After HBO’s “Big Little Lies” Season 1 became one of the best shows of 2017, it returned in 2019 with a Season 2. The whole story from Liane Moriarty’s book had been told, but she comes back as a co-writer – along with showrunner David E. Kelley – to tell of the aftermath of the Monterey Five getting away (for now) with killing rapist and abuser Perry Wright (Alexander Skarsgård, returning for some new flashback moments).
Will they get caught?
For seven episodes initially borne out of popularity, “Big Little Lies” Season 2 is respectably creative. It lacks the advantage of having a mystery; Season 1 built up toward its finale where we find out Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz) pushes Perry down concrete stairs to his death. Now the momentum comes from the question of “Will they get caught?”
Or so one would assume. As the story moves forward, it becomes about “Which one will snap first?” Smartly, Season 2 is all about Bonnie, Madeline (Reese Witherspoon), Celeste (Nicole Kidman), Jane (Shailene Woodley) and Renata (Laura Dern) holding on to this lie while also dealing with other problems that spin off from their inevitably closed-off natures.
Among mystery (or mystery-adjacent) TV shows, no detective has had to do less investigating than Merrin Dungey’s Quinlan; all she has to do is wait.
Arnold takes the reins
Director Andrea Arnold effectively continues the style set by Jean-Marc Vallée. The camera angle from the backseat is a favorite recurring image; all five women are shown driving in the opening credits. They’re always looking over the shoulder, figuratively because of the shared secret, and sometimes literally because their young kids are in the back, looking at their mother as a role model.
Season 1 struck me as Kelley’s best work because it’s outside of a courtroom, so he’s not allowed to fall back on the manipulative melodrama of his previous hits like “The Practice” (which I admit I liked for a time).
In Season 2, he does resort to a courtroom finale, although surprisingly it pits Celeste against mother-in-law Mary Louise (Meryl Streep) for the custody of Josh and Max (Nicholas and Cameron Crovetti).
Even in California, the most statist of states, it seems unlikely that this child-custody case would go to court rather than being worked out by the respective parties.
Wonderful Woodley
But the actresses elevate the material, and I can’t deny it makes for a grand finale. Kelley knows how the court system works, so the drama is largely about the importance of Celeste coming off as a calm, composed mother before the judge, and Kidman reminds us that she has grown into an elite actress, matching the great Streep.
Still, I wonder if the cast’s standout isn’t Woodley, who can mold her face Gumby-like to illustrate Jane’s weird (but not unrealistic) situation. Jane’s son, Ziggy (Iain Armitage), is the product of rape, and now Mary Louise wants to be present as Ziggy’s grandmother.
Through every expression on Woodley’s face, we understand how if you raise a child who comes from a violent act, society doesn’t let you escape it. (Imagine filling out Ziggy’s school or health forms that include a field for “father.”) While Jane wrestles with Mary Louise’s presence, Ziggy is harassed on the playground for having a rapist father.
Female focus
Season 2 focuses almost entirely on the five women, with the sons being objects in the drama and the daughters popping up only to remind us they exist – which is a shame because Darby Camp and Kathryn Newton are established young stars.
The husbands are milquetoasts or trying not to be a milquetoast; the most interesting is Adam Scott’s Ed, who has to decide if he’ll stay with Madeline after her infidelity. Ed is “snide,” as Bonnie’s husband Nathan (James Tupper) points out, but deliciously so. Jeffrey Nordling is also magnetic as the goof-up Gordon, the husband of Renata, who gambles away their fortune with botched insider trading.
Season 2 has mildly awkward add-ons. I didn’t realize before that Bonnie has an abusive mother or that Renata is a self-made millionaire (rather than by inheritance or marriage).
But every time the writers make these little adjustments to shape their grand commentary on the intergenerational cycle of violence, the cast sells it. It’s not as good as Season 1, but this tasty epilog certainly doesn’t tarnish “Big Little Lies’ ” reputation.
IMDb Top 250 trivia
- “Big Little Lies” ranks No. 220 among TV series, with an 8.5 rating.
- HBO’s short-form prestige dramas are well-represented in the rankings. Three series are in the top 10, led by the 10-episode “Band of Brothers” (2001) at No. 3, with a 9.4 rating.
- This is the only David E. Kelley show in the Top 250, although “Boston Legal” (2004-08) comes darn close with an 8.4 rating.
- Dern and Woodley previously starred together, as mother and daughter, in “The Fault in Our Stars,” which has a nice 7.7 rating but falls short of the Top 250 movies (where 8.0 is the rough cutoff).