"Big Love" Recap & Review - "Kingdom Come"

Kingdom Come
Original Air Date: Monday July 30, 2007

[Submitted by: Stacey]

I don’t know where to start with this review. This week’s episode started with an incredibly LONG intro basically summing up the whole season. In what can only be described as eerie foreshadowing, the episode also seemed to cover an obscene amount of material. For the sake of this review, I will continue my protest against the boring “business” storylines and focus on the love, the Big Love, of polygamy.

Bill decided that he needed a night off. Instead of splitting his nights evenly among all the wives, he wanted a designated “night off” from all the wives – men, settle down. While this might be a reasonable request in a “normal” marriage, choosing to live a life of polygamy comes with some additional responsibilities and requirements and as Barb tells Bill “you signed up for this.” In other words, if he can’t handle the time commitment then he shouldn’t have taken three wives. It was really hard to see Barb’s struggle this episode. Like she tell’s her son Ben’s girlfriend at the end of the episode, “polygamy is a hard life.” She revealed how it took her a long time to learn to love Nicki. She went from having Bill 7 nights a week to 3-4 nights a week and now to 2-3 nights a week. It’s hard not to sympathize with Barb and continue to wonder, as a viewer, how I might possibly cope, or not cope, with a life of polygamy.

As Barb intervenes with Ben’s relationship by talking to his girlfriend Bryn, Bill is forced to face how absent he is as a father. This reality is most apparent when looking at his relationships, or lack thereof, with his teenage children. Ben is struggling, and has been all season, with his sense of faith. Instead of giving up sleeping with Bryn, he decides to hide it and deal with the internal conflict. When his father finds out, Bill so eloquently states, “that’s the most unholy thing you can do with your body, that’s your temple son.” Can we say vomit? At the end of the episode, Bryn breaks up with Ben and Bill decides to indoctrinate Ben into the priesthood – meaning, I guess that he is recognizing his son as an adult. This should help repair their relationship, but we still wonder about his eldest daughter Sarah.

Because I really can’t ignore the other things that happened this episode, I will sum them up here. Bill sells the Greens down the river to the ATF in an attempt to save his business. They swear vengeance, and I’m sure we’ll see a revisit from the family in later episodes – can we say possible cliffhanger season finale? In the end, two Green members shoot the prophet, Nicki’s dad, Roman Grant – WOW, that was surprising. I believe Bill will still try and buy Weeber Gaming – even when he finds out that he was loaned stolen money from Lois’s brother to make the purchase. After ratting Bill out to Frank and giving up all his secrets, Lois loses any loyalty Bill had for her eventually causing the ultimate loss of her laundry business. See? I told you this stuff was boring.

B+