Gun smuggling! Bomb threats! Execution-style killings! Unhappy uteruses! It was one wacky episode of Big Love this week, and we’re not certain that’s a bad thing. With all the simmering tension this season, the lid had to be blown off at some point, right? Still, the sheer ridiculousness of it all is unprecedented. And it left us wondering just how much any of this mattered. Let’s see how many of these issues we’ll be dealing with next week.
• Marge wants to marry Ana’s lover so he — and Ana, and Ana and Bill’s baby — can stay in the country. Do you remember when she wanted to bear her neighbor’s child? We look forward to this plotline evaporating as well.
• Nicki’s mom says she’s pregnant with J.J.’s baby. Random eighties outfits aside, Nicki’s been unraveling in a bitterly believable way. Now she has to find out that she can’t have another child, but her mother somehow can? This is simply bizarre.
• The Greens have set up a kangaroo court in Mexico. If you’re out of order, like the bird dealer, you will be unceremoniously shot. If you’re Bill, you will swoop in with your own gun and attempt to rescue your family. If you’re Lois, you will cut off Hollis’s arm with a machete. This is all very dramatic, in a National Lampoon’s Mexican Vacation sort of way.
• Frank is smuggling guns. This actually makes sense — the stakes never felt high enough with the birds alone. And the fact that he admits Roman was the one who had him force Bill off the compound is a solid resolution to that whole question — Frank’s pathetic, and he knows it. He’s not simply an asshole.
• Joey wants revenge. This also feels believable. But his rage was just more white noise in an overwhelming episode.
• Finally, Bill was right about Marilyn — she’s scamming the casino. It’s about time Bill made the correct call on something. But what now? We suppose this whole debacle helps light the way forward for Bill’s damned political career.