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?

We know the biggest problem, of course: Overkill. Too much stuff happening in too little time led to unconvincing writing, unsatisfying plots, and unrecognizable characters. It also forced the show to focus on conflict-conflict-conflict. Every week, that were so many events that the series had little time for tender, quiet, or funny moments that didn’t directly forward the plot.

As it turns out, those moments make the show. Without them, we get nothing but people screaming at each other, and who wants to watch that? If there’s no love in Big Love, if there’s no tenderness or joy, then there’s really nothing to hang on to.

God! Listen to me! It’s like I’m talking to a divorce lawyer. “Well, we were fighting all the time, and then one morning I realized that fighting was all we had. I know that we used to love each other, but I can’t remember how that used to feel.”

So… yeah. Here’s hoping the show pulls it together next year and lets people care about each other again.

That could happen, I think. After all, this episode puts a stop to an awful lot of nonsense. Adaleen is a strong contender for first wife, simply because she kills off the useless J.J. and his Bewigged Bride.

Except… really? That’s how she kills them? After spending several days strapped to a gurney and being pumped with medication, she’s strong enough to tie up two adults and set them on fire? Don’t be surprised if she starts next season by building a Buick with her bare hands.

And what about her motive for killing them? Apparently, J.J. has been harvesting eggs from his sister (Wanda) and daughter (Cara Lynn), mixing them with his own sperm, and then implanting the incest-by-proxy embryos into the wombs of other women. Adaleen is carrying a Wanda-J.J baby, and before Adaleen stops them, J.J. and his crony Dr. Rocket are about to implant a J.J.-Cara Lynn embryo into Nicki. If they had succeeded, then Nicki would’ve been carrying a baby belonging to her own daughter and ex-husband.

So… sure. I can understand Adaleen’s desire for revenge. But why didn’t she just call Wolverine to come kill J.J.? Why didn’t she steal the ring from Frodo and use it to turn her tormentors into dust? I mean, this entire story is so ludicrous that the show might as well introduce super heroes and magic.

Ugh. Enough. Let’s move on to the casino subplot because… zzzzz.

What? Oh! Sorry. It made me fall asleep. Because you see, Tommy’s niece is the girl that Barb hit with her car, and the kid is dealing meth at the casino, and Tommy and his father have been overlooking it, and now Bill got them ejected from the casino’s board and… zzzzz.

I know this hullabaloo is important to the characters, but it just feels so tangential. It’s telling, I think, that every time Barb and Bill discuss the casino, Barb says something like, “You’re leaving me alone up there. Don’t you care about our buisness?” In other words: The casino is not fully integrated into the show.

However, by practically living on the rez, Barb has found an independent streak, and her show-closing announcement that she doesn’t need Bill anymore is one of the best-acted moments of the season. We’ve seen her betrayal—she reported Bill’s baby with Ana to the local news—coming for weeks, but it’s nice that she finally steps up and does something. She’s positioned to be very powerful next year, and I hope the writers push this story. It’s actually about the family, and that’s what I want to see.

I’m not sure I want to see more of Marge’s new family, though. But maybe I do. I’m divided. On one hand, I don’t have the emotional room for an Ana-Goran-Marge triangle. On the other, it’s interesting that Ana, who has judged the Henricksons,  is now in her own quasi-polygamous relationship. This could keep my attention, but since Ana has always felt like an interloper, I’m dubious.

I am convinced by Nicki’s new hairstyle, however. She ends the season with a new look, a new attitude, and a new understanding of why she can’t go back to the Juniper Creek lifestyle ever again.  Will these changes take? Will she ever be comfortable as a “modern woman?” Will Bill’s public announcement of his polygamy help or hinder her?

Nicki has put herself in a position to ask those questions from a place of strength. Barb and Marge also take bold steps in this episode, but they take them away from the core Henrickson family. Nicki takes a bold step toward it. With that, she gains a unique type of power, and she is the season’s final First Wife.

I’ll see you next season for more hijinks. Even in these trying times, your thoughtful and engaging comments have made it a pleasure to think and write a bout this show week after week. And if you can’t wait for the return of Wife Watch!, then look my for second round of True Blood recaps to start this summer.

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.

