Reese and Nicole and Laura and Audrey and Elvis: Thread for BIG LITTLE LIES on HBO

I kind of feel like I should have called out the spoilers in the thread title

the whole thing's done I think we should be able to have some real talk about everything that happened

if a mod ever wanders by, it would be nice to get an edit there

[SPOILERS]

Good interview here with the director on the final episode
http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/big-little-lies-director-jean-marc-vallee-on-the-finale.html

[SPOILERS]

Okay, the praise here and the revelation of Zoe Kravitz's involvement might be enough for me to overcome the side-eye I've been giving to the previews for that show with Shailene Woodley in a central role. Laura Dern's presence should've been enough, though, I guess.

2. Monterey scenery-porn holy crap so gorgeous
right! almost makes me feel like I could live there but every time i've been there in person I get a strange feeling i'd go mad there after i few months.anyways...

I enjoyed the show a lot. the acting was good all around even Kidman who I don't usually care for had me really buying into her character's situation.

right! almost makes me feel like I could live there but every time i've been there in person I get a strange feeling i'd go mad there after i few months.anyways...

Huh -- very curious as to why you felt that way! (As mentioned on the other thread where this was discussed, it's where my parents live and my dad grew up -- Carmel rather than Monterey specifically, though, but hey, just on the other side of the peninsula -- and I've always loved the area ever since I was a kid.)

I've spent a good amount of time up there visiting friends and i can't pin it down other than strange restlessness that comes over before too long .

I couldn't make it through the first episode. parents don't talk like this.

feel like I've eaten a mediocre crepe at the coffee place they all hang out at, though it was redone for shooting this? Monterey sure is beautiful as shot in this. I wish I'd spent more time exploring and less time in cannery row when I was there.

extremely wealthy and attractive parents might talk like this, I don't know

I would and they don't. And the "Greek chorus" stuff is ridiculous, every rando parent having in-depth opinions about the psychological make-up of others etc. gtfo

oh would you now

I am a parent in one of the wealthiest cities in the country and deal with rich helicopter parents all the time so yes.

when the teacher made Amabelle point out her strangler in front of ALL THE KIDS and ALL THE PARENTS

and THIS scene! ugh gtfo that teacher would be fired immediately

seems like the becomes wealthy and stays in the city crowd would be different from the becomes wealthy and moves to monterey, cambria, etc. crowd

Mentioned this on the other thread, but it's less of a 'moves there' crowd than a 'commutes there on the weekend' crowd. Trust me, I know.

Shakes, I really encourage you to try and watch it all the way through. It's so much richer than it seems at first watch

drifting into strawman territory here. how about wealthy parents in Marin, I know those people too

xp

hell, just watch the first 10 minutes of the final episode

haha I thought of including Marin but thought you probably had a better chance of knowing someone from there. I just don't know how you always extrapolate such distances from your own experience, and so frequently into works of fiction, and manage to enjoy anything ever.

hey shakey it's cool you superficially engaged with the first episode of this show and all. your opinions are noted.

the last episode of this was just gripping.

honestly, i feel that this show was amazingly thought out and structured, to the point where i think the early episodes purposefully cast all these people as the cardboard cutout stereotypes you're prepared to hate watch then slowly unfurls so much emotional and psychological depth.

i think it's the only time i ever felt like a therapy session in a show or movie felt really authentic to me.

was really cool to see kidman be so good again, i'd kind of forgotten how good she could be

really the whole cast was great\

<3 little ziggy

My partner is a 2ndary school teacher and was *fuming* during those scenes and basically praying the teacher would be the murder victim

She teaches at a helicoptery place in the UK and found the parents quite realistic

How fucking awful that Laura gets stuck with that asshole st the end though

Ums otm - they set everyone up as stereotypes so that they can shade them in more meaningfully as individuals as the story unfolds

and yeah, the therapy scenes are so good. Y'all caught that the therapist is Robin Weigert aka Calamity Jane from Deadwood? I love her. She was great in Sons of Anarchy too. But I loved how direct but sensitive and compassionate she was as a therapist. And Kidman played those scenes so well.

props to Skarsgard too. I was a fan of him as eyecandy because he's so goddamn gorgeous, but I don't know that I've seen him play anything this layered and complicated before. Just goes to show how good material brings everyone to the party.

