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Big Love
File:Biglove 2.JPG The cast of Big Love
Created by	Mark V. Olsen Will Scheffer
Starring	Bill Paxton Jeanne Tripplehorn Chloë Sevigny Ginnifer Goodwin
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	24 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 60 min
Original release
Network	HBO
Release	March 12, 2006 – present

Big Love is an HBO television drama about a Utah Fundamentalist Mormon family that practices plural marriage, a type of polygamy. Big Love stars Bill Paxton, Chloë Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin and Harry Dean Stanton. It premiered in the United States on March 12, 2006 following the sixth season premiere of the popular HBO series The Sopranos. The second season began on Monday, June 11, 2007.^[1] The show has been renewed for a third season.^[2]

The show was co-created by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer who also serve as executive producers. Olsen and Scheffer spent two and a half years researching the premise of the show,^{[citation needed]} with the intent of creating a fair portrayal of polygamy in America without being judgmental. The series theme song is "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys; musical score for the series is composed by David Byrne. The score for the first season was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh.

The series revolves around polygamist Bill Henrickson, his three wives Barb (legal wife/first wife), Nicki (second wife) and Margene (third wife), and their combined family of seven children. Henrickson lives with his family in three neighboring houses in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City.

Season 1 introduces the main characters and revolves around the family's struggles to live their polygamous lifestyle while keeping it a secret from the outside world.

While Bill goes about expanding his chain of home improvement stores ("Henrickson’s Home Plus"), he struggles to balance his three wives and his strained relationship with Nicki's father, Church prophet Roman Grant. From his compound on Juniper Creek, Roman seeks to gain a greater share of the profits from Bill's business ventures. Bill opposes this and manipulates his alcoholic brother Joey, a former NFL player, to gain a seat on the church's board of directors, in order to undercut Roman's considerable influence and to maintain a level of autonomy from his controlling grasp.

Barb balances managing the family’s personal finances while working as a substitute teacher. As the season progresses, it appears that Barb has mixed feelings about the concept of polygamy and agreed to it out of love for her husband. Barb also has to deal with sister-wife Nicki, who wants to undermine Barb's position as "head wife".

Second wife Nicki has other problems, among which is the fact that she owes nearly $60,000 in credit card charges, which now threatens her ability to provide for her and Bill's children. Due to the debt previously being kept secret, Nicki goes to her father for help making her payments. Bill is shocked and angered when he discovers the amount of Nicki's debt as well as her going to her father for help, but ultimately reconciles with Nicki.

Meanwhile Margene (the third wife) and Bill's various children (most notably his oldest children via his marriage to Barb) struggle to keep their family's secret from their friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

By the end of the season, Barb and Bill are exposed as polygamists when Barb is nominated for a "Mother of the Year" Award. Meanwhile Joey's mentally unstable wife Wanda poisons Alby Grant (Roman's closeted homosexual son and chief minion) when Alby discovers that Bill is using Joey as a pawn in his scheme to undermine Roman's power within the church.

Season 2 picks up two weeks after the end of season 1, as the Henrickson family deals with being exposed as polygamists, with Roman being revealed to be the one behind their public unmasking. The public exposure threatens to damage Bill's "Henrickson's Home Plus" business and causes him to expand his plan to steal power from Roman from within the church. This is hampered, though, when Roman discovers that Wanda had poisoned his son. He offers to force Alby to stay quiet about Wanda's attempted murder in exchange for Joey becoming Roman's pawn on the church's board of directors. Alby is furious that both his father and mother do not care that he was almost killed, let alone wish to further ally themselves with the family of his attackers. So Alby goes to the state police with the evidence of his poisoning in order to force an arrest. However, to everyone's surprise, Joey confesses to the attempt on Alby's life and is arrested instead of Wanda. Bill demands that Roman force Alby to recant his statements and claim that he poisoned himself in order to free Joey from jail and protect his sister-in-law, but Alby informs the authorities that Roman is seeking to commit obstruction of justice to silence him, which leads to a police raid upon Juniper Creek.

Other plotlines include Bill's flirtation with a waitress that could lead to another marriage, oldest daughter Sarah seeking help in dealing with her family's lifestyle through a support group for former Latter-day Saints, Barb's concern over her teenage son Ben's belief in polygamy, and Rhonda, Roman's 15-year-old next wife, running away from the compound and seeking Sarah's help.

Main Cast:

Recurring:

• Garrett Grey - Ray Henrickson
• Aidan and Andrew Gonzales - Joey Henrickson Jr.
• Wendy Phillips - Peg Embry, Don's wife, Home Plus head bookkeeper
• Kyle Gallner - Jason Embry, Don and Peg's son, Ben's best friend.
• Annie Fitzgerald - Verna, Don's second wife^[3]
• Renee Albert - Julep "Jo-Jo", Don's third wife^[3][4]
• Carlos Jacott - Carl Martin, neighbor, Pam's husband
• Audrey Wasilewski - Pam Martin, neighbor, Carl's wife
• Jodie Markell - Wendy Hunt, secretary for Bill
• Sarah Jones - Brynn, Ben's girlfriend
• Aaron Paul - Scott, Sarah's boyfriend
• Lawrence O'Donnell - Lee Hatcher, family attorney
• Jim Beaver - Carter Reese, business acquaintance of Bill
• Luke Askew - Hollis Green, patriarch of a rival polygamist group
• Ellen Burstyn - Nancy, Barbara Henrickson's estranged mother

The show's fictional fundamentalist group, the "United Effort Brotherhood", or UEB, is similar to and was inspired by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) whose financial and legal wing is called the "United Effort Plan". The FLDS is one of the most prolific and well-known polygamist groups which regard themselves as the legitimiate successors of the original LDS church. Creators Olsen and Scheffer included a drive through the twin FLDS towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, as part of their research for the show.^[5] The raid on Juniper Creek is reminiscent of the Short Creek raid, an actual historic event from 1953 where Arizona state police and National Guard troops took action against the Mormon fundamentalists of Colorado City.

Although situated in Utah, the series is primarily filmed at the Santa Clarita Studios in Fillmore, California. The location used for filming "Henrickson’s Home Plus" scenes is The All American Home Center in Downey, California.

The mall scenes from Season one were filmed in the Fox Hills Mall, in Culver City, California.

The head writers for the series are the co-creators: Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer. The writing staff includes staff writers: Dustin Lance Black, Doug Jung, Eileen Myers, Jennifer Schuur, Doug Stockstill, Jeanette Collins & Mimi Friedman.

Directors of the series include many veteran directors from other programs on HBO and many with backgrounds with independent films include Rodrigo Garcia, Charles McDougall, Sarah Pia Anderson, Dan Attias, Burr Steers, Michael Spiller, Alan Taylor, Mary Harron, Steve Shill, Julian Farino, Michael Lehmann and Alan Poul (former executive producer of Six Feet Under).

The show's producers are Ann Holm, Ron Binkowski, Bernadette Caulfield, Angela Courtin, Jeanette Collins & Mimi Friedman, and Shane Keller. David Knoller. Executive producers are Olsen and Scheffer as well as Gary Goetzman and actor/writer/director Tom Hanks.

The second series was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Drama Series in 2007. Bill Paxton was also nominated for the Best Actor in a Television Drama Golden Globe for his role as Bill Henrickson.^[6]

• Mormon fundamentalism
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

• Official site
• Big Love at IMDb
• Template:Tv.com show