Big Love
Big Love is an American drama television series that aired on HBO from March 11, 2006, to March 20, 2011. It stars Bill Paxton as the patriarch of a fundamentalist Mormon family in contemporary Utah that practices polygamy, with Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin portraying his wives. The series charts the family's life in and out of the public sphere in their Salt Lake City suburb, as well as their associations with a fundamentalist compound in the area. It features key supporting performances from Amanda Seyfried, Grace Zabriskie, Daveigh Chase, Matt Ross, Mary Kay Place, Bruce Dern, Melora Walters, and Harry Dean Stanton.
For other uses, see Big Love (disambiguation).Big Love
- "God Only Knows"
by the Beach Boys (seasons 1–3) - "Home" by Engineers
(seasons 4–5)
- Mark Mothersbaugh (season 1)
- David Byrne (season 2)
- Anton Sanko (seasons 3–5)
United States
English
5
53 (list of episodes)
- Tom Hanks
- Gary Goetzman
- Mark V. Olsen
- Will Scheffer
- Gregg Fienberg
- David Knoller
46–58 minutes[1]
- Anima Sola Productions
- Playtone
- HBO Entertainment
March 12, 2006 –
March 20, 2011
The series premiered in the United States on March 11, 2006, following the sixth-season premiere of the HBO series The Sopranos.[2] Big Love was a success for HBO, running for five seasons before concluding its run on March 20, 2011.[3]
Big Love received widespread critical acclaim, and earned several major awards and nominations throughout its run. The third season was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, and the first three were nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series - Drama.[4] For acting, Chloë Sevigny won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in the series' third season, and Bill Paxton was nominated three times for his leading role.[4] At the Emmys, Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, Mary Kay Place, and Sissy Spacek were all nominated for their recurring roles,[5] while the series' creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer won the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Episodic Drama.[6]
The series has been the subject of articles in academic journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Law and Contemporary Problems, and Michigan Journal of Gender & Law.[7] Several publications listed the series's first three seasons as among the best television of the decade 2000–09, and its final season ranked among the best-reviewed scripted series of 2011.[8]
Development[edit]
Concept and writing[edit]
Big Love was created by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, who also served as executive producers. Olsen and Scheffer spent nearly three years researching the premise of the show, with the intent of creating a "fair, non-judgmental portrayal of polygamy in America."[9] Olsen said that the family dynamics were key to the series' narrative, mixing family affection with tensions. "It's that combustion, negotiating that mix of feelings that I think keeps an audience coming back for more."[10]
The fictional fundamentalist group the United Effort Brotherhood (UEB) has characteristics similar to the historic United Effort Plan established by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and taken over by the state of Utah in 2005.[11] The FLDS is one of the most prolific and well-known polygamist groups and identifies itself as the legitimate successor of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which officially discontinued polygamy in 1890.[12][13]
Creators Olsen and Scheffer included a drive through the twin FLDS towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, as part of their research for the show.[14]
The UEB has built its own temple on its Kansas compound. The raid on Juniper Creek is reminiscent of the Short Creek raid in 1953 when Arizona state police and National Guard troops took action against polygamists in Colorado City. Many of the businesses owned by the UEB are similar to businesses formerly run by FLDS members under the non-fictional UEP, which managed financial holdings of the FLDS.[15] The creators read a single 2003 article published in Utah on the Darger family who are Independent Fundamentalist Mormons.[16]
Filming and sets[edit]
Although set in Utah, the series was primarily filmed at the Santa Clarita Studios in Valencia, California. The location used for filming "Henrickson's Home Plus" scenes was The All American Home Center in Downey, California.[17]
The exterior scenes of the three homes that Bill owns were filmed on location on Shady Lane, in the small town of Fillmore, California.[18]
The mall scenes from season one were filmed in the Fox Hills Mall, in Culver City, California. Other exterior shots were filmed in Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, and Sandy, Utah, as well as northeast Los Angeles, California.[19]
Music[edit]
During the first three seasons, "God Only Knows", by The Beach Boys, played during the opening titles (and a cover version at the end of the series finale). The musical score for the series was composed by Anton Sanko. Mark Mothersbaugh composed music for the first season, while David Byrne was in charge of music during the second season. The theme song for the final two seasons of the series was "Home", by the band Engineers.
