Big Little Lies

[prisma]

Maybe the coffee shop guy is the one who gets murdered at the school fundraiser? Picked the wrong time to screw up someone's delivery order and paid the price?

[laurenj]

Mar 20, 2017 11:18:41 GMT -4 Ginger said:

For as much time as Celeste spends with Maddie, you don't see her opening up about anything with her. She's very reserved and the only thing she reveals about her family life is vague bragging about how great her sex life with Perry is.

Yeah, I don't actually find it that unusual that Maddie wouldn't know this about Celeste. Celeste is very reserved and Maddie never stops talking and is all drama all the time. I'm more in the Celeste vein myself (minus the abuse) and with Maddie-like friends, I find myself (quite easily) turning the conversation back to them when there is a topic I don't feel like discussing.

And Celeste can't even bring herself to open up completely to a therapist who doesn't know Perry in a social/personal setting, I can't imagine she would be comfortable letting friends in. Especially a friend like Maddie, who would probably tell someone immediately and try to intervene (which is not a bad thing, but clearly not something Celeste is ready to do).

[kostgard]

I just wonder if coffee shop guy is the guy who kinda knows everything. I mean, he obviously keeps an eye on those ladies when they come in. When they come in they often talk about some pretty personal stuff. I wonder if one of them is the murderer or the murder victim and coffee shop guy will be the one who knows the answers (if the cops ever decide to talk to him).

It feels like this show is setting up all sorts of possibilities/red herrings for the final crime:

We've of course got violent Perry, and the therapist made it clear that she believes him capable of killing Celeste. Jane, toting her gun around, makes it clear she might kill her rapist (who may or may not be Perry. Judging by the pic of Saxon, I think the only husband we can exclude is Ed, because he looks nothing like the guy and Saxon looked enough like the rapist that Jane thought it was a possibility. He looked a bit like Perry. I suppose he looked a bit like Nathan as well, but I think Jane has seen Nathan and didn't flip when she saw him. I'm pretty sure she hasn't met Perry. I guess Renata's husband kinda looks like him too, but I think he's older than the rapist and again, Jane didn't flip out when she met him).

Then we have the feuds. We've got Maddy versus Renata. Now we've got Renata versus Jane. Then Maddy's affair is semi-exposed (at least enough to make everyone a smidge suspicious), so we can add Maddy, Ed, Joseph, and Joseph's wife pile of people with a bone to pick with each other. Then there's Ed versus Nathan, Nathan versus Maddy and Maddy versus Bonnie. All sorts of possibilities.

Then there is the situation I REALLY hope is a red herring - Ed and the sneaky way he glances at Abigail. I really hope it is only because he's trying to figure out what's going on with her, not because something inappropriate happened. Though, they seem to be trying to suggest that (the looks, Abigail moving out, Abigail going on birth control, when Maddy asked if Ed sent Abigail to check on her, Abgail was all, "Uh, no." Couldn't tell if she was just insulted that her mother thought she needed prompting to check on her, or if she has some pretty negative feelings towards Ed because he did something wrong). I'm really hoping Abigail is just acting distant and weird because she knows about the affair and has known about it, and that look between her and Ed was more of the "Well, you're right. She was mysteriously in his car and probably cheating on me with him" variety. I'm not an Ed super-fan or anything, I just don't want "stepdad bad-touching his stepdaughter" thrown in with a rapist and a wife beater (who may or may not be the same person) and I don't want Maddy to be any way "justified" in her affair. She did it because she was bored with her own life and married a man who doesn't really turn her crank (she did the opposite of Celeste - she chose stability over passion) and she should own those mistakes, not be excused for them because her husband was a perv anyway.

[prisma]

Stumbled on this article about this episode and thought it was worth sharing (emphasis mine).

The trailer for Big Little Lies showed Jane, Madeline, and Celeste all sprinting down a windy beach, hair whipping back in the breeze, arms and legs furiously pumping. It implied some competition between the women, as they determinedly edged past one another. Although there is certainly a hearty dose of spatting and brawling among the women of Monterey, the beach-running scene — which plays out in full on this episode — isn’t just more catfight theater, in which audiences can smugly revel in the tacky, unfeminist character assassinations women attempt on one another.

