Big Little Lies MVPs: Episode 2.7 "I Want to Know"
Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 11:40AM Previously: Episode 1 (Nathaniel) Episode 2 (Spencer) Episode 3 (Lynn) Episode 4 (Nathaniel) Episode 5 (Eric) Episode 6 (Chris)
by Nathaniel R
Parting is such sweet sorrow. But so is sticking together. With the seventh and final episode of Big Little Lies -- beware SPOILERS ahead all throughout this post-- we're in some ways directly back where we ended last season, with the Monterey Five, all in harmonious agreement. This time around, though, it's a bit grimmer if you stop to think about what might occur after they all confess. We don't mean the threat of a possible third season (which we don't actually think will happen) but the narrative possibilities inside our own heads. Exactly how do you conspire to lie about manslaughter and get away with it? Did Celeste keep her children only to lose them? Did Madeline save her marriage only to lose her freedom? Etcetera.
But we're jumping right to the finale and we need to backtrack again for the best moments and fine performances of the finale...
Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies, Episode 2.7 "I Want to Know"
10 Renata demolishing the train set
Laura Dern's darkly comic character arc this season had her life (and wealth) unravelled by her husband's crimes. David E Kelley doesn't always write "believeable" characters but sometimes cartoonish fan service is so cathartic. When Gordon pushes his already manically angry wife one step to far she takes a baseball bat to all his expensive toys. Our apartment was screaming with glee. Get him, Renata. Get him!
9 Douglas Smith as Corey Brockfield
"What is fun?" As we've noted in these round-ups before the men in Big Little Lies are rarely acclaimed for their work and their characters are often the antagonists of a given situation. Smith's slow-burn endearing performance took us by surprise. At first he was just "love interest" but by the end of the season we were so rooting for Jane to realize he's a catch. Even her little son (the excellent Iain Armitage) agrees, urging his mom to give him another chance. Brockfield aced that 'what is fun?' speech and won not just Jane over but (presumably) most of the audience, too. The show tried a bit hard to keep his motivations mysterious for some late season drama but the actor cemented himself as a stable and loving "Ed" type rather than another variation on the more clueless or shadier male characters. One side note here: If you stop to think of Big Little Lies dramatizations of the husbands and boyfriends throughout the two seasons, it's fairly interesting that though some of their are flawed to the point of being despicable, almost none of them are characterized as "bad fathers"... which makes the arc of Celeste being accused of being "the bad mother" a sort of side-eye at societal misogyny.
8 Laura vs Meryl, round two
While the first face/off between these two acting powerhouses was weirdly dissatisfying, the second was explosive. Renata was already in a mood ordering coffee and belittling the barista, when Mary Louise approached. Laura Dern has been accused of overdoing it in this series but people do lose their grip on occassion and this scene was thrilling in its cringeworthiness (get a hold of yourself, lady!) even as you fully sympathisized with the reasons for her rage and hostility. For her part Streep did that neat trick of continuing to make Mary Louise feel both innocently out-of-her-depth as well as slyly manipulative simultaneously. Plus she aced the scenes offhand but brutal punchline when she offers to take Renata's coffee to her.
We're going to the same place".
Hell?
7 That Perry's abuse remains shocking
The courtroom scenes never felt like they could really happen; Kelley can't resist being an entertainer first and former lawyer second when it comes to his TV shows -- but that has its rewards as we see here. The out of nowhere reveal of video proof of Perry's abuse of Celeste was more of a cheap plot gotcha than an organic development but boy did it work in the context of this particular entertainment. Too often television shows work to desensitize us by indulging in gratuitous violence through repetition of grisly images (this is a random example but I stopped watching The Flash due to how many times it made me watch Iris being stabbed through the heart -- these are not the type of images we should be forced to memorize as an audience) but Big Little Lies quite valiantly managed to never numb us to the brutality of domestic abuse. This type of imagery should always be shocking and unacceptable andthe actresses watching drove home the point yet further.
6 Sweaty Adam Scott
Mmmmmm. Also damn he's a good actor. The contained emotion as he calmly explained to Madeline what he'd need to stay in the marriage felt exactly how this character came to this point.
5 "You lost your children, you don't get to take mine"
Celeste remains one of Nicole Kidman's best performances. Admittedly her work was a little broader in season two (whose wasn't?) and I didn't quite buy how hard she was going at Mary Louise given her legal training and the risk of making herself unsympathetic -- but the rest of the courtroom performance was riveting and this line reading slayed as a final winning blow.
