If you have HBO, I hope you've been watching Big Love, the series about a polygamist family in Salt Lake City that still has ties to the polygamist southern Utah town and its too-close-knit clans, via one of the wives father -- who is prophet of the pro-polygamy church. Even though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka, the Mormons) members started out long ago supporting the marrying of many wives, somewhere along the way (in order to get Utah's statehood), they ditched polygamy. So a fundamentalist sect (or sects) formed to carry on the tradition.
I could go on and on and on and on about the LDS Church and Utah in exhausting, exasperating detail, having lived in Utah for 4.5 years. But I've been through all of it so many times, I don't have the patience for it anymore. Needless to say, when the missionaries ask my husband if he'd like to listen to what they're sharing about "The Church," he says "I already know way more than I want to know, thanks."
At any rate, this show Big Love is funny and dramatic, sweet and creepy -- all at the same time.
The creepiest part, I think, is the show's beginning, where the husband, played by Bill Paxton, is ice skating, then he's joined one by one by his wives, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin. The way they're looking at each other, women gazing at the man, then shooting odd looks at each other as the ice begins to crack and they start going their separate ways, the whole skating on thin ice metaphor works well. But, as all this unfolds, imagine the Beach Boys singing in the background. If that doesn't just make you shudder...
I could go on and on and on and on about the LDS Church and Utah in exhausting, exasperating detail, having lived in Utah for 4.5 years. But I've been through all of it so many times, I don't have the patience for it anymore. Needless to say, when the missionaries ask my husband if he'd like to listen to what they're sharing about "The Church," he says "I already know way more than I want to know, thanks."
At any rate, this show Big Love is funny and dramatic, sweet and creepy -- all at the same time.
The creepiest part, I think, is the show's beginning, where the husband, played by Bill Paxton, is ice skating, then he's joined one by one by his wives, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin. The way they're looking at each other, women gazing at the man, then shooting odd looks at each other as the ice begins to crack and they start going their separate ways, the whole skating on thin ice metaphor works well. But, as all this unfolds, imagine the Beach Boys singing in the background. If that doesn't just make you shudder...
God Only Knows
Written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher
I may not always love you
But long as there are stars above you
You never need to doubt it
I’ll make you so sure about it
God only knows what I’d be without you
If you should ever leave me
Though life would still go on believe me
The world could show nothing to me
So what good would living do me
God only knows what I’d be without you
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