I fear Michelle is taking the wrong lessons from Big Love (which, incidentally, has rapidly emerged the best show on television). Having multiple wives running around doesn't multiply your collection of emotional rocks, it merely narrows the room between them and the proverbial hard place. Nikki and Margine are, respectively, so duplicitous and insipid that any attempt to lean on them would offer little beyond a swift meeting with the floor. Obviously, the one you'd want to see for day-end comfort and sustenance is Barb, but because you need to spend equal amounts of time with all three, you'd end up seeing less of her, and thus getting less mature support and care, than you would in traditional monogamy.
That, by the way, always struck me as the central conflict of the show. Barb's character is so remarkably appealing, so grounded and elegant and intelligent and kind, that it's unclear why Bill would ever want a second wife. Even less obvious is why he'd choose (save for loan money) Nikki, and then compound the mistake with Margine. Every moment away from Barb and with one of them would be a crushing reminder of what you were missing. The series exploded into realism for me with the start of the barb/Bill affair plotline, where Bill can't stop thinking about Barb and is continually ducking away from the other wives to spend precious seconds with her. That, at least, made sense, and restored Bill's place as a rational thinking male. The rest of the time he's just giving up a mercedes to drive a Hyundai or an Echo, and the cognitive dissonance is a bit too much. Polygamy only makes rational sense if the successive wives bring new qualities or joys to the table. What makes Big Love's portrayal of the practice so unappealing is that, in Bill's case, they didn't.
