By the time Rachel puts out tenders for spouse number four, she’s feeling like a beleaguered camp counsellor. Wallets, overdue dvds, and loose change are strewn across every surface; flat-screen TVs blare night and day; and fights are constantly breaking out over Roy’s insistence on playing Leonard Cohen before breakfast. Eventually she’s forced to acknowledge that the modern woman’s future does not lie in more husbands—but in no husbands at all.
It’s true that Rachel has more opportunities for sex, a benefit she does not take for granted. But after herniating two discs when Luke jumps her in the laundry room, she is no longer enthusiastic about this perk.
The themes:
Big Love has hooked viewers by subverting traditional notions about polygamy and by making plural marriage seem like a hip, progressive lifestyle. But the show actually peddles a reactionary family-values message. Married with Husbands will expose the truth about polygamy: it’s not an equal opportunity arrangement.
The characters:
Rachel Waisberg is a funny, irrepressible, libidinous, thrice-married woman in full. She can be abrasive (” Yes, you need nose clippers. I’m just being honest!”), but she’s so much fun that men are not daunted. A successful, sexy-brainy writer who works in a home office, Rachel’s role model is Mordecai Richler, who wrote from 9 to 4, repaired to the bar to drink with his buddies, then returned to his wife, Florence, and their exquisitely orchestrated bourgeois bohemian life. Rachel’s goal is to become a crusty but benevolent materfamilias worshipped and waited on by a posse of testosterone-fuelled Florences.
Sam Shore-Waisberg, fifty-two, is an English professor turned stay-at-home dad who gave up his career when Jason was a baby. Now that Jason is in his twenties, Sam busies himself with charitable work and runs an online book club. Utterly without ego, he’s content to sing the doo-wahs while his wife bathes in the spotlight. But if Sam feels unappreciated, watch out. His legendary sulks can cast a pall over the entire household.
Luke Waisberg, thirty-six, Husband No. 2, is a bond trader with a commanding portfolio, swaggering libido, and a weakness for big booty—or so he claimed in his Lavalife profile, which also alluded to his ” impressive package.” When Rachel tells Luke that she expects him to relinquish his career and take her last name, she’s charmed when he replies, ” The career thing is overrated, and subsuming my identity into yours will make us a family.”
A talented amateur chef, on their nights together Luke promises to prepare Rachel sumptuous, nutritionally sensitive meals. Afterwards, while she soaks in a leisurely bath, she imagines that he’ll clean up, make a shopping list, walk the dog, air the duvets, organize the balsamic vinegars, do the mending, and throw out the rotting food from the fridge. Then they’ll repair to the nanny suite for sex so operatic the neighbours will complain. On paper, Luke looks like the perfect second husband. But the scales begin to fall from Rachel’s eyes when he turns out to have adhd and a compulsive shopping disorder.
