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BIG LOVE!! HITCHCOCK!! DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH!! Herc’s Season-Box DVD Vault!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
All through the first season of HBO’s perfectly watchable bigamy drama “Big Love,” I was thinking this: If Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton) is so determined to ruin son-in-law and closeted-bigamist home-improvement czar Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), why not just out Bill as a bigamist?
I figured Roman couldn’t out Bill for some hidden reason Roman knew and Bill knew but viewers didn’t know yet. Turns out there was no reason. Roman apparently chose to out Bill when he did because it gave “Big Love’s” producers a big moment on which to end the series’ first season. Bah!
But still! For all “Big Love’s” logical and dramatic flaws, it still had enough “real stuff” to make for a fascinating look at all the wackiness going on out there in Utah, likely this nation’s reddest state.
And wacky it is. Mormons, who apparently do not look kindly upon caffeine and alcohol, pretty much run Utah. So in “Big Love” the wilder Mormon teens have to get loaded on bottles of cough syrup.
In real life, Mormonism was founded by a notorious polygamist, a guy named Joseph Smith (1805-1844). Smith said his practice of polygamy was God’s idea. As I understand it, Smith said if he didn’t marry all of his 30-odd wives simultaneously, God would kill him. (As it turned out The Almighty was the least of Smith’s worries; he was shot to death in Illinois by a huge mob of anti-Mormon activists.)
So bigamy became all the rage among the Mormons. Under the direction of church president Brigham Young (1801-1877), Orson Pratt in 1852 publicly announced that the church was practicing plural marriage under commandment of God. (A ballsy move; this was just four years after Mexico ceded to the U.S. the Great Salt Valley on which the Mormons had settled.)
Now get this. Today, Mormons disdain polygamy! They banned the practice in 1890. This is presumably because the nation’s (far more populous) monogamist Christians, who probably thought Brigham Young was a maniac, pressured the U.S government to outlaw polygamy via the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.
But many a diehard polygamist Mormon fundamentalist, rather understandably, called bullshit. Was the U.S. government now a higher authority than God Himself? They split from the church and segregated themselves from monogamist society. These fundamentalists are something akin to the fundamentalist sect that produced both Roman Grant and Bill Henricksen.
Anyone straddling that line between the Fundamentaist Mormanism and the government-approved “real” Mormonism is going to lead a complicated life, and probably an interesting one. “Big Love” has many interesting characters.
Chief among these is Roman, the fundamentalist uberbigwig with a penchant for new teen wives younger than his own grandchildren. Fascinating also is Rhonda Volmer (Daveigh Chase), Roman’s latest teen fiancée, a snotty brat who enjoys the prestige afforded by Roman’s interest but may secretly hope to use showbiz to flee Utah before the repulsive and elderly Roman can lay a paw on her.
Bill’s first wife, Barb (the wonderful Jeanne Tripplehorn, "The Firm"), grew up a regular Republican Mormon, but got sucked into Bill’s weirder world via a cancer scare. The management skills fostered by her teaching background serve her well in her post-monogamy life.
Bill’s second wife, Roman’s daughter Nicki (the wonderful Chloe Sevigny, "Boys Don't Cry"), was introduced as a major flake with a credit-card addiction, but as the series wore on we learned she was likeably steely and resourceful, and fearless in the face of adversity – whether that adversity be Roman’s menacing thug of a son (her own half-brother) or Barb’s judgmental sister.
Bill’s third and youngest wife, Margene (the wonderful Ginnifer Goodwin, "Walk the Line"), fascinates in part because she remained such an enigma even after the first season ended. Bill met her while she was working in his store, but her background seems to be neither Mormon nor Mormon fundamentalist, and she seemed at one point to be contemplative of throwing in with the monogamists across the street. So was it just Bill’s good looks that lured her into her strange circumstances, or is there more to it?
Fans of “Veronica Mars” might be willing to check out the series just for the young-adult supporting cast, which features in recurring roles Amanda Seyfried (Lilly Kane), Tina Majorino (Mac Mackenzie) and Kyle Gallner (Beaver Casablancas). (“Waterworld” fans will remember that a much shorter Majorino worked with Tripplehorn 11 years ago as well.)
Extras include cast-creator commentaries on three of he 12 episodes, plus a documentary on the series’ memorable and partially icebound title sequence.
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What happened to this? Didn't you say they would release this soon? I'm ever so confused.
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Whoever thought it would be a good idea to release ARK ][ on DVD should be hung from a ceiling...by his balls!
What's next, JASON OF STAR COMMAND season 1? -
"The Complete First TV season". Ah, as opposed to that "Complete First Radio Season" that's soon to be released on DVD I guess, huh?
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still scheduled for Dec. 19. Still not available for pre-order.
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...he's not as stellar a character as the masked men in this flick:
http://tinyurl.com/wraah -
Really sucks. Boring story, boring charactors. Will certainly not be watching any season 2.
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Nice little write-up on Mormonism. But I prefer Arthur Conan Doyle's version (you think the Mormon kids can read it?)
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muahahahahaha. nice one, Herc...
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What Waterworld fans?
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I see crayotic has also addressed this, but I wanted to chime in because I'm bored and have nothing to do but answer questions that have already been answered by crayotic. Roman was getting a cut from Bill's growing business.
Also, I would buy JASON OF STAR COMMAND if they released it on dvd. -
I dont own any season shows on DVD other then Simpsons 1.x. I think I will get Lost though.
