100 Favorite Shows: #92 — Big Little Lies
“This is Monterey. We pound people with nice.”
Based on Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name, Big Little Lies debuted on HBO on February 19, 2017. With its star-studded cast (including Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and Shailene Woodley), it was initially slated to be a miniseries until massive popularity, critical fervency, and award-meriting acclaim prompted HBO to work out a deal for a second season. The show returned in 2019 — this time with Meryl Streep in tow. Created by David E. Kelley, it tracks the buildup to and fallout of a murder mystery in Monterey, California that has roped the aforementioned cast members (and more) into its orbit.
(Careful about gossiping. Spoilers for Big Little Lies are waiting in this essay. The same is true of 30 Rock.)
I didn’t watch Big Little Lies when it first started airing. It came at a time when I was in the middle of binge watching Cheers and was fully convinced that Westworld was the next great HBO water cooler show. What did I need Big Little Lies for when I’d been riding the Westworld train since day one?
Ultimately, I was wrong about Westworld (you won’t be seeing it on this list). But I don’t regret waiting to dip my toes into the saltwater beaches of Monterey. Sure, I missed out on the week-to-week conversation that helped buoy interest in the series. (Alison Herman’s write-ups on The Ringer were a treat to read retroactively. She definitely nailed the “Mommy blog” aura of the whole show. Seriously, it was like those message boards Liz Lemon is on in the “Hogcock!” episode of 30 Rock stretched out over seven episodes.) Instead, though, I got to watch Big Little Lies in the summer.
It felt like a summer show! What can I say? Maybe it would’ve been nice to escape to sunny Monterey (Wish You Were Here!) during the dead of a Massachusetts winter. Ultimately, I preferred to sync up the summer/beach vibes with the actual season it aligned with. It gave me the same feeling I used to get when Royal Pains would proclaim that “characters were welcome” and USA viewers knew that school was out. (I’m not going to give Alice Cooper the satisfaction of a pun. Yes, I know he’s reading this.)
That’s what I loved most about Big Little Lies. Those gorgeous California vistas where it seemed like the sun was always setting on the ocean horizon. I mean, seriously. No matter which character was the subject of a scene, it always seemed like they were cruising down the highway (no doubt thinking about the heaps of PTA drama in their lives) to a purple/orange hue. In addition to the plethora of scenes in which characters drove (who spent more time in the car? Cliff Booth or Witherspoon’s Madeline Mackenzie?) We had the beach with the tide coming in! Characters congregated around fire pits! Immaculate interior design that would even impress one of the Property Brothers (can’t tell ’em apart)! Wine! Big Little Lies had it all when it came to aesthetics.
These aesthetics were not solely limited to the visual senses, though. Big Little Lies had a knack for making your ears perk up. Not when characters were on the brink of exploding at one another, mind you. But rather when you’d hear a melancholic piano melody underscoring a dramatic montage. Or even when you’d hear Renata Klein (Dern) call her daughter (Ivy George) by her name: Amabella. Yes, that’s correct. Amabella. I mean, honestly? That tells you everything you need to know about Big Little Lies. Your presumptions are not leading you astray here.
That’s part of the brilliance, though. Obviously, Moriarty set this whole thing in motion so a lot of the character choices are her responsibility. But we still know exactly the kind of person Renata is from her first scenes in the premiere, “Somebody’s Dead.” About a third of the way through this episode, the mothers in question gather outside of the school to pick up their children for the day. Their greetings for their kids are quick, but they’re everything. Woodley’s Jane Chapman greets Ziggy (Iain Armitage) with warmth and curiosity. Madeline’s pick-up is joyous, but a little perfunctory. And it’s Renata who immediately incites conflict.
She’s not entirely without reason to do so. Amabella did claim that Ziggy tried to choke her. (Wouldn’t any mother be enraged by this?) But Renata goes full scorched earth on the Monterey community, even when Ziggy denies the act. Her reaction, at first glance, seems justified. But when I rewatched the episode for this essay, I felt differently. It seemed like Renata’s rage was split. Half of her wanted to protect Amabella. The other half wanted to become a martyr. Her kid was the way to do it. Renata could embrace a perfect life if she wanted to (her problems include the imagery associated with having a job and the feeling of not being liked, whereas some characters fear for their lives), but it’s almost as if she craves the drama and she’s willing to make a pawn of Amabella to acquire more of it.
She’s not alone in this behavior, though. It seems like most of the characters are willing to make pawns of their children to further their cause of becoming the Queen Martyr of Monterey. It takes Jane, the outsider, to show that empathy is possible on the show. Leaving aside the fact that seeing Woodley as a mother was a whole different experience for a younger generation of viewers who grew up watching her in The Fault in Our Stars (I’ve had more history with Kidman and Witherspoon and was more prepared to see them as maternal figures without thinking I was getting old), she was the pivotal force of the show.
Her empathy extends beyond Ziggy. It’s attributed to all of the people she encounters in Monterey. It’s like Jane can’t fathom the idea that someone would be cruel to her without knowing her, even though she’s fully embroiled in a clique. Just watch in the season one finale, “You Get What You Need,” when Jane respects that Ziggy made a promise to Amabella to keep her bully (Nicholas Crovetti’s Max Wright, the son of Kidman’s Celeste and Alexander Skarsgård’s Perry) a secret. She gives him the empathy he needs to keep his promise before quickly diving into a strategy that still prioritizes the safety of the kids involved, like a more advanced Uncle Jesse.