Y'all caught that the therapist is Robin Weigert aka Calamity Jane from Deadwood?

i know! that was nuts, it was driving me crazy who she was the whole time, my wife told me this morning...just the characters are so different she's so buttoned up and rational in this role

yeah it makes you appreciate what she had to do vocally and even physically to get to Calamity as a character

omg I remember looking her up after Deadwood to see if I'd seen her in anything else. This was the first one, and I didn't even notice that it's her!

On episode 5, this show is also really funny in its breakdown of human behaviour

This was a really solid show

i get why some people didn't like this; I got 'i'm not interested in privileged white people' a number of times. but I still thought it was good. things aren't bad just because they're about rich white people. fuck.

anyone else think the soundtrack was like a boomer's dream come true? Mostly filtered through Chloe as well, which made me laugh..

that hurts, I'm only 40 ;_;

Ah VG, you're so awesome

A lot of it was still boomer music though

A couple of things:

Had Perry and Jane met before the fundraiser (besides the rape, of course)? I cant remember.

Also I was partly convinced the whole time that ed was going to be the killer. Just with the staring at Madeleine's oldest daughter then the quick looks away and whatnot. Seemed like something was going on there.

Also: Ziggy ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Yeah I totally expected Ed to end up schtupping the stepdaughter, there were a lot of weird lingering looks & furtive glances between them

Don't think Perry and Jane met before the fundraiser

Has anyone read one of Liane Moriarty's books? Could def give one a go after this (I've read that it's a fairly literal adaptation)

Glad a thread was finally started for this series. I'd be lying if I said I didn't look forward to each episode of this more than anything else I've been watching for the last 2 months. Was really taking back with Kidman's performance.

i'm avoiding this thread but just saying I'M IN - feel sorry for nicole kidman's poor face, and for basically all the kids. really impressive how in just one episode they introduce reese witherspoon as this hateful hosebeast and by the end you just want to hug her and take her home. just finished ep 4 and i have an inchoate theory about the bullying but really no idea where this is all heading. excellent job sowing seeds of doubt and anxiety everyone, A+

my inchoate theory was OTM :)

The parade of Audreys in the intro is creepy. You have those cute kids dancing and then it goes to that. Some weird backlit outdoors thing. Nicole Kidman looks mannish, showing off her adam's apple. At the end it blurs out and cuts off Perry. I wonder if it was just something they put together in a hurry, or if it was carefully planned out.

i think it was all pretty planned out. i read they initially wrote the gala as happening inside, in a school gym, but changed it when they found that location (which is actually in LA)

the parade of audreys after the kids doing the same was amazing wtf

The credits end on the main character, cutting out before the bad guy - that seems purposeful surely?.

laura dern in partic was hypnotic in that sequence xp

holy heck this was good

man a-list actresses get so much shit for one reason or another and then you watch reese witherspoon and nicole kidman take a tv role and realize they're just light years beyond even a decent tv actor.

my takeaway is how much better roles for women are when the actresses are producers on their own shit and/or collaborate with each other to make great content

Also for real Ed is like the Usain Bolt of passive aggression.

I am still watching s2 but I am pretty disappointed.

The behind the scenes story doesnt surprise me, the whole thing feels so off.

The writing is my main gripe though bc it feels like such a first draft story. Or very rushed. All these random outbursts in place of earned drama, everyone’s yelling & slapping & crying it resembles fkn Dynasty more than the show itself. The depth to the characters is gone & they’re just doggy paddling in a circle around the death of peter & it’s dumb as shit.

Big Little I Know What You Did Last Summer

ugh

Yeah. Even the remixed theme tune is a slow bummer

I love that song

The proper version is great - local Muswell Hill boy makes good! the S2 version loses the drums and only primes me for an hour of drear

agree the proper version is better.

maybe the writing wasn't as strong but I thought the drama this season has made sense. I have enjoyed how much more somber and emotionally dark this has been than the first season

it could be so much better tho

i mean, Laura Dern is amazing & i love seeing her character go nuclear & lose her shit, but in ~every~ scene? i dunno

lol I confess I have really enjoyed all of her scenes. to me she is the comic relief in the midst of all of the suppressed guilt and anger

Well, that wraps everything up, I guess.

that was .... a giant wet fart of an ending. As much as I enjoyed watching laura dern smash shit up and meryl streep lose: the courtroom shit was absurd, no custody hearing goes like that; I love poorna jagannathan but she's obviously the worse lawyer on earth; everybody hates nathan; the stuff with zoe kravitz' mom never had any dramatic tension; what happened with reese witherspoon's daughter deciding not to go to college (also why is that actress in every single thing I watch all of a sudden?); and at the end what, did zoe decide to confess? did they all? why did they all? WTF?