On the polished side, producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic turned in a reasonably tight show that dispensed with a lot of musty traditions. Did anyone  miss the speech from the Academy president? Or the walk-across from the accountants? I didn’t. And I appreciated seeing scenes from the previously-taped ceremony for the lifetime achievement winners. The clips from that laid-back party were much more enjoyable than some stuffy, three-minute speech on Oscar night, and I’ll bet the honorees had more fun getting drunk with their friends than shuffling to a microphone.

Taking the large view, I also appreciated the overall tone that Shankman and Mechanic created. They didn’t take the show too seriously, but they teased it with love instead of bitter sarcasm. That attitude was summed up by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin’s laid-back opening. Like droll comedians from the Dean Martin days, they fired pleasant zingers at the crowd and each other, and you got the impression that they were really enjoying it.

This is a benefit of having Hollywood insiders host the show. A John Stewart or a Chris Rock is professionally defined defined by his outsider attitude, which means he pretty much has to maintain that stance for the Oscars. That invites a cooler-than-thou dismissiveness that makes watching the show less fun. (This essay notes explains why that’s true.)

An Ellen Degeneres, meanwhile, is professionally positioned as everyone’s goofy friend, which perhaps invites too much frivolity to an affair that, ridiculous as it is, also carries an elegant weight. But Martin and Baldwin, because they are part of the club that the Oscars are thrown for, and because they’re famous for their gentlemanly humor, can expertly skirt the line between “laughing at” and “laughing with.”

Shankman and Mechanic extended this light-hearted kindness to John Hughes, who got a lovely tribute for a body of work that might seem too slight for the Academy Awards. Ditto the tribute to horror movies. The spirit of both these sections was, “Hey, movies don’t have to be ‘important’ to be important. Let’s honor this work for entertaining us.”

(Granted, the horror movie tribute tried a little hard to make its underdog case… you can’t open by saying it’s been over thirty years since horror took home an Oscar… and then show clips of The Silence of the Lambs and Misery. But that’s a cavil.)

The Best Actor and Best Actress presentations extended the impression of good pals gathering for a good time. Last year, it was stately and stirring to see great actors step out to honor each of the ten biggest acting nominees. But those actors didn’t have obvious connections to the nominees they praised. Not like this year, when each nominee was addressed by someone he or she had worked with. Those connections made the moments feel even more intimate, personal and generous.

There are plenty of things to nitpick in the ceremony—I’d have liked to hear the nominated songs, for instance—but overall, I give the professional side of the Oscars a big thumbs up.

And then… hoo girl! Were there some down-and-dirty human moments or what?!?! Salon has a great report on the commotion surrounding the award for Best Documentary Short, when producer Elinor Burkett shoved director-producer Roger Ross Williams out of the way. Rude! Sa-kurr-itee!**

Conversely, while I doubt that history will be kind to Sandra Bullock’s win for The Blind Side, her acceptance speech was one of the best I’ve ever seen. Like, can she win an Oscar for that? The tears, the laughs, the good-natured self-deprecation… she charmed my socks off. Also? Gabourey Sidibe’s response to being praised by Oprah Winfrey? With the tears and the obvious joy? Yeah… that’s how I would react, too.

And I loved the diva perfection of Barbra Streisand being tapped to deliver the Best Director Oscar to Kathryn Bigelow. It was kind of like when Grand Old Statesmen Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas presnted the award to Martin Scorcese: You could tell the producers were hoping for the outcome they got. (Or was the fix in? Who cares! It was cool!)

Did you hear Bigelow and Streisand’s conversation before Bigelow started her speech? Bigelow was all like, “This is such a honor, receiving this from you,” and it sounded like Streisand said, “Can I hold [your directing Oscar] for a minute, and see what it feels like?” Which, if that’s what actually happened, then… amazing. That display of gratitude, ambition, ego, desire, and politics is exactly what I want the Oscars to provide.

** Yes, that’s a Bon Qui Qui reference

Over at TDF STAGES, the online theatre magazine I edit, we just posted a step-by-step guide to designing a Broadway poster. Frank “Fraver” Verlizzo, who has designed the posters for everything from Sweeney Todd to The Lion King, takes us through his process on creating the poster art for Looped, a new Broadway comedy starring Valerie Harper as a drunken Tallulah Bankhead.

Interviewing Fraver taught me a lot about about the artistry behind these iconic theatrical images. I think you’ll enjoy hearing him as much as I did…

Another great week in the blogosphere. Here are some highlights…

(1) StinkyLulu regularly hosts a Supporting Actress Smackdown, in which bloggers debate the merits of a particular year’s supporting actress Oscar nominees. This week, the team takes on the current crop of supporting actresses, and though I disagree with them about Vera Farmiga and Maggie Gyllenhaal, I really enjoy reading what they’ve got to say.

