'Big Love': Help me, Rhonda

If ever there were a show that encouraged an unmarried life with no children, it's "Big Love."

With each passing episode, any thoughts that having a small army of women around the house to do your bidding might be an attractive prospect have slowly been crushed beneath the tangled network of humanity that makes up Bill Henrickson's life. The frothiness of "The Girls Next Door" notwithstanding, we can only imagine the scheming domestic minefield Hugh Hefner wakes up to every morning. Although no one has undertaken such a task, any attempt to map out the show's varied conflicts, allegiances, rivalries, betrayals and hidden agendas would no doubt result in a flow chart complex enough to make an MIT grad proud.

The conflicts this season haven't been internal -- the Henrickson women have put up a pretty united front since being exposed as polygamists -- but external, against Bill's in-laws and fellow polygamists, led by Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton). The latest to throw a monkey wrench in the familial gears is Rhonda Volmer (Daveigh Chase), Roman's baby-faced and cold-eyed underage wife.

In Monday's episode, the teenaged Rhonda, having had enough of polygamist compound living, packed her bags and stowed away with Bill and Nicki (Chloe Sevigny). She decided that life with Bill's first wife, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), was much more preferable than an eternity of farm chores and ankle-length skirts.

Rhonda was taken to a shelter for runaway children, mainly as a way to avoid Roman's own personal police force, but despite a hasty meeting with an aid worker specializing in children victimized by polygamy, it became quickly obvious that Rhonda's interest to both Bill and Roman was as bargaining chip in their constant rivalry. Turn over the audio tape of incriminating evidence, Bill informed Roman, and you'll get your wife back. (In the episode's greatest moment, Roman, overwhelmed by his own paranoia, cannot locate the tape in question among the hundreds of secretly recorded conversations in his archive.)

But Rhonda is no innocent in all this. Her darting eyes reveal a driven personality that alternates between bullying and manipulating the Henrickson family. The biggest victim of this, surprisingly, is Nicki, who was once the family's master manipulator. But Nicki's conflicted feelings of allegience to both her husband and her father threaten to tear her apart. And Rhonda, all too aware of Nicki's weakness, uses it against her. Anything is fair game in her attempts to keep far away from the compound.

Meanwhile, Nicki's unstable brother, Alby (Matt Ross), seemed intent on stalking the Henricksons. He was no doubt unhappy about Roman putting his business interests before the prosecution of the people who tried to poison him. As Roman's chief enforcer, he was menacing, but now that he's apparently gone off the deep end, his appearances have become frightening. Wherever this storyline is going, it will no doubt end in tragedy.

And Bill, usually off on his own in most episodes, appears headed into the game machine industry. But what do those extended looks mean, as he stares at the flashing touch screens before him? He hasn't gambled away the family savings yet, but something's definitely up. The staunch family man, who chirped family values every day through his home supply stores, appears headed for a major life change. Or maybe he's just seduced by the all-inviting escape these machines represent.

With a political tug-of-war to rival the Elian Gonzalez saga back at home, can you blame him?

-- Patrick Day

(Photo courtesy HBO)