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List Price: $59.98 | | Label: Hbo Home Video
Salesrank: 1828
Released: October 17, 2006 |
| Our Price: $29.69 |
| Used Price: $21.96 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Think having three wives is a dream come true? Think again. HBO presents the new contemporary drama series that tells the story of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), a practicing polygamist who lives in suburban Salt Lake City with his three wives and seven children. An independent businessman who runs a growing chain of hardware stores, Bill faces a myriad of challenges in meeting the emotional, romantic and financial needs of his wives Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) while dealing with their kids, three adjoined houses, an ever-mounting avalanche of bills, and the opening of his newest hardware store.
DVD Features:
3D Animated Menus
Audio Commentary
Featurette
Description of Big Love - The Complete First Season:
Big Love, HBO's newest buzzworthy series, recalls Groucho Marx's blithe proposal to two women in Animal Crackers. "Why, that's bigamy," one of the women exclaims. Groucho responds, "Yes, and it's big of me, too." But Bill Henrickson's (Bill Paxton) situation is hardly a laughing matter. Bill is a modern-day polygamist who lives in suburban Salt Lake City with his seven children and three "sister-wives": Barbara (Jeanne Tripplehorn, never better), the more mature anchor of the household; Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), who spitefully refers to her as "Boss Lady"; and recent addition Margene (charming Ginnifer Goodwin), insecure and childlike. A series that puts a human face on polygamy is brimming with prurient possibilities. Big Love's first two episodes are veritable commercials for Viagra, as Bill struggles to keep up with the demands of his spouses, with whom the sleeping arrangements are strictly scheduled. But once this more sensational aspect of "plural marriage" is dealt with, Big Love moves on to focus on the emotional, spiritual and financial pressures that beset Bill and his families. As the dreamlike opening credit sequence (scored to the Beach Boys' ethereal "God Only Knows") illustrates, Bill is a man on thin ice. He is carrying mortgages on three adjoining homes. A home-improvement store entrepreneur, he has just cut the ribbon on his second store and is planning a third. His wives, not immune to jealousies, vie for dominant position. And then there's Roman (Harry Dean Stanton; and any series that puts this venerable character actor and hipster saint in our homes on a weekly basis deserves our big love), the sinister leader of an outlaw fundamentalist compound, who has an escalating disagreement with Bill over the repayment of his loan that helped Bill build his fledgling empire ("There's man's law," he states ominously, "and there's God's law").
There are further complications that make Big Love so compelling. Bill suspects that his raw-nerved mother (Grace Zabriskie) may be poisoning his father (Bruce Dern). Nicki is a shopaholic accruing nearly $60,000 in credit-card debt. Overtures by new neighbors threaten to expose Bill's unorthodox and illicit living arrangements. The polygamy factor puts a subversive spin on traditional matrimonial melodrama. When Nicki plans her son's disastrous birthday party, her list of "immediate family" tops 150. When Roman, who is Nicki's father, arrives, Bill proclaims he is not welcome in his "homes." As with Rome, Big Love may require a little patience. But this fascinating portrayal of a shadowy subculture, the intelligent writing, and the estimable ensemble will soon make you feel like part of the families. --Donald Liebenson
Big Love - The Complete First Season Reviews:
Shocking but funny 
2009-11-24 - The closest I could compare this show to is to Sex in the City except this show has a different twist, in that there's a man with 3 wives. All of them know about each other and of course there is drama. This show really shocked me. Sure there is family oriented things in there but it's lets say, Rated R style. There's sex although not too much nudity, there's DRAMA like jealousy between the wives, and who gets to screw the husband on which night, etc. There's more to the show of course, but those parts pretty much spiced up this show and in a funny and interesting way.
Not paying attention to this show was a mistake
2009-10-08 - I had heard about this show, but never paid attention to it until last week when a friend insisted I watch it. I got this DVD set and couldn't stop.
I have to confess, in the past, I never was a Bill Paxton fan and was really dubious that he would bring the show down. But to my surprise he didn't! Not only is the writing exceptional, but the acting is outstanding. You may not agree with how the character's choose to live, but you begin to care about them immediately. That is a mark of a brilliant TV show.
Love Big Love
2009-09-21 - Knowing that five round, flat, DVDs, resplendent in their shiny like-new package await me when I come home from a grueling day at work make the hours tick by just a little faster. At 17:00 it's hit the road, race into the house, pull down the shades so my neighbors don't know I'm home and don't find reasons to knock on my door, and kick back with My Friends The Polygamists - Barb, the quintessential housewife whose missing screw is never seen but you know it must be there, Nicki from outer space, always maneuvering, never smiling, and cute-as-a-button 23 year-old Margene with her cheer leader on acid personality and their husband Bill, Mr. Alpha-Male. Throw in the aliens from the FDLS compound and you have a winning combination, a family drama not fit for the family, liberally spiced with all the love, warmth, and caring you'd expect in a typical suburban cult family. Bottom line: I love Big Love.
A sly exposure of the Mormon cult 
2009-09-20 - There is no way that you can watch this show without understanding that, couched in this quirky "family" comedy-drama, is a scathing indictment of the Mormon cult and the sub-cult of polygamy that still exists within it. (Section 132 of Doctrine and Covenants is officially subtitled this way: "Revelation given through Joseph Smith the Prophet, at Nauvoo, Illinois, recorded July 12, 1843, relating to the new and everlasting* covenant, including the eternity of the marriage covenant, as also plurality of wives.")
Harry Dean Stanton's character, Roman, is patterned directly on the Mormon "prophet" Joseph Smith, who nowadays would be rightly known as a charlatan and a creepy child molester. In the episode where Roman explains to a couple of news reporters, via a mural, the history of Mormonism, he's telling the exact truth: It is a cult of personality, founded upon the ludicrous belief in certain "golden tablets" unearthed and "interpreted" -- via "sacred spectacles"(!) -- by the child molester/polygamist Joseph Smith. There's just no way around it, because that's what they profess to believe. Roman merely goes the whole nine yards in his Mormon fundamentalism. Sure, the Mormon church has tried to distance itself from its roots, because they know full well how bizarre it is to non-cultists. They'd rather sweep it under the rug and focus on so-called "family values".
It's scary, weird, very sad and, yes, painfully comical to see grown adults in the 21st century embracing any of this. The characters are all acting from within this cult mindset, and the actors do an excellent job.
*Well, perhaps not so "everlasting", as the Mormons deferred (officially, anyway) to the Federal government as it threated to withhold statehood for Utah. Similarly, and more recently, a "revelation," saying blacks would no longer be denied the Mormon priesthood, was given to Mormon leaders when the federal government became involved.
quick delivery time
2009-06-28 - I ordered this product and received it in less than a week. It was in excellent condition.
