by Nathaniel R
The first season of Big Little Lies won 8 Emmys, 4 Golden Globes, and 2 SAG Awards and, most importantly, the hearts of actressexuals everywhere. It would be foolish to expect the possibly unneccessary Season 2 to deliver at quite the same level. But for now, just one episode in, it more than satisfied, if only for the chance to see these exceptionally well-drawn characters again.
The first episode begins with the new school year and charts the after-effects of Perry's (Alexander Skarsgård) death. The death has (mostly) been deemed an accident but "the Monterey 5" (Kidman, Witherspoon, Woodley, Dern and Kravitz aka Celeste, Madeline, Jane, Renata and Bonnie) are still the talk of the town. To add to the combustible mix of those five strong personalities, now closer friends due to their shared tragedy/lies, Perry's mother Mary Louise (Meryl Streep) is making everyone uncomfortable not just with her questions about the death of her son, but the brusque manner in which she delivers them. As with season 1, we'll conquer each episode in list format. Herewith...
Top 10 MVPs of Big Little Lies. Episode 2.1 "What Have They Done?"
10 The title shot
The editing of Big Little Lies has always been one of its moodiest signature strengths and near the beginning of the episode we move from the first narrative scene and line "I was having a nightmare" to this out of context shot of police footage of Celeste, tear-stained and flustered, but then the direct-to-camera and thus guilty-looking freeze frame and the title. Very impactful.
09 Mary Louise's scream
The clip of Meryl Streep screaming at the top of her lungs felt out in promos, but it makes more sense within the actual show. Grandmother Mary Louise (allow us to freak out a bit that Meryl is playing someone with her actual birth name, Mary Louise, for the first time) is telling her now fatherless grandchildren that they should scream if they feel like it over their grief about their dad. The best part of the scene is not quite the scream (sorry Meryl) but Celeste's inability to deal with it, quickly shutting the advice down.
08a Jane's dancing
But not everyone is feeling down. One of the most interesting acting/scripting choices in the opening episode is the new lightness in Shailene Woodley's performance. It ballsily suggests that the Perry's violent end set her free, because we don't see her dancing just one but twice in the episode, a physically consistent (Jane is always moving) but emotional inverse of her characterization in the first season where she was always despair-jogging.
08b Jane's sketch
... but that new turn in her character is complicated a bit by a follow up scene where she's looking troubled and sketching. Artist name please? We like it. It's maybe a little on the nose, symbolically (since there's an earlier scene involving an octopus about beauty being dangerous and who is more beautiful than Alexander Skarsgård?) but deliciously so. It also ties in with the feeling that Perry is still the monster in the room, only in ghost form now, as we learn in Celeste's therapy session and through her nightmares.
07 Two cupcakes
"One for each thigh." After Reese's perfectly dumb mom-joke, she bitchily flips the joke to essentially tell the Principal just where her can shove it. Madeline can even weaponize pastries! Reese is so entertaining with the cupcakes that the continuity people/prop teams totally forgot when she'd already eaten one of them and in the next scene she has two new cupcakes again. Or maybe Madeline went back for more. She is a "wanter"
05 The look on that new teacher's face when meeting Renata
She's a handful, poor guy. (We believe that's Mo MacRae who had a bit part in Wild but not totally sure since the character isn't named.)
And speaking of...
05 "It's my house and I live here! 🎵"
Renata is still insufferable... but Dern makes sure she's insufferable in a super entertaining way.
04 The Befuddlement of The Husbands
The husbands get little attention in the Big Little Lies raves, primarily because the men have been demoted to "the husbands" just like actresses are often demoted to "the wives" in mainstream narratives. The difference here is that these roles have actual personality, because the scripts are so good. Was trying to decide between the "Snide Fuck!" scene and this image above to personify what's happening with the husbands but I went with this enigmatic one, sans dialogue. Why is Gordon (Jeffrey Nordling) holding a baseball bat and drinking whiskey and zoning out with his train set all at the same time in the middle of the day. Is Renata making him that crazy?
03 Zoe Kravitz needs some space! And camera time.
The most promising piece of episode 1 is the new focus on Bonnie, who was inarguably given short-shrift last season as the outlier among the five major female characters. Bonnie, having been the one that pushed Perry to his death, is feeling the guiltiest and Kravitz is incorporating her "I need some space" line into the performance everyway which way she can. Whether she's evading people's eyes or sitting in crowded rooms, she's not quite there. Hopefully this season gives Kravitz opportunity to really develop this character.
02 Celeste's dream
"In your own time. Take a good look" We finally have an explanation for that promotional shot above and this nightmare is smashingly creepy, with Skarsgård cameo'ing as wronged victim though he's the monster the women escaped. This time Celeste does the screaming.
01 Meryl vs Reese, Round Two
Big Little Lies delivered consistently last season as not just a great actor's showcase but a great showcase of different acting personas and female stars actually interacting in long scenes with each other, that were about their feelings about one another (men were sometimes the topic but never the subject, if you catch me). Though we went into season 2 expecting it to be the Nicole vs Meryl showdown (given their relation onscreen: daughter/mother-in-law), the early fireworks are between that tetchy huge personality in a tiny package Madeline and the grieving mother-in-law of her best friend. Streep and Witherspoon have two big scenes together in "What Have They Done?". The first is juicier for its bizarre cut-to-the-chase animosity, Mary Louise telling Madeline she doesn't like short people (wtf?). Still, I actually prefer meeting number two in Madeline's realtor's office. We argued last season that Reese Witherspoon was giving the performance of her life as Madeline and that hasn't changed. Note how many things she's juggling in that second scene, not just the minutae of Madeline trying to read Mary Louise and her pronouncements (which are both telling and hopelessly vague), but her doing that while she's balancing her own guilt, the stack of lies she's already told. And she's filtering it all through a more confident battle-ready register than in their first round, given that they're suddenly on Madeline's turf, instead of out for coffee on neutral ground.
Reese is magic. If Season 2 can keep up with her, it'll be something special.