Big Love Season 3 Finale: Bigger Love

An at turns breathtaking, heart rending, heart warming, and mostly highly satisfying finale to an outstanding Season 3 of Big Love last night on HBO.

The two things I liked most -

1. Sarah's engaged to her love, and Bill (and more or less Barb) will not stand in the way. Sarah's always been one of my favorite characters on show. She's been a through a pregnancy and losing the baby this season, and I'm glad to see her putting her life together. I assume we'll be seeing a little less of her in subsequent seasons, if she and her husband don't live with Bill and company, that's ok. Good job Amanda Seyfried!

2. Nikki reconnected with her 14-year old daughter, and both will be living with the Henricksons. This is an important development. Bill said last week that something deep inside Nikki was "broken," which he didn't know how to fix. It may well be that what was most undermining Nikki's life and sanity was her guilt about abandoning her daughter. Their reunion, and Bill's taking them both in, should make a big difference. Fine performance Chloë Sevigny!

Otherwise, Roman's dead - killed by Joey. I don't mind that (though I'll miss Harry Dean Stanton). But the story skipped a bit too quickly from Roman having a gun on Bill on the road, and then Roman showing up on the compound and Bill at FBI offices ... So, how did Bill get away from Roman?

But that's a minor quibble to great finale of a great season of Big Love! Bill Paxton was great Bill H., Ginnifer Goodwin as Margene, and Jeanne Tripplehorn as Barb! I'm looking forward to Season 4 of this series, which manages to make a guy married to three women as truly much the same as the couple living next door.




5-min podcast review of Big Love finale

See also: Big Love, Season 3 ... 1. a 4th ... 2. Two Issues Resolved, Two Not So Much ... 6. Exquisite, Perfectly Played

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The Plot to Save Socrates


"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Mad Men, Jon Hamm, David Duchovny, Atonement Win Golden Globes!

Well, Mad Men, Jon Hamm, David Duchovny, Atonement have won Golden Globes!

There are a lot of other winners, of course, but the above are the ones I'm cheering about.

Mad Men on AMC was the most original, powerful new series of the year - which is not taking anything away from Showtime's The Tudors (Henry VIII) and HBO's Big Love (polygamy today), which were also superb, also nominated, and I loved. Jon Hamm was magnificent as Don Draper in Mad Men - but I wouldn't have been unhappy, either, had nominee Michael C. Hall won it for Showtime's delightful serially killing Dexter. And nominees Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors, Bill Paxton in Big Love and Hugh Laurie in House gave powerhouse performances, too. It was a great year for riveting drama on television. That's why I call this the Platinum Age.



David Duchovny as Hank Moody in Showtime's Californication was fall-down-on-the-floor laughing - as hilarious a savvy, comedic performance as ever I've seen.

And Atonement - which my wife and I saw a few weeks ago - is an original masterpiece of a movie. I would have reviewed it here in Infinite Regress already, had not Presidential politics jumped in the way. I will review Atonement here in the next few weeks or months.

In the meantime, links to my reviews of Mad Men, The Tudors, Big Love, Dexter, and Californication follow. The link brings you to my review of the first episode, which contains links to my reviews of all the others...



reviews of Mad Men begin with Cigarette Companies and Nixon Coming
reviews of The Tudors begin with History So Colorful You Can Taste It
reviews of Big Love begin with Big Love Resumes
reviews of Dexter begin with Dexter's Back!
reviews of Californication begin with Californication Going On Mondays

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Big Love Resumes

Tonight's Big Love on HBO picked up just where the innovative series left off last year - Barb, the first wife in Bill Henrickson's three-wife polygamous marriage, is traumatized by her forced withdrawal from Utah's mother-of-the-year contest - which by all accounts she was likely to win.

The reason she had to withdraw was that Roman - Nikki's (Bill's second wife) father, and head of a powerful cult Bill is in complex conflict with - outed Barb to the contest officials.

No one knows that Roman is the culprit.

As the show begins tonight, after that great opening scene on the ice with the Beachboys' "God Only Knows" playing and the ice cracking, Bill suspects his neighbors across the street. Nikki suspects Bill's secretary Wendy. Bill pressures Barb into having dinner with the neighbors - to smoke them out, if they are the tattlers - and Barb erupts.

She walks out on her three-wife, one-husband, lots-of-kids from everyone family. It is part of the genius of this series that, although we might think polygamy is crazy, as we watch the show it is hard to fully identify with the people who in one way or another condemn or rebel against polygamy. Once in a while, the polygamists do seem totally crazy to us. But most of the time, they seem the normal ones.

Big Love also presents polygamy as a much more complex relationship than just one man with three wives. The three wives are married to each other as well - as Nikki, and Bill's third wife, Margene, make very clear in this episode. They feel as walked out on by Barb as does Bill - and they want her back as much as he does. (Well, in the case of Nikki, the second wife, perhaps not quite as much - since she would become the first wife if Barb left permanently.)

This multi-faceted relationship is played beautifully by each of the wives - Jeanne Tripplehorn (first), Chloë Sevigny (second), Ginnifer Goodwin (third) - and Bill Paxton brings just the right blend of piety and living-it-his-way to Bill Henrickson.

Barb - of course - does come back in the end. But we've been served with notice that we're likely in for an even more tempestuous and surprising season of Big Love than last year...

See also reviews of other episodes: 2: Oh, Happy Day, and Not ... 3: Sons and Mothers ... 4. Help Me, Rhonda ... 5. The Waitress and More... 6. Just Lust ... 7. Margene's Mama ... 8. Polygamy and Misgivings ... 9. Swing Vote Margene ... 10. Polygamy as the Ultimate Cool/Bad ... 11. Family in Crisis ... 12. Polygamy and Great Performances Confirmed