The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

Big Love: Coming Out Party

I've never not loved the Henrickson family, even when they were saddled with some exceedingly stupid storylines.

I'm talking mostly about last season, which had too many plots, and not enough episodes, meaning a lot of stuff just didn't work.

But the writers made a smart move at the end of season four, taking the show's central notion -- that Bill Henrickson needs to hide who he and his family are -- and turning it upside down.

So while Bill begins Big Love's final season dealing with more headaches than usual, they're headaches that have crystalized around the same idea: going public -- like a lot of Bill's plans -- hasn't worked out the way he predicted it would.

Bill has no traction in either of his jobs, Barb feels adrift, Margie loses her home shopping job, and Wayne's getting bullied at school (although, we later learn, by a kid who's part of another suburban polygamist enclave).

It's way too early to tell how well any of this is going to work in the long run, but if Big Love can keep us grounded in the Henricksons' world and away from too much compound craziness, this show can leave town on a high note.

Other thoughts:

• After all his accolades on 24 years ago, I sort of thought we'd see more of Gregory Itzin, but he's only shown up on TV intermittently. He's back here as another politician, although hopefully not as evil as the one Jack Bauer.
• I'm not a big shark-jumper, but if Big Love has a JTS moment, it was when Ana arrived.
• The opening sequence, in which we hear a woman's anguished sobs, would've been much more powerful had we learned it was Barb, and not Marge, going through that much torment. Margene has grown a lot as the show has gone on, and the fact that the scene was played mainly for laughs ("they called me a lying jewelry hooker!") sapped it of its power.

Tom Coombe

The Best TV Shows of 2010

It was a pretty good year for TV, but for me, a bad year for TV watching. I spent the second half of 2010 buried in work, which meant I didn't have much time for this blog. But with the year winding down, it's worth remembering the cream of this year's TV crop, whether I wrote about them or not.

1. AMC -- At least one of this network's program's -- Breaking Bad -- was an obvious contender for the top spot before the year was halfway over. Then came Mad Men's fourth -- and best -- season, followed by Rubicon and The Walking Dead, and by the time November arrived, it became clear AMC was TV's new king of quality TV shows.

No network has had a year like this since 2005, when The Wire, The Sopranos and Deadwood (not to mention Rome, Carnivale, Six Feet Under and Curb Your Enthusiasm) were all part of HBO's line-up.

The Walking Dead proved to be the network's biggest hit so far, a comic book-inspired horror/drama that managed to transcend its roots by the time its six-episode season was over. 

 Rubicon's low ratings, slow pace and complicated storyline pretty much doomed it early on, but it was still fascinating to watch, and heartening to see AMC take this kind of risk, even for just a season. In the end, the show's conspiracy plotline wound up being less interesting than its characters -- the fascinating, funny villain Truxton Spangler justly inspired a fake Twitter feed -- and it's those people, rather than the answers we did/didn't get, that makes me sorry Rubicon won't be returning.

I'd been a little underwhelmed by Mad Men's second and third season, but its fourth was brilliant, taking us deeper into the mind and soul of protagonist Don Draper while also giving us a compelling look at an ad agency struggling to keep its head above water. But put all that aside, and Mad Men rises above most of its contemporaries on the strength of "The Suitcase" episode alone.

The king of the AMC mountain this year, however, was Breaking Bad. In three seasons, it's gone from "interesting" to "must-watch" to "comparisons to the Coen Brothers are not unwarranted."  

In the article I linked to above, TIME's James Poniewozik ties Coen movies like No Country For Old Men and Fargo to some of Breaking Bad's larger themes. It's an apt comparison, but I'll take the connection in a different direction: just as the Coens can jump from No Country to Burn After Reading to True Grit, Breaking Bad can be a different kind of show every episode. One week it's the most tense thriller you've ever seen, another it's a tragic-comedic "bottle show." And it does all of those things well, helped along by a brilliant cast and the most beautiful cinematography on TV. The finest show in production now.

As for the rest...

Big Love Season Finale: A Sad, Stupid Man

The title of today's post comes from a quote by Marilyn Densham, the lobbyist played by Sissy Spacek on Big Love this year. 

 Her character never really went anywhere -- which is too bad, because it would be nice to see the show give Bill an enemy who wasn't from Juniper Creek -- but she was right on the money here: Bill spent this entire season on a sad, stupid quest, and the show suffered for it.

