History Series / BigLove

%% * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Apparently a dominant gene in the Juniper Creek population.
%% ** Helps that Alby's primary wife is played now by the actress who played Cutthroat Bitch on Series/{{House}}
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Bill's brother Joey and his wife Wanda are not seen or even mentioned in Season 5 after being very important characters for the first four seasons.

%% * ArrangedMarriage: Roman and the Joy Book, a catalog of unmarried girls on the compound.

%% * BackForTheFinale: Sarah.

* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Bill's brother Joey and his wife Wanda are not seen or even mentioned in Season 5 after being important characters for the first four seasons.

%% * GayngstInducedSuicide: [[spoiler:Dale commits suicide in season 4]].

* GoshdangItToHeck: Very much used, highly surprising for a HBO series, although justified considering the main characters are an offshoot of the conservative Mormons. It is also a common Mormon mannerism to, e.g., abbreviate "H**l" to "H".
** Margene will occasionally drop a real curse word, but only when she's really steamed, and it's justified by her not having grown up in the Mormon religion.

%% * TheHecateSisters: The three wives: Margene is the maiden, Barb is the mother, and Nikki is the crone.

%% * RealSongThemeTune: The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".

%% * TeacherStudentRomance: Cara Lynn and her math teacher, Mutual Attraction subtype. Also something of a WhatHappenedToTheMouse ending to the story. Nicki ends the relationship with a very cruel verbal beatdown of Cara Lynn in which Nicki claims that the teacher had done it before and wasn't really interested in her, but the audience never sees whether that's true or not or if the supposed meeting between Nicki and the teacher ever happened.

* ClusterFBomb: ''The only show on HBO that averts this.'' As Mormons, the characters are fastidious about abstaining from profanity Heck, they don't even use "Crap".
%% * ConflictingLoyalty: Nikki

* DepravedBisexual: Alby,implied to be in the closet from the first season, though in a handful of scenes seems to have no problem lusting after his co-conspirator wife. His despicable actions and general misogyny however, appear to have nothing to do with his sexuality.

%% ** Margene will occasionally drop a real curse word, but only when she's really steamed.

* ArmouredClosetGay: Alby
** He's also in a TransparentCloset to many characters. His mother says he is... [[UnusualEuphemism "tap tap tap"]].
* ArrangedMarriage: Roman and the Joy Book, a catalog of unmarried girls on the compound.
* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler: Bill seems to have done this at the end of the series finale]]

* AxCrazy: so very, very many people on the compound. Lois, Adaleen, Wanda, Roman and company...Nicki's also no slouch in the coo-coo bananas department when she's pushed, either.

* BackForTheFinale: Sarah.
* BalancedHarem

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Bill is dead]]. But his first grandchild has been named after him, Barb has taken her role as head of the household, Margene is becoming more independent and self-sufficient, and after years of bickering, the three wives have forged a sincere, profound connection. Also Bill has a revelation and annoits Barb in the Priesthood of their new church, being the first of a new line of female priests.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Apparently a dominant gene in the Juniper Creek population.
** Helps that Alby's primary wife is played now by the actress who played Cutthroat Bitch on Series/{{House}}

* ClosetKey: Don's second and third wives, to each other.

* ConflictingLoyalty: Nikki
* ConvenientMiscarriage: [[spoiler:Sarah Henrickson, Bill and Barb's daughter]].
* ConvictionByContradiction: Roman.

* DeathOfTheHypotenuse: [[spoiler: Kathy.]]

* DevilInPlainSight: Nikki and her out-of-control narcissism.

* DoubleStandard

* DragonAscendant: Alby becomes this after Roman's death becoming the BigBad of the final season.

* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Margie goes blonde after her (blonde) mother dies. She also cuts her hair in a pixie cut after Bill's death (the actress's RealLife hairstyle), possibly symbolizing her newfound independence.

** It's suggested that Bill's mother did this long before the show's beginning, when her daughter died. She is the only woman on the compound with short hair.
* FourthDateMarriage: frequently happens in polygamy. Ana pretty much did/was this. Sarah does a version of this in which she suddenly gets engaged and claims to be madly in love with the guy she dumped a few months earlier---for not loving him.
** More accurately, she broke up with him because [[spoiler:he got her pregnant.]] The love part's debatable.

** Other characters seems to sense this about Alby as well.
* GayngstInducedSuicide: [[spoiler:Dale commits suicide in season 4]].

** Margene will occasionally drop a real curse word, but only when she's really steamed.

* HaremSeries
* TheHecateSisters: The three wives: Margene is the maiden, Barb is the mother, and Nikki is the crone.

* {{Housewife}}

* HumiliationConga: The entire fifth season.

* [[IHaveYourWife I Have Your Kid]]: Kim Lee.

* LongLostRelative: JJ to Wanda, Franky to Bill.
* LukeYouAreMyFather: Cara Lynn to Nicki.
* MacGuffin: the Woodruff letter.
* MamaBear: Lois Hendrickson. Hollis Green learns this the ''hard way.''
* MercyKill: Frank for Lois in the series finale.
* TheMole: Nicki at the law office.
* MurderSuicide: Although it's of the MercyKill variety, Frank also appears to be invoking this with Lois.
* NativeAmericanCasino: Like most of Bill's bright ideas, this does not work out in the end.

* ParentalAbandonment: teenage boys are frequently thrown off the compound for developing sexual interest in the teenage girls intended for old men. Nicki had [[DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou a good reason for abandoning]] her daughter: in order to get out of her first marriage.
* PapaWolf: Bill. Alby learns this the hard way.
* ProductPlacement: The first season was full of them, as part of a shopaholic storyline with Nicki.

