Big Love Series Finale Review: "When Men and Mountains Meet"

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night's series finale episode, "When Men and Mountains Meet," had some shocking scenes, but overall I felt disappointed with how the show ended. This was the final episode after all and I felt that the writers held out in some areas, while rushed to complete some storelines as well.

For example, it was left for us to believe that Lois is killed by Frank.

Big Love Finale Photo

Throughout the years, Frank and Lois had been each others worst nightmare, but as the series dwindled down, they became closer than ever. Lois made Frank promise to end her life when things got really bad, but I was shocked to actually see him go through with it. I felt that the writers needed to prove that Lois and Frank really loved each other so very much after all, but really it just made these characters past storylines seem fake.

I knew that Carl would play a role larger than the minor cameos we had seen, but it wasn't until the final scene with Bill unexpectedly meeting him in the street that I knew what was going down. The writers added a layer here primarily for shock value because we all knew it was Alby that we expected to be holding that gun.

Alby twistedly got what he was after - for Bill to be dead.

Speaking of Alby, besides the quick mention of him and Adaleen, we never got to see any closure to his story.

How much time will Alby spend behind bars? What will happen to Juniper Creek? Who became the new prophet in his absence? It was odd that the writers would leave his storyline filled with so many holes and unanswered questions, especially since Alby was one of the main characters on this show.

Barbara's mission to become a priesthood holder almost tore the entire family apart. It took finally getting the chance to have the power she so desperately wanted, for her to realize that it wasn't worth a dime without her family being there.

Out of all that happened in tonight's episode, having Bill request Barb to give him a dying blessing was by far the most memorable scene.

He knew how important it was for her to be taken seriously, especially by him, and this action caused quite the reaction as we found out eleven months later that Barb took over Bill's church. In an odd way, Barb finally got the freedom in her religion that she yearned for.

Margene figured out that her life's purpose wasn't just to be Bill's third wife. She mentioned to him that as time passes she would want to go on missions to help the poor and unfortunate. At first, you can see Bill struggle with this idea, but eventually he was willing to accept her life's choice. He even told Nikki to be supportive.

Margene was by far my favorite character, but I wasn't happy to see that after eleven months since Bill's death that she cut off all her hair and left her children to go help others. A part of me believed that if Bill was alive, he wouldn't want the mother of his children to be gone for such long periods of time.

Nikki didn't get any closure to her character's storyline. After eleven months from Bill's death, she was still the same old Nikki. Maybe the writers were trying to show that she was the glue that held this crazy family together.

Cara Lynn was completely absent in the final minutes, only leaving us to guess where she could be. The meeting that Bill had with Cara Lynn was super strange and felt like he was trying to show her that he was okay wither her relationship with her teacher.

We all knew something had to happen before Bill got rushed off to jail and dethroned from the Senate, but I wasn't expecting him to open up a can of worms about making Polygamy legal. It was strange to watch him be so proud of what he created by imagining himself speaking to his forefathers. The writers never let us know what he was writing outside in his patio and if anything ever happened with the amendment.

As great as it was to see Sarah and her beau, whatever happened to Joey and Wanda? What about Tinny? All season long these people remained MIA, but I was certain that they would have made a cameo for the finale. Oh well. I guess the writers didn't deem them worthy enough for the send off.

It was sad to say good-bye to such a beloved show, but I am happy that it ended with the sister-wives together and the original song revamped and sung by a woman. God only knows what we'll be without you, Big Love.

Big Love's 12 Most Memorable Moments

When Big Love began in 2006, the Henrickson family's problems were at first limited to the challenges facing four adults in a plural marriage: questions of sharing, solidarity, and personal secrets. They were an ordinary family in some extraordinary circumstances and creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer opened a window into a world that few of us will ever see: one of compounds, fundamentalists, intense faith, and vengeful adversaries.

Article - Lacob Big Love The cast of Big Love on the set of their season finale. (Photo by Chuck Zlotnick / HBO)

Over the course of the show's groundbreaking run, the family was besieged by both external and internal threats as the four main characters—Bill (Bill Paxton), Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicki (Chloë Sevigny), and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin)—and their ever-expanding brood of children attempted to find their way, to grab hold of those fleeting moments of joy, and to struggle with the pain of loss, betrayal, and ignorance.

In its final episode, Big Love pushes the Henrickson clan to their breaking point, as Bill faces both a lengthy prison sentence for statutory rape charges and the loss of the family's business. But Bill also receives his true testimony in his church—a nod from Mormon founder Joseph Smith's wife Emma (Rebecca Wisocky)—and he restores the true balance that had been thwarted at Juniper Creek. Bill can now lead his flock of believers into the light.

Or he would have—if his life hadn't been so brutally taken from him by a former friend. But Bill's death accomplishes something that Barb, Nicki, and Margene had struggled with for the past five seasons: it finally unifies the three sister wives in an unbreakable bond. In the final minutes of the show—11 months after Bill's shooting—these three find the common ground they've been fighting for throughout the entire series. And Barb, who struggled with her questions of faith, gains the priesthood she's long sought after and leads the righteous into a new beginning.

For a show that, at its core, has been about families and faith, it was a perfect way to end the remarkable series, as heartbreaking as it was. The 12 scenes selected below from Big Love's five seasons exemplify the way that the show shifted effortlessly from domestic drama to faith-based vision quest, and from the mundane to the divine.

Big Love, American Style

Tonight is the series finale of Big Love, one of the key shows of what we might call the HBO interregnum — the period after the first generation of drama hits went away (it was a year after the end of Six Feet Under and a year before the end of The Sopranos) and it seemed unable to come up with new shows of the same impact.  Big Love is sort of a transitional show. It follows the pattern of those HBO successes: a stylish melodrama with a sense of humour and a commitment to showing the dark side of a typical TV genre (in this case, the family drama). But it got broader and soapier than they did, and seemed to use stories as metaphors for topical issues almost in the way that science fiction shows do. That’s a format that True Blood would eventually use, but Big Love arguably got caught in the middle of that transition, never quite sure if it wanted to be a serious drama or a crazy soap.

This all came to a head in the controversial fourth season, which tried to cram an incredible amount of craziness into only nine episodes. Bill Paxton, who defends the season for its ambition (though ambition, as always, doesn’t equal achievement), seems to think that the negative reactions cost the show the chance to have a longer run:

    I grant you that last season may have tried to put too big a foot in too big a shoe, but they were cramming those episodes chock full of great stuff. I was surprised that we were so taken to task for it. And it did not help us keep the show going. If [people] would just watch it again, they’d realize that we put too many ingredients in the stew, but the show’s always been so ambitious and so well written and so full of stuff. I personally grew to resent that whole brouhaha and I think that it ultimately killed the show. Again, I don’t know the political ins and outs of that, but I know that it didn’t help us going into Season 5.

Of course it could be that the show was simply unlucky that there wasn’t a polygamy craze in pop culture to compare with the vampire craze that helped lift True Blood to smash hit status. In any case, in preparation for tonight’s finale, Jace Lacob collects together 10 memorable moments from the run of Big Love, most of them from the third season.