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The premiere of a new show is always so exciting! It's like the first day of school in a new place -- anything could happen, and you're just going to have to hope for the best. And just as any student spends the first day at their new school making the kind of anthropological field studies that would do Margaret Mead proud, so too do I check out the credits of a show to see what kind of clues we'll have.
So these are the credits: the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows" begins playing, and we first see Bill Paxton. He appears to be standing in front of a darkened mountain range and a beam of light illuminates him. He turns his face to it, then to the camera, then back to the now-illuminated landscape. It's in the high desert, there's a frozen pond, and now Jeanne Tripplehorn is skating out. Tragically, the producers missed the chance to outfit her in classic Italian team ice-dancing costumes. She skates out to Bill, they meet and twirl around, and then the camera pulls back from Bill's face to reveal that he's now holding Chloe Sevigny. Incidentally, this is the point where the Beach Boys begin singing, "I may not always love you." Bill dips an enraptured-looking Chloe, pulls her up for a spin, and then the camera pulls back so we see that Ginnifer Goodwin is now spinning toward Bill to "you need never to doubt it." She melts into him, and we see Jeanne and Chloe skate on over again. Then there's a lot of linking of hands as the Beach Boys sing, "God only knows what I'd be without you," because polygyny affects everyone, see? We get a circle-type shot of Bill's face, then Jeanne's, then Bill's, then Chloe's, then Bill's, then Ginnifer's.
The camera pulls back so we can see that a big crack is snaking across the ice toward the merry-go-round of skaters. Everyone looks alarmed and skates backward into their own orbit. Then Bill's apparently entangled in someone's laundry line, as he's surrounded by gauzy sheets and the three women move in and out of focus, none of them sharing the same clearing he's in. Then he finds Jeanne, Chloe, and Ginnifer in quick succession, right as The Beach Boys are asserting that God only knows what he'd be without them. Then we see a white candle fill the screen. The camera pulls back so we see that it's on a table. Bill's at the head of the table: Jeanne is to his immediate left, Chloe is to his immediate right and Ginnifer is next to her. The camera pulls back more and we see that this little dinner group is actually on its own tiny, barren planet, surrounded by tons of other little satellites.
Now that I've recapped the credits...semioticians, start your engines!
The episode starts in your typical bedroom -- and how much do I love HBO for whomever there wrote the memo that specified "all our shows must look like they take place in actual locations and not Planet Pottery Barn"? Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) is just waking up. Evidently Bill's not a big fan of pajamas -- not that there's anything wrong with that. What is wrong are the tighty-whities he's wearing. He asks his bed partner if she's awake, and when he gets no answer, decides now would be a fine time to swing out of bed and into flashback: apparently, he was unable to complete The Deed with Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) the night before. While Bill goes off to sulk before a mirror (with triple reflections, natch), Nicki hangs out in bed and tries not to take it too personally.