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Big Love: The Complete 2nd Season

Genre: ,

Cast: Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie, Bruce Dern

Creator:

Rated: NR

Review By:
Rocco Passafuime

School:
SUNY Purchase '05

Quote:
"I don't compromise my values and I don't compromise my work. I won't give in." -Michael Moore

big_love_season_2_dvd-bill_paxton-chloe_sevigny
Release Date: December 11th, 2007
Click to Buy on DVD or Bluray!
Overall Grade: B+

Big Love: The Complete 2nd Season

Review By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

Big Love: The Complete Second Season

When Big Love, a drama that unflinchingly portrays the life of a polygamist Mormon family, premiered on HBO in March of 2006, it was a show that almost inevitably would cause a lot of controversy and uproar and be accused of glorifying polygamy. However, to the show's credit, audiences are not only drawn to the series' fantastic cast and their great performances, but to the incredibly layered storytelling that expresses both the negative and positive aspects of such a type of family.

As HBO's longtime favorite The Sopranos had finally come to an end, Big Love's only seems to have gotten more bigger with audiences when its second season premiered during the summer of 2007. It is now available on DVD as Big Love: The Complete Second Season.

It continues the story of the Hendricksons, an earnest, well-meaning family that lives in a picture-perfect house on an idyllic suburban community in Salt Lake City, Utah. However, they have a very big secret: they are polygamists.

Husband and father Bill (Bill Paxton) is the successful CEO of a burgeoning Utah hardware store chain. He also is a follower of a branch of a traditionally polygamist Mormon faith, married to three different wives whom he each has children with and each family live in three separate houses directly against one other.

His first wife, the down-to-earth Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is an ambitious, domineering personality who works part-time as a teacher. His second wife, Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) is a prim-and-proper personality who is deeply strict about adhering the family to the fundamentalist Mormon way. His third wife, the young Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a bubbly and hopelessly naïve woman who's often desperate in her attempts to prove herself as an equal.

When we last left our intrepid clan, the Hendricksons must do some serious damage control after it is discovered that someone has exposed their secret lives as polygamists. Nicki soon realizes that the man who secretly exposed them was none other than her own father, Roman (Harry Dean Stanton), the leader and deemed "Prophet" of the United Brotherhood Effort, a corrupt fundamentalist Mormon organization, which also runs a deeply repressive polygamist collective farm on Juniper Creek.

Meanwhile, Margene, who is pregnant with another child and now fully steeped in the Mormon faith, seeks to gain more respect with the family, particularly when she begins to befriend and encourage the relationship of a waitress Bill is secretly having an affair with. Meanwhile, Bill himself, still seeking to rid his family from the clutches of Roman's tight grip, plans to increase his fortunes by investing in a gambling operation known as Weber Gaming, which Barb strongly objects to.

However, his desire to go into the gambling business involves dealing with a shady Mormon family known as The Greenes, who have animosity with the UEB. Ultimately, Bill's plan to have the

two warring families fight one another backfires when Roman is shot, leaving the UEB and the Juniper Creek compound's future uncertain.

The second season of Big Love mostly continues where much of the greatness of the previous one left off. The cast, particularly its four parental figures, continue to deliver great performances, while the writers continue to do an excellent job fleshing out the characters.

The creative team continues to do a great job portraying everything as is, without either condoning or damning it. This is particularly a great asset as the darker sides of both the polygamist Mormon sect, even in the family themselves, and the more modern sect of LDS, represented by Barb's family, who become a bit more prominent later on in the scene, begin to reveal itself.

This is particularly chilling and revelatory as Bill pulls his son Ben (Douglas Smith) deeper into polygamy, after learning he's now sexually active with his girlfriend. He appoints him as a priesthood holder and Ben soon immediately begins dating creepy twin girls from the compound and gradually becoming more embracing of his father's polygamist ideals.

This, plus the Weber Gaming situation, really adds greater shades of gray to the generally well-meaning Henricksons themselves. This allows the show even more so to really delve into a continual mood where the mores of right and wrong are never entirely clear, regardless of good intent, which really adds to the already interesting story.

The DVD picture quality is in the 1:78:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of the original high-definition TV broadcasts, with the sound quality in Dolby Digital Surround 5.1. The sole special features included are three highly interesting origin story vignettes that delve into a post-partum experience for Nicki after she gives birth to her first child, her meeting of babysitter-turned-third-wife Margene, and the wives' demanding of Bill to move into three closely-together houses in the suburbs. The vignettes are only about five minutes each, but are interesting and are fascinating for fans who want to get more into the back story.

All in all, Big Love continues to deliver with its second season. It's great performances from the equally great cast mixed with a story that only grows more exciting in its layered complexity makes it one of HBO's best series to watch right now.

Movie Grade: B+

DVD Features Grade: B+

Overall Grade: B+

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