The Bigger Political Message of Big Love

I loved "Big Love," from the moment it debuted on HBO in 2006. I blogged about the show many times over the years, and what I believed to be its politically charged message.

The "Big Love" finale aired on Sunday night. Unlike real-world polygamy, which continues, not only Utah and Arizona, but also in dark corners of the tri-state area, the polygamist family that Bill Paxton’s character built will live on only On Demand. The principle lessons he and his sister-wives taught us, however, will live on in perpetuity.

During its five-season run, many people told me they would not watch the show for what they said were political reasons. They could not, watch a show that celebrated polygamy, and therefore the rape and denigration of women, they said.

Respectfully, however, I disagreed. First of all the show did anything but "celebrate" its main characters. The patriarch of the polygamist family at the center of the drama was a tortured soul, not just morally and spiritually but politically, as well.

In season four, Henrickson becomes increasingly hypocritical, as he makes a run for public office, all the while juxtaposing his private life against his public persona. Henrickson selfishly betrays the people he loves in order to win. He races around town, putting out the fires of one scandal after another, and manages to succeed on Election Day, but at what cost? He is utterly transformed into a detestable character.

In this way, "Big Love" mirrored our experience with to many of our real-life politicians. We watched as Henrickson the Man - an honorable person of family and business, trying to live his alternative lifestyle under the radar - morphed into Henrickson the Politician - an egoist who forgets his original purpose in running for office: To secure the rights of his underrepresented community.

How many of our real-life politicians do just that? Forget the unrepresented voices they vowed to represent? Live double lives they cannot, in the end, reconcile? Lose their sense of purpose to their own ambition?

That is why "Big Love" was not really about polygamy, at all. It was about so much more. This was a supremely political show, with every episode challenging us to think about the value judgments we Americans so love to make about the life choices of others. At bottom, this was a show that reminded us to not throw stones from the windows of our own glass houses.

Created by Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer (partners in work and life), "Big Love" was originally intended to ask its audience to consider the judgments we pass on alternative lifestyles. It was a unique way to explore families outside the American mainstream.

As the show evolved, however, it quickly became a Rorschach test of for viewers to reconsider the assumptions we make about any other family, about what is going on over the white picket fence, behind the neighbor’s closed doors, under their shingled rooftops. It was a cogent reminder that things are never quite what they seem.

As the show’s patriarch clung to his moral code -- The Principle -- with religious ferocity and his wives, to varying degrees, challenged it - every episode explored the supremely political divide between the modern woman and patriarchal society - didn’t we all have to question our right to question their moral compasses?

After all, how many of us has struggled with our own choices as much as the Henricksons? Why are any of us Catholics or Jewish? Monogamous or married at all? Are these conscious choices or inherited faiths, lifestyles, cultural norms, passed down from father to son, mother to daughter? Have we done enough self-examination to spend as much time as we do with our noses so firmly planted in the business of others?

The show made an important distinction between the life of polygamy as chosen by mature and independent people and the externally imposed life of those at Juniper Creek – a fictional polygamist compound from which Bill had been forced as a “lost boy,” cast out by men who prefer to hold close the power – and the women. Modeled on the real-life compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), young girls are married off at an early age, most often against their will.

It is an issue that, during the run of "Big Love," captured the national consciousness, with headlines from the New York Times, to National Geographicto Marie Claire.

Quite by coincidence, Warren Jeffs the real-life president of the FLDS was arrested, prosecuted and tried on charges of rape as an accomplice during the second season of “Big Love.” I was at Court TV at the time and we covered the trial, gavel to gavel. (Jeffs was convicted, but the sentenced was reversed; he now awaits trial on similar charges in Texas.)

During season three, we covered the decision by Texas authorities to storm the Yearning for Zion polygamist compound in Eldorado and remove, by force, 400 women and children from their homes in response to a call from a woman claiming to be a victim. (The call turned out to be a hoax, the case made it’s way all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, and the children were later returned.)

Throughout our coverage of both stories, as reporters across the spectrum struggled for objectivity, I was taken with the moral judgments passed by most Americans on a world and lifestyle about which we knew so little, and the cultural domination of the local and dominant Mormon communities over the unorthodox polygamist groups. In both cases, the US Constitution provided clarity for all involved – prosecutors, defendants, alleged victims and journalists seeking to tell the story to a larger country far removed from it. It was a mighty struggle, however, to preserve the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority.

Real world politicians and the citizens they represent could take a lesson from "Big Love." As the political climate becomes increasingly caustic, in this country, we would all do well to remember that snap judgments about our neighbors never serve the larger interests of justice or democracy. They only distract us from the real issues and undermine our common purpose, to form a more perfect union.

Or as Third Wife Margene said on "Big Love," "There have only been a few times in my life when I've seen this much stubbornness going on all sides of a fight...I really want to bring all sides together, but I'm making zero headway...I can't start judging everyone because that's its own form of stubbornness. But, man, Come on!"

Jami Floyd is an attorney, broadcast journalist and legal analyst for cable and network news, and is a frequent contributor to WNYC Radio. She is former advisor in the Clinton administration and served as a surrogate for the Obama campaign on legal and domestic policy issues. You can follow her on twitter.