Monday, July 22, 2019

Did Big Little Lies Season Two Stick the Landing?

Two years after the world was shaken by news that Big Little Lies, the almost unfathomably star-stuffed HBO limited series, would return for a surprise second go-round—even though the first had exhausted its source material, Liane Moriarty’s eponymous novel—that season (and, perhaps, the series itself) has wrapped. So, did it end with as much of a bang as season one? Not really, according to TV critic Sonia Saraiya. “When I reviewed the premiere, I said I wasn’t sure how the story would pan out, but I didn’t care,” she writes. “But I didn’t anticipate this wholesale abandonment of the story’s stakes, which leached out so much of the show’s zest and replaced it with a kind of soapy stasis. The show’s stickiest and thorniest questions—about mothering, trauma, guilt, and the price of dishonesty—are by and large left unanswered by this ending, which recedes from the narrative of these six women as a wave recedes from shore.”
Elsewhere in HWD, Yohana Desta investigates whether we can expect another season of Big Little Lies; Peter Savodnik introduces three Hollywood bigwigs who are trying to get Democrats elected; and Joanna Robinsonbreaks down two of the biggest takeaways from this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con: a jam-packed new Watchmen trailer, and a huge Marvel presentation that broke down what’s next for the industry’s biggest franchise.