Like I said last week, I still really like nearly all of these characters. And even as the show went off the rails this year with an overabundance of plot lines, there were always things that helped keep me interested, such as the interplay between the three wives -- still Big Love's backbone --Nicki's identity crisis, and the abject creepiness of J.J. 

 But it was hard to overlook really ridiculous episodes like Bill in Mexico, and harder still to swallow Bill's plan: win the election, then tell the world he has three wives.

 It was difficult watching Bill turn into a truly unlikable guy to stay in the race -- can we ever forgive him for what he did to Don, a better person than Bill will ever be -- but even tougher to buy his logic. As I've said before, how can he be an effective public servant if he believes in something no one wants to deal with?

Big Love: In This Country, We Settle Disputes...With Tetherball!

As I've been watching this season of   Big Love, I've also been rewatching seasons one and two with my girlfriend, who'd never seen the show until a few months ago.

 It's a jarring experience: spending the weekends seeing the Henricksons in much better days, then coming home to find them trapped in this overloaded season. 

 Because it's hard not to like this family, even as the writers have them do really stupid things, like Barb's out-of-nowhere Mother's Little Helper rant, or Bill's insane race for the state senate.

 I've already listed all the ways his campaign is a bad idea (and the list has only gotten longer since then), but I'll come back to this one point: Even if you put all those reasons aside, you're left with a massive problem, and that's Bill's plan to make his polygamy public is a monumentally bad idea.

 At best, it would make him a pariah, and an extraordinarily ineffectual legislator. At worst, he'd be the target of some sort of mass recall effort.

And let's say he does win, but doesn't come clean about who he is. That means the show's final season will involve: Bill, the three wives, eight kids -- technically, there's nine, but Sarah's gone next year -- Bill's parents, Wanda, Joey, JoDean, J.J., Adaleen, Alby, the folks from the casino AND the people Bill comes in contact with as a state senator.

 Let's just say that I'm rooting for his opponent.

 And for Nicki, easily the best thing about this episode...hell, the whole season. As Richard Lawson pointed out on Gawker, seeing her try to reshape her identity and come to terms with her childhood would make for a compelling spin-off. 

 If that had been the episode's main storyline, I might have forgiven things like that tetherball battle between Bill and Goran, which felt wrong, and went nowhere. I wasn't happy to see Ana return a few weeks ago, and I'm less happy now. 

 *Sigh* At the very least, we only have to endure this for one more week. Hopefully season five will be a little leaner, and allow Big Love to go out on a high note.

 Tom Coombe

Big Love: Bill and Ben's Mexican Adventure

 After watching an episode like "Blood Atonement," it's easy to see why some critics are accusing Big Love of shark-jumping lately.

 Of course, that article mentions things that have already happened this season -- new actors replacing old characters, a surprise wedding, a previously unheard of child -- and is fairly complimentary of the show.

 And with a cast this strong, and writers this good, it's easy to forgive things like that.

 It's harder, however, to forgive how busy the show has become, and even more difficult to overlook an episode like the one that aired last night. 

 Gun play, arms getting hacked off and Jack Bauer-style rescues are all things that have no place on this show. And they were all elements of this episode's main storyline, which therefore felt cartoonish and distracting.

Big Love: Father of Lies

  Dear lord, how many different kinds of creepy was this episode?

 As Bill and the wives all struggle to create something of a normal life for themselves, "Under One Roof" reminds us how futile these dreams might actually be by showing us all sorts of unpleasant if not flat-out horrific stuff circling around them.

 It was an episode that was even more overstuffed than its predecessors have been this season, but it was one that I thought worked a lot better than previous weeks, thanks in part to some excellent work by Chloe Sevigny, as well as by Matt Ross and Ben Koldyke as doomed lovers Alby and Dale

Big Love: Portrait of the Candidate as a Young Man

 Last week, it dawned on me a bit late (i.e. after I'd posted my original blog) how hypocritical Bill was being in regard to Ben.

 One week later, Big Love managed to get a lot of good emotional mileage out of Ben's exile and the resulting fallout among the Henrickson family.

 (Bill can protest all he wants, and yeah, Ben's not sleeping in a ditch, but he did little to stop his son from leaving.)