Reception[edit]
Critical opinion[edit]
Review aggregate Metacritic indicated positive critical response for all five seasons. The average scores for the first through fourth seasons were 72/100, 71/100, 79/100, and 70/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The fifth and final season received an average score of 85/100, or "universal acclaim".[37] Based on its overall Metacritic score of 75, Business Insider ranked the series at number 29 in its 2017 list of every HBO series ranked "from best to worst".[38]
Upon its debut, reaction to the series was mixed-to-positive. Initial raves came from publications such as Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Daily News. James Poniewozik described it as a "first-rate drama"[39] and Dorothy Rabinowitz said it was "seriously compelling".[40] Publications such as Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker, Variety, the Boston Globe, and The Hollywood Reporter were all positive as well.[41] Notable detractors included Robert Lloyd of the Los Angeles Times, who said it ultimately "didn't convince";[42] Doug Elfman of the Chicago Sun-Times, who felt its quality didn't match its concept;[43] and John Leonard of New York magazine, describing it as "more soapy than salacious".[44]
By the second season, critical reception warmed. Maureen Ryan of The Huffington Post and noted critic Alan Sepinwall remained ambivalent towards the show; otherwise critics were uniformly positive. In particular, several critics noted improvements from season one. Gillian Flynn of Entertainment Weekly wrote, "Big Love has dropped the last vestiges of its ostentatious quirkiness and fashioned itself into a rich and grounded family drama", and Diane Werts of Newsday said that "'Big Love' does more this year than you might expect, and more richly, more provocatively, more dramatically and amusingly, too."[45] The second season was cited among the best shows of 2007 by numerous publications, including PopMatters,[46] the San Francisco Chronicle,[47] Time,[48] Entertainment Weekly[49] and NPR.[50]
Season three vaulted Big Love to universal critical acclaim. Notably, Tim Stack of Entertainment Weekly gave the season's early episodes an 'A' grade, and Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times said, "If there's a better written, better acted, more originally conceived show on television, I defy you to name it."[51] After two years of popping up spottily on critics' 'Best Of' lists, season three was recognized as one of the top seasons of television from 2009. In aggregating Top 10 lists from every major television critic, Metacritic reported that 10 critics had cited the series, tying for the eighth-most mentions (and, in particular, Big Love ranked third on that list among series in their third season or later).[8]
Though only its first three seasons aired in the 2000s (decade), multiple critics cited Big Love as one of the best series of the decade. They include the Huffington Post,[52] Ain't It Cool News[53] and The A.V. Club, who wrote "Big Love has proved to be one of the most ... earnest studies of religion and morality ever to air on television."[54]
Returning in 2010, Big Love was met with mixed critical response for a shorter fourth season. General consensus dictated that the series was focused too much on plot, with character development suffering as a result. The Washington Post identified a lack of energy in the actors, looking "alternately confused and pooped, empty shells of the characters they used to play".[55] Putting it into perspective, Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote, "In this new season the show is spinning off into too many directions. None, taken individually, is terrible, but altogether these myriad plots create a lack of focus."[56] The A.V. Club, which a year earlier had cited the drama as one of the previous decade's top 20 shows, described the fourth season after its finale as "The season that virtually obliterated Big Love's dramatic credibility."[57]
When the series returned for its fifth and final season the next year, critical reaction was extremely enthusiastic. Big Love received the best early reviews of its entire run. Mary McNamara wrote, "Big Love quickly reclaims its astonishing ability to balance the insightful and the absurd, hilarity and heartbreak and the personal with the political."[58] Similar raves came from Nancy DeWolf Smith of The Wall Street Journal, who said the final season was "mesmerizing", and the New York Post, which awarded the final season a perfect four out of four stars.[59] Overall, the final season of Big Love tied as the fourth-best reviewed returning show of 2011, trailing only Breaking Bad, Louie and the animated comedy Archer. It was the tenth-best reviewed scripted series of the year overall.[60]
Response to the series finale, "When Men and Mountains Meet", was passionate among top publications. Jace Lacob of the Daily Beast called it the "perfect way to close out this series" and described his reaction to it as "emotional".[61] James Poniewozik wrote for Time magazine that "In the end ... Big Love came back full circle to the core relationships ... We closed on a moving if messy note for a moving if messy series."[62] Mary McNamara, of the Los Angeles Times dubbed it "a perfect finish to an astonishingly ambitious show that often careened through genre, narrative structure and believability like they were false walls on a stage". In her rumination on the finale, Ginia Bellafante of The New York Times noted that Big Love "was always at its most compelling as an indictment of the mindless spiritual avidity and the bizarre displays of self-exoneration that can go on in the name of faith", and celebrated the finale for committing to that theme. She also wrote that the series had "achieved the resonance of [HBO's] other heralded series."[63] Writing for TV Squad, Dr. Ryan Vaughn was less enthusiastic about the finale but said, "I'm not going to let a great series be sullied with a mediocre finale."[64] Finally, Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club awarded the series finale, and the series as a whole, a B+, writing that its first three seasons in particular qualified as "remarkable television".[65]
LDS Church and others[edit]
In March 2006, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which ended practice of polygamy in 1890 and often distances itself from modern polygamist breakoffs, issued a public statement citing concerns over the program's depiction of abuse, polygamy, use of stereotypes, and television's depiction of moral and civic values in general.[66] Among other things, the church stated, "Despite its popularity with some, much of today's television entertainment shows an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, coarse humor and foul language. Big Love, like so much other television programming, is essentially lazy and indulgent entertainment that does nothing for our society and will never nourish great minds."[66] In March 2009, the LDS Church stated that HBO's writers, producers, and executives were displaying insensitivity to church members by choosing to display simulated segments of the LDS Church's Endowment ceremony in an episode of Big Love.[67][68][69] Independent of the church's statement, some members of the LDS Church called for a boycott for ceremony depiction.[70] HBO made a public apology to those offended by the depiction but defended a decision to broadcast it anyway. The network stated the depiction was accurate and done with reverence.[70] The LDS Church also stated that the show had continued to blur the distinction between the LDS Church and "the show's fictional non-Mormon characters".[67]
In contrast to the statement made by the LDS church, several real fundamentalist Mormon polygamists spoke in favor of the series: In a 2006 interview in The New York Times with various polygamist wives, one noted: "It's a more realistic view of a polygamous family that lives out in society than people have known. It can be seen as a viable alternative lifestyle between consenting adults."[9]
Academic assessment[edit]
Since its premiere, Big Love has been the subject of several studies in the humanities and social sciences.