(2) Theatrical producer Ken Davenport makes some interesting parallels between Off Broadway and independent film.

(3) The Film Experience is giving out some awesome awards. Nathaniel R., who runs the site,  just coronated the Film Divas of the 2009. (He’s also responsible for that picture up there of Sandra Bullock as a Na’vi.)

By DOUG STRASSLER

Since we’re approaching Oscar eve, my favorite time of year, I figure it’s not only fitting but necessary to write another entry for the Best Picture Expansion Project. In honor of the apparent battle royale between frontrunners Avatar and The Hurt Locker, I’ve decided to write about another year with polarizing Best Picture results: 1980. A full list of that year’s films can be found here; below is the list of the five finalists:

Actual Best Picture Nominees

Coal Miner’s Daughter

The Elephant Man

Ordinary People Winner

Raging Bull

Tess

In Retrospect:

1980’s Best Picture winner was a no-brainer at the time, but has since emerged as a controversial pick, as affection for Raging Bull has grown. For my money, though, both Bull and People are unqualified masterpieces. They’re just very different types of movies: Bull is a directors’ movie and reflects current filmmaking sentiments; People is a writers’ movie and mirrors the era in which it was released.

Martin Scorsese took the life story of Jake La Motta and turned Bull into a rumination on the male animal. Robert De Niro’s performance brims with rage and sexual jealousy as La Motta questions his own virility and identity. It’s a beautifully shot and edited movie – perfect, really. But it’s also very raw, and upon its release, the movie’s violence turned some viewers off. Also, De Niro’s performance, which won an Oscar and came to embody Method acting, was as vilified as it was acclaimed for the actor’s dramatic weight gain for the part. Some felt it was distracting and that another actor more physically suited for the role should have taken it.

People, meanwhile was a cold film about a fractured family struggling to pick up the pieces after the drowning of the older, more beloved of two sons. Timothy Hutton won Best Supporting Actor (though it’s a lead role, he had no chance competing against De Niro) for his searing embodiment of the guilt and depression of those left behind. Robert Redford, in his first stab behind the camera, won as both director and producer, and he wrung the most out of his superb troupe of actors: Judd Hirsch, in one of filmdom’s most convincing portrayals of psychoanalysis; Dinah Manoff and Elizabeth McGovern, as two young women who attempt to break through to Hutton’s character; and Mary Tyler Moore (shedding her “lovable Mary” reputation) and Donald Sutherland as the parents unsure of how to go on. (Sutherland himself has never been nominated for an Oscar. Last year, I spent several BPEP’s discussing how the genius Jeff Bridges had been overlooked by the Academy, and now he looks like a lock to win on Sunday. I think I’ll start a 2010 campaign for Sutherland now!) This movie Breaks. Your. Heart. It is real, and devastating, and remains one of the most honorable, inspiring works I have ever seen. I’m not alone. Many actors I know, and more famous ones, refer to People – particularly Timothy Hutton’s performance – as the reason they wanted to start acting.

It was only a decade later, when Scorsese’s Goodfellas lost to another actor-turned-debuting-director, Kevin Costner, that some savvy PR people began spinning Scorsese’s Oscar losses into a great underdog narrative. At the time, though, Bull was mostly praised for its individual cast members and Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing; People was the story that gripped the nation, and here’s why I believe it to be so. Best Picture winners are victorious because they tap into the cultural zeitgeist, capturing the feeling of the times, and the late 1970s and 1980s were a time in which the picture of what makes a family redefined itself. The divorce rate spiked, and more single-parent families emerged, which is reflected in such major releases as An Unmarried Woman, Starting Over, Shoot the Moon, and other Oscar victors like Kramer Vs. Kramer and Terms of Endearment. The struggles of the Jarrett family in People echoed fundamental changes in the domestic landscape, and that’s why it won.

There were two other great, real-life tales also nominated that year. Coal Miner’s Daughter, which nabbed Sissy Spacek an Oscar for her portrayal of Loretta Lynn, remains to me the benchmark of a musical biopic – heck, maybe any kind of biopic. I love the way Michael Apted was able to fluidly capture the full arc of Lynn’s rise from deep poverty to stardom. Bonus points to Spacek and Beverly D’Angelo (as Patsy Cline) for using their own singing voices.

