On a regular basis I am both horrified and fascinated by the programming on HBO. I was a megafan of Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, and I love Bill Maher’s show, although the whole Cathouse series seems a little unsettling given its recurring message that whoring is a great way to spend the weekend.
Lately, HBO’s offerings have been a little slim. Deadwood is definitely worthy of its title, and Rome is yet another television series about Romans. Sorry, but unless the toga is wrapped around John Belushi circa Animal House, I just don’t give two shits about Romans. I was wondering what HBO would come up with next, then I saw the previews and my jaw dropped.
Big Love is the story of a polygamist and his three wives. In the preview for the series, the husband is portrayed as a good-hearted, down-to-earth guy, while his three wives are constantly bickering and trying to get one up on each other. Of course, all three women just can’t keep their hands of their uni-husband, and thankfully he has enough sperm to go around.
I’m not sure if HBO will attempt to portray polygamy in a truthful way. Most likely, all three of the wives will have married the uni-husband after they were adults, which is not typically what happens in a polygamist marriage, and since it’s HBO, they will focus on the women’s cattiness and the man’s ability to please them all sexually.
This will be a stark contrast to the reality of the majority of polygamy in which girls as young as 14 are married off to men many, many years their senior. They are never allowed to complete their educations, and end up having baby after baby while living in abject poverty under the rule of a tyrannical, extremist religious sect.
Big Love will feature a character, portrayed by Harry Dean Stanton, called the Prophet, which hints at a religious connotation, but I wonder how closely they will associate it with the real life extremist faiths that practice polygamy. Will all the wives drive minivans and dress in frumpy, handmade clothes with cheesy flower patterns? Will they all have long hair pulled back into that same banana-shaped, single burette?
When I was younger I used to wonder why in polygamy, and even bigamy, it never worked the other way. You saw these guys with all these wives, but you never saw a woman with multiple husbands. Now that I have a husband, I realize that women are smart enough to know that one man is enough! I’m even hesitant about giving Rachael a sibling, because of the 50/50 chance it will be a boy. Men are a big pain in the ass, I mean, could you imagine two guys hanging around in their underwear asking you where the TV remote is? This is the kind of stuff nightmares are made of.
HBO is premiering their new series tomorrow night, Super Bowl Sunday, after The Sopranos. I might make a half-assed attempt to watch it if I’m home in time, but I’ll be a bit skeptical and scrutinizing, which seems to be a stark contrast to the media’s examination of the polygamist fun fest. HBO’s website quotes Time magazine as claiming that the show “may prove to be…the next cool thing on TV.” I don’t know if I’d go that far in praising a series, then again it does have Tom Hanks as one of the producers. I guess he never got over the whole Bosom Buddies idea of closeness.
HBO gives big props to the show for examining marriage. If they wanted to examine a marriage that is considered outside of the mainstream, yet has a lot more relevance, they should have done a series about gay marriage and included the realistic challenges facing gay couples. Oh yeah, I forgot, Showtime picked up that cue with Queer As Folk and The L Word, so I guess this might be HBO’s sorry attempt to outdo them.
I could be wrong in assuming that I will find this show offensive, but given the fact that I’ve written countless letters on behalf of victims of polygamy and have donated to Hope for the Child Brides, a grassroots non-profit created by former polygamy survivor, Flora Jessop, I don’t think I’ll get such a big laugh watching three women catfight over the affections of a middle-aged patriarch with a bad case of swollen balls no matter how much creative direction Forrest Gump provided.
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