Looking Out For Love

In Miami I watched the entire second season of ‘Big Love,’ the HBO show about a polygamist family starring Chloe Sevigny as the best thing that has ever happened to television/prairie garb. The show’s resolutely lighthearted tone seems even weirder now in light of the recent Warren Jeffs news, which made polygamist cults seem less like campy fun and more like the horrific dystopian future depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale (or ‘Daughters of the North,’ which Ruth recently stayed up all night finishing and which I am eager to read). But somehow that tone, and the supersaturated lighting that makes all the female characters look like turn of the century ads for Coca-Cola, make the show even more perfect and escapist and fun. Maybe every skeptical and irreligious person sometimes fantasizes about fundamentalism. What if you believed — really believed! — that all you had to do in order guarantee yourself eternal bliss was follow a very specific, slightly quirky but not entirely heinous set of hard and fast rules? Wouldn’t it make life so much easier? You would barely have to make any decisions, really! Best of all, you would never again have to think about dating.

But of course there are many good reasons not to pack a suitcase full of high-necked blouses and move to Utah. The season’s three main plot arcs detail some of the culty complications : 1) some kind of Sopranosish thing about sub-cults’ warring business interests (boring), 2) Should Bill marry a fourth wife (not boring) and 3) Ben and Sarah, the two eldest Hendrickson kids, now in their late teens, are trying to figure out what their family’s kooky religious beliefs mean for their nascent sex lives (emphatically not boring at all).

Until now, Hendrickson matriarch Barb has generally seemed to be putting up with her husband’s thing for polygamy like it’s a harmless but ocassionally too-time-consuming hobby, like cigar appreciation or golf. When her son starts talking about how his corruptingly overripe girlfriend Brynn might not be “the one” but could potentially be “the first one,” though, she’s horrified. And she deals with it in the most hypocritical and clever way possible: she sits down for a heart to heart with the girl about how tough it is to be someone’s first wife. Scared shitless, Brynn stops answering Ben’s phone calls. Mission accomplished!

Meanwhile, Sarah’s opposition to her family’s lifestyle leads her to a recovering-Mormon support group, where she meets a much older guy who just totally wants to help her escape her damaging background and okay maybe also get in her pants. Amanda Seyfried, so genius in ‘Mean Girls,’ makes Sarah nuanced — we never worry that she’s being taken advantage of, because we can tell that she kind of knows when she’s being taken advantage of and also knows that satisfying your curiosity is more fun than avoiding trouble.

Really, the only major disappointment of the season was Chloe aka Nikki. She had her usual awesomely conniving moments of playing Barb and Margene off each other, and there were some wonderful throwaway moments that made it clear that she’s still a loveable psychopath (a family crisis catches her in the midst of teaching her barely past toddlerdom sons how to scrub the toilet). But compared to the cheating, stealing, compulsive-shopping Nikki of Season 1, this Nikki seemed toned down. Bummer! If ever there was a fictional character I hungered to know more about, it is she. Unfortunately, though, HBO has decided that only Margene’s character merits a blog.

Margene’s blog might just be the strangest corner of the Internet.

Picking up where Season 2 left off, it details Margene’s pregnancy — on May 30, readers learned that she had a girl! — and contains examples of Margene’s dabblings in short fiction and her thoughts on contemporary art (“I don’t know who this Damien Hirst guy is, but apparently he’s rich and famous and weird and British, and also, I’m pretty sure he stole an idea of mine.”) Whoever maintains this blog for HBO is a) bored b)hilarious and c) maybe kind of a genius. “Margene’s blog” is such an exercise in bloggy versimilitude, in fact, that she even had to take a break from blogging due to the meanness of her commenters! In a post from last August that begins “Dear Internet, Um, we need to talk,” she writes:

“ll be in touch. I’ll give you updates when I’m up for it. I’ll read your hate mail…but I won’t give you any new ammo for a while. What I’ve given you so far has been returned to sender and it’s chinked my armor. Probably just another example of my immaturity, but…it’s true and it does, in fact, hurt. I doubt that was the goal…I don’t know exactly how malicious you are, Internet…but your tongue is sharp. I know that now. A good lesson to learn.”

