A Trivia Night Ends in Bloodshed
On HBO’s ‘Big Little Lies.’
“Never had a trivia night end in bloodshed before,” spoken by a tertiary character, is such a perfect summary of the first episode of Big Little Lies. The new HBO series, a seven hour movie technically, is dynamic, fresh, and hard to place on the spectrum of past TV shows. The limited series, which premiered Sunday Night (2/19), has mild How to Get Away with Murder vibes (Emily Sinclair, the women who played the murdered prosecutor from Season 2, is even in it), as well as Revenge Season 1 tones (David Clarke, Emily/Amanda’s father, is also a featured actor), but there’s something addictively new about it too.
Big Little Lies (which will undoubtably be dubbed “BLL”) is an ensemble production, but it revolves heavily around three mothers, Madeline Martha Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon), Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman), and Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley). Madeline and Celeste’s respective husbands, along with other mothers Renata (Laura Dern) and Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz), are all instrumental in the drama that surrounds the three women, which shifts from working mother v. stay at home mother tension to actual homicide. The murder mystery label combined with the cult-like passion that is immediately present among Madeline, Celeste, and Jane leads me to believe that none of the three women are the victim (whose identity isn’t revealed in “Somebody’s Dead,” the first episode). I’m pretty sure that the three formed a murder pact (probably spur-of-the-moment, as the most iconic pacts are) together and killed one of the fathers of their children, despite their obvious distaste for Renata and Bonnie. Set in the beautiful, relatively affluent coastal city of Monterey, California, Big Little Lies is all about allegories, namely the mystery of who tried to choke Renata’s daughter (she accuses Ziggy, Jane’s sweet son who genuinely seems not t0 have done it) running parallel t0 the mystery of who committed the murder.
My bet on the murder victim is Nathan Carlson, Madeline’s ex-husband and the father of her two daughters. Despite being (relatively) happily remarried, Madeline has dropped bitter hints and said things like “one day Nathan would get his due” in reference to him cheating on her and their subsequent divorce. It doesn’t help that her daughters love their youthful step-mom a lot.
Perry Wright (Alexander Skarsgård), Celeste’s notably younger husband, is also a solid contender for the murder victim, as he has proven to be physically abusive (the couple’s fights always end in hot, borderline overly-affectionate sex). The flash-forward scene, where random witnesses are interviewed, features a lot of commentary on the couple’s passionate public displays of affection, suggesting that he’s possibly a candidate for the murder. Jane has perhaps the most applicable situation to the show’s slogan, we all have something to hide, as even viewers are in the dark when it comes to the details of her trauma. She states that the father of her son, Ziggy, was “never in the picture,” and as the episode unfolds and we witness what is definitely PTSD, viewers recognize that the situation is most likely not a one-night stand and instead a rape (“you don’t think assault victims bare lifetime emotional injuries?” Madeline’s oldest daughter asks in a particularly poignant moment).
The complexities of these characters, a situation that defies the “badass female” trope and creates genuinely strong women, strong people, who are well-developed and realistically flawed, is what has me truly routing for them and for the show.
But I think that when it comes to these two obviously very physically toxic relationships with men, the pair might possibly act on the chance to take out the least seemingly dangerous individual (Nathan) with the endlessly loyal and grudge-holding Madeline.
The drama is interesting, and the heavy-handed lines (“none of us really see things as they are; we see things as we are” and “the metric of success is not always monetary or career-related; it can be a much more holistic equation”) are certainly provocative, but it’s these three women that drive my excitement for next Sunday night.
Madeline’s current husband, Ed (Adam Scott), pointed out that she’s “drawn to damaged people” in his observation that “this Jane’s kind of damaged” and “even Celeste, there’s something wounded about her.” The sometimes shallow ideals of Madeline, Celeste’s conflicting attitude towards her abusive husband, and Jane’s mysterious past which led her to own a gun are what drives this radically feminist show. The complexities of these characters, a situation that defies the “badass female” trope and creates genuinely strong women, strong people, who are well-developed and realistically flawed, is what has me truly routing for them and for the show. This is what makes Big Little Lies the kind of production that makes me treasure my HBO GO password more than I already do.
