The Monterey Five are back and in full force in the first episode of Big Little Lies, but not all is well as Perry’s mother is in town.
Big Little Lies is back, and the season 2 premiere didn’t disappoint! As we start to see our favorite ladies get back into action, we also see how Perry’s death is weighing on Bonnie in particular. While we still don’t know exactly what will happen in season 2 (unlike in season 1 when we had the brilliant Liane Moriarty’s work to go off of), that just gives the suspense a new edge.
The last we saw Madeline, Celeste, Bonnie, Renata, and Jane, they were all dressed as various versions of Audrey Hepburn, and Bonnie had just pushed Perry down the stairs in defense of Celeste. After a stroke of brilliance from Madeline, they all said they were arguing and he slipped down the staircase; for now, they’re safe. That doesn’t mean they’re all fine and well with what happened though.
So, where does that leave us in the first episode? Well, with Meryl Streep of course! While we have a lot of actors we’d love to see on Big Little Lies, having Meryl Streep play Mary Louise Wright is pretty incredible. (Even if she’s rocking fake teeth for…some reason.) The episode begins with Mary Louise helping Celeste (Nicole Kidman) take care of the twins.
While she’s certainly a help with the grandkids, it is very clear that she’s only in Monterey to discover the truth about her son, underscored by her shared scene with Madeline (Reese Witherspoon) getting coffee. Mary Louise continually brings Perry’s death up whilst insulting the other woman by saying how short she is.
From there, the episode mainly focuses on Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz) not being able to handle what she did to Perry while Celeste copes with nightmares about her husband coming back into her life. However, there’s also a beautiful moment between Celeste and Jane (Shailene Woodley) about how Celeste views Ziggy and what happened between Perry and Jane. Jane opens up to Celeste, saying that if the situation was reversed, she would probably hate her because of what happened. As Celeste points out, it wasn’t Jane’s fault. She was raped, that’s on Perry, and there is no reason for Celeste to hate her.
There are other little bits of drama throughout the episode, mainly in that Madeline’s daughter Abigail doesn’t want to go to college.
Other than that, it was a great first episode to set up where the season is going to be taking us. Renata (Laura Dern) is definitely going to have problems with her husband, Celeste has her hands full with Mary Louise, and Jane and Bonnie are coming to terms with the fact that everyone is going to talk about Perry Wright for a very long time.
I cannot wait to see where Big Little Lies season 2 takes us!