Bill Paxton in Big Love
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Most of these events struck me as game-changing, potentially deal-breaking lapses. They gave me a queasy feeling that all was not well with Big Love — the same foreboding I got when, at the beginning of this season, the show junked its much-loved "God Only Knows" ice pond opening-credits sequence for one that blended slo-mo falling, a la Mad Men, with what looked like a commercial for Preference by L'Oreal. (Do you fast-forward through that opening when TiVo-ing the show? I do.) But in the past two episodes, I've come to think that Olsen and Sheffer knew what they were doing and have made the vagaries pay off.
The Feb. 7 episode, "Fight or Flight," concentrates on Bill's immediate family before and after the convention that will determine if his State Senate bid is successful. Everyone — Bill's mother Lois, his brother Joey and all three sister-wives — got in a tizz over two events involving Bill's eldest son Ben. Word of the not-quite-inadvertent kiss has spread, a news story soon topped by the bulletin that Bill "exiled" his son. Moments before Bill's big debate at the convention, Barb tells him to reconcile with Ben — "right away, this minute, or I swear I'll check myself into the boobyhatch" — then confronts Margene, whose fury makes her blurt out, "Eff you!", at which Barb angrily kicks a leg out from under Margene's display table.
Bill has another revolt to worry about. His opponent in the Republican primary has seized on the death of a "lost boy" — a teen refugee from Juniper Creek — to plaster the hall with mug shots of the teenage Bill, himself a lost boy when his father threw him out of the compound. During the debate, Bill summons the resolve to give a big Frank Capra speech, confessing that to stay alive he committed burglaries and worse: "I did things for cash that haunt me to this day." He insists that society must save the lost boys. "Until we embrace them — our shadow, our stain — we will never be free of our history." He walks out of the debate and, of course, wins the primary. The exultant Tancy wonders, "Why would anybody want to be a Democrat when we have all the fun?" (But doesn't winning the party nomination assure Bill election in an overwhelmingly Republican state? Not exactly: eight of the 12 Salt Lake City seats in the real Utah State Senate, including the eighth district Bill is running in, are held by Democrats.)
Throughout the series, Bill has displayed the charm, belief and obsessive drive of a born politician — or a dictator, whose ego is rarely clouded by the saving grace of self-doubt. For any man on a God-ordained mission, whether he's a Muslim or a breakaway Mormon, the end justifies the means, however shabby. Earlier this season, he pressured Don, his friend and business partner in the Home Plus stores, to "take the bullet" by outing himself as a polygamist, allowing an unsullied Bill to proceed with his campaign. Friends' lives ruined, his son ostracized: it must all be part of the divine plan. That kind of faith means never having to say you're sorry. Tiger Woods surely apologized more times during his 13-minute statement Friday than Bill has in 38 hour-long episodes. The closest he gets to an act of contrition is admitting, "I'm an imperfect person, I know that.... I've been tested, and failed." But apologize to Ben? "Apologize for what?"