Me and Caree have been watching this. Caree had seen it before (but only the first season). It’s good. The standouts are Jeanne Tripplehorn as Barb, and especially Chloe Sevigny as Nikki. Nikki starts out as one of the most annoying characters on television, but through sheer force of will Chloe Sevigny makes us like her, so much so that things tend to be a lot less interesting when she or Barb aren’t around (Sevigny is also the source of most of the humor in the series).

Which leads us to the biggest problem of the series: Bill Paxton is seriously out-matched as an actor. This was kind of surprising to me, since he always seemed solid, and was the only one of the core four I could have recognized before watching this show. But he’s boring as toast compared to the wives, even though his storyline (about his confrontation with the prophet Roman Grant) has the most inherent interest and strongest through-line.

A similar problem shows up in the next generation, where daughter Sarah is considerably more compelling than son Ben. I’ve also heard this show gets soapier as it goes on, which seems like an obvious pitfall. Right the show is so grounded, and so genuinely interested in how these people live their lives and love their families, but it could easily spin out of control if we lose that in favor of “drama.”

But for the first season at least, I’m going with a Recommended.

Caree gives it 3 stars out of five, slightly downgraded from her original assessment on this re-watch.