Big Love: The Complete Fourth Season
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bill Paxton, Chloe Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Jean TripplehornBrand: Warner
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Box set, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 517 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2011-01-04
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Hbo Home Video
Movie Reviews of Big Love: The Complete Fourth Season
Movie Review: Big Love--Bill Paxton Is Simply Terrific
Summary: 5 Stars
Bill Paxton as the polygamist Mormon in this series has driven me absolutely crazy for four seasons. I always want to reach inside of the television and start choking him for the crazy things he does. This season he pushed my buttons even more. He decides to run for political office, of all things, with the express idea of going public about being a polygamous Mormon at his victory speech with his multiple wives and children beside him. "You idiot," I scream at my TV, "how can you be so stupid?!" But this is Paxton's brilliance. He has completely caught someone who is in the continuous, rapt thrall of obsessive religious belief. He is humorless, which is true of all zealots, because he never steps outside of its thrall for even a second. It absolutely controls every aspect of his life. He laments his early beginnings as a lost boy, thrown out of his outlaw Mormon compound, and mistakenly believes he has recovered from all of that. He has never recovered from being raised at a cult religious encampment. What he's done is try to transplant the cult to new soil, mainstream USA life. He plays the character as rather one dimensional and robotic because someone who is in a state of rapturous religious zeal IS one dimensional!
The other characters revolve around him. He is the head so what he says goes. However, he has thrown three wives together, all of whom have his children. They live and function as a unit. Like women everywhere who are cast into subordinate positions from which they can never emerge, they scheme around him. Oh boy, do they scheme. While he has his eye constantly on the prize, being united with heavenly father in paradise with this huge family, the wives jockey for position, power, and play all ends against the middle. If they believe in the end destiny, that takes a very subordinate position to daily contention with the here and now.
Then there is the true horror: when you take on multiple spouses, you take on multiple in-laws. Just imagine having to cope with multiple sets of in-laws instead of just one set. One absolutely needs religious zeal to take on that component of this lifestyle.
Summary of Big Love: The Complete Fourth Season
For years, Bill Henrickson wished for a world free from the corrupt ?prophet? of Juniper Creek, Roman Grant. Now that Roman appears to be out of the picture, Bill and his family can breathe easy ? or can they? Hold tight for the fourth season of the iconic, Emmy®- and Golden Globe®-nominated Big Love.For viewers new to HBO's acclaimed series Big Love, starting with these nine episodes (on three discs) from the fourth season may be like jumping aboard a moving passenger train--there are many strange folks around, and there's a lot going on, so it may take a while to find your footing. (Fortunately, the boxed set includes episode synopses, "previously on" and "next on" teasers, a look back at the first three seasons, and brief "Inside the Episode" bits in which cocreators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer discuss the key elements of each new chapter.) Of course, old hands will already be familiar with the many trials and tribulations of Mormon businessman Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), his three wives (Jeanne Tripplehorn as Barb, Chloë Sevigny as Nicki, and Ginnifer Goodwin as Margene), and a brood of children now approaching double figures. The family's nemesis (and Nicki's father), "prophet" Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), is out of the picture early on, but a scary new villain emerges in the form of JJ (Zeljko Ivanek), a skeletal, hollow-eyed schemer and Nicki's ex-husband, who, for starters, marries her mother and connives with her brother Alby (Matt Ross). And there are numerous other story lines to follow, as Bill and his Native American partners struggle to get their new casino going; Bill contemplates a run for political office, hoping to use that bully pulpit to convince his constituents that polygamy isn't so bad after all (and outing himself in the process); two of the wives struggle with carnal temptations offered by other men; Bill's loony parents (Bruce Dern and Grace Zabriskie) become involved in smuggling exotic birds from Mexico; and on and on.
Many of these situations are patently absurd, and the tone of the show--satirical but not parodic; amusing but not in the least sit-commy--often follows suit. But there are serious issues here as well; aside from polygamy, the stigma of being gay and Mormon male is handled with considerable poignance. As usual, the performances are excellent (Oscar winner Sissy Spacek appears as a Washington lobbyist in several episodes), as are the writing and direction. And even if many adherents agree that this is not the series' finest season, Big Love is sui generis; the fact that there's nothing else like it out there is by itself a good reason for watching. --Sam Graham
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