It's not a show I regularly watch, but every so often the topic of the week, or the current script thread, will prompt me to watch. Often I get phone calls along the line of "they said such and such on the show.... it that true???" I try to say, "Hey, get real. It's a tv show and they want ratings. Of course they're going for shocking, outlandish, unreasonably biased story lines."
Truthfully, it makes me annoyed that I have to explain things the show chooses to portray. My parents and other non-LDS family members love to find things to criticize about anything remotely LDS. Like so many viewers, they cannot seem to grasp the difference between Fundamentalist Mormons (i.e. the show) and Latter-day Saints (my family and I). My life is easier when the show is on hiatus! LOL
On one episode an LDS neighbor was begging to be given the unborn baby of one of the multiple wives, who was claiming to be a surrogate mother. Hope that isn't too convoluted. Anyway, the LDS woman cried and begged to be given the baby because, as she tearfully put it, her husband was going to leave her because she couldn't provide him with spiritual children and without them she and her husband couldn't go to the Celestial Kingdom.
I had barely picked myself up off the floor where I was rolling around laughing, when the phone rang and I -- once again -- got to explain to shocked relatives that NO, having children is NOT a requirement for Celestial entrance. (I would put in an eye rolling emoticon here, but don't know how, so just imagine a really big eye roll!)
Too bad, too, as the acting on the show is pretty good, but really, couldn't they spend an extra few dollars a week to have an actual LDS person fact-check this type of trash before writing it into the storyline? Or maybe just stick to the Fundamentalist/Polygamy line and leave the Latter-day Saints out of it? Either way would be fine with me. It would save me a lot of explaining over nothing but a writer's overactive imagination coupled with gross ignorance.
SusanHere