Big Love (with spoilers)
I tried watching Big Love for the first time on the recommendation of some people on my f-list. Also, because Hugh Laurie keeps referring to the black Mormon doctor on House M.D. as "Big Love," and that made me curious.
The show gave me chills.
The men were patriarchal dictatorial assholes; I couldn't imagine why anyone even listened to them for two seconds. It was obvious that they were a) control freaks, b) lawbreakers, and c) liars who would say ANYTHING to convince people that they were righteous, virtuous souls who were sitting up there in Heaven with God. Their lies would have been funny if they hadn't been so ridiculously serious about it. I think they half-believed their own bullshit.
And the women were just flat-out creepy, with all their babbling about sister-wives and the need to find a man and one telling her teenage daughter that the girl was a part of her and that she was being selfish and hurting the family by wanting to get away from the family compound and the religion. If it were my kid, I'd have helped her pack. And if my mother had tried that "You are a part of me" line when I was trying to break away and be independent, I'd have snotted back (as I think any teenager would), "I haven't been part of you since delivery, Mom. Try to keep up."
The best bit was at the end, when someone FINALLY fought back. At last! Someone with a backbone that didn't resemble wet spaghetti!
A young girl was kidnapped on her wedding day to be forcibly married--in a barn, of all places--to this evil old fart who claimed to be some kind of prophet. (Prophet, my ass. Every proclamation he made about what God wanted coincided exactly with what he wanted. It was miraculous.) He had apparently broken some law and been sentenced, and who felt terribly abused as a result. How dare the law actually apply to him!
The girl had been talking about the phony prophet's lawbreaking and his sentence, and he didn't find that acceptable, so he was going to marry the girl to his brother--who already had a wife, by the way--and send the girl off to an area in Mexico a million miles from anywhere, where she would do nothing except work out her salvation by giving birth to sons. Salvation through fucking. (And the old fart clearly thought that he could order up boy babies just by telling the prospective mother what sex he wanted.)
Well, the girl didn't take this too kindly. When the first wife, who looked like an ambulatory wall, grabbed the girl's hand and put it in her husband's so that the girl could be extralegally married, the girl said, "NO!" and grabbed a pitchfork. Not only that, she used the pitchfork on the woman who was trying to strongarm her into this marriage. And then she ran. And she did NOT twist her ankle! No, she ran and hid. The old fart ran after her, and he tripped and fell near a bunch of pigs. I didn't see what happened to him--but I hope the pigs ate him alive.
The girl then waited till no one was around and stole a truck. At this point, I was really rooting for her. I was. She was the only woman in the entire show who wasn't a Stepford wife singing, "Stand by your man."**
So, of course, this situation couldn't continue. The one woman who wasn't hopelessly brainwashed into thinking that whatever the men said was the Word of God had to be smacked down. A guy--the old fart's brother, I think--drove after the girl and when he caught up with her, he rammed her truck from behind.
Now, the obvious thing to do would be to floor the gas pedal...and then, if the asshole came after her, to back up in reverse really fast. Because she could have used the same tactics to intimidate him and wreck his vehicle. I would have. But then, I follow the Cosby Theory of Fatality: "You're going to die anyway. Take somebody WITH you."
The girl was not thinking like that. She was just scared and wanted to get away. And so he shoved her off the road and she hit a pole. And I think she was killed. I don't know. The credits started rolling after that.
But yeah. That was the show I was encouraged to watch.
Now, maybe it makes more sense if you can relate the occurrences in the story to actual people and events. Maybe it makes more sense if you're devout. I couldn't relate to any of the religious bits at all; it was alien to me. There was one long thing about a letter and whether or not it existed and whether its existence meant that polygamy was the will of Joseph Smith or not. As if all religions don't change their policies from time to time!
Also, I have to admit that I had to study religion for twelve years at school, but I was never any good at believing it. I tried for years. And I just finally gave up. Whatever talent it takes to believe in religion, I do not have it. I cannot believe in a set of ideas about God without questioning them.
And that's all these people did. They insisted that you had to believe without questioning. I got the impression that using your mind--which, presumably, God gave you--was considered a sin. And that was just repugnant. The idea of a religion saying, "Thou shalt not think"--and people actually accepting this!--just stuck in my craw.
So, no, I don't think I'll be watching this TV show again. If I want to watch The Stepford Wives, I'll rent it from Netflix.
**(Okay, the teenage daughter wasn't bad, but in the end, even she gave up "rebelling"--trying to go to a non-Mormon college outside of Utah, wow, shocking!--and agreed to do exactly what her mother wanted--go to the college her mother wanted her to attend and help the family by helping the Church and eventually marrying whoever her parents wanted her to marry and having lots of babies.)
