Big Little Lies, series 2 episode 3, review: Are the children the real stars of the show?

None of the ladies of Monterey Bay were faring very well in episode 3 of Big Little Lies. Well, that’s not quite true, Jane (Shailene Woodley) has a blossoming romance with a bit of a weirdo and was able to tolerate a hug at the end. But she was doing a lot better than any of the married couples in that regard.

Renata had turned the dial up to 11, pitching into a level of rudeness to her daughter’s school staff that I found a little hard to buy (despite the caustic brilliance of Laura Dern’s performance), but making the main focus of her ire the husband who had made them bankrupt, man-child Gordon. Madeline had a semi-breakdown in front of a full complement of fellow parents at Otter Bay after Ed found out last week she had had an affair and told her their marriage was over (it’s not really - yet).

And Celeste, who remains the emotional heart of this show thanks to the deep tenderness with which Nicole Kidman plays this character, was doing the best she could to pretend that her dead husband was still alive - and also, actually, really nice. She’s trying so hard to summon him from the dead that she may - just may - be physically hurting herself in order to bring the feeling back of their constant conflict. People have attachment to their wounds, she was told by her perspicacious therapist.

I have an anxiety that BLL series two will lose its way. That it cannot build to a climax of the level that season one reached. Of course, one way to avoid the comparison is for it not to build to a climax at all, but to take multiple threads in different directions. Mary Louise’s sleuthing is the effort most likely to bring us a showdown - if she can plant the seeds of suspicion that Perry’s death was no accident. But I like to think writers David E Kelley and Lianne Moriarty won’t let her precipitate that obvious disaster. That they will give us a different one instead. One we never saw coming. Or several of them.

In the meantime the actors luxuriate in their roles. Adam Scott as Madeline’s Ed, the nice guy with a sharp tongue, consistently lands his sly linguistic punches and is an ideal foil to Madeline’s hysteria - which was again, like Renata’s, possibly a little over-egged in this episode.

Always of fascination are the children. All are acted beautifully. All, in their various ways, seem wiser than the adults. Abigail was comforting her mother this time; Ziggy seemed to clock the sinisterness of Mary Louise even as she was lulling Jane into a false sense of security. Amabella had a panic attack and passed out after having had the consequences of climate change explained to her - surely the most rational reaction to the pending End of the World (also the title of the episode). Little Chloe’s eavesdropping on Madeline’s conversations was the trigger for the many shocks of the previous episode. Perhaps it is the youngest generation who deserve our closest attention.

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