Big Love Recap: Pilot
Bill Paxton stars as Bill Henrickson in the newest HBO series, this one looking at polygamy. The credits at the end of the first episode mention that 20 to 40 thousand are practicing polygamy today in the US. That's a big number.
In this initial episode, we are introduced to the family, with Paxton supporting three wives and what appears to be about a dozen kids, across three houses that don't exactly adjoin one another - they are next to each other on the same street, however, and share backyards. So he enters and exits through one house, and then the family members move back and forth between the houses through these shared back yards.
Jeanne Tripplehorn plays Barb, who seems to be wife number one, charged with keeping the peace. Chloe Sevigny plays middle wife Nicki, frantically spending money and scheming to further her postion in the family. Relative newcomer (as both an actor and a wife in the family) Ginnifer Goodwin is Margene.
Underused (thus far) is Harry Dean Stanton as Roman, the head of the organization (sect?) from where Bill and Barb seem to have orginated. Not only that, but he lays claim to a percentage of Bill's business profits too. And did I mention that it looks like he is Nicki's dad? Intrigue abounds, to be sure.
Like everyone else, I suppose I think that most of these folks stem from the Utah area, even though the Mormon church outlawed polygamy in 1890 (according to the same footnote at the end of the first episode). You have to wonder if the show would have packed more punch if the participants were living outside that stereotype, in say, Charlotte.
