Big Love Watch: Cat's Out of the Bag

Before you read this post, check that your office safe is securely locked, then watch last night's Big Love: 

If there's a consensus emerging about last night's Big Love—well, from the handful of conversations I've had about it so far—it is: How awesome that Nicki finally got exposed! And is it awesome. And also, how sad.

I get as fed up with Nicki as any Big Love viewer: the slithering, the hypocrisy, the excuse-making. And yet, the excuse-making, at least, is somewhat legitimate. No, nobody forced Nicki to go undercover for her father, much less to go out on a date with Ray. (Yes, Adaleen and Roman threatened to expose Bill and the family, but Nicki could have gone to Bill and her sister-wives with the information.) But it is true that she's in a situation of horribly divided loyalties—between family and compound, Bill and Roman, the secular world and the world she grew up in—and she was placed in that situation in the first place as, essentially, a token sealing a deal between Roman and Bill. It's infuriating that she can't choose, that she wants to have it both ways, but the situation is not totally of her making. 

If Nicki has a failing, it's that she can't look past her self-pity and realize that—no matter how unfair the decisions she's ben asked to make—she has to make them anyway. That, in fact, is one of Big Love's big themes about family life in general. It isn't fair.

Your siblings screw up and you have to help them out anyway. Ditto your kids. Your parents screw you up and you have to help them out—or you have to face up to them and make a clean break of it. Your mom ruins your childhood and you still have to find somewhere to put her ashes when it's all done. You do it not because it's fair or even because you can necessarily count on your family to do the same for you: you do it because you do it, and being able to get past the unfairness is the major test of adulthood. This, it seems, is part of what Barb tries to tell Sarah, during their conversation in the car about how, as painful as family can be, losing commitment to it makes you feel lost. That Nicki in that sense has never grown up may make her a villain, but it also makes her pitiable. 

Other work calls now, and so the hail of bullets is my friend: 

* "Wanda, if I had a dollar for every time I wished somebody I loved dead, I'd be the richest woman in the world." I sort of just want to post that line and make it my entire review. Because it is sort of the greatest line uttered on Big Love, ever. 

* As much as I loved that line, Lois' speech at the funeral seemed a little too suddenly wise and expansive for her, even though Grace Zabriskie sold the delivery; she is the matriarch, but I don't recall her ever having sounded that matriarchical before.

* That said, it was perfect that her moment should get stepped on by Roman's arrival. And while his appearance may have been inappropriate and tone-deaf—do polygamists have a concept similar to chutzpah?—I like that, even in his most sinister, hypocritical moments, Roman seems to sincerely consider himself a father to his people at the compound. He's a bad father, though, immediately using the occasion to spite Alby and Nicki) and making a show of benificence—saying of Joey, "We must minister to him, and we must forgive him"—as a way of deflecting the murder charge. All of which underscores Barb's message about real dedication to family. 

* The run-in between Bill and the Greenes: I'm afraid I've lost track of the math on this one. Bill got word that Alby had stolen the letter and sought to right his wrong. The Greenes were brought in by Roman to destabilize the compound and undermine Alby. So when they show up to extract the letter from Bill, they're acting on behalf of—Roman, is it? 

* So Roman did know Nicki pushed him!

* Are we to assume that Zeljko Ivanek is Nicki's long-lost first husband? Also, Heroes, House, True Blood, Damages—can anyone tell me what series he has not been on lately? Two and a Half Men, maybe? 

* I'm kind of disappointed we didn't get to see the scene inside Alby's house as Nicki came crawling to him—and his despised wife—with nowhere else to go. Also kind of glad.