***
Voting is going on over at the UFO Awards . I'm one of the candidates in The Dresden Files category.
The show gave me chills.
The men were patriarchal dictatorial assholes; I couldn't imagine why anyone even listened to them for two seconds. It was obvious that they were a) control freaks, b) lawbreakers, and c) liars who would say ANYTHING to convince people that they were righteous, virtuous souls who were sitting up there in Heaven with God. Their lies would have been funny if they hadn't been so ridiculously serious about it. I think they half-believed their own bullshit.
And the women were just flat-out creepy, with all their babbling about sister-wives and the need to find a man and one telling her teenage daughter that the girl was a part of her and that she was being selfish and hurting the family by wanting to get away from the family compound and the religion. If it were my kid, I'd have helped her pack. And if my mother had tried that "You are a part of me" line when I was trying to break away and be independent, I'd have snotted back (as I think any teenager would), "I haven't been part of you since delivery, Mom. Try to keep up."
The best bit was at the end, when someone FINALLY fought back. At last! Someone with a backbone that didn't resemble wet spaghetti!
A young girl was kidnapped on her wedding day to be forcibly married--in a barn, of all places--to this evil old fart who claimed to be some kind of prophet. (Prophet, my ass. Every proclamation he made about what God wanted coincided exactly with what he wanted. It was miraculous.) He had apparently broken some law and been sentenced, and who felt terribly abused as a result. How dare the law actually apply to him!
The girl had been talking about the phony prophet's lawbreaking and his sentence, and he didn't find that acceptable, so he was going to marry the girl to his brother--who already had a wife, by the way--and send the girl off to an area in Mexico a million miles from anywhere, where she would do nothing except work out her salvation by giving birth to sons. Salvation through fucking. (And the old fart clearly thought that he could order up boy babies just by telling the prospective mother what sex he wanted.)
Well, the girl didn't take this too kindly. When the first wife, who looked like an ambulatory wall, grabbed the girl's hand and put it in her husband's so that the girl could be extralegally married, the girl said, "NO!" and grabbed a pitchfork. Not only that, she used the pitchfork on the woman who was trying to strongarm her into this marriage. And then she ran. And she did NOT twist her ankle! No, she ran and hid. The old fart ran after her, and he tripped and fell near a bunch of pigs. I didn't see what happened to him--but I hope the pigs ate him alive.
The girl then waited till no one was around and stole a truck. At this point, I was really rooting for her. I was. She was the only woman in the entire show who wasn't a Stepford wife singing, "Stand by your man."**
So, of course, this situation couldn't continue. The one woman who wasn't hopelessly brainwashed into thinking that whatever the men said was the Word of God had to be smacked down. A guy--the old fart's brother, I think--drove after the girl and when he caught up with her, he rammed her truck from behind.
Now, the obvious thing to do would be to floor the gas pedal...and then, if the asshole came after her, to back up in reverse really fast. Because she could have used the same tactics to intimidate him and wreck his vehicle. I would have. But then, I follow the Cosby Theory of Fatality: "You're going to die anyway. Take somebody WITH you."
The girl was not thinking like that. She was just scared and wanted to get away. And so he shoved her off the road and she hit a pole. And I think she was killed. I don't know. The credits started rolling after that.
But yeah. That was the show I was encouraged to watch.
Now, maybe it makes more sense if you can relate the occurrences in the story to actual people and events. Maybe it makes more sense if you're devout. I couldn't relate to any of the religious bits at all; it was alien to me. There was one long thing about a letter and whether or not it existed and whether its existence meant that polygamy was the will of Joseph Smith or not. As if all religions don't change their policies from time to time!
Also, I have to admit that I had to study religion for twelve years at school, but I was never any good at believing it. I tried for years. And I just finally gave up. Whatever talent it takes to believe in religion, I do not have it. I cannot believe in a set of ideas about God without questioning them.
And that's all these people did. They insisted that you had to believe without questioning. I got the impression that using your mind--which, presumably, God gave you--was considered a sin. And that was just repugnant. The idea of a religion saying, "Thou shalt not think"--and people actually accepting this!--just stuck in my craw.
So, no, I don't think I'll be watching this TV show again. If I want to watch The Stepford Wives, I'll rent it from Netflix.
**(Okay, the teenage daughter wasn't bad, but in the end, even she gave up "rebelling"--trying to go to a non-Mormon college outside of Utah, wow, shocking!--and agreed to do exactly what her mother wanted--go to the college her mother wanted her to attend and help the family by helping the Church and eventually marrying whoever her parents wanted her to marry and having lots of babies.)
***
Voting is going on over at the UFO Awards . I'm one of the candidates in The Dresden Files category.