Dr. Cheryl Hanna explored "the problem of categorical exclusions to the consent doctrine in private intimate relationships" through the lens of Big Love, specifically citing its "beautifully explored" tensions between individual autonomy and state interests. In her conclusion, she wrote "the future of feminist legal theory depends on its ability to remain ambivalent about the tensions presented in the consent doctrine as applied to contexts such as polygamy, prostitution, sadomasochistic sex, obscenity, and domestic violence. Big Love seeks to persuade us to accept ambivalence and to be open to changing our minds because of the complicated nature of women's (and men's) lives; feminist legal theory ought to persuade us to do the same."[7]
For the Columbia Law Review, Dr. Adrienne D. Davis assessed legal debates surrounding polygamy after the premiere of Big Love and how it was being likened to same-sex marriage. She wrote, "The highly acclaimed hit series self-consciously invites viewers to consider analogies between same-sex and polygamous families. In the show's much-anticipated second season, the invitation became more pointed and persistent, with intermittent references to 'coming out,' 'closeted families,' and 'the state' as repressively surveilling nonconforming 'big love.'" However, she claimed that Hollywood and television critics' desire to interpret the polygamy in Big Love and beyond as representative of American "quirky families" was a miscue. Ultimately, she argues that the dichotomy presented by Big Love works when viewed in terms of "intimacy liberty, privacy, autonomy, and agency, or even an incipient constitutional respect for 'sexual minorities.'"; the very essence, as Davis notes and commends, of the series' themes.[71]
Dr. Brenda Cossman examined Big Love closely in her study of "migrating marriages" for Law and Contemporary Problems. In addition to asserting that "Just as in Big Love, same-sex marriage is never more than one degree away of separation from polygamy", she found that the series adds crucial insight to the understanding of marriages that exist between legal and cultural recognition. As she explains, "These cases can be seen through the lens of ... Big Love, in which marriages are produced as the culturally real in the here and the now, even when legal recognition remains elusive." By exploring the movement seeking to culturally legitimize same-sex marriage, she concluded Big Love served as a most powerful, unique allegory: "Big Love plays on an even more decisive gap: polygamous marriages are not legal in Utah or anywhere else in the country. Yet the point and the poignancy of the show is to depict a 'real-life' family. Bill Hendrickson and his three wives struggle with all of the daily trials of contemporary family life: parenting, finances, intimacy, and sex. The sympathetic portrayal of their family is as culturally real, although it suffers by virtue of its nonlegal recognition."[72]
Big Love was also studied as a part of Andrew Atkinson's study of HBO programs and the post-secular humanistic themes they elicit. In writing of Big Love, Atkinson too draws on the parallel between gay rights and polygamist rights illuminated by the series, but focuses more on the series' influential humanistic elements. In fact, he somewhat rebuffs earlier assertions made: "The attention that is paid to the minute details of Mormon ritual, theology, and historical disputes demonstrates that HBO's writers are uncomfortable with the supposed dichotomy that constructs homosexuality as by default areligious." Atkinson focuses on the ending, interpreting Barb's blessing of Bill as a "ritual innovation [that] indicates that FLDS Mormonism must shed the trappings of patriarchy if it wants to legitimate polygamy in a post-feminist society", and the fall of Alby, the closet homosexual, as a powerful interpretation of "the future theo-political and sexual tensions that Mormonism, and by extension, the broader American polity, will face as the post-secular matures". In concluding, Atkinson makes the case that Big Love and other HBO shows like The Sopranos, The Wire and Six Feet Under "contribute to a fuller conception of humanity" than other forms of art and entertainment.[73]
Series
Acting
Directing
Writing