Today’s Guest Clacker is Meredith O’Brien, a pop culture columnist who also blogs about TV and movies at Notes from the Asylum.
I didn’t expect to laugh this much during Big Love’s premiere. I think the laughter was a defense mechanism, a response to the parade of craziness which appeared in one scene after another. Gone was the subtle ratcheting-up of the tension that marked the first season of Big Love, where a Home Plus brand of vanilla suburban normalcy was interspersed with polygamy and the dark, grittiness of Juniper Creek. Instead, Big Love writers decided to commence the fourth season by going all sledge-hammer-to-the-head-let-your-freak-flag-fly.
The funniest and strangest thread in the Big Love premiere dealt with the now dead prophet Roman Grant, who, we learned, had been propped up in a lawn chair in a Juniper Creek freezer for months, before his body was carted all over the southwest, all while he was wearing his signature white hat. It reminded me of Weekend at Bernie’s, only I don’t want Weekend at Bernie’s when I’m sitting down to watch Big Love.
It felt wrong to be amused by the scene when Adaleen intentionally sent Nicki into the freezer in search of bacon for BLTs only to discover Roman in the lawn chair, as it did when I chuckled while watching Alby flinch as he looked at Roman’s icy face and said, “He just gave me a mean look because he knows I’m going to be the prophet now.” It all added to the gallows humor which dominated the season premiere. I’m used to dark humor on the show, but not comprising 90 percent of it.
Frozen Roman was the source of lot more laughs, like when Alby left him — again, jauntily posed in a lawn chair and wearing his hat — at the site where Bill and his partners are building the casino, as if Roman will never stop tormenting the Henricksons, despite being dead and all. When Bill and Nicki hauled the Romansicle back to the compound, I kept thinking that perhaps if they’d actually eaten some BLTs like Adaleen was screeching about instead of those cold burgers and fries they had in the van, they could’ve thought more clearly. Alas, they were blinded by rage and thus made stupid mistakes, like sloppily leaving Roman’s white hat at the construction site only to have it be discovered by Bill’s casino partners who are already sick of being questioned by the feds because of their association with Bill. I guffawed when the hat turned up at the casino though I’m not sure I was supposed to.
Amid the comic frosty-prophet-on-tour bit, there was an element of Freaky Friday-ness too where the normally collected Barb was almost comically unhinged (crab legs anyone?). She acted a whole lot like the once-flighty Margene who, by contrast, was amusingly the calm and rational one. Adding to this kettle of strangeness was the “bird watching” Alby, who was dryly humorous when he went cruising for guys in a park and wound up hooking up with the man who, he’d later learn, had been selected to serve as Juniper Creek’s trustee.
Throw into the mix those birds and the uber-odd convertible car courtship between Lois and Frank — who, when they’re not trying to kill one another, are dating and going out for ice cream — and I felt a lot like the casino employees who rolled their eyes when Bill sanctimoniously prattled on about the struggles of their people. As much as I’m a fan of Big Love, this premiere felt shallow and too chock-full of weirdness. After deeply moving episodes last season –where Barb was excommunicated, the road trip where Sarah lost the baby – the tenor of this episode threw me. Was this a good or a bad omen for the fourth season? Let’s ask the frozen prophet and see what he says.
Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Jan 12, 2010 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
