Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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As we cast our minds across “End of Days,” the final episode of Big Love’s fourth season, let’s remember the third season of Six Feet Under and the third season of Lost.

Those were both middling years for otherwise excellent series. Those were the years that Nate suddenly had a wife and a bad haircut, and Jack had an unfortunate run-in with Bai Ling’s magical tattoos. Yet both shows rebounded. Six Feet Under produced the greatest final episode in the history of American television (yeah, I said it), and Lost is going out with a bang.

With that in mind, let’s assume that Big Love is going to emerge from the wreckage of this terrible season with a new sense of purpose.

But as we’re being hopeful, let’s also be frank: Girl, this show gone crazy. Can we get security?

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A truly enjoyable Oscar ceremony needs to be both a carefully planned event and a hotbox of spontaneity. We need to simultaneously see the polish of professional artistry and the messiness of raw emotion. That way, we can experience the enjoyment of watching an excellent film and the delight of remembering that the talented people who make excellent films are just doofuses like the rest of us.

I’d say last night’s Oscar ceremony succeeded on both fronts.

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Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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In the season’s penultimate episode, “Next Ticket Out,” writer Patricia Breen lays Bill’s cards on the table in this conversation with Ana:
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Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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I feel Big Love changing, and while I’m not quite ready for a divorce, our marriage is certainly in trouble.

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By DOUG STRASSLER

If someone were to ask me my favorite TV show of all time, there’d be a long list of shows that tie for the number 2 position (or, in the spirit of the current Olympics, take home the silver): series as diverse as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Family Ties, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, St. Elsewhere, and The Wire would all have to share space on the podium.

However, there’s one show that has held a firm grip on the gold medal for two decades now: Twin Peaks, David Lynch’s haunting, irreverent and sadly short-lived concept series set in the woods of the Northwest. More than any other show I have ever seen, Peaks created a world and a mystique of its own. Even when the initial “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” mystery was resolved, I remained glued to the show, so unique was its community of characters.

Of the cast, Kyle McLachlan, Piper Laurie and Sherilyn Fenn received the most attention, but it’s another actress that caught my eye – largely because of her own two bulging orbs. Yes, I write this IPO in honor of Grace Zabriskie, a fantastic character actress who has flown under the radar for the last thirty years.

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Here are my thoughts, questions, and concerns about the current season of The Office. What are yours?

(1) Is anyone else disturbed by the subplot that has Ryan and Dwight hatching a sinister plot to destroy Jim’s life? It’s just so nasty. The show has always been rife with petty hostility, but it emerged in ways that were just goofy enough to be harmless and/or endearing. Creed’s bug-eyed freakishness, for instance, is too cartoonish to seem dangerous.

But when Ryan and Dwight get together, they’ve got a hard edge. They talk about murdering Jim. About stealing his personal information. And something in Rainn Wilson and B.J. Novak’s performances don’t let us off the hook.  They seem like they really mean it and that their vengeance could actuallybe wrought. It’s unsettling.

If the show’s emotions and motives are going to feel honest, then I want them to romantic emotions or empathetic motives. Jim and Pam’s love? Yes. Michael’s loneliness? Sure. Live it up. That lets me feel connected to and reflected in the show. When I sense real threats of violence emerging, however, I get freaked out. This is not the escape I look for in The Office.

Also, this subplot might bother me less if the violent threats were directed against Meredith or Creed or Angela. Again, those characters are just exaggerated enough that I don’t quite believe in them as real people. When Meredith gets attacked by that bat, then it’s kind of like watching Wile E. Coyote fall off a cliff: You know it’s not real.

Jim, however, seems much more actual. You threaten him, and you kind of threaten me. Not cool, sitcom! Not cool!

(2) On the flip side, I’m loving the Erin/Nard-Dog romance, even though the circumnstances are totally unrealistic.   I do not believe that a real man would ever buy his crush every item on the 12 Days of Christmas list, and I do not believe that a grown American woman wouldn’t recognize Snoopy and Woodstock on a Valentine’s Day card. However, I do believe these things about Andy and Erin because they are played with such commitment. The actors make their wild situations feel authentic.