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still looks like crap.
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That Six Feet Under? lol....what a blast. And the M*A*S*H and Alias and Law and Order box's look pretty inventive as well.
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Amen.
Oh, and God? Please do a crossover show with Showtimes Weeds and have Jeanne Tripplehorn make it with Mary-Louise Parker in some sort of MILF-straveganza.
...um, yeah, and save the starving children of the world and no more wars. Amen. -
I love the use of the Beach Boys "God Only Knows" on top of the images of Bill, his wives and all the Mormon/LDS imagery.Nicely done IMHOI especially love the bit where Bill finds his wives through the curtains and as he finds Margene she gives him a really cute smile.Also was anyone else intrigued by Margene's immature but sweet relationship with Ben(the one minute wonder! ;P)?P.S.Ginnifer Goodwin and Amanda Seyfried are hot! Tripplehorn is still quite nice also!
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Buahahahahahahahahahaha!Amen!
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Love everything except the gratuitous Bill Paxton ass-shots that seem to be in every episode. Still, makes me want to practice polygamy. Although I doubt my wife would go for it. She likes the ladies and all, but not enough to marry one.
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I too theorized that Roman might have too big an investment in the home improvement franchise to out Bill - but obviously this was not the case.
One wonders where the second season will go. Will Bill lose the business? Will he somehow deny the polygamy? Will he find new success serving the polygamist market? -
At first I thought it was her, since Roman outing them seems like a red herring. But now I'm not so sure. I think she is torn between her loyalty to Bill and his family, and her desperate need to gossip. Maybe it was Alby, calling from his hospital bed. Doubt that one though. I think Alby will kill Roman though, eventually. He's too fucked up.
Oh, and I hated Nicky for most of the season, until the last episode when she became a little less bitchy, and we saw that Chloe can look hot when she wants to. -
At long last, the best sitcom of all time, Twitch City, the complete series, is available for preorder from amazon.ca.
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Oct 17, 2006 1:46:04 PM CDT
Finally!..Saturday Night Live:the complete first season
by twitchinmonkey
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=6503
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Hercules continues to confuse "bigamy" with "polygamy". In Big Love, the portryal is of a family of polygamists--not Bigamists. The distinction is subtle, but there is a distinction. "Bigamists" are those who are legally married to one person and then go through the legal processes again to marry another person(s). Usually, both spouses--one legally, the other illegally--do not know about the other. "Polygamists" are those that are legally married to one spouse and ceremoniously married to others, without the legal processes that bigamists undertake. In a polygamist setting, the entire family is aware of the situation, and usually accepting of it.
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still no GvsE. who the hell is going to buy ArkII. its a horrible Damnation Alley knockoff.
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That show was bad ass. And where the hell is Duckman? I've been waiting for that shit for years too...
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The best L&O season ever, IMO. And the episode "Con-Text" took on the Church of Scientology long before South Park did. :)
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But it is on TV tonight, Can we discuss it?
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We want a VM TB NOW!!!!!!!P.S. Frak the Zone!!!
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St. Elsewhere on DVD? It's about time!
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One of the best shows on TV and it's being ignored.
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...and I always thought you guys were in the know...
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But not until both series are each reduced $30 or more less than what Amazon has them at now. Current price is a still a rip.
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Yeah, I feel the same way about the season sets for the new Who. $100 for 13 episodes? What the fuck is that? Even "discounted", it's still insane.
As for Friday Night Lights, it's being lauded by critics and ignored in droves by the public. Imagine that AICN would ignore it, too. *I* like it, though, but then I like a lot of shows that Herc doesn't seem to care for. -
Just remember, the $100 MSRP is going not only to BBC Worldwide, but also to Warner Home Video (the BBC's official distributor throughout all of the Americas) and in the U.S., a cut is also going to the SciFi Channel (a division of NBC Universal) as part of the agreement they made to televise the series. I wouldn't mind the prices if they were on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, but then again, the series ain't shot on HD to begin with.
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I'll believe its complete and unedited when I see it.
I watched that show since the first episode. A lot of people don't even know about the land of Gorch, or that before cutting to commercials they would put on screen a member of the audience with an embarrassing statement underneath (still don't know how this made it past the censors in 76-77 "Spells kunta kinte with a C"). And the "america needs a hum job editorial"
The show has become soooo conservative and safe compared to the good old days.
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Back in 1992 I had 9pm (?) dress rehearsal tickets to the episode with Christopher Walken and Arrested Development. The dress rehearsals are 2 hours vs. the 90 minute show. They use these to decide what sketches get the best audience reaction and get aired and what gets cut. I don't remember it very well after all these years, but I've never forgotten that there was one sketch that never made it to air. As I recall, Phil Hartman wa s giving a TV speech at a lecturn as Clinton, and as he's talking he starts doing things like pulling out alcoholic drinks while he's talking, maybe holding up and looking at porn, and then he ends up pulling out a joint and lighting it up... and then they cut away to George Bush (Carvey?) in bed waking up to discover he had only been dreaming it. (This was a couple of weeks before the election). I guess they didn't use it because they had the Carvey/Hartman sketch about Perot and Stockdale. Don't think they used it the next weekend and then the elction was over and the sketch out of date.
Somewhere in the vaults they must have tons of material that never made it, some of it bad, some good, but a lot with people like Belushi and Farley that might be worth seeing just for them.
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