"Big Love"is Back! Discuss

Wow. Six weeks since the final post, so apparently everyone is about as gripped by the unrelenting drama (har har) of "The Final Season" as I have been.

About half the time I'll catch it on Sunday, half the time I catch up to it later on demand if I happen to remember about it. A couple weeks ago I had fallen about three shows behind the storyline.

I don't get the logic in abruptly writing Margie out of the telemarketing-huckster business and suddenly into the Amway-juice peddling business. Basically it's the same thing with different brand names.

Amusing how all the "lost children," the 6 or 8 of the Henrickson rug rats who have been kept off camera for most of the last couple of seasons, are suddenly running around, running underfoot, in almost every scene (although few have names and fewer have speaking lines).

Of course, two of the three children who DID have speaking parts and storylines about them (Sarah and Teenie) have basically been written out.

I was actually hoping tonight Alby would screw up the courage to blow Nikki away.

The "big resolutions" they are building up to in the final two weeks are going to be as rushed and hackneyed as most of the brief abortive storylines of the last two seasons.

Oh yeah, in the first couple of seasons, BL used to be fun, and funny, a lot of the time. That's all gone now. Except the "unintentional comedy" moments when you can't help laughing at what an idiot some character is.

 

I miss Roman.

 

I have no idea--zero--why I can't tear away from this completely idiotic show. The plot (if you can call it a plot) is insipid and cartoonish, the characters are insufferable. And yet I watch...maybe to see if it all makes sense at some point. But I'm sure it won't.

 

Indeed.

They could at least have had Nikky grab the gun and kill her loathsome/tiresome brother. You know she could do it.

 

it's all been bill's dream; he's actually a single jewish man who's never been married, has no kids and has been in a five-year coma.

he's gonna wake up, look around and tell his bedside mother, 'married people with kids are nuts! i'll never leave you, mommy!'

 

I think they're building up to a "Sopranos"-style ending: a few major characters, both bad guys and good guys, will bite it, it will look for a while as if the main character's whole world is tumbling down, everything will look to be building up to a cataclysmic climax, and then the music shuts off -- we'll never really know what happens to the central characters.

 

I have a hard time believing the woman playing Nikki would be a snotty prima donna bitch...... :

 

I'm in the same boat, I liked it at first but now it has become a very bad imitation of the first Melrose Place - the only difference is there is no cheating going on because the playboy in question up and married the three females in question.

But the storylines have become dumb and that is being polite.

Plus, all three of the wives AND the Twister guy have turned into whining, sniveling, "please shut the fuck up" bitches.

The storyline with the son banging his sister's friend - then banging the girl with the baby who is married but a stripper, was just stupid.

The political campaign and subsequent "coming out" was way over the top and Bill's two parents deserve each other.....

But yet, I'll watch it to the bitter end for whatever reason.

 

I'm only watching because, as admitted above, I don't have shit-much-all-else to do on Sunday nights, and for the same reason you jog in the last 200 yards when you're running five miles. You've come this far, might as well trudge all the way to the finish line.


But it's fun to handicap a death pool for the final two episodes:

Bill: 100-1
Barb: 50-1
Nikki: 8-1
Margie: 25-1

Ben: 50-1
Sarah (in guest-star reappearance) 10-1
Teenie: 20-1 (if she died, would anyone notice?)
Other Henrickson kids (as an entry): 30-1
Heather: 10-1
Cara-Anne: 25-1
Cara-Anne's teacher: 3-2
Rhonda: 8-1
Don: 2-1
Alby: 3-5
Adaleen: 5-1
Lois: Even
Frank: Even
Jamba Juice guy: Even
Some other politician or law-enforcement officer: 3-2
Ana: 25-1
Ana's husband: 8-1
Sleazy senator trying to screw Bill over: 2-1


Odds of being in jail at the end of the series:

Bill: 3-2
Barb: 4-1
Nikki: 3-2
Margie: 5-1


Ben: 5-1
Don: 9-1
Alby: 1-2
Lois: 10-1
Frank: 5-1
Cara-Anne's teacher: Even



Overall odds of nothing much happening and everything just fizzling out: 3-1

 

My girlfriend has watched this show since the beginning. I, sadly, have only caught parts of the last two seasons. Because of this, I know it only as one of the worst serious television dramas I've ever seen. The girlfriend is chugging along because she's invested, but it's hard for me to even imagine that this show was ever good. The writing is dreadful, but more than that, the acting is just bad. Mostly from the Bill character, who has the most contrived conversations with his inner circle that I could imagine.

Here's my experience with the characters, over the better part of these last two seasons:

Bill is always putting out fires and making impassioned speeches to rally his family. The first wife is always miffed about something or just has that stunned look on her face, like a complete stranger just called her an asshole. Nikki is always scared or has a look of planned revenge. And Margene is always quipping back with an I-told-you-so kind of tone.

I don't doubt that this show was once very good. I don't know if I'm disappointed to have joined it in time for this meltdown, or relieved that I didn't watch as a good show turned into such crap.

 

Also, I was hoping during Sunday's episode that Alby would kill Nikki. That would have been the first unpredictable plot twist I would've seen. I was thinking, "Please, writers, do this and prove you're bold!" But nope. Shouldn't have been duped.

 

This speaks to one of my big disappointments -- Bill never grows or changes. The constantly putting out fires schtick was one of the things that drew me into the series, but they kinda needed to move on from that. You're right, he has become a one-note character.
I thought, when the Sissy Spacek character pulled back the curtain for all of them -- "Your 'religion' is just an excuse for you to screw around" -- somebody, Bill or at least one of the wives, might say, "Hey, wait a minute, that's exactly right." And then we'd have some interesting growth and conflict. Instead, same old stuff, like it never happened.