Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies is offering up some of the best psychological storytelling on television. ... Somehow, this kind of rigorous, thoughtful probing still manages to coexist in perfect harmony with the show’s barbed sense of humor, an incongruence that Streep, in particular, seems to relish. ... But the dazzle of Big Little Lies—the money and the stars and the searing comedy of modern manners—can’t override how incisive the show is about its characters, their damage, and their desires.

If anything, Season 2 only gets richer as it digs deeper into these ladies’ lives. ... Savor this while it lasts, folks: This is as good as TV gets.

There is indeed more to say about these women and the fallout from the events of season one, as well as more exquisiteness to enjoy. ... But it’s not just Streep who is fascinating to watch. While all of the principal cast members were terrific in season one, each of them gives even richer performances this season.

Not the least of Big Little Lies' achievements is its relentless mockery of the moneyed class of California progressives from which most of its cast and writers presumably spring. Its characters embrace every crackpot totem of fashionable liberalism with bubblehead enthusiasm that masks a profound lack of sincerity.

“Big Little Lies” is a fairly apportioned ensemble vehicle, giving each actor room to shriek, to cackle, to clutch a glass of wine nervously as she stares at the surf. ... But no character propels scenes quite like Kidman’s Celeste. ... Kidman’s nonjudgmental inhabiting of Celeste’s oscillations continues to be exceptional. ... Streep gives Mary Louise a vicious and eerily hilarious maternal edge. She is clearly having a ball. I can’t wait to see how her story line expands.

Perhaps the most exciting development in Big Little Lies’ second season is that there’s more depth to each of the characters, allowing Witherspoon, Dern, and Kravitz in particular to give even more impressive performances. ... The show appears to be exchanging an all-consuming, incendiary mystery for a tale that’s less mercurial but no less hearty, and it’s still an absolute pleasure to watch.

If the first three episodes of this second season are any indication, what’s waiting is another exceedingly wicked, exceedingly adult ride through riveting territory.

This second season is worth it just for the opportunity to watch Streep have fun. ... “Big Little Lies” still takes time for the gauzy flashbacks as Celeste grapples with assorted emotional responses during sessions with her therapist (Robin Weigert), but the whole enterprise feels peppier, poppier and more entertaining as viewers spend more time with these pretty people with pretty significant problems.

The second season is nearly as breathtaking as the original. "Lies" remains an immensely satisfying platform for superb performances (now with 100% more Meryl Streep), one that gives women’s issues, often seen as frivolous, the weight they deserve.

Season two is a smart, dark, gripping, often wickedly funny story of beautiful people living with ugly secrets while committing dirty deeds in stunningly gorgeous Monterey, California.

Not since The Sopranos has an HBO show been so attuned to the grace notes of excessive privilege.

While it may lack some of the bite and urgency of its first season thus far, Big Little Lies is still an absolutely gorgeous series with a lot to unpack in terms of its complex women, the legacy of abuse, the makeshift families we form, and protecting one’s friends.

In its second season, Big Little Lies remains the same moody suspense-drama that fans fell in love with during its initial run. There are no jarring formula changes or new gimmicks to keep it going; this is simply the second half of the same story, with a very slight break in time, and it works.

As with every good soap, there’s a bit of cathartic pleasure in seeing rich, gorgeous people suffer like the rest of us mere mortals. Whatever word you choose to describe “Big Little Lies,” the new season looks to be just as addictive as the first.

Though its focus is more scattered this time around, Big Little Lies recaptures much of the magic of the first season, especially in the performances. ... Kelley is once again writing every episode, it seems, so the barbs are just as acidic, often more so when they’re delivered by Streep, who deftly adjusts Mary Louise’s sparring strategy with each new combatant.

Season 2 doesn’t feel like a necessary addition so much as an enjoyable epilogue — but it’s still proven this group has plenty more to say.

No second series slump here. Actually, sometimes it was too fast, going for short, staccato scenes, which can be frustrating because often the conversations begged to evolve much more. But this is a small niggle. This stellar cast of women is a buffet of flavours.

To everything there is a season, and this is Streep’s. Monterey belongs to Mary Louise now. God help the five.