 Yeah, maybe it was a bit too on the nose to have the Lost Boys subplot tossed into an episode where Ben's estrangement was such a crucial part of the story.

 But "Sins of the Father" offered a lot to like, including the way Bill's debate performance won over the delegates but did little to heal the many, many rifts in his family.

 Actually, "rifts" probably isn't the right word, since most of the conflicts involve someone being angry with Bill, except for Barb, who's angry at Bill and Margene.

 Once again, Bill has the type of baggage -- three wives, nightmare parents, vengeful and powerful lobbyist -- that could derail any political career. And once again, he pulls it off, leading me to believe he's headed for either a massive public defeat or some huge personal loss at home. Then again, I was wrong about Margene's meltdown (I said it would cost her the home shopping gig), so don't listen to me.

 Other thoughts:

•  Five episodes in, and I haven't warmed to the new opening credits at all.
• Barb dressing down Margene after Margene had inhaled the helium (and was speaking in a squeaky voice) was painful. There's noting worse than getting in trouble while you're acting silly. It reminded me of back in school, when it would be, say, "60s Day," and some kid would get yelled at in front of the class, while dressed like they were at Woodstock.
• Hopefully, Nicki's identity crisis will be something that carries over. 
• Have they ever explained why Teenie is called "Rat"? Or are Ben and Bill saying "Red" and I'm just not hearing it right?
• The whole episode could have been set at the Reagan-themed party and I would've been fine with that.

 Tom Coombe

Big Love: Here's to You, Benny Henrickson

 How many different ways is Bill Henrickson's run for public office a bad idea?

 He's married to three different women. His oldest daughter kidnapped a baby. His parents are involved in a smuggling operation and his brother killed a man, then dug up and burned the body.

 That's enough baggage to destroy several candidates. 

 But let's put that aside for now. The real problem is that Bill's ultimate goal -- win the state senate seat, then come out as a polygamist -- was more or less derailed by his actions at the end of the episode.

Big Love: Capitol Offense

  Big Love is at its best when it takes its characters as far away from their comfort zones as possible, something we saw last season during "Come Ye Saints." 

That was an episode that featured very little of the show's normal intrigue -- no Roman, no Alby, no compound -- yet managed to be riveting as the Henricksons embarked on a cross-country vacation that daughter Sara likened to -- not that inaccurately -- a "death march." Secrets were revealed, buttons were pushed, and a miserable time was had by all. It was great.

 And while it wasn't really feasible to have the entire family away on a roadtrip, "Strange Bedfellows" featured enough traveling and transgression to give this season the forward momentum it needs.

Big Love: (Not) Going to the Chapel

 I have to compress four hours of 24 (that's 1/6 of the season) into a single blog entry late tonight, which means I need to skimp on this week's Big Love and write about it in the lazy, bullet-points style. Spoilers are ahead:

•  First off, I thought this week was a significant improvement over last week's premiere, in part because we spent as little time with Juniper Creek as possible, and Bill's parents didn't appear at all.
• Also keeping a somewhat low-profile was Chloe Sevigny's Nicki, but what little we got of her showed us why she deserved that Golden Globe last night.
• With Roman dead and Alby part of a plot line that paints in a far more sympathetic light, it falls to Zeljko Ivanek's J.J. to serve as this season's villain. So far, great job by him, and by the writers, who added the very creepy touch of J.J. having no fingernails. Of course, Ivanek might have yanked them out for real in an extreme bit of method acting.
• Speaking of good acting, let's hear it for Aaron Paul as Scott. Actually, it's only an impressive performance if you've seen him on Breaking Bad. The perpetually frantic meth dealer Jesse is nothing like Scott, who's almost a saint (and not just by comparison).
• It's nice to see Margene growing up, asserting her independence. Of course, making $134,000 a year will allow you to do that.
• That was a pretty lengthy, public kiss between Alby and Dale, huh?
• The thing about Bill a prophet: he'd actually be good at it, and it would be just a much a nightmare as when Roman was in charge, only a different kind of nightmare. Roman ran things out of cynical self-interest. Bill would rule thinking he had God on his side, allowing him to put his every whim into practice. Hell, he does that now. 
• Gotta say, I'm not interested in the casino, or in the fact that Barb is gonna hook up with Adam Beach.
• Next week: Sissy Spacek puts Bill in his place (and hopefully uses telekinesis to do so!).

 Tom Coombe