Big Love

It's been three years since Big Love first premeired on HBO, and I've finally started watching it. I've been hacking it off the internet for the past eight days now, and I've gotten through the first nine episodes of Season One.

Wow. What a show. The character development is amazing. Everything about it is just so incredibly well done.

In case you're not in the know, Big Love is that show about polygamists in Utah. Interesting concept, right? Well, it makes polygamy seem kind cool and not any more dysfunctional than a traditional family (at least the modern polygamists, not the ones at the compound... they crazy). They all just seem so happy with their family situation that consists of three wives, one husband, and seven children between them.

Who are we to judge whether that is right or wrong? I mean, Kevin Federline is the father of several kids with different mothers, and nobody cares about that. I repeat: NOBODY CARES ABOUT KEVIN FEDERLINE. Why should our society be so quick to judge the lives of polygamists (not the ones that are marrying the 14-year-old girls, but, you know, the "normal" ones), if we're not judging the sex life of K-Fed? Of course, polygamy is not a lifestyle that I would choose, but I would also choose not to have sex with Kevin Federline.

Speaking of sex, they sure do have a lot of sex on this show. I think Bill Paxton's naked butt has made an appearance in at least eight of the nine episodes that I've seen. He just really, genuinely loves all of his wives, and they really, genuinely want to have sex with him. Seeing them have that much sex makes me want to have sex more with my husband. (On a sidenote: I wonder if I ever watched clown porn if that would make me want to have sex with clowns?)

The only thing about the show that seems a little bit off is the characterization of the teenage boys in the show. I mean, do teenage boys really talk about boners THAT much (if so, I would fit right in, hardee, har, har)? There was one scene where a teenaged boy was pretending to steer the car with his hard-on (and he was in the car with a bunch of other boys). I don't get it. Unless that's how kids now-a-days are acting. It's been awhile since I've been a teenager, and it's been even longer since I've been a teenage boy, so I don't really know.

Matt Saracen

There was this amazing scene in Friday Night Lights this week. (Occasionally, I will get struck by the awesome-ness of a certain scene in a movie or television show, as I've done before, and the scene will resonate with me for weeks / years to come... this was one of those times).

In the scene, Matt Saracen was looking through the window of the house that he shared with his mom and grandma, and they were quietly arguing over whether they should get a new television set. Awesome, right?

Okay. Maybe you had to be there. But it was so poignant because he was thinking of leaving town and leaving them, and the scene just showed how ready he was to do that, and how trivial his life in Dillon had become.

And then, at the end of the show, he left town and that made me very, very sad because I've had a crush on Matt Saracen since the first episode. He reminds me of Vernon. And Matt's relationship with the coach's daughter reminds me of my high school relationship with Vernon. Their relationship brought me back to my old courting days with Vernon, back when we were both weird little teenagers with nothing better to do than to talk about Margaret Cho's new TV show, All-American Girl. Oh, them were the days. Them were the days.