Streep is the real wonder in this scene, but I did also admire the finesse with which the show has worked out a Streep-time-sharing scheme. ... Kidman’s Celeste would obviously get time with someone playing her mother-in-law, but the actresses and the series’ writer David E. Kelley had to come up with something a little more creative for Witherspoon’s Madeline. The solution, like the entire second season, works better than it has any right to, a compromise—to create more content, to get Reese and Meryl acting together—that doesn’t feel compromised at all.

Electric with snappy dialogue, visual splendor, and genuinely remarkable performances, Big Little Lies Season 2 is still the sensual, gripping high-camp that we all fell in love with, but a bit older and wiser. It’s slower and quieter, which means it might not capture the water cooler conversationalist and online theorists with the obsessive fervor surrounding the first season, but it also rewards patience with a doubled-down commitment to character drama, complex portraits of female friendship, and often profound meditations on what it means to survive trauma.

While it’s possible in these early episodes to see where Kelley and Moriarty had to pick the stitches sewn at the end of season one to accommodate this unlikely second season, there are enough remarkable distractions—of acting, of direction, of costuming, of music—to make it easy to brush past them and get to the good stuff. It helps when Meryl Streep’s involved. Streep, who joins the cast as Celeste’s (Nicole Kidman) mother-in-law, makes for a seamless addition.

Surprisingly, even shockingly, almost everything about season 1 that was overwrought and overdone has been ratcheted down. What was given insufficient exposure—specifically, Laura Dern—has been ratcheted up. And what’s entirely new to the game—namely Meryl Streep—is close to perfection.

“Big Little Lies” continues to offer the sharp, dark-comedic observations that made the first season one of the great thrills of 2017. What it does not offer, in the first three episodes, is an indisputable argument that there is material to power a second season, and maybe more, beyond the memory and repercussions of the first.

An ever-watchful Streep lurks on the margins of an irresistible season. The suburban satire has a blunter edge when things fall apart. [10 - 23 Jun 2019, p.9]

Based on the three episodes previewed, so far, so pretty good in terms of justifying another dreamy drive up the California coast. That's thanks, in no small part, to this Streep kid, who has demonstrated that she can class up even the classiest of seaside towns.

After watching the first three episodes of season two, I’m still not sure I can say that the return of “Big Little Lies” is altogether necessary. But I can say that it promises to be thoroughly enjoyable and smart, with the same conspicuously good acting, the same sharp David E. Kelley writing, and the same spectacular Monterey views that contrast so well with the characters’ dark inner lives.

Although “Big Little Lies” doesn’t seem entirely sure of where it’s headed, it can still work itself up into a delectably roiling state of privilege and anger.

Talent doesn’t solve every problem — and there are definitely some bumps and stumbles as BLL reopens a formerly close-ended story — but when you can throw this staggering amount of talent at them, problems become much harder to notice.

Without the murder-mystery focus, the plot meanders. Whether they will get caught in their lies is the driving question here. That, it turns out, is not entirely interesting. Luckily, these women and these performances are so much so that it doesn’t really matter.

Big Little Lies is returning in summer blockbuster season and with Streep in control, the series may be shifting from dark comedy, mystery and commentary on gender politics to full-on actorly action. I might miss the murder mystery a little, but this is more than a good substitute.

Everything is in place, and everyone, and what's prevented this from turning into a heightened camp version of Wisteria Lane is that now-supersized superteam. ... Still fun, still addictive, still (yup) pretty much the same.

Streep resists outright scenery chewing, perhaps knowing that Dern has that department covered. ... Opportunities for sniggering laughter abound as the scrupulously crafted lives of the Monterey 5 crumble.

All the actors rip into their storylines with the depth we’ve come to expect, and all their characters’ reactions to the events of last season track (Bonnie especially has no reason to trust these women who never offered her the same courtesy before). Nonetheless, the beginning of this season suffers from separating them so much.

I am of the opinion that season 1 was basically an overly long Lifetime movie with a much more expensive cast. Season 2 has yet to move my position on that, although I will say that David E. Kelley, who pens each episode’s, ahem, teleplays, corrects some of the first season’s nagging stumbles mostly because he has to.