In Defense of <em>Big Little Lies</em>’ Second Season
This article contains spoilers through the second season of Big Little Lies.
Just to put this out there first: No, the second season of HBO’s wasn’t as good as the first. The plotting was minimal, leading up to an underwhelming showdown in the best-attended family courtroom in America. Even as the characterization of Zoë Kravitz’s Bonnie was beefed up, the show found other women of color to keep on the sidelines as window dressing, such as Merrin Dungey’s Detective Quinlan and Poorna Jagannathan’s ignored lawyer, Katie. Meryl Streep’s Mary Louise, an agent of chaos who seemed to threaten the fragile equilibrium of the Monterey Five, ended up … quietly slinking back to San Francisco. Renata (Laura Dern) became a caricature who existed purely to spawn GIF-able moments. And Andrea Arnold, a director who’s spent her career examining marginalized and disenfranchised women, was given the fascinating job of turning.
