Review: Breaking the Faith S01Ep01 and 02

Episodes: Keep Sweet and On the Run

A wall of FLDS sacred undergarments

OK, I just going to say this: I like this show.

I don't love this show, like those rabid Brown family fans love TLCs Sister Wives show. But, contrary to those equally rabid anti-polygamy activists who believe polygamy is the root of all evil (as personified by Warren Jeffs and to a lesser extent, Kody Brown), I  don't hate this show.

I just don't.

As entertainment, in my opinion, it is one of the better reality show on TV nowadays. It certainly is better than TLC's scripted trailor park mess "Welcome to Myrtle Manor", and in some respects, better (at least visually) to TLC's own polygamy side show Sister Wives. And the producers are careful to note at the beginning of each episode that scenes were recreated for dramatic purposes.

Too bad Sister Wive's production company didn't post a disclaimer like that, particularly when Kody and family supposedly had to sneak out of Utah like thieves in the night for the safety of a cul-de-sac with four McMansions in Las Vegas.

But understand that if this show is cancelled next week, I wouldn't lose sleep about it.

For the most part, the two episodes of Breaking the Faith highlighted the beauty of the St. George, Short Creek area of Southern Utah. The camera work of the scenery, especially of Angie as she takes a 'swim' in a large body of water (I believe it's called the Reservoir on Google Map) is beautiful - almost as good as John Boorman's Lady of the Lake from his movie Excalibur.

Except we see the full 'lady' as she slowly sinks, fully dressed in a plyg dress with plyg hair, into the water, with the mountains illuminated by the setting sun looming behind her.

Where Breaking the Faith lets me down (and the audience) is how it tells the story of women being  "extracted" from the polygamous community, like so many bad teeth in the middle of the night.

This is where the re-enactment takes over from the real truth as these women apparently left the FLDS at least two years earlier. But instead of the show's producers having the girl's tell their stories (like the men were allowed to) the audience is subjected to dramatized recreations.

So all those scenes showing the girls praying in solitude, slipping notes to the "Lost Boys" extraction team, doing laundry, cleaning the house with only their right hand, running away in the dead of night, with the girl's supposed hidden camera lighting their way and their faces for the benefit of the God Squad were all fake.

 I also found troubling  the apparent over preoccupation with sex (mostly talks about blowjobs and masturbation) of the young men that made up the extraction team. Especially since these apparently were the reasons for their being turned out of the community. One of them even said if getting a blowjob meant burning in hell, he'd rather burn in hell. Nice...

It's enough that the audience knows (or should know, dammit...read a book!) how perverse Warren Jeffs was when he was making wives out of 12 year old girls, but was it necessary to hear the sexual transgressions of the Lost Boys extraction team?

Maybe the FLDS bishops should have told the boys too much preoccupation with sex before marriage could make them go blind, or grow hair on their palms. It works in the monogamist world, doesn't it?

Anyway, once the girls got settled into the safehouse, they went to the  kitchen refrigerator and cupboards and cleaned them out of every bit of banned foodstuffs it contained. About $200 worth.

When that little chore was completed, the next item on the agenda was to actively shun none other than Carolyn Jessop who escaped Short Creek a decade earlier and was the "house mother" at the safe house. In what was truly bad acting, the girls were so fearful of her, they refused to look at Jessop as she tried to talk to them.

I just hope the producers will enroll those girls in acting classes because all that faux crying was really ridiculous. I mean, really, here's Carolyn Jessop whose testimony sent her father to prison, and Linda can't even muster up a measly tear or two?

Finally, a member of the extraction team named Jake decided to do an "extraction" on his own to get his sister Val out of Short Creek. So he leaves in BROAD DAYLIGHT and takes with him Linda (you know, the girl with the lazy tear ducts) so she can say goodbye to her sister who was born with no bladder and kidneys.

Of course, this little venture ends disastrously with the successful extraction of the Jake's sister, but the unfortunate re-insertion of Linda back into Short Creek plygdom as she disappeared from the car without a trace.

As the episode draws to a close, the remaining girls plus the new one along with the extraction team quickly gather their belongings and are off to another safe house located somewhere in Salt Lake City.

I am totally hooked on this show. Will they make it to Salt Lake? Will the God Squad raid Carolyn Jessop's safe house in St. George? Will Ben get another blow job soon?

Stay tuned....