*You will find no spoilers here.  I do not punish people for recording, and watching at a later date.

Never in my life have I been so emotional about a show coming to it’s end.

Sunday was indeed the Lord’s day in our house… at least for a few months out of the year when HBO brought us Big Love.  And after five years, I can say with certainty that it is one of the finest works on television I have ever had the pleasure to watch.

If you don’t watch the show, then this post is probably not for you.

If you do watch the show…

then your heart was part of the collective breaking sound that occurred when the show aired it’s final episode on March 20, 2011.

Ultimately, this show is what the telling of stories is about.  To give us insight into human nature, judgment, forgiveness, family, love. To ask questions of ourselves, of others.  To make us think and feel.

The creators of Big Love (Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer) took polygamy- a belief that most of the country ridicules, and built a multifaceted, real, humanly dirty, beautiful, show around it.

These characters became real to me.  The three wives are so incredibly different that it seems to make sense that together they would make each other whole.  Not to mention the cast of sterling actors.  Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin are together the perfect storm.

And as sad as I am that the show has ended.  I believe it ended at the perfect time, and in the perfect way.  It was a flash.  An injection into the social consciousness… never at risk of beating an already dead horse.

And it will leave a scar.  Not only by the ideas that it introduced, but by the quality of entertainment it brought.  The bar is forever raised by a show like this.

The last episode was beautifully done, with all the main characters fulfilling their destinies.  There was the prophet, the priesthood holder, the servant, and the one who finally knew and felt what it meant to be family.  I was always so in awe of Bill Henrickson’s ability to cling to his faith in the toughest of times, and to infuse that faith into his family.  But it wasn’t until the last episode that I got the message (along with him) that true faith “comes from the love of family- not the other way around.”

We all have family, or those that we consider family, that love us.  And if you don’t, you want it.  You’re looking for it.  Fierce love- It’s that love that gives us faith… maybe faith in something bigger and more beautiful than ourselves, or faith in mankind, or ourselves.

The show really was about BIG LOVE.

And how delicious that the backdrop of something so risky, scandalous, and illegal as polygamy was used to give us such a wholesome, brilliant, and peaceful message.

Although Big Love has won no Emmys, it has won over most of America- well, the HBO subscribers, anyway.

So, in a world of Jersey Shore, the Bachelor, Real Housewives, and where a show like Two and Half Men runs forever- I thank you.

When a television show opens my mind, it’s good stuff.

But when it also open my heart, it’s stellar.

To the cast, producers, and crew of Big Love…

big thanks.

I’ll miss you.