficient unto itself. He’s approaching his home life and faith the way he does his business, as an entrepreneur. 

As season 3 of Big Love ended, Bill is closer to that goal, and in the powerful final scene, he literally consecrates his family as a church, complete with a communion of water and bread. But will it be enough? Will his family continue, as Barb describes it, to “disintegrate”? And just as important: can Bill turn out different from Roman, when—both in establishing a “church” and in seeing that that church needs a financial rock—he is in some way following Roman’s game plan? As Roman tells Bill, after planting a wet one on his lips: “You have to take authority from God. I took it.” Bill has—and from the LDS church and from the state, as his maneuvering to secure the casino deal shows. But at what cost? 

Speaking of which, a moment of silence for Roman. I haven’t been a fan of Big Love’s weakness for fake-out “deaths”—Roman’s shooting, Bill’s father’s asphyxiation—but this one looked pretty final. And what a shame if, with Roman just hours away from an indictment for murder, Joey ends up being the one put away for a killing. 

In all, this finale episode wasn’t the emotional powerhouse that the last couple have been, probably because it sought to resolve so much in an hour, but it sets up an interesting premise for season 4. Sarah’s engagement, Roman’s death, Bill’s business deal, Margene’s success, Nicki’s return with her daughter: what happens when you get what you wish for? 

Now for the hail of bullets: 

* If you’ve been following the comments at Tuned In over the past couple weeks about the controversial endowment ceremony, then you weren’t surprised to learn, from Roman, that the contentious letters were fakes all along. Apparently, a commenter here noted, there was an actual case of forged church letters in the past. You can learn things from Tuned In! Maybe not from me, but you can still learn things. 

* “The seal is not raised. It is not embossed!” I’m hoping we’ll be seeing the Greenes again before too long—with Selma in custody and talking, that would seem likely. But I wonder how Roman’s apparent death will affect the power dynamic. Do they attempt to move back in, sensing a power vacuum? And what kind of force does Adaleen become going forward?

* A little irony with Margene finding a career in home-shopping-TV ,considering how Nicki originally landed in debt trouble through phone shopping.

* A strong episode for Chloe Sevigny, as she is forced to literally face her past, and is compelled to action by the prospect of her daughter being entered into the Joy Book. But should we assume that she’s back for good? Will Bill take her back—seeing, through the story of her first marriage, and excuse for her acting out, and a parallel to his own ill-use by the compound as a teenager? Or will they remain separated, but under one roof? 

* Finally, because I watched the first three episodes of Breaking Bad’s season some time ago, I haven’t been watching it on Sundays, but is anyone else experiencing whiplash from seeing Aaron Paul in these two different roles so close together?