The Elephant Man was David Lynch’s most conventional movie until The Straight Story. It tells the tale of the deformed John Merrick (his real name was Joseph, he’s played here by John Hurt), who finally finds humane treatment when surgeon Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) discovers him. John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, and especially Anne Bancroft also turn in moving performances.

(Elephant had a long-lasting effect on the Oscars: it led to the creation of the Best Makeup category.)

As for Tess, the fifth nominee, I wasn’t a fan of the Thomas Hardy novel and I’m even less of a fan of the Roman Polanski adaptation. It belongs nowhere on this list. Any of the movies listed below are more deserving:

The Expansion Pack

6. The Empire Strikes Back – I won’t try to preach to the unconverted here; you’re either a Star Wars fan or you’re not. But this is the best entry in what is arguably one of the most important trilogy in movies, and it also features one of the great cliffhangers of all time. Darth Vader is Luke’s father? Han Solo is frozen? What? It may just be a popcorn film, but it’s popcorn filmmaking at its most fun.

7. Gloria – Gena Rowlands was nominated as a mob moll who discovers her maternal instinct. As directed and written by her husband, indie pioneer John Cassavetes, Gloria has both grit and heart. Its influence can be seen in movies as disparate as Aliens and The Professional. Note: avoid the remake with Sharon Stone.

8. Melvin and Howard – Crazed billionaire Howard Hughes (Jason Robards) bequeathed $156 million to Utah service station employee Melvin Dummar. This seriocomic film purports to understand what that connection might have been, and the effects such a windfall can have. An irreverent social critique on money, family, and the media, it won a well-earned Supporting Actress Oscar for Mary Steenburgen and introduced the world to Jonathan Demme, one of the most unique voices ever to document “ordinary people.”

9. Airplane! – Yeah, that’s right, I said it. If the point of nominating 10 movies is to increase the variety of movies recognized, then this spoof has to make the cut. It’s genius and makes you laugh every time. Bravo to writer-directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker for letting dramatic talent like Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack use their comedic arsenal – in the case of Nielsen, it launched a second career. My highlight: watching Barbara Billingsley – aka June Cleaver – speaking jive.

10. Inside Moves – Diana Scarwid, best known as Joan Crawford’s terrorized daughter Christina in Mommie Dearest, received a nomination for this movie, but Moves is really about the guys. John Savage plays Roary, a man left partially crippled after a failed suicide attempt. He soon meets other disabled people, including Jerry (David Morse), a bartender with a bad leg. When an operation gives Jerry a second chance, he must choose between his new life and his de facto family. This is one of director Richard Donner’s most personal movies, and it marks a return to the screen for Harold Russell, the real-life disabled World War II veteran who won not one but two Oscars for The Best Years of Our Lives.

The Snubs
9 to 5
The Big Red One
Breaker Morant
Kagemusha
Mad Max
Private Benjamin
Resurrection
The Shining
The Stunt Man

Here’s the thing, though: When two great movies go head to head for Best Picture, it doesn’t matter whether it’s 1980 or 2009; movie lovers are the ones who ultimately win.

Usually, I know exactly when a song is a disasterpiece, but sometimes, I get confused.

Last year, I couldn’t decide if “Boom Boom Pow” was a hot hit or a hot steaming pile. Since I’ve now purchased The E.N.D. and occasionally phased “BBP” into my workout mix, I’ve obviously put it in the “win” column, though I still like it less than recent Black Eyed Peas hits like “I Gotta Feeling” and “Meet Me Halfway.”

I felt similar uncertainty when my friend Collin tweeted me yesterday, asking if I would declare Young Money’s “BedRock,” currently #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, a disasterpiece. (Sidebar: Are you following me on Twitter? If not, won’t you join me for some bonus musings, links, and sass?)

My ambivalent heart… after the jump

The Case for Disasterpiecing “BedRock”

To a degree, I can see Collin’s point. The song is a mess. For one thing, Young Money isn’t even the name of an artist, it’s the name of Lil’ Wayne’s record label, and on “Bedrock,” it sounds like every person on the payroll, including the custodian and the guy who stocks the vending machine, showed up to drop a verse.

