TV's New Beginnings

Tara could take a few tips from HBO's polygamy drama, Big Love (Sundays, 9 p.m. E.T.), which returns in top form for Season 3. Its premise is just as outlandish: a multiple marriage among religious Fundamentalists in Utah. (On Big Love, a man has three wives; on Tara, a man has three and a husband.) But Big Love quickly settles you into its odd setting. The particulars of the Henricksons' lives--their intrigues and secrecy, yes, but also their familiar family dynamics and sincere faith--are presented, simply and unpatronizingly, as the reality of the show's universe.

If there's anything TV has taught us, after all, it's that nothing is as ordinary as weird families, or as weird as ordinary ones. TV is all about families, real and ersatz, on islands and gridirons, in pitch meetings and interrogations. After a long hiatus, it's good to have the family back.