4 The confession, pt 2
Early in the episode Bonnie confesses her true feelings to Nathan -- she never loved him (ouuuuch) -- but the narrative has been far more interested in her other inevitable confession, that she pushed Perry to his death in Season 1. This final episode wrapped up all the disparate arcs too neatly and quickly -- it might have helped to spread out the drama instead of saving so much of it for the last two episodes -- but the final image of the women arriving at the police station together to confess to their lies about Perry's death felt right. "The lie is the friendship," Celeste says unironically earlier in the episode, but the finale indicates that the bond will survive the lie. It's a good note to go out on for a series that surprised in its first season for playing like a catfight only to reconfigure itself as it played out, with great style and feeling, into a story of female solidarity.
3 and 2 Marriage Vows Renewed & Reese Witherspoon in general
The happiest of all the endings, was the wisely brief renewal of vows with Ed & Madeline recommitting to each other with only their daughters as witnesses. That this happy ending was so very satisfying (and authentically felt) is a huge testament to the chemistry of Adam Scott and Reese Witherspoon. At the risk of sounding like a broken record Reese Witherspoon has never won enough praise for this series. I maintain that she's given her all time best performance within, cumulatively. It's a rich three-dimensional portrait of a loveable but aggravating woman and her guilt, exhaustion and elation with Ed's behavior and decisions was admirably precise and character specific. Here's the cherry on top: she's also elevated Kidman's work. Kidman deserved her Emmy last season but Witherspoon has always been right beside her, actually doing more work to sell this particular best friendship and, more crucially, the overarching themes of solidarity as well as relationship intimacy and its limits more than anyone else in the series.
1 An olive branch - Hugs for Meryl
At times Big Little Lies season 2 clumsily behaved as if it had invited Meryl Streep on board only to have a prestigious actress that it could then reduce to a fall guy and antagonist. Mary Louise was sometimes a caricature of a manipulative mother but her newly excavated grief on the witness stand humanized her just in time for a lovely grace note in the finale when Celeste sends her two boys over to hug their grandmother.
Did you like the finale of Big Little Lies? Though it didn't quite deliver on the promise of the very exciting penultimate episode ("The Bad Mother") it had its moments.
For your exiting joy, please enjoy this brief video of La Streep's last day on set. The "good riddance" cake is LOL.
MERYL STREEP#BigLittleLies pic.twitter.com/9bSEhfT6mo
— εѵα ✨ (@evamariestreep) July 22, 2019
Reader Comments (39)
Renata needed to kill Gordon. I want 100% fan service.
I loved that you highlighted Douglas Smith. His work here has inspired me to seek out the rest of his filmography.
I felt terrible for Mary Louise in this episode.
I don't see her as a villain. She's correct that she never got answers about Perry's death, which as a mother she deserves. She's correct that Celeste is operating in an Ambien blackout, and may be temporarily unfit to care for the kids.
The way the script pinned Perry's psychopathy and his brother's /accidental/ death on her was disgusting and cruel. I honestly couldn't believe what I was watching.
I like Streep best when the burden of carrying a piece is off her shoulders. She digs deeper to me with secondary characters even when it appears to her super fans as hyper artifice.
Big Little Lies made the world love Nicole Kidman and for that Nathaniel Rogers you must built an alter to Mr Michelle Pfeiffer.
H: The way Mary Louise's lawyer (and by extension Mary Louise herself) went so viciously and fully after Celeste last episode, she lost all sympathy from me. Blaming the violence on Celeste herself, questioning if Jane was raped or if Jane somehow invited the rape, slut shaming and having Celeste followed around for months on end? If you can't take that kind of heat, don't dish it out. Celeste had every right to sink down to Mary Louise's level if it meant keeping her children. It is unclear if Perry's assertions about his brother are true or if they are lies he told. Mary Louise spent all season though building Perry up as some victim/saint, so if his lies brought her down, what goes around comes around is how I see it
I really appreciated this season. It was different, and all the characters got to do more. They all are now iconic, and the introduction of Mary Louise was unexpected, weird, and created tons of tension. My only complaint, which could be remedied by a Season 3, is to know more about Mary Louise's internal and private life. It was a weird editing choice to put the flashback of the car accident in Nicole's head, when she would only be imagining it. As a writer, I might have suggested Mary Louise actually have a different memory, which we get to see. And generally, it's hard to complain about a production that is female driven and riveting. Best in show for me where Meryl, Laura and Adam Scott but everyone did a great job.
