I’ve mentioned before that I’ve long had a rather unlikely and slightly obsessive interest in Mormon history and culture. I’ve read me some Fawn Brodie and some Hugh Nibley and lots of others who fall somewhere in the middle of that very wide spectrum of LDS historians. Like everyone else I know, I read Under the Banner of Heaven, and I also closely followed the whole Warren Jeffs saga. Recently I read Carolyn Jessop’s fascinating tale of her own escape from de facto polygamous slavery, and of course…of course I am a big fan of Big Love (or was, before the plots got so over the top nutty last season).
Given my oddball interest in this topic, you will not be shocked to learn that I felt compelled to check out the new polygamy-meets-reality-TV-show, “Sister Wives.” I was immediately sucked in, and I’ve now watched (I think) every episode. And after all the reading and watching I’ve done over the years on the topic of the history of LDS polygamy, I can now report that in only three or four 30 minute television episodes, the Sister Wives’ patri-dude, one Kody Brown (Kody with a K???) has turned my previous fascination into outright revulsion. In fact, the whole show plays like some kind of totally disturbing piece of performance art, but apparently it’s not. These people are for real.
What I can’t figure out is how Kody McKreepy, he of the middle aged paunch-meets-polygamy shtick, managed to convince even ONE of those three nice mom-jeans ladies to “marry” him. This question is TV’s new “Who Killed Laura Palmer?” – a weirdly compelling question that no one can really answer.
Whither Kody?
While Kody is offensive in the extreme (I can see Will Ferrell playing him in the movie version), the three older wives are just inscrutably ….odd, although I must say that they all seem like well-intentioned people who just happen to have seriously bad taste in man (singular). But something is off there with these three women, although I can’t quite put my finger on it. I half expect one of them to eventually reveal herself to be John Waters’ muse, Divine, back from the beyond.
But if the first three wives are odd, the new wife is just Trouble come to town, polygamy or no polygamy. She’s a type. Mark my words, she’s up to no good. That beady-eyed wife # 4 is clearly a frenemy interloper with some sort of specialized conjugal juju that she’s currently deploying to her advantage in order to score better vacations than the other women. I mean, you just KNOW she’s got some kinda mad skillz to earn herself a whole day at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Kingdom -including ZIP LINE RIDE!! – alone with the Kodester.
So have you watched Sister Wives? What’s your impression? I am betting that all the other self-respecting fundamentalist LDS polygamists out there are really irritated that this cheesy Klan o’ Kody is making them look so bad on national television.