Snarky Show of the Week--Big Love

I really need to escape from the insanity of the news, and the pandemic, so I’m streaming like mad, seeking addictive shows or great movies that help me get through the day--or night.

This is the midweek what-to-watch edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.

I plan to recommend at least one series or movie a week, old or new.  The only requirement is that it must have at least one or more older characters in a prominent role.     

Here’s an offbeat favorite of mine you may have missed:

Big Love.   Five seasons on HBO

Quirky, weird, darkly funny but simultaneously touching, Big Love is the juicy story of a polygamous family in suburban Salt Lake City striving to fit in with their typical suburban family neighbors.   With one husband, three or four wives, three houses, a common backyard, and countless kids, they’re desperate to be one of the Joneses.

 Bill Paxton plays Bill Hendrickson, the paterfamilias, an everyman who wants to do the right thing but is constantly stymied in his aspiration to be a pillar of the community.

Bill, a businessman who owns a hardware chain, struggles to support them all and simultaneously overcome his dark roots—his past in a fundamentalist Mormon cult reminiscent of the FLDS led by Warren Jeffs—which keeps coming back to haunt him.

The most fun characters are the older generation at the remote Juniper Creek compound where Bill grew up and where teenage girls in long pastel dresses are forced to marry much older men.  There’s an evil Warren Jeffs-type leader played by the demonically riveting Harry Dean Stanton, who  hatches convoluted plots, including murder, to eliminate his rivals, many of whom are members of his own family.  At the same time Bill’s unhinged parents, played by veteran actors Bruce Dern and Grace Zabriski try to kill each other in ever more deranged ways—interrupting Bill’s busy life with constant calls to save them from each other.  

Nikki, played by the brilliant Chloe Sevigny, is my favorite wife-- the bad girl you love to hate.  Her sly and manipulative character insists on not fitting in by wearing prairie dresses and braids while spreading gossip about the other wives and trying to pressure recalcitrant Bill back into the fundamentalist fold where they both grew up. 

The tension--and comedy--comes from the family’s desperation to pretend they’re ordinary suburbanites.  The irony is that in many ways they are—except they have more laundry--and more murderous relatives.   

Great writing and acting make for many seasons of addictive fun.

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Snarky Senior" is for those of us who qualify for a senior discount, but aren’t content with the crap we can buy with it. Subscribe for an irreverent take on life, culture, media, aging, health, politics and everything else about aging as a rebel—with or without a cause.  Snarky Senior will send you short takes and deeper dives on the humiliations and ironies of aging in America.