This season was pointless and unnecessary (as I feared it would), but giving credit where it's due: at least Corey didn't turn out to be Perry's nefarious brother (which I suspected he might). Jane didn't need *that* lumped on her as well.
Let this be the end of Big Little Lies, please. The first was perfect as is.
It's just weird to me how the script acts like it found its "real villain" in Mary Louise—so much so that Perry is used as a character witness against her! You see, she guilt tripped him into becoming a psycopath. Celeste knows because he told her so, in between the physical violence, which he also learned from Mary Louise.
That's the hierarchy of evil this finale established. Not only does she defend a monster but she created him, and—by the way—might be a child killer. You can believe (as I do) that Mary Louise is backwards and out-of-line as hell in her defenses of Perry without mustering a "you go girl" for Celeste.
Don't forget the actress who played Celeste's lawyer told Vanity Fair that Streep ignored notes from Andrea Arnold to make Mary Louise a villain. I feel the story gave Mary Louise the short end of the stick. Sure, she was obnoxious, but ultimately, her suspicions were true about the women hiding the killing of Perry. But unfortunately, she doesn't get to know that information on screen. Plus, maybe it was a David Kelley lawyer revenge fantasy, but the two women really hit each other below the belt in a courtroom setting. Is it really appropriate for Celeste to blame Mary Louise for bad parenting, when she doesn't really know any facts? At least Mary Louise had facts.
Sweaty Adam Scott. Yes, please.
I don't think Streep was a caricature at all. She was the only character who invited complex feelings from me this season (and notably, the character who we are discussing here in the comments). I pitied her, I felt defensive of her, I was angered by her, I was curious about her.
I was entertained by Renata and bored by most of the others (I don't even recall watching your #9 scene).
"Celeste had every right to sink down to Mary Louise's level if it meant keeping her children."
Legally, she would have kept her children regardless because there is an enormous presumption in favor of the mother's rights. Mary Louise did not even have to take the stand.
As an attorney, Celeste knew this. But of course, it's Ally McBeal-level writing.
Weren't we warned that the Monterey 5 would have to testify? Why didn't we see that? Why wasn't the detective in court to watch the custody hearing? It's like they forgot about Perry's death in last two episodes.
I agree with Suzanne in that it felt like the season was headed toward forcing the Monterey 5 to testify. I assumed Mary Louise was using the child custody hearings as a backdoor to getting SOMEONE to purger themselves on the stand in court. Why else have Mary Louise meet with the detective in earlier episodes and discuss the case?
It felt like the building blocks were there and were completely ignored.
Streep was MVP for me, by far. She made season 2 worth watching. Such an interesting character.
Ultimately, BLL was still a really riveting show this season, flaws and all. I agree that Adam Scott really proved himself as an actor here, especially. Laura Dern as Renata was always a highlight. I don't think she was over-the-top, I think Renata is simply an over-the-top type of person and that Dern captured her perfectly.
Agree with commenters. While Madeline and Jane had their storylines wrapped up (for now), there are still some infuriating loose ends that may support a final season 3:
Celeste - Wouldn't Mary Louise automatically renew her petition? I mean, she is a lawyer but clearly a liar. What happens to her and her kids?
Mary Louise - I could maybe see her and Celeste reconciling, after a lot of work. It would be gratifying to see her evolve realistically as a senior.
Bonnie -- Is she going to jail? She did kill someone. Either way, what happens to her?
Renata -- I need to see her back on her feet and financially independent. A comeback story for her recapturing her wealth would be good.
Loved the courtroom scene except for the sudden discovery of that video (how convenient) and I love everything with Reese and my future ex-boyfriend, Adam Scott but I felt that the decision to admit what happened to Perry at the police station is so unearned. Bonnie sends a group text and then suddenly, everyone was like Okurrr girl. I felt that the finale as a whole was weak (mainly because of the writing) but the performances were great all around.
Not as interesting as I had hoped it would be, but I was entertained the whole time. Streep made it more watchable for me, but those high powered actresses all raised the quality of the material.
I was not as involved this season... the characters were too many and it seemed as though
they tried to get to everyone in 45 min.
I do not see any awards in the future.
