Big Love

Bill and I are catching up on one of our favorite TV series: Big Love. Big Love is an HBO series which ended recently after the 5th season. However, we are currently watching the 4th season on Netflix. We watched one episode yesterday and two tonight. There are three to four episodes on each DVD.

It's a well-done series, which is pretty typical for HBO. (My all time favorite was probably Six Feet Under, which centered on a family's business that just happened to be small funeral home.) Big Love focuses on a family practicing polygamy in Utah. It's a fictional version of Sister Wives, the current TLC series which follows the lives of a real polygymist family and has been somewhat controversial.

I think it's interesting that as a society we seem to find polygamy fascinating. I have to admit that it does interest me. Most people in America think polygamy is wrong, unethical, immoral, etc. However, when I watch Sister Wives, I realize that in some odd way the family is not that different from my own. Obviously, there are four wives and one husband. In that way, we are different.

Yet, the struggles they have and the issues that they face are things that I relate to. It reminds me that people who seem very different from me on the surface still have things in common with me. I think this lesson is an important one when it comes to understanding and showing empathy for others. This may be particularly important for me because I tend to error on the side of being judgmental. It's good for me to remember that everyone is similar to me in some way. I just have to figure out how they are similar to me.

In other news...I am looking forward to a weekend with some time to work on a research article that is in process and do some running. And, of course, spend some quality time with my husband and the dogs.