Is the HBO show Big Love an accurate depiction of Mormons?!
Question:
Is the HBO show Big Love an accurate depiction of Mormons?
I think so. If not, they must be pretty boring.
Answers: Sorry. The Mormon church outlawed polygamy a hundred years ago. They had to in order for Utah to be admitted to the US as a state.
And so it is very much a fairly mainstream church, the only religion native to the United States. Though they're strongly evangelical, they stay out of born-again politics, hooray. They have an extremely strong tradition of self-reliance and of service to whatever community they're living in.
"Big Love" was just another silly premise for a television show about a weird family that tries to adhere to a conventional lifestyle, not unlike The Addams Family.
If you happen to get to Salt Lake City, go downtown and take the whole Mormon tour. It's a mixture of the extremely conventional and extremely strange, as all religions are. I don't know anything about the show, but TV & movies virtually never portray religious people anything close to accurately, because the people making the shows are usually completely clueless on the subject. So the chance is pretty slim that it's an accurate depiction. No, they're not supposed to be Mormons. There's a disclaimer in te opening or closing, I think.