As for the characters: I have to agree that Streep was the standout. As for Kidman ( who I don't particularly care for ).. I thought she was very good in this role. Reece was the best of the Monterey 5. Shaliene was also very good.
I do not see a Season 3 in the offing... leave a good thing alone.
Ugh. Love all these actresses, but this script, ugh, just no.
Woodley was MVP for me. Adam Scott, a close second.
And no, I’m not convinced that seeing his brother’s death or his mother’s subsequent behavior towards him turned Perry into an abuser and rapist. Nope, he was a bad seed from the get go. He probably socked his brother or worse to distract Mary Louise.
Season 3 not needed.
I agree with what you said about Reese, Nathaniel.
I'm all for a Season 3. It could address what happened when the Monterey 5 went to the police. Bonnie would get some kind of conviction for manslaughter and who knows what the sentence would be for that, given the circumstances. The others might be charged as accessories after the fact. (I'm not a lawyer, just spitballing here). Would love to see more Renata, She was so believable, somehow, as being a kind of nutty over-the-top woman.
But of course it depends on what ratings Season 2 got, and all kinds of machinations between actresses, directors, producers, etc.
Your favourite divas are such hypocrites. Considering they're the modern beacons of sorority, I'm a bit surprised by their absolute silence on the Andrea Arnold's issue.
rrich7 -- supposedly ratings for Season 2 were 18 % higher than season 1 so if they want they can probably get a third season. But given that most of the actresses also work in movies, i'd be surprised if they signed on again (given the descending critical acclaim)
Betty Lou -- it could be that they know something we don't. Or maybe they're speaking with Andrea Arnold to confirm. That story, while totally awful and disheartening was strangely lacking in sourcing and on the record quotes (as journalistic exposes go)..
Apparently HBO has denied the Indie Wire Story - Link
The whole "let's create a creative environment and more work for women" discourse sounds like bullshit to me if Reese and Nicole, as executive producers, are fine with hiring a woman just for the prestige and the hard work and then let two men reshape her work completely.
I’m sure you can DM Reese and Nicole on Instagram Betty Lou, and they’ll be happy to give you a statement.
Even before the Indiewire article came out, this season felt messy. I enjoyed watching it, but it was a frustrating experience and much of it felt pointless. The attempts to develop certain supporting characters fell flat and they failed Bonnie once again, though I do like how Kravitz played the part. It would've been much more interesting to have them all make that confession early in the season and then deal with what happens after that. I really hope season 3 is a no-go.
I'm not sure who my MVP is, but I know it aint Streep. She started off strong, but the performance got lost behind the wig, the teeth, and the tics. It ended up being a bit too cartoonish for my liking.
Wow, lots of bitchy comments. Clearly the show had value if it was so polarizing. That is what art is for. In any event, fans loved it and I will not be surprised if there is a season three.
So let's blame Vallee for the edit. Kelley for the writing. Actors for uneven performances that didn't gel. The cinematographer for the awkward shot framing. Makeup team for Meryl's teeth. HBO for all of the above. Am I missing anyone? Certainly not the director!
I bet there's a season 3 too. Money to be made!
Faye - So I guess you thought Green Book deserved to win last year?
Thank you Nathaniel for validating what I've been saying about Reese to anyone who will listen. I have enjoyed her in the past (Election, Legally Blonde, Walk The Line, Wild) but never loved her. Post Big Little Lies, I cannot wait to see what she does next.
Promoting peace is good and inspiring. It is very informative. You have given a fresh outlook on the topic.
I would definitely share this on other platforms as well.
I think season 2 is a hot mess...but Meryl & Nicole save it by being at the top of there game!
I blame David E. Kelley for Michelle's career so I'm with Betty Lou! But seriously, why do you hire Andrea Arnold if you're going to treat like Mimi Leder?
@Keegan - Witherspoon's Peggy Lee biopic with Todd Haynes is reportedly still in development!
Thank you for the story ideas. We would love to do a season three because there are certainly great ideas. But we would not do it without all of the same people involved... even the kids.
Am I the only one who felt Reese has literally *nothing* to do this season?
I watched this season... but I didn't really care. Whereas last season I was FULLY IN. haha. The writing this season was honestly questionable, and sometimes outright bad. And I feel the performances suffered because of it.
At this point I'm 50/50 on a season 3.
Has anyone else heard the new techno track with the Mary Louise scream? It made me laugh.
This comments thread is my August book pick. Love you Nathaniel!