I still think they’ve just abandoned any hope of making Bill likeable, but they’ve dangled enough intrigue for next season with Barb talking of living Bill for me to turn into next season.

And btw- what’s with this 9 episode season? I didn’t even realize this was the finale until I realized everything was done.

Was I thrilled that Adaleen was setting fire to JJ at the end–or simply that the JJ mad-scientist-incest story was going up in flames? Doubtlessly the latter: good riddance!

So Bill gave Tommy the push? Good–maybe the casino story has been given the push, too.

And the writing helped–finally–to position some of these elements in relation to each other: the nightmarish power-struggles and patriarchal and eugenic delusions of polygamous cults are an aspect of the phenomenon of modern polygamy, but having Bill clearly state that these are the corruptions of the Principle he wishes to destroy so that his way of life can be presented in its (humanly flawed) innocence was, I thought, a powerful (if last-minute) framing of issues that had recently seemed out of writerly control.

And if there are still untied threads (the mad prophet scarring his wife’s cheek and scattering papers) and logical gaps, still–the final scene put the focus right back on the central family, and whether they are publicly presenting themselves as polygamous at the very moment when they are internally at their weakest as a unit. So the whole political plot and the family plot got honestly tied together, and the final image presented the family vulnerably exposed.

For me, this helped redeem Bill from his sins against whatsisname who took the fall for him; his public confession of polygamy took the wind out of Cissy Spacek’s antagonistic sails; with the side-stories more or less appeased, the focus is back on target and the suspense is back on the strength or weakness of this unconventional family.

Here’s hoping that there are some lessons learned by the writer/producers and an approaching season that will remember why we cared in the first place.

Although I agree with Mark that splitting focus from the Henricksons to the Ana-Goran-Margie family is unwise, I wouldn’t mind a momentary digression to a hot three-way. If they’re gonna go polyandry-everywhere on us, they could at least hotten things up some. It is HBO, after all.

Also annoying: putting the incest subplot into a mad-scientist framework. There’s enough real-life incest amongst these groups to explore without going all sci-fi. Next thing you know, one of the embryos will emerge as Mansquito!

Errant query: Where are Lois & Joey?

Minor detail: Closed captioning repeatedly rendered the doctor’s name as “Roquet”, which is funny when pronounced Rocket. Because, you know, it’s really *not* Rocket Science.