Big Love: The Complete Fifth Season

In a very a parallel way, Sister Wives, a current reality show about a polygamous family presents us with a family who choose to live their lives in the open. Unlike the Hendrickson's however, the patriarch of the family did not run for public office nor have a business that depends on public support.

This final season of Big Love was much better than the cartoonish and improbable episodes from Season 4. It takes a very dramatic turn towards the reality of their lives and there is no longer anything remotely humorous except dead on issues that can no longer be run away from. It's mostly about Senator Bill Hendrickson's refusal to put his religion in the closet. While he has noble intentions, the political, financial and emotional toll it takes on his family is overwhelming. This is also the season of self realization for all three wives, no longer able to do just what's best for their family but to meet their own individual spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth that can no longer be suppressed.

Like many, I sure am sorry this wonderful series has concluded. I can only hope and pray that one day, maybe we'll see Big Love, the Movie (which I'd much rather see than another Sex in the City installment). Big Love you will truly be missed!

I just finish watching all ten episodes of big love and I am so sad to see it end. I have been there since the start. How it ends, I personally don't like certain things on the ending of the series. Bill was the glue in that family, a good man that only fought for what he believed in. The wives the serious one, the jealous one, and the young perky one will miss there huddling together as well as there disagreements on certain issues. There has been a lot of ups and down in the season, arrests and killings that provides good entertainment. Will really miss this show cable shows has a life expectancy of 5 to 6 years and this show was surely cut short.

Polygamy works for our lead character Bill. It also works for his three wives and his children. They consider themselves law abiding, family oriented, god centered people. Thus, Bill wants to come out of the shadows and be accepted for what he is, a polygamist. Thus, this final season is primarily a tragedy on Shakespearean levels because he and his family can never be accepted in this country for what they are. This is because even though they live in the most religiously tolerant nation in the world, which also confers the greatest personal freedoms upon its citizens, that county can never allow polygamy to come out of the shadows because it is against our law.

Utah was permitted to enter the union only if it ended the practice. And it is clear why the country insisted on this: it is a nation of laws and too many legal problems are potentially created by polygamy, especially for a modern society which confers equal rights and responsibilities upon its citizens. This practice worked somewhat in an agricultural society centuries ago. It is too much of an anachronism for a post industrial revolution society which has marched off into the digital revolution. Just look at how little educated his entire family is. How are they going to fit into this modern world? He is very rich through most of the show and it is pretty clear all of these children will NOT be going on to college. I can't recall any of these children ever using a computer of any sort. Are they all going to sell washing machines at the family store?

It never occurs to Bill to ask himself how he can expect his store patrons, his senate colleagues, his neighbors and other acquaintances to feel when they see him and his family prospering although they are flagrantly breaking the law. This would certainly occur to even the average mafia don, even though one doesn't think of such a person as sensitive to others' feelings. It would occur to him as a matter of his survival. However, Bill is so caught up in his religious vision that his survival instinct seems deeply tamped down or even turned off.

Bill believes is it possible to bring polygamy out of the shadows and into the full light of both the law and the USA. He couldn't be more wrong. As he keeps fighting to achieve this, one disaster after another befalls his family as other people and factions want to bring them down. Bill Paxton does an extraordinary job with this character. He conveys him as a good and spiritual man, trying to do the right thing by everyone in light of his own religious beliefs. Yet the fact that he can't perceive that this single mindedness enrages others to the point of violence does not deter him. He is myopic beyond belief. It never occurs to him to ask how someone else might react to his paternalistic actions. And this is his fatal, Shakespearean flaw.

The three wives come off very well in this final season too. They have always had clearer vision than Bill about their effect on other people. However, they support him in his beliefs and share his overall faith. There is no question that they are capable of enduring and most likely will always endure together.

On an ironic note, early in this season we see Bill and his family still trying to make the casino with the Indians work. Ultimately, Bill and his family are too much for even the Indians. These are the same Indians who live on reservations, run gambling casinos, inhale crystal meth, have serious alcohol problems, etc., etc., Yes, the Indians are different from us but they don't seem to be on a different planet like Bill and his family seem to be. (The Indians also act within the law with what they are trying to achieve overall with their casinos so the government is not against them per se.)

I felt the show very satisfactorily concluded. It was a good point to conclude it as well as there was not much more to be done dramatically with this family without making it into a soap opera. There is something to learn from Bill's fatal flaw: no matter what one's personal religious beliefs, one cannot put blinders on to what is happening to the people in the larger community of man. To do so is to utimately welcome chaos into your life.

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