To be super-specific, the song is 4:48 long, and it features appearances by six rappers: Lil Wayne, Gudda Gudda, Nicki Minaj, Drake, Tyga, and Jae Millz. (I’ve only heard of half these people.) And then for good measure, R&B singer Lloyd, who is signed to a completely different label, shows up to sing the hook.

And what does this Council of Learned Elders s rap about? Are they explaining why they won’t play Sun City or raising money for Haitian orphans? No. They’re rapping about sex. And not even sex, really. More like freaky-deaking. It’s possibile that listening to this song will give you genital warts.

Meanwhile, if you don’t like the two-note minimalism of modern hip-hop, then you are out of luck here. The beat is more like a suggestion of a beat.

The Case Against Disasterpiecing “BedRock”

And yet… this is some catchy shit. The chorus is especially earworm-y, and I can’t fully hate on a song that gets stuck in my head.

I also like the laconic pace crafted by producer Kane Beatz. Despite the dirty lyrics, it makes the song sound sexy instead of horny.

Also, several of the rappers stand out. Gudda Gudda has a striking baritone and a pleasantly relaxed flow, and the charming wink in Drake’s voice helps explain the six million hits he’s had in the last year.

Nicki Minaj, meanwhile, deserves her own paragraph. She hasn’t dropped a solo single yet, but given the number of songs she’s guesting on right now—along with “BedRock,” she appears on current singles from Ludacris, Usher, and Mariah Carey—she’s clearly being groomed for hip-hop superstardom. She deserves it. She’s got a great voice that hovers somewhere between scratchy and squeaky, and like a female Ludacris, she wields it with theatrical flair. She does that Durrty South thing where she over-exaggerates certain words for comic effect, and she really nails the “asbestos” bit of her verse, pronouncing each syllable like it’s a separate laugh line.  (If only she could demonstrate her talent on songs that aren’t about loveless, degrading sex, but I figure I’m tilting at windmills on that one.

On another side note, it’s nice to have a female rapper on the scene again. Other than Lil’ Mama, women have been totally absent from mainstream hip-hop for years.)

Finally, some of the lyrics in “BedRock” are downright clever. “Call me Mr. Flintstone/I can make your bed rock?” Hee! “And now we murderers, because we kill time?” Ho!

For me, these credits outweigh the debits. I’m not going to download “BedRock,” but when it comes on the radio, I’m not going to complain .

How about you? Where would you rank “BedRock” on the disasterpiece scale?

Ya got the New Jack SWING comin’ atcha!

If you listened to pop music in the early 90s, then I’m guessing you read the line above and immediately started tapping your toe. Maybe you considered adding exclamation points to your name, a la Tony! Toni! Tone! (That would make me Mark! Marc! Marque!)

And maybe, just maybe, you felt sad that the New Jack era is over. Lord knows that I certainly miss it. Those hard drum beats, bouncy piano loops, and harmony vocals are all just so much fun. The early 90s hits of T!T!T!, Mary J. Blige, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, and Bell Biv DeVoe have a full and aggressive sound, yet they’re also charming and accessible. They occasionally remind us that we are a part of a rhythm nation, but they’re mostly about dancing and having fun.

Let me repeat that: Having fun. As much as I enjoy the minimalist sexypantsing of Timbaland and the vocoded preening of Jay Sean, their music has a darker edge than “Do Me!” or “Miss You Much.” It’s partly the grimier beats and partly the explicit lyrics, but whatever the reason, their music occasionally makes me yearn for the sound of my adolescence.

Given that nostalgia—and I freely admit I’m doing the whole “back in my day” thing right now—I’m ecstatic that “Nothin’ On You” is tearing up the radio. The first single from Atlanta rapper B.o.B. (featuring vocalist Bruno Mars), it is the New Jackiest jam I have heard in ages. Take a listen…

Damn, y’all! That beat is straight Jam and Lewis, all hard drum beats and sweet piano undercurrent. And when B.o.B. drops that “nuh-nuh-nuh-nothin’ on you” line, I want to throw on a “Button Your Fly” t-shirt.

I’m glad this song is succeeding, because pop music needs this kind of breezy, sunny jam right now. It’s a nice balance for the robotic funk of Black Eyed Peas, the high-drama fever of Lady Gaga, and whatever the hell Ke$ha is.

What do you guys think?

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:

Bill: Doggone it! Margene is my wife! I can’t share her with you and Goran.

Ana: Why Not?

