'Big Love's' Roman is Really Dead, Show Creator Says

Following Big Love's season three finale, I speculated in this space about whether the sinister, self-appointed "prophet" of Juniper Creek, Roman Grant had REALLY died after being smothered by a pillow at the hands of Joey Henrickson.

According to Big Love co-creator Will Scheffer, Roman (Harry Dean Stanton) is indeed dead, as dead as Lipstick Jungle.

"Roman is 100 percent, absolutely, completely dead," Scheffer told the Los Angeles Times' Show Tracker blog. "There's no trick in terms of, he was pretending to be dead, or it was a hallucination. He is gone. His spirit has left the earth . . . No one can bring him back from the dead."

Well, okay then, with that issue settled, what else did Scheffer have to say about season four? J.J. (Zeljko Ivanek) -- Nicki's first husband played by the same actor who's hunting down those folks with superpowers on Heroes -- will become a series regular. For those who wondered why the third Henrickson child, Teenie, was largely absent from the tail-end of the third season, particularly in the pivotal "Sacrament" scene in which the Church of Bill was created, Scheffer said, ". . . [When] we left her out of the sacrament at the end of the season finale, we were doing so on purpose . . . We will deal with that this coming season."

Over on Mommy Track'd, my column this week focuses on how watching Big Love, and the Showtime drama United States of Tara both make me thankful that my life bears no resemblance to the lives of the women on these shows.

Image credit: HBO.