A quick review of last night's "Big Love" season finale coming up just as soon as I try on the dress you picked out for yourself... "You sad, stupid man." -Marilyn DenshamThere are several moments in "End of Days" where Bill is confronted with the hypocrisy, selfishness and destructiveness of his actions, first by Don, then by Marilyn, then by Barb. Considering what a monster the character has become, these should be satisfying moments of reckoning. But they're not, because Bill Henrickson is so lacking in any kind of self-awareness, so consumed with a belief system that, as Marilyn notes, is really "just another excuse for f--king around," that he's incapable of feeling shame or remorse. It doesn't matter if the wake-up call is coming from a hated enemy like Marilyn, or the best friend Bill betrayed, or his #1 wife - Bill had a testimony, and he's going to follow that no matter who gets hurt in the process, end scene.
And while I've been known to obsess on TV shows with reprehensible main characters who are incapable of learning or changing (Tony Soprano, to name one), those shows came with charismatic actors in those roles, and/or such assured storytelling around the anti-hero that I accepted the lack of growth as the price of admission. But as played by Bill Paxton, Bill is an incredibly bland and opaque main character. And as we've discussed in many previous weeks, the show's storytelling this year has become such a ridiculous mess - trying to stuff what felt like three seasons worth of plot and character arcs into a 9-episode bag - that I'm finding it hard to care about any of it.
The acting by many of the female castmembers (here the wives plus Melora Walters as Wanda and Mary Kay Place as Adaleen) is still great, even if the characters' journeys only sometimes make sense (Nicki's arc, in particular, was all over the map this year). That, plus my vague curiosity at seeing how much ruin descends on the family now that Bill has stupidly come out of the closet, may keep me watching through gritted teeth next season. But this year was a pretty spectacular creative failure, and I hope the creative team is more capable of learning from its mistakes than Bill is.
What did everybody else think?
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