More about Big Love

It's late so I won't say much.

But I want to mention that one thing I love about Big Love is how close to the perfect the scripting is around issues of family dysfunction and healing.

In the latest episode, Nicki says point blank to her husband. "I get so angry about how we were raised sometimes. I wish I could be more like you." He says, "Well you can't hang on to the past, you just have to move on." To which she replies. " I don't think I can, there's something in me that's damaged."

She says this calmly, while cuddling with her spouse in front of a movie. It's not frought or complicated. She's not making a cry for help, she's just talking about how she feels with her spouse. It's simple, and as far as I am concerned it's accurate. She's also saying. I am not going to move on like you Bill, which is foreshadowing for what's to come in the episode.

Viewers invest a lot of emotion in characters they empathize with, and I like that the people writing this series are letting us watch Nicki grow and evolve instead of just keeping the characters at an emotional fever pitch all the time.

I mean yes, the melodrama still happens and this episode was no exception. But it's in the small scenes that the characters get to show what goes on in their heads.

Kudos to the writers for making Nicki's head a note perfect rendition of a child from dysfunction learning to own her feelings.

Nicki and Bill's little conversation ties into another excellent part of this episode with respect to character psychology.

After Bill tells Nicki she needs to leave the past behind, she goes and does the exact opposite; dressing like the angry teen to crash her mother's second sealing (mormon marriage) to Nicki's own fucked up and terrifying ex-husband JJ.

There, completely to her horrified surprise, she discovers that JJ is attempting to marry their teen daughter to a man who already has 6 other wives, something Nicki had expressly forbade him to do.

Nicki was herself married to JJ 15 years earlier, before reaching the age of majority, while her mother (currently betrothed to JJ the bastard) watched and did nothing.

Nicki finds her daughter scares the shit out of JJ with an awesome "furious mom don't fuck with me or I'll kill you" 3 second of fury and gets her daughter the fuck out of dodge. All while dressed as an angry teen.

Thus disproving Bill's exhortion that to heal you have to leave the past behind. As Nicki rightly suspected sometimes you have an obligation to keep your fucked-up past with you, somehow, no matter how unfortunate or sad, so you can help keep the people you love from having one of their own.

That's the hardest part of growing up with dysfunction, learning to accept the dumb strength that comes from having a history you can't leave behind.

Dumb, as in mute, as in incomprehensible, as in doing things you don't understand until after you've done them, and then realizing "oh that was self-preservation", "that was fighting back", "that was escape", or even "that was showing love".

I can't even explain it. Ask Nicki why she dressed up like a teenager to crash her moms wedding, thus managing to rescue her daughter, she probably doesn't really know. Her feelings know but they aren't telling.

Keep up the good work Big Love.

That rant probably made no sense, but it's 1:00am so fuck it.