According to Wikipedia, the third season won’t premiere til January ‘09. Maybe by that time, Margene will have realized that what she really ought to do is start a secret Tumblr.

12 comments to Looking Out For Love

  • I created a whole myspace page for a character in a script I wrote. Got the idea here (btw- Jess Weixler is the next coming of Meryl Streep imo). The character was a girl ten years younger than myself, but she was based on an actual girl, so it was pretty easy to fill in all the blanks and bring her to life. It was a lot of fun, and it got a great response, but people got so into it, I wasn’t sure if I should tip my hand or not that she came outta my head. I figured it was apparent since I was also pitching the script on her page, but it was like people only saw what they wanted to see, ya know? (As they do here?) I deleted the page when the project more or less came to a standstill. Miss that girl.

  • i haven’t seen any of “big love,” but i appreciated your descriptions of it, and of course…your humor.

    of course, you cannot forget to add that margene will obviously have to get her twitter on as well. ;)

  • RF

    I tried watching Big Love, but it made me feel kinda sick. And, at least from the few episodes that I did see, the writers didn’t bother to get the Utah linguistic quirks correct. Nobody refers to anything as “the wasatch range”.

  • As someone who grew up in Utah, though not as a Mormon or polygamist, I had a hard time staying focused on the show. Bored at times, even. Then I snapped to and realized I was bored because it all seemed so damn familiar to me. Utah IS like a Coca-Cola commercial. The 48 hours a year I spend with my parents there is like the waiting room of hell: the shiny and antiseptic anteroom to a gangrenous hole.

  • Matt

    Does this mean you have a secret tumblr?!? Do tell!

  • Tim

    I would suggest you procure a pair of magical Mormon underwear before season 3 starts. If you are sitting there watching Big Love while wearing the sacred Mormon undergarments, you will be doing more than just viewing the program. You will be vicariously struggling, suffering, loving and hating along with the characters. It will be better than virtual reality!

    There are many rumors about Mormon undergarments–such as they are bullet proof–but one thing is certain: they are very hard to obtain if you are not a Mormon. The Mormons take their secret underwear very seriously. Many non-Mormons have tried to acquire these mysterious skivvies but almost all have failed.

    One must present a Mormon ID card when purchasing said undergarments (a white shirt, black tie and ruddy complexion will not fool the cashier at the Mormon store). Don’t think you can easily order them online either. The Mormon ID card has a number which must be entered when purchasing the garments.

    Many Mormons don’t like to talk about their Mormon underwear. By wearing the undergarments they believe they are fulfilling a covenant with the Lord. The covenant stipulates that the underwear must be worn at all times, except while bathing.

    I hope it is not too offensive to suggest that Mormon underwear is fitting attire to enhance the viewing pleasure of Big Love. But Mormons’ Amish-esque friendliness invites such jokes to be hurled not like bricks lobbed out of hatred at a stained glass window, but like pillows in a pillow fight of religious warfare. Catholicism, Islam and evangelical Christianity have done much to drive a bloody wedge between the secular and devout realms of various society’s. But Mormons a likeable bunch mainly because they possess an unquenchable spirit of love and happiness. Their unorthodox belief system and quirky ways invite discrimination and criticism, but they are able to shrug off all forms of attacks with kind indifference. They are arguably the truest examples of Christians in the world today, even while most will say they are not real Christians at all.

    Jews have their yarmulkas, the pope has his flowing robes and macrocephalic hats and the Mormons have their magical underwear. This joke practically writes itself.

  • ow a paper cut

    polygamist cults follow the practice of Bringem Young

  • Jack McKee

    “Looking Out For Love” good title, better warning

  • Amy

    Is it weird that I primarily read your blog for the Fleetwood Mac references?

  • Kara

    That’s a pretty great response to mean blog comments.

  • I simply can muster no affection/sympathy for Barb. She has the warmth of a pap smear. We’re supposed to like her, right?

    Nikki on Twitter. Please HBO. Please.

  • [...] In Miami I watched the entire second season of ‘Big Love,’ the HBO show about a polygamist family starring Chloe Sevigny as the best thing that has ever happened to television/prairie garb. The show’s resolutely lighthearted tone seems … Source: Looking Out For Love [...]

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