* RealSongThemeTune: The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows".

* TakingTheKids: what Don's two other wives did to him. He's not legally married to them, which makes it worse for him.
* TeacherStudentRomance: Cara Lynn and her math teacher, Mutual Attraction subtype. Also something of a WhatHappenedToTheMouse ending to the story. Nicki ends the relationship with a very cruel verbal beatdown of Cara Lynn in which Nicki claims that the teacher had done it before and wasn't really interested in her, but the audience never sees whether that's true or not or if the supposed meeting between Nicki and the teacher ever happened.
* ThickerThanWater
* TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth: said about [[spoiler: Kathy]].

* VillainousIncest: JJ.
* WellDoneSonGuy: Alby and Nikki both have this going on.

* WhiteShirtOfDeath: [[spoiler:Bill himself at the end of the show.]]

** Wanda has a poisoning fetish as well.
** In Season 3, [[spoiler:Joey kills Roman in revenge for Kathy's death]]

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Three wives of Bill, eight kids so far, employees, friends and, above all, relatives on the compound.

* TheHecateSisters: The three wives - Margene is the maiden, Barb is the mother, and Nikki is the crone.

* TheUnfavorite: Nikki, in spades. Her dialogue and backstory makes it's obvious that she grew up as this, being female on the male-dominated compound. Then, we learn Bill took her in not because he'd fallen in love with her, but both to secure a loan from her father, and because Barb's illness left her unable to have more children, meaning that she's this in her own marriage--she finally calls Bill out on this in the final season. A good deal of her behavior can be attributed to this.
** Margene has moments of this too, as she clearly often feels left out of Barb and Nikki's close relationship.

* VillainousIncest: JJ

* {{Yandere}}: Rhonda, the child bride of the cult leader. She trades shamelessly on her status as an abuse victim, right up to the point when she flips completely and flaunts her status as bride of the Prophet. She's willing to blackmail and manipulate, but she takes pains to appear as a sweet innocent to anyone she's not specifically attacking.

* ConvenientMiscarriage- [[spoiler:Sarah Henrickson, Bill and Barb's daughter]].
* ConvictionByContradiction: Roman

* ClusterFBomb: ''The only show on HBO that averts this.'' As Mormons, the characters are fastidious about abstaining from profanity.

Bill Henrickson (Creator/BillPaxton) is, by all appearances, a traditional family man. He met his wife Barbara (née Dutton) Henrickson (Jeanne Tripplehorn) in college and has had three children by her: Ben (Douglas Smith), Sarah (Creator/AmandaSeyfried) and Tancy. Though Barb had a close brush with uterine cancer, the two remain HappilyMarried. Bill has started his own business, "Home Plus," a small chain of home-improvement stores, and has made enough to buy the two houses on either side of his own, which he now rents out to single mothers as a charity project. Oh, and, yes, he and his wife are members of the [[UsefulNotes/Mormonism Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints]]; but in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, that's not really a big deal...

Bill Henrickson (Creator/BillPaxton) is, by all appearances, a traditional family man. He met his wife Barbara (née Dutton) Henrickson (Jeanne Tripplehorn) in college and has had three children by her: Ben (Douglas Smith), Sarah (Creator/AmandaSeyfried) and Tancy. Though Barb had a close brush with uterine cancer, the two remain HappilyMarried. Bill has started his own business, "Home Plus," a small chain of home-improvement stores, and has made enough to buy the two houses on either side of his own, which he now rents out to single mothers as a charity project. Oh, and, yes, he and his wife are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but in Sandy, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, that's not really a big deal...

...except for how Bill is actually a member of a fundamentalist Mormon splinter group that practices polygamy. The two neighbors, Nicolette Grant (Creator/ChloeSevigny) and Margene Heffman (Ginnifer Goodwin), are also his wives, and their sons and daughters are his. Nicky Grant is the daughter of [[DarkMessiah Roman Grant]], who took over the Juniper Creek polygamist compound where Bill grew up, after Bill's grandfather, the former leader, passed away under mysterious circumstances. She joined the family to help look after them all during Barb's illness and convalescence. When she herself began to have children of her own, Margie was brought in as a babysitter. Both women joined the plural marriage of their own free will, though Barb's mother, a traditional Mormon, disowned her for the decision.

** Wanda has a poisoning fetish as well. .

* YourCheatingHeart: Nicki in season 3. Also Bill's flirtation with Ana that he carried on behind the other three's back. And a strange "inside" version, when Bill and Barb have an "affair" during Season 1(he's not supposed to sleep with her on nights designated for the other two). When Nicki finds out, she's very hurt and upset, as it confirms what she's clearly always suspected--that Bill doesn't love her as much he does Barb.

* RoadShow: "Come, Ye Saints."

* CreepyChild: Rhonda Vollmer is a non-supernatural variant: behind her artless demeanor and expressionless blue eyes lurks the brain of a baby sociopath and master-manipulator-in-training (not to mention a disturbing fondness for rhinestones). She's got something of an excuse, having been raised in an abusive cult and married off at the age of fourteen to a man in his seventies, but it doesn't do much to make her less terrifying. (Amusingly, she's played by Daveigh Chase, who portrayed the ultimate CreepyChild in the American version of TheRing.)

The series centers around the lives of these characters, as well as ancillary ones from Juniper Creek; Bill's brother Joey and Joey's wife, [[{{Yandere}} Wanda]]; Bill's mother and father, and his father's other wives. And, of course, there's the typical soap opera drama resulting from a deconstructed TenchiSolution, in which a man can cheat on two of his wives by sleeping with the third one when it's not her turn on the schedule. (And yes, that happens. By the first half of the first season.)