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Big Love
Season 2
SERIES: HBO, Monday 9:00p (60 minutes)

8.3 based on 10 reviews read critic reviews how did we calculate this? based on 53 votes read user comments rate this tv show

Get more information on this show at TV.com.

TV:

• Big Love: Season One (HBO)

• Official Show Site
• Television Without Pity Recaps

Starring Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Harry Dean Stanton, Bruce Dern, and Grace Zabriskie

Utah's Henrickson family--all one husband, three wives and seven children of them--return for a second season, where they must deal with the aftermath of being outed as polygamists.

GENRE(S):	Comedy, Drama
CREATED BY:	Mark V. Olsen Will Scheffer
FIRST AIR DATE:	June 11, 2007

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

90

TV Guide Matt Roush

The second season... crackles with high drama, suspenseful twists, unexpected humor and emotion.

88

People Weekly Tom Gliatto

[It] remains a nervily ambiguous concept. [18 Jun 2007, p.37]

83

Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn

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]

80

Newsday Diane Werts

"Big Love" does more this year than you might expect, and more richly, more provocatively, more dramatically and amusingly, too.

80

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen

The series performs a deft balancing act, creating sympathetic characters in a nontraditional family that viewers care about while making polygamy look like a much bigger relationship headache than any two-person union.

80

Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara

It's the characters, and the character development, that continually lift the show out of soap into true opera, in which things writ large resonate with pinpoint accuracy.

75

New York Daily News David Hinckley

There's lots of humor in "Big Love" this season, but it is all based in the characters and a new spin on familiar situations.

70

The New York Times Virginia Heffernan

Like the fledgling “John From Cincinnati” but with fewer side effects, “Big Love” derives suspense, humor and thrills from HBO’s signature insight: that Americans are profoundly anxious about how their families are different from other families.

50

Newark Star-Ledger Alan Sepinwall

The show feels cold, like it's holding the audience at arm's length.

10

Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan

“Big Love” is a waste of time, and an excruciating waste of these actors’ talents.

The average user rating for this tv show is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 53 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Mike gave it a10:
Big love is excellent! more provocative and enlightening than any other show on tv! as a side note Maureen ryan is a moron. her reviews read like a high school blogger. she prefers mind numbing shows like entourage and flight of the concords over big love.

Lynn N. gave it a10:
Easily the most compelling and best written script on TV today.

karen m gave it a10:
It is as close to the real thing as it gets good job..

glenn gave it a9:
I am a mormon and I watch the show. I am hooked and find it very amusing and entertaining. Having more than one wife would be hard work but Im glad the wife has the final decision. The show really portrays a polygamist lifestyle and the problems a family would face. It would take a very noble guy to take it on.

Ally gave it a10:
Love it!

Nanette B. gave it a10:
My husband even likes this show. I think it is one of the best shows on TV today.

Chuck S gave it a9:
It's a great show with very good character dynamics. Here is my take on the characters: Bill Hendrickson wanting a large family. Barbara's love for her husband agreed to allow him to take on other wives so he could realise his large family even though, as indicated in the 1st season was a member of the mainstream LDS faith but has left it. Niki, who didn't marry Bill for love but for the principle, that is their belief that polygamy is right. Margene, simply loves everyone, even those that don't like her and loves the idea of this "alternate family lifestyle". Even the 2 oldest children are struggling with coming of age issues and are dealing with their own views on the polygamist lifestyle. I guess the people that don't like the show, can't see that it's trying to portray the dynamics of the lifestyle in an intellegent manor. Of course it's not going to be totally accurate in that portrayal. It's not a ducumentary of real polygamist family. It's a television drama and it has to keep viewers entertained. I doubt if thee are very many people or families in real life could keep others entertained for very long, let alone an entire tv season.

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