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« Roush Dispatch
Finales: Big Love, Army Wives, Kill Point
Bill Paxton and Jeanne Tripplehorn in Big Love by Lacey Terrell/HBO
Sundays are seldom as busy during the regular TV season as was the case this weekend, with season and series finales all over cable. So much for summer being the sleepy season. If you'd been watching any of these shows this summer, you wouldn't have wanted to miss the payoffs.
Big Love: So much drama and trauma on HBO's increasingly addictive domestic melodrama about a family man and the three wives who alternately adore and tolerate his whims, schemes and transgressions. One reason I love the show is that it has lines of dialogue you could never hear anywhere else. Here’s Nicky: “Our husband’s dating life is none of our business.” Bill to Barb: “There are two other people in this marriage.” Bill to Margene: “You are not having the neighbor’s baby!” Barb to Bill: “I don’t want a fourth [wife].” Margene: “Boss lady outed us to the neighbors!”
So twisted, and yet presented in such a way that it almost seems normal. The juicy, funny, scary Big Love helped redeem HBO’s lost summer, squandered on the self-indulgent John from Cincinnati, a so-so season of Entourage (am I the only one rooting for the fictional “Medellin” to be a bomb at Cannes because it looks so very hissable?) and the quirky cult item Flight of the Conchords, whose scruffy charms completely escape me (though I’ve grinned at a few of the music videos).
The malevolent Roman Grant recuperating in Nicky’s home under Bill’s watch, was the catalyst for the final hour of family-vs-compound intrigue, spiced up by the diabolical Lois (the great Grace Zabriskie) bringing the deranged Wanda some industrial-strength antifreeze poison and urging the addled lass to finally polish Roman off. (We already knew Wanda was “struggling with [her] impulses,” as a week ago she nearly sprinkled cleanser as frosting on the Bundt cake for her own new sister-wife.) On this show, sometimes the line between humor and horror is perilously thin.
Among the other developments: Margene brings Ana into the houses, leading to the inevitable passionate clinch with Bill and more dismay from “boss lady” Barb. Ben rejects sister Sarah’s entreaties to abandon his polygamist ambitions, sending a disillusioned Sarah into the amorous arms of her older boyfriend Scott. And while the kids put on a Pioneer Day pageant in Bill’s backyard and all appears hunky-dory, back at the compound the despicable Alby has his father arrested, along with Joey and Adaleen, in the latest round of the deadly power struggle. Great cliff-hanger. Great season.
Army Wives: Lifetime’s biggest hit ever (so we’re told) ended its first season with a potential bang, as a jilted husband shows up at the bar — where nearly every major series regular who hasn’t shipped off to war has gathered, naturally — wired to explode with dynamite strapped to his body. While I try to ignore unfortunate parallels with suicide bombers, this triggers memories of the glory days of the prime-time soap. (I still remember the aftermath of a similar explosion on Falcon Crest, after which the widow of the incendiary spouse explains that she hasn’t left the house for days because “there are pieces of him all over the front yard.”)
Up to that point, the episode had steered relatively and refreshingly clear of melodrama, instead wallowing in satisfying sentimental farewells as several of the Army husbands were suddenly deployed. This was especially wrenching for Roxy (my favorite character) and her young husband Trevor, who’s the first real dad her little boys have ever known. I’m sure all loyal fans of this show are hoping for his safe return.
With a backdrop of a terrorist alert in the wake of stolen munitions on the post, we see one pregnancy scare averted (Claudia Jean’s college-bound daughter Amanda) and another pregnancy confirmed (Joan, who tells estranged husband Roland to go off to Chicago regardless). It's business as usual — up until that wacky bomb cliff-hanger — for a show that hit its stride instantly and is destined to be one of cable’s more reliable draws for years to come.
The Kill Point: Spike TV’s bank robbery/hostage thriller miniseries wrapped its tense eight-hour run with a nerve-rattling two-hour climax of violent twists and turns that might have been even more effective if they’d come a little sooner. (A few of the middle hours felt awfully padded, a symptom that’s beginning to affect FX’s Damages as well, especially evident in last week’s episode.)
As we might have expected, things didn’t end well (with one exception) for the veterans-turned-criminals, with one of the crew dying in a bone-crunching hand-to-hand battle with his own superior officer. The Wolf-Horst negotiations (always well played by John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg) took an unexpected detour toward the end, as Horst became the gang’s final hostage, with the policeman’s pregnant wife along for the final endless showdown and shootout. And was I the only one reminded of ABC’s poor The Nine toward the end, as the bank officer emerged with the other freed hostages and found himself the only one without a greeting party to welcome him? As he poignantly shuffled off, I couldn’t help but think fondly of The Nine’s John Billingsley, who cornered the market on pathos as Egan Foote.
True, The Nine probably would have been better off conceived as a limited-run miniseries like The Kill Point. But still, it deserved better than it got from ABC, especially during the summer off-season, where it barely got a chance to reemerge from a long hiatus before it was pulled off the air for good. Talk about your kill points.
