So, HBO has premiered a new show. Racy, wild and completely foreign to most of us, Big Love deals with polygyny. In one sense, HBO is just looking for shock value. The show, however, boasts excellent writing, casting and plot development.
Polygyny, as we all know, involves several women marrying one man usually because of religious beliefs. This is far from legal in the United States.
In the show, Bill Hendrickson (Bill Paxton) is married to three women. His first wife, Barbara Dutton Hendrickson (Jeanne Tripplehorn), is the calm and cool-headed one of the family. She isn’t as sex-crazed as the other wives, and usually ends up defusing arguments between the other two.
Nicolette Grant (Chloe Sevigny) is the second wife, who is constantly fighting with the third wife, Margene Heffman (Ginnifer Goodwin).
The family, consisting of seven children, spread between three side-by-side houses, must stay hidden from the public eye. The show offers commentary on the modern practice of an archaic social structure.
More often than not, the two junior wives fight bitterly over attention from Bill. The eldest wife is the only one of the three who is not petty and sex crazed. They have a schedule that divides his nocturnal time between the three of them. When one of the two junior wives oversteps her time frame, the other one gets wildly upset.
In the third episode, we meet a cousin who has become old enough to marry. She is only 14. She is a pre-wife until she turns 16. She is supposed to marry the leader of the church, a man who already has 14 wives. One might conclude that since he is a man of power and influence, he has been able to marry more wives.
Bill Hendrickson’s daughter, Sarah Hendrickson, is secretly against polygamy, and befriends a state trooper’s daughter. This leads us to the next major plot device – will the family get caught?
The show makes it easier for us to talk about the issue. Of course, since compared to Utah, East Tennessee has a smaller Mormon population, it is not a hot button topic here.
The show portrays both positive and negative aspects of polygynist relationships. The negative aspects raise questions about women’s rights and abuse. Some of the abusive sides of the marriage aren’t really that different from the abuses suffered in a two-person marriage.
In this regard, Big Love is important for us to watch and talk about.

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