I watched the Big Little Lies season (series?) finale last night. It ... was not good. Perhaps my impression was influenced by a splashy article that appeared a few days ago suggesting most (all?) of the second season had been re-edited after principal photography wrapped because the executive producers did not like what they saw, but it did explain the story's choppiness. The story lines felt (mostly) half-baked and hurried, some scenes inexplicably short and lacking context with the rest of the episodes and overall, a lack of narrative continuity. There was enough plot for ten episodes but it all got squeezed into seven.
The finale tied up the loose ends, but throwing out a montage and a dramatic courtroom showdown (which was ludicrous and never would have happened in real life) did not make up for the season's obvious shortcomings. To be sure, there is something to be said for the way lies erode trust and increase paranoia, how they isolate you from the people you love and draw you closer to those you conspire with, but that core and important idea felt lost among the threads that got dangled but wrapped a bit too conveniently.
I do not know if there will be a season three and I am not sure we need one. TV, for all its attempts to mirror life, hates the one thing that animates much of our lived experience - ambiguity and uncertainty, the lack of a neat Hollywood ending.
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