Three's Company

By James Poniewozik

The makers of HBO's Big Love, about a Utah man with three wives, say their drama is about the strains and compromises of family--times three. And sure, you want to know about that. But mainly you want to know: How does he ... you know ... ?

The answer: Viagra. Lots of it. But stamina is only one problem that Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) has. He keeps his wives Barb, Margene and Nicki (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin and Chloe Sevigny) in adjacent houses, where they run the extended household jointly but harbor simmering jealousies. ("Officially," he tells Margene when she asks if he missed her, "I miss you guys all the same.") He has to keep the arrangement semisecret because polygamy is illegal in Utah and banned by the mainstream Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Oh, and one of his fathers-in-law (Harry Dean Stanton), the patriarch of a fundamentalist polygamist compound, is shaking him down for a cut of his hardware business. The Osmond family these Utahans ain't.

For a network as blue-state-oriented as HBO (each of its current sitcoms, for instance, is about show business), Big Love is a surprising detour to the reddest of the red states. In the drama, which debuts in summer 2006, characters declare their faith as easily as those on Deadwood swear. Co-creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, neither of whom is Mormon, say they were interested in the conflict within Bill, who came from a polygamist compound but now lives in the mainstream suburbs of Salt Lake City. The fundamentalists, says Olsen, see the LDS Church "as sellouts and apostates." Mainstream Mormons, he adds, "wish the compounds would go away."

Some of them feel the same about Big Love. The church banned polygamy in 1890 and regards it as a source of wife and child abuse. The church is concerned, says spokesman Michael R. Otterson, about the show's "making polygamy the subject of entertainment." But Scheffer says, "This show is not really about polygamy, in the same way that The Sopranos is not really about the Mob." Except that Tony Soprano only has one family at home--to handle three, that takes real guts. And a little blue pill.