Unlike the first season of this HBO series when every week brought the flashback-heavy high drama to the Monterey Five, the second helping of “Big Little Lies” has been truly a slow burn with bite-sized snacks of info instead of full helpings.
Frustrated viewers, therefore, have resorted to sniffing out clues and speculation about how the unraveling of this guilt-ridden quintet — haunted Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz), spacey Celeste (Nicole Kidman), bankrupt Renata (Laura Dern), cheater Madeline (Reese Witherspoon) and traumatized Jane (Shailene Woodley) — will somehow lead to a happily-ever-after ending.
From what intel has been gathered from the episode creepily called “Kill Me,” which was a fuller serving of clues than usual, this has been what has been theorized by viewers.
— Jane’s sweet and caring new guy and fellow aquarium worker Corey (Douglas Smith) is actually an undercover snitch working with the police, judging from what Bonnie sees when she is outside the station.
— Bonnie was abused by her mother as a child, which explains her violent reaction to Perry’s behavior last season as she protected Celeste. Perhaps that is the key to keeping her from fulfilling those premonitions of drowning seen by her stroke-suffering mom and getting her off the hook for pushing Perry down the stairs.
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— Why does Mary Louise (Meryl Streep) want so badly to be a guardian to her grandchildren? Is she herself hiding something in her past that might have led to Perry’s hateful and destructive behavior?
— After a failed attempt at touchy-feely couples therapy, Madeline’s cuckolded hubby Ed (Adam Scott, whose shoulder-shrugging “I don’t give a damn performance” is great this season) is seen in a local bar where he’s confronted by a hot-to-trot Tori — the wife of the little theater director Joseph, whose affair with Madeline last season is out in the open. Most creepy is that the voyeur is watching his spouse’s outrageous flirting. Where will this lead?
— Fans who are still hanging in there, however, were most distraught this week with a scene involving Mary Louise unknowingly poking at one of Madeline’s many sore spots when it came to her elder daughter’s resistance to go to college. Photos were leaked of a pissed-off Witherspoon chucking an elaborately decorated ice cream cone at the back of La Streep’s head. Alas, said scene did not pop up in episode five.
Instead, we got Madeline yelling rather ineffectually, “What’s wrong with you? Huh? Huh?” Did they think that this leaked dairy incident couldn’t compete with last week’s slap heard round the world?
just learned the most distressing news from the Still Watching podcast with @jowrotethis & @rilaws: this scene was cut from this season of Big Little Lies pic.twitter.com/WoQR4Z8YWk
— Fabian Igiraneza (@fabianigiraneza) July 6, 2019
What theories do you have about what will happen next? Will it turn into a “Perry Mason” courtroom confrontation? Will our ladies not be allowed a satisfying conclusion? Or will Mary Louise be the one to break down on the stand and spill her guts out about her own flawed parenting skills? Please share in the comment section below and find some hints in the video preview of the show’s penultimate episode (see above).
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