Bill: Because it’s unnatural, that’s why.

Ana: (scoffs)

Bill: A man has to know his woman is his. It’s just the way it is.

Ana: Are you aware of what you’re saying?

Bill: Of course I am. A woman cannot have two husbands. It’s just wrong.

Ana: How can YOU say that?

Bill: I’m not a hypocrite. I explained our religion to you. I told you all about it!

As you read this, you have to imagine Bill Paxton delivering his lines with a high-pitched, baby-has-a-tantrum voice and a look of bewildered irritation on his face.

This is the clearest the show has ever been about how Bill’s faith or hubris or whatever has warped him into a self-centered, self-righteous, and immature hypocrite with a raging God complex. He may believe he gets his instructions from The Principle or from God, but he interprets those instructions to mean that everyone in his family should do exactly what he says at all times.

Granted, he’s not tyrannical about his power. He doesn’t beat his wives or try to psychologically wound them into submission the way Frank, J.J., and Roman have done. He uses everyday weapons like guilt, hectoring, and pouting to get his way.

Given the scene I just transcribed and several others like it—Bill tells Barb she has “defied” him, as though he’s her king; he tells Marge it’s wrong to hide her polygamy for the sake of her business, despite what he did for HomePlus—I’d say this episode offers the series’ most scathing critique of what polygamy does to men. Bill obviously has decency and compassion, but they’re perpetually strangled by his twisted worldview.

Consider his small, kind act of letting Barb make an unpopular statement about scrip addiction among Utah women: Barb basically has a nervous breakdown before he lets her speak her mind. And last week, before he was willing to renounce his earthly power for his family, they had to face a massacre in a Mexican compound. If it takes situations this extreme to make Bill acknowledge that maybejustmaybe he isn’t the world’s most Knowing Man, then he’s clearly been deformed by his life. He clearly spends most of his days believing he’s some kind of god.

I’m surprised, frankly, that the series has pushed it this far. There’s always been tension about the sustainability of the Henrickson’s life (and the value of polygamy in general), but the negative was generally tempered with the positive. For every scene of Roman raging or Barb weeping, we’d also see Marge taking succor in her new family or Adaleen taking control of her destiny. Now, the bad obliterates the good. A halfway-happy birthday party for Teeny just isn’t a balance for Bill’s sanctimony, J.J.’s craziness, and Roman’s ongoing power to shame Alby out of happiness.

Has the series painted itself into a corner? Can it pull back from this anti-polygamous path and restore some balance? Should it?  As I said last week, I can’t keep the show from changing, but it’s hard to imagine how I could stay connected to a series that seems to dislike so many of its characters’ choices. If I want a stern moral lesson on Sunday nights, then I will go to church.

It’s also hard to trust that things will correct themselves when the writing in this short season keeps disappointing. Like, did you notice that the first scene of “Next Ticket Out,” when Sarah, Ben, and Teeny set the table, is nothing but a blast of exposition? There’s so much happening in so few episodes that the series doesn’t have time to let events unfold organically. Instead, it has to pause the story and catch all the characters up on what they’ve been missing. It’s a clunky technique, to say the least.

Also clunky? Nicki’s storyline. Intellectually, I can see how her attempt to become more “normal” could be moving, and Chloe Sevigny and Matt Ross are such great actors that when Nicki tries to get Alby to leave Juniper Creek and chase the happiness he was starting to feel as an openly gay man, I’m touched. But overall, there’s something half-baked about her arc. Instead of arriving at them slowly, so that we can experience them, too, Nicki just announces her personal revelations flat out. “I want to be normal. I want out of this life. I like flaunting my boobs.” When we’re told these things instead of being shown them, they’re less satisfying. It’s like if someone says they love you with an expressionless face. It’s hard to believe the words if you don’t see the proof that they’re true.

Oh! And since when did Nicki not love Bill? How can this be the first week she really loves him? Just telling me she’s never loved him isn’t good enough, since it negates everything she’s been doing for years. I may understand that Nicki wants Bill all to herself now, but I don’t feel it. You know what I mean?

(And don’t even get me started on Other Nicki… the one who’s angry a Joey for killing her father and trying to protect Wanda from herself. That feels so disconnected from the show that I can’t deal right now.)

Sadly, I don’t feel much for Sarah’s decision to move away. Amanda Seyfried isn’t coming back and there was no way Sarah could do anything but get out of Dodge, but it bums me out that her departure is handled in such a perfunctory way. Her wistful moment in the kitchen plays like one more task on a checklist, not a scene that’s given time to breathe.

