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Positive:
53
Mixed:
19
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Feb 3, 2011
Season 5 Review:
One welcome aspect of all this is that some of the plot threads which became so distracting last season, threatening to tip Big Love into crazy-flatulent "L.A. Law" territory, seem to be gone. There is more than enough left, along with consistently brilliant acting all over, to keep the show as mesmerizing as it ever was.
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Season 4 Review:
Paxton's supported by a vast cast of vivid characters waging holy battle while chasing the almighty dollar. [11 Jan 2010, p.41]
Season 2 Review:
[It] remains a nervily ambiguous concept. [18 Jun 2007, p.37]
Season 1 Review:
The casting is so good and the production design so sophisticated that the series' pull toward baroque psychosexual doings is, so far, pleasurable. [7 Apr 2006, p.51]
Season 2 Review:
Big Love has dropped the last vestiges of its ostentatious quirkiness and fashioned itself into a rich and grounded family drama. [22 Jun 2007, p.62]
Feb 3, 2011
Season 5 Review:
The first two new episodes are better focused and often affecting but don't quite cohere, possibly in part because of the mop-up work left after the whirlwind of season four. The third episode sent to critics, however, is one of the strongest the show has done in a while, possibly since the excellent third season.
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Season 1 Review:
It’s something of a feat that the makers of Big Love are willing to put the ugly side of this phenomenon up against the mainstream sheen of Bill’s setup, and -- thanks in great part to the marvelous acting on display, from Paxton’s rugged haplessness to all three women’s unique variations on maternal stress and wifely sensuality -- still offer up a family to root for, warts and all.
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Season 3 Review:
Big Love quickly settles you into its odd setting. The particulars of the Henricksons' lives--their intrigues and secrecy, yes, but also their familiar family dynamics and sincere faith--are presented, simply and unpatronizingly, as the reality of the show's universe.
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Feb 3, 2011
Season 4 Review:
It's all very entertaining, and extremely well acted, but feels overly hectic. Not until next Sunday's episode, when Bill and Barbara's daughter Sarah makes a move toward determining her own future, does Big Love approach the kind of emotional, transcendent high that made so much of last season so memorable.
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Season 4 Review:
At this point, the show's creative team has earned the latitude to trust that it knows where it's heading, as unpredictable and soapy (times three) as that path might appear. So while the series has so many plates spinning as to feel messy at times, the course of true "Love" never did run smooth.
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Season 1 Review:
More of a curiosity than a necessity.
Season 3 Review:
The performances by the three lead actresses (and by Amanda Seyfried as Paxton and Tripplehorn's eldest daughter) are so strong, and the nuances of life in such a complicated relationship so endlessly fascinating, that I'll suffer through the rest for a few episodes at a time before Bill's unsettling stare or Roman's calm, criminal sense of entitlement chases me off again.
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Feb 3, 2011
Season 5 Review:
Season five is a definite improvement on season four, but only to a point. There aren't as many different stories rattling around, but the show's still so crowded that it has to bounce from scene to scene, subplot to subplot, so quickly that very little gets a chance to breathe.
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Season 4 Review:
HBO probably wants us to regard it as brilliant layering. But viewers who have three previous seasons' investment deserve Big Love's original (and more linear) sense of twisted heart and dark metaphor. Even the actors look alternately confused and pooped, empty shells of the characters they used to play.
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