Big Love: The New Commandments

Let's get biblical.

This seems to be the principle, if I may borrow one of Bill Henrickson's favorite terms, that's driving this season's Big Love. The show is hitting on the big themes—sin, evil, redemption—as it confronts the complexities inherent in the labyrinthine web of relationships in the extended Henrickson clan.

After watching last week's show, I was struck by just how much that single episode tried to take on but assumed it was almost a freak of nature designed to set out multiple plot lines to be dealt with as the season progresses. That it did and then some. Watching Sunday's episode, however, I also accepted that Big Love has moved away from its previous seasons' more conventional structure—which was grounded in reality-based storylines—and into something far denser and literary. All sorts of underlying issues, not unlike Roman, have been exhumed and are now openly on display.

For all of the characters' expressed faith, by this point in the season, the Ten Commandments have been pretty much trashed. We've seen all sorts of coveting, stealing, false idols, false witness, adultery, and so on. Because of the particulars of the Henrickson situation, the characters have managed to commit an assortment of violations that, while not explicitly spelled out, were nevertheless clearly implied in the original ten. But it seems as though they could use a few individual admonitions and sub-clauses to return them to the path of righteousness. Consider these:

Ben: Thou shalt not covet thy father's third wife.

Margene: Thou shalt not commit adultery with thy husband's eldest son.

Bill: Thou shalt not revisit the sins of the father and cast thy son into the wilderness due to thy own wounded male vanity.

Joey: Let sleeping prophets lie. And whatever you do, don't dig them up, douse them in gasoline, and burn them to conceal DNA evidence. Someone may be watching.

Alby: Thou shalt not submit thy mother's body and spirit into the possession of a seemingly deranged psychotic—who also happens to be thy sister's first husband—as a means to extract a form of cosmic vengeance against thy father. No matter how evil dad happened to be and even if he says that you have, "masturbated (yourself) into a Sodomite."

And Bill again: Thou shalt not throw thy loyal crew-cutted business partner under the bus in order to further thy political ambitions. And never, ever, make any of thy wives don an elephant costume.

It's a lot to take on, no? We can all get protective of favorite programs, and I suppose my concern about Big Love is whether it will collapse under its own weight. The psycho-sexual tension right now is so dense and inescapable that it's as if it was created in a super-collider. Bill appears increasingly delusional and narcissistic, while characters from Alby to Margene seem willing to take risks that are inherently self-destructive.

Ultimately, I tend to focus less on plotlines than on character, and where I do believe Big Love continues to excel is in its writing and in discrete set pieces that transcend the success or failure of the broader narrative.

More simply, I live for individual moments on the show. And last night we had many memorable ones. The exchange between Alby and JJ was a masterpiece of language as each of them cloaked their own insidious motives in phrases as poetic as they were chilling and archaic. JJ referred to Roman's 14 wives as "a treasured and deserving flock now cast adrift" and depicted Alby's mother as, "a most handsome, proven woman."

Visually too, Big Love has created vignettes as eloquent as the writing. I loved the sequence of Alby telling his mother of her marital fate as he received a haircut in front of a mural of white clouds, blue sky, and soaring pheasant. Speaking of soaring birds, the release of the smuggled parrots managed to be both Hitchcockian and slapstick all at once. The extended sequence of Ben in the pool served as a homage to The Graduate and a different Ben's own sexual confusion. And there was the exquisite sadness of the shot of Margene, her face unseen but her posture in the elephant costume mutely expressing the burdens and humiliations that Bill has foisted upon the people in his life, especially his wives.

No, Big Love is not without its sins. But a lack of ambition is not one of them.