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

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

both last posts otm

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.

Kidman is reliably amazing basically all of the time but some of the best performances in any medium right now come courtesy of Leftovers and Americans actors

Great performances
I feel like I knew these characters almost too well though, like I got bored caring about Madeleine's problems (sorry Reese <3 u), maybe because I watched the whole thing in a few nights.
Great direction, little touches throughout
Less funny than I anticipated though and didn't shake the 'that kind of novel*' vibe.
Felt a bit like a beautiful distillation of mumsnet in a way. Enjoyed it enough though. My OH has been giving me the side-eye for recommending it though :/

*I don't know what you call this kind of novel, focusing on relationships/family/parenting/working mother/class issues - usually with big reveal at the end and someone innocent suffering for the good of others - but I don't think they're my thing, I usually guess the big reveal and get irritated by it. (I guessed one early on here, in part due to the extreme unlikeliness of certain roles acting in the ways depicted - and the other I found too pat.)

amazing to watch a series with a bone fide GOOD ENDING.

great performances. I don't have any preconceptions of Reece W but she's brilliantly, comically, subtle here. what a clever actress she is. kidman was a revelation. its just really great to watch excellent female characters and female actresses be basically the whole thing and the whole point but I agree with kinder there^ - we've had rich white women's stories a lot and i think it needed to breathe out a bit. or a lot.

Fucking great show, just finished. damn. Thought it started off real corny (the interstitials with the parents in the police station were really grating at first - also whoa, Todd Bridges)- but it went way further and into heavier terrain than I was expecting. Everyone was great in it. And yeah the ending ruled. No second season please. It was great.

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.

Such a great observation, that is an excellent way of putting it. I watched it over 5 days, and as I watched the last couple episodes I thought about how much my perception of Reese's character especially had changed.

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

otm

GUYS!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/meryl-streep-star-big-little-lies-season-2-hbo-1064801

amazed this thread isn't all about the insane wig that nicole kidman wears in every scene.

So I just finished binge watching this and yeah it was pretty great. Not thrilled by the idea of a second season though as it was so satisfying as a whole, and because the director of S1 won't be helming it this time. But I guess the final shot of someone watching the women on the beach through binoculars was intended to set the scene for the second season (sorry for alliteration), even though they can't have known S2 was in the bag when they included that shot.

oh wait, that Vulture article explains that it was the policewoman watching them right at the end, because she suspects something's not quite right. I hadn't caught that.

I hope the second season isn't about them being re-trialled for what happened in the first. That way lies Broadchurch madness.

Also I don't know why but my head has confused elements of Big Little Lies and Logan Lucky. I guess they both have open-endings with strangely prescient detectives going "hmmmmmm..."

I loved this but is it too late to talk about how bad the high school internet sex plot was

i loved this too but i am starting to be tire of the thrilling, televised escapades of the extremely rich (cf McMafia)

oh man that show is really bad compared to BLL

personally i dug the luxury porn and felt like the characters had some resemblance to people i knew, in spirit if not in wealth

also i used to live near monterey so it's beautiful nostalgia (although i guess mostly filmed in southern california?)

i'm perpetually behind the times but i just watched all of this over the last few days. nicole kidman is just fantastic. i cried my guts out. the therapy scenes (especially the first session in episode 3) were so good that i said "this is some of the best television i have ever seen" out loud as i was watching it. i too am getting sick of extremely wealthy families and neighborhoods being the setting for so many creative works, and i'll spare everyone reading this my trite feelings on that because they've already been expressed upthread and it's a problem that many shows have, not just this one.

episode 3, though. that one just blew my mind. and somehow in the midst of all that wrenching turmoil rising to the surface, it was the "dreams" sequence in the van that tore me up more than anything. what a wonderful show.

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