TV Review of Big Love: Is HBO Still Worth It?

We all know HBO’s legendary roster of some of the greatest shows ever made (The Wire, The Sopranos, Rome, Deadwood, The Larry Sanders Show, and countless others) but taking a look at its schedule you can’t wonder if HBO’s best days are behind it. The Sopranos—its last unqualified hit with both audiences and Emmy voters—is long gone and cult sensations like The Wire and Deadwood haven’t been properly replaced with new duds from their creators like Treme and John from Cincinnati.

If you look at some of the other shows that have come and gone over the last five years (Tell Me You Love Me somehow making porn boring was the lowest point for me), it’s no wonder HBO has created a ton of comedies (The Comeback, Flight of the Conchords, Eastbound and Down, The Ricky Gervais Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm enters its 7^th season this year, Funny or Die Presents, Hung, Bored to Death, to name just the ones I can name off the top of my head): they could use a laugh.

As of right now, the network has only three drama shows. First is the ratings hit but uneven True Blood which swings wildly between great episodes and awful ones. Second is the good but over praised Broadwalk Empire which has just racked up an ass load of undeserved Golden Globes and SAG Awards. And finally is Big Love, which has one foot out the door. Big Love is halfway through its final, ten episode season 5 right now and so far the show is back to being interesting after a fourth season that even Chloe Sevigney—who plays mean wife Nicki—said sucked.

Everyone’s favorite polygamist family has finally come out of the closet after Bill won a state senate at the end of last season, and enemies have come from all sides to attack them. By putting the family on the defensive it immediately reinvests us in characters we didn’t even know we still cared about. It’s a well done move for HBO but with cheaper basic cable channels like FX (positioning itself as the Home for the Antiheroes with Sons of Anarchy, Lights Out, The Shield, Rescue Me) and AMC (home to such great, cerebral fair as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Rubicon) having shows just as good if not better, how much longer will people still pay for the HBO brand?

Scene Stealer to Watch: Big Love has an enormous supporting of characters, with some that are interesting and some that are not so interesting (all of the family’s grandmothers need to die soon so they doesn’t suck up any more screen time), but it’s a brand new character I really like every week: Gregory Itzin’s scheming but ambiguous speaker of the Utah state senate. Itzin played the evil President Charles Logan on 24 so antagonistic politicians are nothing new for him, but half the fun lies in figuring out if he’s really a bad guy this time or not.