What’s the lesson of these two bullet points? I think it’s that The Office always works best when it’s balancing perfectly on the line between the actual and the exaggerated, but if it falls over that line in either direction, I want it to be in the service of love-or-kindess-related plotline. Again, I don’t want that from every show, but that is what I want from this one.

(3) I love Kathy Bates as the ball-busting, big-haired CEO who now owns Dunder-Mifflin. I hope this character gets her own spinoff series that then becomes a movie, and I hope Bates wins a second Oscar for it.

(4) Bring back the cute boy in the warehouse! Oscar needs a date!

Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

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After the overpacked clown car that was last week’s installment, “Under One Roof” is a relief. There’s still a whole lot of shakin’ goin’ on, but it’s easier to tell whose hips are whose.

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So before I get to today’s topic, I have to tell you a story about middle school, moderate activism, and my mom.

You see, I was always a… well… a hyper-vigilant student. Like, why get a 95 on a test when you can get a 102? And when I was in seventh grade, there was this thing where none of the teachers in the honors classes were coordinating with each other, so they were all assigning big projects and tests and book reports at the same time. There would be several weeks of nothing major followed by two weeks of BOOMBOOMBOOM. And for me, this was not good. It meant that I was basically working nonstop. And I know, I know… that’s how it is in college and grad school, but when you’re twelve, it’s a little overwhelming. So my mom, a veteran teacher herself, actually called one of my teachers to mention thi scheduling problem, and guess what? The teacher agreed with her. Whoa! And the logjam broke up for the rest of the year. It was possible to good work in all my classes without going insane.

I bring this up because I would like my mom (or someone like her) to call the TV networks and explain that we’ve got a similar situation right now with the programming schedule.

See, I consider myself the member of a fairly targetable demographic—I like smart, well-written shows with either a modicum of gay appeal or a hefty amount of pandering to my college-educated sensibilities. What’s more, I like to watch television. Hell, since I’ve got a DVR and the ready-made excuse that I “watch TV for my work,” I like to watch too much television. I’m the hyper-vigilant A-student of watching television, so if something looks good or critically acclaimable or hot-boy-filled, I will give it a shot.

Even better for the networks, I’m fairly easily pleased, and if I dig a show, I will keep watching.

But since I’m giving the networks so much, can’t they honor my commitment by backing off me a little bit? Right now, the following shows that I like-to-love are all airing new episodes:

Lost
RuPaul’s Drag Race
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked
The Amazing Race
Project Runway
Models of the Runway
30 Rock
The Office
Shear Genius
Ugly Betty
Community
Modern Family
Big Love
and the Winter Olympics

What the hell, people? Add in the March return of Flash Forward and Law & Order anda brother cannot catch a break. I do like to do other things, you know? I like to go out once in a while. See a friend. See a movie. Reflect quietly. Read. Couldn’t the networks space this shit out a little bit? Wouldn’t it be better for them and for me if they gave me some breathing room? At the very least, couldn’t the next Amazing Race have waited until after the Olympics?

Thanks to this overload, I’ve already dropped lesser favorites like Shear Genius and Ugly Betty, and it’s not looking good for RuPaul’s Drag Race: Untucked, frankly. But I wish I didn’t have to make these choices.

Is this a failure of scheduling from TV land? Is it an unavoidable byproduct of there being so many channels now? Is it the happy conundrum of a TV culture that’s delivering so much great material? Am I crackpot for complaining, when really I should just be turning the TV off entirely and spending more time contemplating the health care crisis?

Good questions, all. But all I know is that I’m frustrated because I want to stay pop culturally literate but I don’t want to spend my damn life in front of the TV. What’s a fella to do?

Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

It’s time to climb into the clown car, because “Sins of the Father,” the midpoint of Season 5, is a full-on Polygamy Circus.
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Welcome to Wife Watch!, the only blog post that ranks the most powerful wives on this week’s episode of Big Love.

I mean it as a compliment when I say that watching Big Love always makes me feel kind of sick. Like, I get so tense every week with all the drama and the fighting and the secret loving that I wonder if I should take an aspirin. Of course, that’s what I tune in for, and the latest installment, “The Mighty and the Strong,” certainly keeps me in chest pain.
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