Love may heal a Tony-less HBO
 
By Diane Werts
Newsday
 
What would Abraham Lincoln do?

This and other contemporary questions are asked -- and if not answered, probingly explored -- in HBO's "Big Love," the suddenly Tony-less network's nearest thing to a "Sopranos" successor.

Starting Monday, the second season of this juicy "plural marriage" saga seems to be stepping up to the plate as HBO's next signature series.

"Big Love" does more this year than you might expect, and more richly, more provocatively, more dramatically and amusingly, too. Last season's cliffhanger "outing" of suburban businessman Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) and his three wives -- none of them ex -- detonates tensions inside their immediate family, in the extended clan back at the earthy Utah compound they've fled, and around the Salt Lake City community that isn't certain what those Henricksons are doing in their three adjoining subdivision houses but suspects it's not something in which Lincoln would have engaged.

Abe is actually Bill's role model as this unusual "American dream"-seeker wrestles with tonight's big crisis -- one of his wives leaving him. That throws not only him into a tizzy but her "sister wives," too, whose places in the pecking order start to shuffle.

What's also true -- and perhaps disconcerting -- is that our own feelings can shuffle with the weird realization that, as we've grown to know these complicated souls for all their principled faults and good-hearted sincerity, we might actually be rooting for that wife's return. After all, this man and these women really do all love each other in some profound, if to us inexplicable, way.

Or maybe not so inexplicable, once you spend time with these textured characters. Next week's calamity back at the compound has the most traditional wife, cunning second-position Nikki (the sublime Chloë Sevigny), earnestly wondering how the poor compound couple in crisis will cope, "with no other spouses to lean on." And we get it.

For everything that's "wrong" with this polygamy setup, plenty of other things seem right. Trying to reconcile that is what powers both the drama and our fascination with it. As much as Bill's scheming "prophet" father-in-law Roman (the delicious Harry Dean Stanton) deals dirty to keep Bill in line, he's nothing compared to the "polygamist fugitive" from an even stricter compound for whom cops are hunting. Roman ironically fears the fugitive's extreme beliefs are "gonna ruin it for us."

Normal. Let's have some definitions. Bill runs a successful home store chain. Conventional Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), refugee Nikki and bubbly young Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) live comfortably and (relatively) happily as co-spouses. Their kids seem average, too. But this season starts to focus more on Bill and Barb's teens as they move toward adulthood. Believing she's leading "a dishonest life," Sarah (Amanda Seyfried) tiptoes into an "ex-Mormons" support group, while true believer Ben (Douglas Smith) decides to bring his girlfriend into the fold. The more fully the Henricksons step into the mainstream, the dicier their polygamy dance becomes.

The story's more sensational turns don't help. Life at the back-to-basics compound remains simultaneously zany and poisonous -- in literal terms, when somebody is once again made to swallow something they shouldn't. That brings the police into the picture, at just the time Bill and brother Joey (Shawn Doyle) are plotting their way onto the board of Roman's "brotherhood" to uncover his chicanery. Joey's demented wife Wanda (Melora Walters) and the brothers' bitter mother, Lois (Grace Zabriskie), are forever throwing fits, expanding the size of the rambunctious "family" for whom level-headed Bill feels responsible.

But "Big Love" is able to balance all that, much more believably than FX's similar series "The Riches," which couldn't resolve the absurd/tragic/ credible equation of its yearning dreamers escaping the outcast coop that hatched them. "Love" creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer have a real handle on the show's tonal gene pool, and their actors swim fluently. Sevigny remains the linchpin, her Nikki forever nursing grudges, equally vengeful and loving. The scripts, too, are rich in tiny moments, as when Lois and Margene next week forge an unlikely connection. Paxton provides as much humor as heart, caught betwixt, between and often bewildered, but always committed.

When Bill asserts, "The life we have chosen leads to Eternity," he means it. "Big Love" isn't mocking these people or their faith. Though they've made different choices, they spring from the same well we do. Their hearts are more recognizable than those of "The Sopranos" or "Six Feet Under," making this show a strong claim-staker to new weeknight territory for HBO.

We think Lincoln would have watched.

BIG LOVE. Bill Paxton's husband-to-three-wives Utah entrepreneur fears exposure will ruin his business and marriage(s). Second season begins strongly Monday at 9 on HBO. (Episodes repeat several times weekly on various HBO channels, consult listings.)
 
newsday.com
Originally published June 10, 2007
 
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