Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 9, 2020

If you think about it (and some of us who evidently have way too much time on our hands and/or minds have thought about it), a lot of traditional broadcast television series were structured so that a hoped for run of several years could be accomplished without reinventing the wheel every week (so to speak). What that often boiled down to, at least in terms of many dramas, was typically a show with at least one or two well defined characters who were often in some sort of career where a variety of people and plots could arrive and depart, but where the foundational premise stayed intact (comedies can be focused on families quite a bit of the time, where any job might be tangential, though of course there are numerous examples of workplace sitcoms as well). There are therefore countless shows built around (to cite three prevalent examples) doctors, lawyers and/or policemen where different cases (medical or legal) could fill an episode or two, only to be replaced with something ostensibly different. So-called “short form” series culled from literary sources have a somewhat narrower line to toe, and in the case of Big Little Lies, some may wonder why a second “season” for this show was ever deemed “necessary” to begin with. One probably need look no further than audience numbers and award nominations to figure that out, but the fact that the source novel by Liane Moriarty that gave birth to the first season had a story with a beginning, middle and end, and some might argue without too much objection from folks that the first season dealt with all of those “sections” well enough. Was there a coda in the book that went unaddressed in the first season? Yes. Were there a few other dangling plot threads that Moriarty’s book included that didn’t ultimately make it into the first season of Big Little Lies? Probably indubitably. Does that in and of itself mean that a second season was required? That may be a decidedly more debatable proposition.

Some cult video lovers may remember an Oscar winning short film called An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which actually ended up being broadcast as an episode of The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series. Small spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen this intriguing piece (based on a story by Ambrose Bierce), but a Confederate soldier is about to be hung as the tale begins, only to have “technical difficulties” result in a broken rope and the soldier supposedly being able to swim to freedom, albeit a freedom haunted by what seem to be ghosts. The “twist” is that the rope didn’t break and the entire story was simply a fever dream that took place in the nanosecond between the gallows floor dropping out and the soldier’s neck being broken. In a somewhat analogous if inversely proportional way, this second season of Big Little Lies seems to want to stuff fourteen episodes full of what, in the source novel at least, was a relatively paltry amount of information Liane Moriarty provided in the wake of the death of a major character in the first season, a death which was the obvious climax of the story.

Instead, this second season goes off on a veritable glut of tangential subplots and introduces an imperious character in the form of Mary Louise Wright (Meryl Streep), Celeste’s mother-in-law and a woman who has certain suspicions about what went down vis a vis her son Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) in the first season. In what might be seen as a "restructuring" (as per above) in order to support a longer form approach, this character is not in the source novel, though is apparently at least partly the creation of Moriarty, who reportedly wrote a "template novella" as a foundation for this second season. A number of other sidebars intrude that were not part of Moriarty's original formulation, including lots of marital infidelity and other squabbles, but this second season also seems to want to go for some pretty cheap comedy at times, something that can tend to undercut some admittedly sharp writing in more dramatic moments.

I was frankly kind of shocked in what I personally perceived as a pretty major falloff in quality in this seconds season of Big Little Lies. This season repeatedly and increasingly reminded me of efforts like Desperate Housewives, replete with some kind of unwelcome (in my estimation, anyway) sitcom-y elements that just chafed at what are some of the underlying story's more troubling aspects, including things like rape and domestic abuse. That said, fans of the first season will probably get at least a few passing pleasures out of seeing this remarkable cast reunited, along with the redoubtable Streep, who's both hilarious and frightening as the take no prisoners Mary Louise (her name tells you pretty much everything you need to know about her).

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Archive Collection (HBO seems to have off loaded at least some of its Blu-ray releases to Warner Archive) with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While cinematography duties passed from the first season's Yves Bélanger to Jim Frohna for this second year, according to this article, he continued to use Arri Alexa Minis, but chose different lenses to "soften" some of the imagery. There's therefore some of the same haziness that I mentioned in the Big Little Lies Blu-ray review, along with what I'd term some intentionally impressionistic imagery (see screenshot 5) at times, but on the whole this is another very well detailed and sharp looking presentation. As Frohna mentions in the above linked article, he wanted a somewhat desaturated look, and so things can look a bit tamped down in terms of the palette, but detail levels are routinely quite excellent throughout this season.

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that has some noticeable surround activity in some of its outdoor moments especially, but which, quite like the first season, tends to retreat into more center positioned activity for the many dialogue scenes. Dialogue, ambient environmental effects and score are all presented with fine fidelity and no issues whatsoever with regard to dropouts, distortion or other damage.

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Lies Revealed: A Conversation with the Cast of Big Little Lies (1080p; 36:56) is an enjoyably casual sitdown with the principal (female) cast of this season. Some may feel there are a few too many "illustrative clips" from the show, but the actual conversational bits are quite engaging.

Note: This sole special feature can be found on Disc Two of this two disc set.

Big Little Lies: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When this season resorted to little shtick laden moments like Renata (Laura Dern) "educating" a new teacher about how to treat her daughter and then trying to leave "gracefully" while stumbling through an oncoming student marching band that just materializes out of nowhere, I was frankly rolling my eyes a little at what I perceived to be a telling downturn in writing. As fans of Moriarty's source novel may know, the "culprit" from the first season ultimately is tasked with a couple of hundred hours of community service, something that this second season of Big Little Lies doesn't really get to — which may mean we're in for another set of long detours before the last few paragraphs of Moriarty's source novel can be presented. Technical merits are solid for those considering a purchase.