Jane extends her empathy later in the episode, as well, when Madeline has a panic attack of guilt for having cheated on Ed (Adam Scott). (Few moments on the show thrilled me as much as Ed, newly beard-less, dressed as Blue Hawaii Elvis Presley and singing “The Wonder of You” on stage at the finale’s Elvis and Audrey Hepburn-themed bash (a party foreshadowed by the preceding episode, “Burning Love”). It’s clearly not Scott’s actual voice and it’s an even more obvious substitution than when Scott sang “Sweet Child O’ Mine” in Step Brothers.) It’s Jane who’s there to comfort Madeline, a woman she trusts that she knows well enough to console. Woodley and Witherspoon have the show’s best dynamic.
Many derided these moments of petty dramas and status jockeying for taking away from the main focus of the show (which I have barely even touched upon yet): the murder mystery. It’s true. The first episode does begin with every element of the murder obfuscated. We don’t know who the killer is; we don’t know who’s dead; we don’t know anything. It’s all a mystery that’s steadily revealed to us through the in media res gimmick and the Greek chorus of townsfolk (including Kelen Coleman and Sarah Baker in fun supporting turns) who are being interrogated by police. (Although, it seems more like the Facebook group of a local community come to life. Is the People of Monterey Facebook group the new Greek chorus?)
But while the murder is the narrative thrust of the show, I’m skeptical that it’s actually the point. Besides, it’s pretty easy to deduce by, like, episode three who the murder victim is. We’re just distracted, as an audience, from this conjecture by the endless barrage of inter-family power plays and snide comments that permeate every single episode. The focus is pretty far from the actual mystery at all times.
That’s because it’s almost an amusing idea that there could even be a murder in Monterey. Their problems are so petty and overly dramatic that the show seems like a prestige HBO drama and more like a creation in a post-Slap world. The posturing unravels quickly, though, when we see that dangers lurk behind even the most inviting of front doors. Abuse is rampant on the part of Perry in the Wright household. Perry is far more than abusive to Celeste. Her life is constantly threatened when she is in his presence. Yet, she’s trapped. She’s metaphysically trapped with the master manipulator that is Perry. And then she’s physically trapped with him in the car outside of the party. It’s a fearful moment that comes in a finale so we have no idea if Celeste is actually safe. The only exhale comes when Bonnie (Kravitz) actually shoves Perry down the steps. He’s gone then. For good. Celeste wasn’t ever going to be safe until that happened.
The masterstroke of the first season finale, though, is that Celeste’s harrowing struggles are never used to delegitimize the plights of the other characters. Celeste enduring domestic violence is not in competition with Renata’s fear that she has no fears. Big Little Lies treats all characters as humans rather than caricatures (though it’s entertaining to poke fun at that on occasion) and acknowledges the validity of their emotions. Because emotions exist on a wide spectrum. Who are we to condemn the struggles of others? In that, the entire show serves as a condemnation of high class suburbia and coastal elitism (on a local level, not on an MSNBC level). God bless all of these characters and their endless efforts to break out of the hierarchies they feel are thrust upon them.
It seems like none of them are happy being traditional. Take Bonnie for example. Her pretension and enthusiasm seem cloyingly manufactured at first glance. It’s like she’s a distant relative of Ron Dunn from Parks and Recreation. Surely no person could be as full of herself as Bonnie? So holier-than-thou to avoid the ocean of drama until she suddenly dives into its deep end? But we see, over time, that Bonnie’s happiness is fake. All of their joys are fake. They’re all masking real pain. And pain is a spectrum.
That’s the point I was trying to make about Jane. Sure, she has her own slew of anxieties and fears. But as the outsider, she helps show the characters in Monterey that their lives don’t have to extend into misery perpetuity. There is always a way out (or down). Until Jane showed up, the families of the coastal town were destined to become cyclical. The Klein, Wright, and Mackenzie kids are predestined to become clones of their parents and repeat their mistakes. Abigail (Kathryn Newton) is a mirror image of Madeline. Max is showing early signs of adopting Perry’s most evil traits. Amabella still might not have a chance to escape the Renata of it all. The next generation is what we make of them. And on Big Little Lies, Jane showed the women she came to love that they didn’t have to be repetitive. They could be forces for good. Change a legacy and you change the world.
This is part of the tone struck at the end of the first season. The prestige version of a soap opera (right down to their “Californians” style homes and a café designed for congregating) ends on the chord of changing parental patterns, yes. But it also emphasizes that these women have become even more united in the face of their shared trauma.
It’s a perfect note to end on, which is why season two was probably always doomed. Granted, Streep’s casting is perhaps the zenith of movie stars migrating to the small screen for multi-episode television arcs. (With Streep’s turn as Mary Louise, Amy Poehler’s iconic Golden Globes quip about “the rat-faced people of television” may no longer apply.) But Streep can only do so much when there is no longer the solid foundation of a book. Forced drama, an unfortunate ousting of visionary Andrea Arnold as the show’s leader, a debilitating misuse of Kravitz. It’s all emblematic of how season two didn’t have to be a letdown.
It’s not necessary to dwell on that, though. As it stands, Big Little Lies is still a remarkable television show in my own viewing history. It was a slow burn over the course of seven episodes. It never even had a chance to drag. Everything about season one was purely delightful and enriching. Big Little Lies was addiction television at its finest.
