Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady

Some say that polygamy is having one wife too many; others would say that is also monogamy.

I watched the second installment of Big Love tonight. Big Love, if you haven't been paying attention is the new HBO series about a Utah polygamist and his three wives.

I wrote a couple of months ago about The Book of Daniel and the uprising of certain-minded religious individuals who caused the NBC series to be abruptly cancelled because they didn't share the same appreciation of the show as the Peacock's executives.

A Vicodin-popping priest, a martini-swilling wife, a drug-selling daughter, and a Mob-owned construction company doing business with the Episcopalian church was way over the line. It was apparently a left-wing attack on Christianity.

That's fine - we live in a competitive market place of ideas; it's Capitalism at its purest. Granted, what gets bought and sold in this marketplace are often not the best of ideas, but so be it.

But, a show about "Mormon Fundamentalists" who take 13 year-olds as wives, a wife who tries to kill her husband by lacing dinner with arsenic, and a self-titled prophet (the one with the teenage wife) who extorts to his heart's content?

Where's Falwell? Where's Dobson?

[Insert cricket chirping noises here.]

Actually, the show is decent and fairly entertaining.

While the main character's family doesn't exactly match my definition of a nuclear family, it is a family nonetheless with real-life issues - dealing with money problems, raising a family and teaching morals, juggling work and a wife (or 3), and trying to remain sane through it all.

I don't feel threatened; I don't feel attacked. I'm able to see it for what it is.

And even if I did feel threatened or attacked, the show wouldn't have to be taken off the air in order for me to feel better about myself.

Am I allowed to judge? Sure; just as much, no more and no less, than you are able to.

So watch it, don't watch it. Doesn't matter to me. You're an adult with independent judgment.