Episode 2 of "Big Little Lies"

OK, so a lot of heavy shit went down this episode. The biggest thing is probably that Jane and Celeste end up telling their kids that Perry is Ziggy's dad. Bonnie's basically suffering from post-traumatic stress, so Nathan asks her mom to come out and help. Her mom is pretty in tune with what's wrong with Bonnie, and she's apparently some kind of like witch doctor who's using crystals to help her troubled daughter. Madeline confesses to Ed that she had an affair (thanks to the second time in two days one of her daughter gets a little loose with her language). Renata's dick husband has allegedly squandered all their money on some risky business venture, and we get to see pretty clearly what's behind her motivation for success.



And then of course, there's Mary Louise. She gets creepier by the minute. She's also sort of an awful person, if we didn't already realize that. After hearing the painful revelation from Celeste that Perry was physically abusive, instead of being sympathetic, caring and a listener, Mary Louise can do nothing but deny the possibility that her son could have been that way and that he could have raped someone as well. Essentially it's an exercise in denial, and Meryl plays it well, in that I wanted to reach through my TV and slap Mary Louise into reality.

Shailene Woodley was best in show for me tonight. The scene where she's telling Ziggy the truth about his father--it was pretty easy to feel her pain, and I thought she did a wonderful job conveying that.

With all this stuff out in the open already in week two, there's a pretty solid framework for a five more episodes of conflict. Fifty minutes never went by so fast...