Instead, it’s clear that each of the three women is only able to push herself because the others are there to provide ballast. At its core, this is a show about female friendship in all its intricacy, including the inability some women have to share their lives’ worst aspects with even their most intimate friends. The scene, then, is a gloriously subverted image of the modern stay-at-home mother: It seems like she has all the time in the world, able to work out on a beach with her friends in the middle of the afternoon, untethered from the ding of a Slack conversation or the pileup of email. But the audience knows what they’re keeping from one another. We see that their firmly set mouths aren’t just a symptom of their elevated heart rates. We see how much they need to run because of everything that might happen when they stop.

[ladyboy]

I call the coffee shop guy Flannel Murderer, because he so clearly is the murderer. Motive, I'm still working on it. But we see him all the time. He has to do more than refresh the tea!

And was that her rapist she met with, or not? I thought yes but am not sure.

[Ginger]

Mar 20, 2017 22:12:42 GMT -4 ladyboy said:

I call the coffee shop guy Flannel Murderer, because he so clearly is the murderer. Motive, I'm still working on it. But we see him all the time. He has to do more than refresh the tea!

And was that her rapist she met with, or not? I thought yes but am not sure.

It's been hard for me to come up with a motive too since I don't know who was murdered, or when, or how.

I think the guy in San Luis Obispo is a nice, gay interior designer who just had the misfortune of having a distinctive name that's easy to find on Google. And I think when Jane leaned down to smell him she realized he wasn't her rapist and ran out of there.

[ladyboy]

I wasn't clear if it was a run out because she was totally freaked by being that close to her rapist, or because it wasn't him. Then I couldn't remember if we ever saw his face in the rape scenes, and thoroughly confused myself. Also I thought this was the last episode so kept looking for Conclusion. Now, I think it's coffee shop guy with the teapot in the theater. It will all come together at the premiere of Avenue Q. Somehow...

[prisma]

Interior designer Saxon B. has the same build and general coloring as Perry. Someone raised the question that creeper Ed might be the rapist, so when I went back and rewatched the episodes, I noticed that the rapist is definitely tall and slim like Perry or Saxon. I don't know if that's a red herring, because at this point it seems a little too obvious if Perry's the rapist and his kids are Amabella's tormentors, but I don't think it's the interior designer.

Who knows if this is true, but the Daily Mail says Reese and Nicole are on the outs with each other. They have such good chemistry together and give such great performances, I like to think they would be on good terms.

[kostgard]

Mar 21, 2017 11:35:47 GMT -4 prisma said:

Interior designer Saxon B. has the same build and general coloring as Perry. Someone raised the question that creeper Ed might be the rapist, so when I went back and rewatched the episodes, I noticed that the rapist is definitely tall and slim like Perry or Saxon. I don't know if that's a red herring, because at this point it seems a little too obvious if Perry's the rapist and his kids are Amabella's tormentors, but I don't think it's the interior designer.

Who knows if this is true, but the Daily Mail says Reese and Nicole are on the outs with each other. They have such good chemistry together and give such great performances, I like to think they would be on good terms.

I think that story is BS simply because of the bit where they said "If Reese knew she wasn't going to bother promoting the show she would have cast a nobody." Reese wasn't in charge of casting Nicole because she and Nicole are co-producers of this thing. If they bothered to watch the end credits, they'd see the "Pacific Standard" credit, which is Reese's production company, followed by "Blossom Films", which is Nicole's production company. They didn't get the basic facts right, and I think this is just a typical tabloid "Two women in Hollywood? They must secretly hate each other! Cat fight!" dumb story.

[scarlet]

Watched the latest episode last night. There's so many changes from the book that I swear if they change who the killer is I will revolt (I really won't). Having said that, one of the changes--Celeste's appointments with her therapist--are some of the strongest I've ever seen. Nicole is hitting it out of the park in those. I can see her getting an Emmy and maybe a GG for this role.