Margene fares better, but this recap is getting long… so I’ll just give her props for calling Bill on his b.s. (once again) and correctly pointing out that by Bill’s own standards, her paper marriage to Goran shouldn’t mean anything.

And then there’s Barb. She makes an honest but politically unsavvy statement about Utah women and pills. She realizes the extent to which Marilyn is in cahoots with the Religious Right, and she realizes that she hired this viper just to lash out at Bill. She fights against Bill’s attempts to silence her, control her. (Like Nicki wanting Bill to herself, her unhappiness underscores the show’s newly apparent distrust of polygamy.)

And finally, she gets Bill to change. She gets him to defend her drug abuse comment on air. She moves the mountain, and even if it’s just an inch, it’s enough to make her First Wife.

It’s coming to theatres on March 19, but is it possible you’ve already seen Repo Men? Multiple times? Or is that not true? Is it an original and exciting sci-fi adventure starring Jude “Still Hot” Law and Forest “Oscar” Whittaker?
Watch the trailer and let me know what you think…

The Movie: Repo Men (opening March 19)

The Buzz: Jude Law, guns, sexy ladies. Oh, and something about a future where sick people buy new organs from a corporation, then get them violently repossessed if they miss payments.

The Trailer:

The Review:

I’ve been through two phases with this trailer, which first came to my attention during Roommate Joe’s Spring Movie Preview. At first, I was stoked to see Jude Law looking so sexy-sex-sexy and proving that a receding hairline need not stop a man from being fine. Also, having just seen law on Broadway as Hamlet, I was pretty bullish on his talent as well as his looks, so… bonus.

After I cooled down, however, I watched the trailer again. Now I’m conflicted.

On one hand, you see, the preview itself is better than your average sci-fi spot. Rather than telling us what the movie is about up front, it teases us with information for thirty seconds. We know that something creepy is going on, we know that a company is collecting some kind of debt, but we don’t know exactly what it is for quite some time (relatively speaking.) You don’t always get storytelling that intriguing in a preview.

And then there’s the tone: The quick-cut editing and grittier-version-of-Beck electronica on the soundtrack tell us this movie is going to be cool, dark, and menacing. However, that tone is contrasted by Law’s sarcastic quips about people not taking care of their organs and Whitaker’s philosophical argument on why his job as a repo man is actually maintaining societal order. So which is it? Should we laugh or shudder? Should we nod in agreement or back away in disgust? By not making it clear, the trailer pulls us further into its teasing mystery.

Granted, things take a turn for the hoary in the second half, when Jude Law ends up with his own transplanted organ and starts running from the very organization he once worked for. But the opening of the trailer is so effective that I could almost look past that cliche…

… if it weren’t for the things the trailer can’t do. No matter how sleek and engaging it makes the movie seem, it can’t cover the fact that Repo Men plays like an obvious rip-off of both Repo! The Genetic Opera and Minority Report. The former is a 2008 movie musical about a company that sells organs and then sends repo men to collection them if people can’t make their payments. (It’s based on a stage musical from 2006.) Minus the music, it seems like it could actually be the Jude Law film, and if there haven’t been any lawsuits filed, then I assume there’s one cooking in some lawyer’s office somewhere.

Meanwhile, Minority Report is also a movie about a man who works in the not-too-distant future, terrorizing people to uphold an ethically shaky social order. (He arrests citizens moments before they commit murder, since a group of psychics can predict violent crimes before they happen.) Just like in Repo Men, the agent eventually has to flee from the very system he once defended.

Given this, can Repo Men be anything other than an example of Hollywood’s exhausted imagination? Can its style overcome a story that seems trite at best and plagiaristic at worst?

I don’t know. This movie does look entertaining and Jude is a hottie, but I fear that by watching it, I’ll be helping the studio system both chew up the little guys who made Repo! and pander to the audience that liked Minority Report.

What do you think?

Here’s my advice: Even after you’ve gotten the joke—Look! People in giant My Little Pony costumes are performing popular Broadway songs!—keep watching. It gets more and more surreal the further you go.

I don’t want to tell you more. You need to experience this thing for yourself. But if you’re in a hurry, just watch from 5:20—5:58. The passionate literalism  of the choreography is breathtaking.