*IF* this comes back they'd better figure out how they want to present the story and stick to it.

Yeah, this deflated really badly. I didn't want a second season and I am actively against the idea of a third.

i liked some of this season (ok maybe only meryl) but the finale was pretty bad

yep. shit loads of stuff dropped; what exactly are we to think of the non-stop Bonnie drowning scenes? Was that just supposed to be metaphor? if it was it was dumb, and if it was meant to foreshadow anything it didn't work either.

if this show comes back it should star ONLY Laura Dern yelling at people.

david e. kelley gonna david e. kelley

The euthanasia plot really took care of itself huh. And that judge really allowed herself to be interrupted for some monologues

The vow renewal was odd. It didn't seem like the show was suggesting we view it cynically, since it was presented as lovely and uplifting, yet the audience knows it's something of a fraud because Madeline never came clean to Ed about the cover up.

Except for popping up in the background of a few scenes, the detective didn't seem to really be still investigating at all. I thought that Mary Louis lash out in defeat by dropping some sort of new information with the detective rather than just slink away.

honestly this show is just bad

I assumed that Madeline came clean to Ed offscreen. I mean you figure her confession to the police would probably get back to him.

The show wasn't mindblowing but my expectations were tempered from go and it was fine.

Y'all need to maybe see some legitimately bad tv or something, I think.

she didn't confess to the police?

Didn't she?

I wasn't clear whether she did confess or just went with Bonnie out of solidarity or something. (Like, does that mean Celeste also came clean? Even though she just fought a big battle to keep her kids?) I figured they would have shown Madeline talking to Ed about it, since it seemed like a big conversation to have considering their whole plot was about trust, and that Ed would not have been particularly receptive to "So, I know you gave me all those chances to come clean, but let me slip one last thing in here..."

bonnie didn't go with madeline to the police station?

i mean the other way around

like the text she sends "hey guys I'm confessing" happens at the time the ceremony is happening?

just seemed like a straight bit of dramatic irony "oh things are all happy and great with everyone (apart from bonnie)" oh no here comes this news to undercut it for all of them

didn't seem to me like things were happy and great for everyone, despite the resolution of some story lines. I thought the final scene of them going to the police station together to confess was the absolutely necessary ending, they needed to put all of the lies and related misery to rest

yeah these bitches needed to go to jail for killing that upstanding young man

hmmm

Won't read anything till I get through the rest, but I thought the first two episodes were fine--although I died a little when "Down by the River" was cut short after 30 seconds at the precise moment the volume should have been turned up.

Two episodes left. Streep is so creepy (Streepy?)--and definitely, at least in part, based on Kael.

I liked most all of the second season. The finale for me was probably the weakest episode--not terrible, but a little pat in spots, and Dern with the baseball bat seemed redundant (her rage had been made quite clear by that point). Kidman is such a great actress sometimes. Streep, Dern, Witherspoon, even Adam Scott I'd say, all excellent. Somebody posted something earlier about Arnold having control taken away from her...I don't doubt it, but I've liked/loved three of her movies, and this seemed to fit with her earlier work.

finale was trash, the entirety of the courtroom stuff was a joke

every time nicole kidman insisted on what a good mother she was i was like... wellllll...

Yeah! Obviously Streep was conniving and awful re: her son, but it's not like there wasn't cause for concern, from the pills to the slapping. (I haven't seen the show since it aired--did any character express more than a passing concern about all that? I mostly recall Witherspoon treating it like not that big of a deal.)

i thought i had no interest in this show (rich white people, parenting, women who snipe at each other) but i actually really thought it was good! i thought S2 gave Bonnie a lot more depth and her moments of intrusive memories were very realistic. I also identified with her aimlessly walking through the woods looking dour.

and lil Ziggy <3 i figured whoever wrote the screenplay (and maybe the original author) had read Far From the Tree, where there is a long and difficult-to-read chapter about children of rape.

anyway, i enjoyed both seasons in spite of my original misgivings. the theme song grew on me too.

Great show

I find madeline very sympathetic, despite her flaws. Still in the middle of season 1.

I loved this series, both seasons, it wasn't perfect but in the end I wish I could find other tv shows that would mean as much to me

i can’t believe i watched THE UNDOING in full