HBO
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, let me give you a little shot, relax, and watch last night’s season finale of Big Love.
“I’m afraid we’re walking off a cliff” –Barb Henrickson
“Do you really think the world is going to embrace you? You sad, stupid man.” –Marilyn Densham
It’s been clear for a while that everyone besides Bill Henrickson thinks that his running for State Senate, then coming out as a polygamist, is a bad idea. The question has been: is it a bad idea for him, or a bad idea for Big Love?
I’ve been of the latter persuasion. Though there’s been a lot of season 4 that I’ve liked, Bill’s run seemed false to me, as though it grew less from his character or any motivation of necessity than out of the producers’ apparent belief that the show’s stakes had to be ever heightened, and its plots ever multiplied, to keep us from losing interest.
After all, we’d spent much of the excellent season 3 seeing Bill build up the casino as his family’s means to avoid having to live in secret. No longer exclusively tied to Home Plus–and thus to a business that would be dependent on the approbation of their mainstream-Mormon neighbors–the Henricksons would be financially independent, and thus free. But now, literally as soon as the doors open on the casino, Bill decides that isn’t enough, and has a “testimony” to run for office, so that his family can live openly.
That still doesn’t make practical sense to me. The point of the casino was to give the family private-sector security that can’t be taken away. Public office, on the other hand, depends on nothing but the approval of others. (Not to mention, although Big Love has made clear that polygamy is illegal but rarely prosecuted, could its illegality disqualify Bill from office? Get him impeached? I don’t know Utah law, but at the least it would be worth addressing. Update: per the comments, Bill did mention the legal situation; I find an interview with the show’s producers that mentioned it, but evidently the reference on the show went past me.)
But last night’s finale, which brought the myriad plots of the season back to the multiple dynamics of the Henricksons’ marriage, at least gave us a plausible reason for Bill’s about-face. To him, living openly and publicly is about more than just him: “The Principle will die if it’s left in the dark. We’ll be con men and perverts. We’ll be despots and victims until it’s destroyed.”
Now, this is actually a plausible motivation, given what we know about Bill’s faith (and his belief, in light of his family’s history, that he’s something of a polygamist leader). Running for office may still be a stupid idea, but that’s OK, as long as we can see Bill’s reasons for wanting it to work. Might have been nice to have laid it out in the beginning of the season instead of retroactively in the finale, though.
I still believe that there were more credible ways to do the family’s coming out and set up the series’ endgame. (I agree with Todd Van Der Werff that the point-of-no-return announcement was the equivalent of leaving the Island in Lost.) But, you know what, this is where we are, and the way “End of Days” ended does bring the show back to its core and most important conflict: can the Henricksons really find a way to be polygamist in modern society, without falling apart or losing their moral bearings.
It also set up a painful irony: even as Bill foolhardily declares in his acceptance speech that he is a polygamist, his declaration is practically untrue. Barb is ready to leave him (though she may have changed her mind in the end), Margene looks like she would rather be plural-married to Goran and Ana; only Nicki wants him unreservedly, and she wants him all to herself.
As for the Juniper Creek storylines: I may be in the minority of Big Love critics in having wanted more, not less, this season. The weirdness and perversion of the compound is an integral part of the show’s Lynchian weirdness (and really, its sense of fun), and it’s a necessary reminder of the original sin that Bill (and Nicki) fear they may not be able to escape.
But while events on the compound were stranger than ever this season, they never really coalesced. Alby got a fine turn coming to grips with his attraction to men, but it’s unclear where it leaves him going forward; by his last scene, he seemed to have simply gone insane. The Greenes materialized just long enough to allow Bill to engineer a rescue. The reveal and enormity of J.J.’s plan was suitably shiver-inducing, but I’m still not entirely clear how it related to his return to Juniper Creek, or his plans to buy out the property for pennies on the dollar. (“We’ll drag out the dead bodies, and we get the house!”)
I’m guessing, and hoping that in a fifth season—and however many Big Love has left—the compound and the home front are more closely aligned in the narrative. The way forward seems clear: to prove his bona fides and redeem the Principle, Bill has to take it on himself to reform, or take down, Juniper Creek once and for all, setting up a final showdown with Alby. He also has to prove publicly that he can live out the Principle and live in harmony with his wives, without becoming the kind of “despot” he despises—a challenge he has repeatedly failed at this season, in the season’s best moments.
We had another one of those fine moments at the end, I thought, as—to the ironic strains of “Heroes”—Bill took his stand, apparently oblivious to the anxiety in the eyes of the wives he pressured into the spotlight with him. Bad idea or not, the die is cast, the stakes are set and the focus is (I hope) back on the relationships that matter in this show. Let’s hope in season 5, Bill’s terrible idea turns out to be a good one for Big Love.