Television Without Pity on Big Love

This show is intriguing enough to come back to it.

Oh my heck, does Bill Hendrickson have his hands full. He's got a chain of home-improvement stores poised to go public, and if that weren't headache enough, there's also trouble on the home fronts -- all four of them.

First wife Barb is not exactly going along with the unquestioning-obedience business and Bill spends all episode coaxing her into signing over her paycheck. This is so he can alleviate some of the financial woes that compulsive shopper and wife number two Nicki has incurred. And wife number three, Margene, is clearly in over her head with regards to keeping house and raising kids. (Which is only to be expected: she appears to be barely older than Bill and Barb's oldest daughter, Sara.) Meanwhile, back at the fundamentalist compound from whence Bill escaped, his dad appears to be the victim of poisoning, Bill's salty momma complicates the situation by throwing assorted fits over the state of modern medicine (she distrusts it) and Bill's lifestyle, and Bill's father-in-law -- well, one of them, anyway -- is making noises about wanting a bigger slice of his business's profits. Those fourteen-year-old brides don't come cheap, you know.

All in all, a promising start to the series. Plus it features Tina Majorino in a role that's a spiritual sister to Deb in Napoleon Dynamite, so there's always that going for it.