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Aug 27, 2007 10:18 AM
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Big Love certainly did save HBO this year. (Matt, you're not the only one rooting against Vinny Chase)
Bill is a liar and manipulator but the fact that he hasn't gone completely nuts with his 3 wives, 3 homes, 8? kids, 2 crazy parents, 2 stores, 1 gambling business, multiple enemies, and 0 protection from the compound is quite a feat.
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Aug 27, 2007 11:51 AM
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Loved the Army Wives finale. I was surprised to like this show at all. Despite being of the female persuasion, Lifetime is SO not my favorite network! But I'm loving their "new Sunday nights"! Army Wives being my favorite of the three. And, it took me awhile, but I realized why. Things are not dragged out. Things happen, people find out, it is dealt with, and we move on. Such as Pamela's surrogate pregnancy. Just think how long some other shows would have played that out. The finale kept with the entire season - I cannot wait until next season to find out what happen!
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Aug 27, 2007 1:17 PM
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Re "Kill Point": My sympathies to anyone who set their DVR to record the scheduled 11 p.m. "encore" broadcast, which started at 10:45 or so. How ridiculous is that? Almost as ridiculous as this line in the end credits: "Filmed in whole or in part in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." Seems to me "in part" negates "in whole." On the whole, I liked the mini, especially after things got tense enough that Cali stopped correcting everybody's grammar.
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Aug 27, 2007 2:03 PM
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you sure are right about Big Love. What a season that show has had. I was a little worried about the show in general during the first six episodes ... but everybody on this show really has had a chance to connect with certain characters you would never expect and that ultimately leads to scenes that you would never expect as well.
It's obvious that Barb is at a breaking point ... and when this Weber game thing doesn't go through, I've got a feeling that Barb is going to go straight to where Wanda's been half the season ... the loony bin.
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Aug 27, 2007 3:42 PM
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Matt as usual you are dead on about Big Love. It does almost seem normal. The writing and acting on this show from everybody from Roman to little Wayne is incredible. I have had the most fun this summer watching this show that I've become completely obsessed with polygamy this year. The 2 HBO polygamy specials led to me buying numerous books and reading articles online and talking about it nonstop.
I knew I was hooked when I noticed that the book I was reading about a hermaphrodite whose grandparents were actually brother and sister STILL wasn't the most fascinating thing I had read this summer!
I wouldn't be caught dead practicing polygamy, but damn if I don't enjoy observing it! Come on Season 3!
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Aug 27, 2007 4:06 PM
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Matt - I have to wonder why more networks don't adapt more TV concepts to a mini-series format? We tuned into 8 hours of TheKill Point which is more that what we saw of The Nine and Mr. Smith and Daybreak and Drive just to name a few! It seems to me that a show like Drive could have really been successful as a mini-series. I could never figure out what they would have used as a plot for season 2 anyway!
And yes - I missed the first ten minutes or so of Kill Point and was not happy about it!
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Aug 27, 2007 4:35 PM
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Matt, isn't the character on Army Wives named Claudia Joy not Claudia Jean? I loved the finale by the way. It was heartfelt, well acted, and entertaining.
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Aug 28, 2007 12:22 PM
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Ginnifer Goodwin deserves at the very least an emmy nomination for this season, come emmy time next year. She was so fantastic this season...and really stepped it up.
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Aug 28, 2007 5:29 PM
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The Army Wives season finale was awesome - unsuspecting and surprising. I am not a Lifetime typical demographic - I am a middle-aged male; but I was addicted to this series from episode 1. I am glad it was renewed for a 2nd season (anyone know when that will be? Next summer? UGH!). I recently lived in an army town in north/western Tennessee for a couple of years working at a University and I can relate to these characters from an "outsider" point of view. I hope this series has many seasons ahead of it.
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Aug 28, 2007 7:35 PM
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I LOVE Army Wives and the season Finale had me on the edge of my seat I cant wait for the new season to start and find out what happen.
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Aug 29, 2007 9:06 AM
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I was wondering why I felt lost at the beginning of the Kill Point. Now I see that I missed the first 10 to 15 minutes of it. What did I miss? Can someone give a brief recap? Thanks.
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Aug 29, 2007 10:11 PM
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Does anyone (Matt?) know when Big Love's 3rd season will begin? I don't know how I'm supposed to wait!!! I can hardly stand it, I love it so bad. 
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Aug 30, 2007 5:34 PM
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I was looking forward to "The Kill Point". I love heist movies. It had 4 actors from my favorite show, HBO's "The Wire". It started out great, but the writing went downhill fairly quickly. The shootout scenes were the absolute worst. Between veterans and the SWAT team, nobody could hit the side of a barn! I can't believe how many bullets were flying around with nobody getting hit. Michael K. Williams' acting talent was totally wasted in his role as a sniper mumbling unintelligible philosophy while he waits for something to shoot. I didn't like the fact that the one bad guy who got away was a psychotic pervert. Oh well, it's over now.
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Aug 31, 2007 2:21 PM
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