Bill Paxton in Big Love
(3 of 3)
The Feb. 14 episode shifted focus and setting, from the State Senate campaign to Juniper Creek and Mexico. While Margene tries to reconcile with Bill ("We haven't had sex in a week; I don't think I can take it much longer"), Barb, who's been attending to the casino the Henricksons run with a local tribe, cozies up to the sulky, dishy Blackfoot Tommy Flute in a sweat lodge and finds an ally in Marilyn Densham (Sissy Spacek), a Washington lobbyist who, against Bill's wishes, wants to represent the casino. Ana reappears, visibly pregnant, and Barb agitates to bring the waitress back into the family because "she's carrying our child" — until she learns that the child was conceived before the marriage. Bill reveals that his political ambitions fold into his domestic dream of make his polygamy public and moving his families into one big house. Bill's parents Lois and Frank drive Ben from Juniper Creek to Mexico, where they buy parrots for resale in the U.S. Lois thinks they've "cut out the middle man": Hollis Greene, the leader of a rival polygamous cult, who lives down there. But Hollis is not so easily ignored. He and his ultra-butch wife Selma seize the interlopers at gunpoint.
That should be enough for one terrific episode, but not on this show. When Big Love wants to get really creepy, it turns to Alby, who after the death of the patriarch Roman Grant, his and Nicki's father, has assumed control over UEB, because God told him to. He's declared that Adaleen, Nicki's mother and Roman's widow, should be "sealed" (wed) to J.J., Nicki's reptilian first husband; and Adaleen, with odd docility, agrees. At the sealing ceremonies, Nicki bursts in to find that Alby is planning to seal Cara Lynn, Nicki's and J.J.'s daughter, to an old man whose seventh bride she would be. Furiously, she whisks the child away.
Bill has rightly pegged Alby as "a total sociopath." He tells this to Dale, who can't shake his love for Alby despite counseling from Mormon elders. Just say no to your gay impulses, they tell him, and Dale, shriveling in mortal misery, says, "That's what I've been hearing for 30 years." Every attempt at reprogramming his sexuality, from college days on, has only increased this very decent man's abysmal shame. Alby's wife Laura has discovered the affair, and informs Bill, who tells Dale he'll have to be taken off the UEB case. For all his sins, including against Dale, Alby is devoted to him; he's even rented a love nest for their trysts. When he arrives there, he finds that Dale has hanged himself.
It's a great episode with moments of surpassing poignancy and weirdness. Nicki curls into Bill's arms and whispers, "I think I'm damaged." When she appears at the weddings, she's wearing a miniskirt, garish makeup and a rakishly askew ponytail. "Get a sheet to cover her up," says the disgusted Adaleen; and Nicki spits back, proudly if cryptically: "It's who I've always been inside." Frantically seeking Cara Lynn, Nicki finds Joey's wife, the demurely deranged Wanda, who says of Cara Lynn, "She's in the nursery with the ponies." (We're deep into Twin Peaks territory now.) And when Alby discovers the hanging, he crumples to the floor in shock and grief, and gently kisses Dale's foot.
Narrative art at its best both confounds and satisfies. This episode of Big Love rises to nearly unique, unbearable, thrilling levels of malice and true love, of insanity and empathy. I can't wait to see what happens next. So tonight, I'll be skipping the Winter Olympics. Everyone else can see how the ski-jumpers perform. I have to watch the shark-jumpers.