high hopes

Just as I once had high hopes that this blog wouldn't look like it was designed by a precocious second grader who just discovered geometry and the magic of primary colors, so too I once had hope that anything on HBO wouldn't have a worse ending than Lost, which I think we all now realize was inspired directly by Hot Tub Time Machine and a giant butt plug. In fact, looking back, kudos to ABC for going there. Not many people do (unless you live in Alexyss K. Tyler's world...crystal snack.)

But whatever. Let's not relive that gigantic disappointment. Let's relive last Sunday's, instead, when Big Love ended in what can only be described as, "Wait, who is that and...nevermind, this whole season was ridiculous anyway considering, like Lost, it had no regard for the physics of the space-time continuum."

And here is where you may want to stop reading this and just go watch the rest of Alexysss K. Tyler's YouTube clips because, yes, there are spoilers here. So, if you plan to waste precious hours of your life watching this show even after I warned you, e-see ya later. Likewise, if you just don't give a sh*t about Big Love and don't care to read about why its last season was stupid, then leave, you honey badgers, because this blog ain't no snake in a tree for you.

Now, for those of you who remain, I'm going to assume you watched the show and saw Sunday's series finale. Great. Perhaps you can help me out here then: Besides Barb's storyline, how in hell did any of this season make sense? Specifically, what the hell was going on with the whole Margine, statutory rape thing? Didn't we learn from previous seasons that: 1) Margine worked at Home Plus for a number of years or at least a number of months before she met Bill, and 2) after she met Bill, didn't she then become his babysitter for another couple of years? That being said, if they got around to getting polygamist married to each other when she was only 16, wouldn't that have made her, um, 13 or so when she worked at Home Plus? Not to mention, there was one episode in which that curly-haired sad sack, son-of-a-dick annoying son of Bill's was at Home Plus and ran into some 35-year-old sleazeball who bragged to him about having made sex on Margine when she was an employee there. This means either everyone at Home Plus is a pervert or Home Plus doesn't comply with child labor laws. I mean, was she hired off the books? How is it even remotely possible that Bill didn't know her age? Did Margine have a fake ID the entire time? Or was he just a sick old pedophile? I guess maybe either of those are possibilitities, but I doubt it, which means under normal, presumed space-time conditions, Margine had to be at least 16 when she started at Home Plus, which would've made her probably 17 or 18 when she became the babysitter, and even older than that when they got polygamist married. That storyline just don't make nooooo sense. (Please intone that last sentence with the diction of Forrest Gump for full effect.)

So, I'll admit. When this Margine being underage thing first surfaced, I kind of knew this show was going to end badly. Considering the complete disregard for logic, I thought perhaps I was looking at yet another Hot Tub Time Machine-inspired ending, but instead we got something that was probably even worse -- the neighbor, who we've seen, what, all of six or seven times in the whole series, shoots Bill dead. OVER AN ARGUMENT STARTED ABOUT HIS LAWN. Uh...

The worst part is is that it wasn't even shocking. As soon as you see the neighbor approach Bill, you automatically think, "Yep, so he's probably just gonna shoot him." We hear, "Blah, blah, why you touchin' my lawn? Blah, blah and bang."

The wives come running out of the house, Bill suddenly radically changes his mind about everything he apparently ever stood for in his religion and dies. I'll admit I was relieved. For one, Bill was a huge dick and for another, this poor excuse for an HBO drama was about to end, meaning I would have more time now to get excited about another show that will inevitably end terribly, like [FILL IN ANY OTHER CURRENT AMERICAN TELEVISION SHOW].

But wait, I'm not done. So there we are, the wives are all hovering over Bill as he bleeds out. I guess the other 20 people in his houses didn't hear the series of gun shots, so they stayed inside. Doing what? Who knows. Meanwhile, not one of the wives thought, "Hey, maybe one of us should call 911," which, I guess, either means: 1) they're all complete idiots, or 2) they all secretly wanted him to die. I'm hoping for the latter.

Cut to "11 months later" (why not just make it an even year?) -- we see Margine with a horrible haircut for her face shape come in to announce she'd be leaving to go on volunteer overseas for a few months. Yay. Dreams. Meanwhile, we get the idea that Barb is now the spiritual leader of the family and even runs Bill's church, which also, for whatever inexplicable reason, somehow managed to gain the allegiance of all the compound people when their prophet Albie (the fifth best character in the show after Roman, Bill's mom, crazy compound Rhonda, and Very Truly Yours Hollis Green) went to prison (which, by the way, we learn not from any could've-been-so-great dramatic scene but from a casual mention of it from Bill to one of his wives or whoever). And what the f*ck? Why is anyone still associating with that stone-cold sociopathic bitch Nicki, let alone still "married" to her? Besides the best one-liners in the show, her character was horrible. I don't get it.

Not to worry, though, the two creators of the show recently let us in on the secret to understanding it all: it's all about feminism! Duh! Maybe if I wasn't just a dumb girl, I'd have understood. Or maybe I just preferred the first three seasons when the storyline actually made some sense, before the writers found an easy way to stop writing good lines for Bill's mom and gave her dementia, before the ridiculously fascinating Rhonda was downgraded to "single mom stripper," before the eldest daughter, Sara (the voice of reason on the show), left because the actress who played her was smart enough to get out before the show's two feminist male creators first jumped the shark, and then simply fed the show to it. Seriously, this season finale was about as fun as running into a piece of selachimorpha feces while you're snorkeling.

And while I'm pretty sure, my mind is made up where Big Love falls on my television scale of watchability (probably right between The Little Chocolatiers and Animal Hoarders), I'd invite arguments from the other side. Specifically, I'm looking for someone who thinks he or she can justify the Margine storyline. If you can and you're convincing, I'll promise never to mention Animal Hoarders again. Hell, I'll even move Big Love up in my rankings and put it between Facts of Life reruns and Geico commercials. So, what'dya say? Did you watch?