Big Little Lies

[Cassius Clay]

Wow. 9/10. Would watch again. Acting is great. Perfect pacing.

7 part series on HBO. Very dark feminist themes handled with appropriate gravitas. Someone said it had all the themes of 'True Detective'(abuse, muder, mystery, pretty visuals and landscapes) except that the ending didn't "gaslight the viewer by pretending it was about Cthulhu". Lulz.

[Raxivace]

People being so bad at watching TV that they honestly expected Cthulhu to show up in True Dectective will never not be hilarious to me.

I've seen some ads for Big Little Lies- I might get around to it at some point now.

[Cassius Clay]

Ha. Maybe I'm bad at watching tv, but I think her point wasn't that she was honestly expecting Cthulhu to show up...but that the show kept hinting at an otherworldly element even after it was clear that it had nothing to do with the conclusion. Like, it feels like the writers keep telling the viewer that it's about something else when it's clear it's not, after a certain point...just to add interest.

Big Little Lies is deceptive too, though...but in a good way. They make it seem like some stupid 'Desperate Housewives' type of show, but you slowly see it's much more than that as they peel off the layers. The ending feels more satisfying because they're not subtly hinting at a mystery - to manufacture intrigue - that it never quite delivers on (the way 'Lost' does)...it's mystery is interesting on it's own, and it delivers. They don't try to make it seem like more than it really is.

[Raxivace]

Ha. Maybe I'm bad at watching tv, but I think her point wasn't that she was honestly expecting Cthulhu to show up...but that the show kept hinting at an otherworldly element even after it was clear that it had nothing to do with the conclusion. Like, it feels like the writers keep telling the viewer that it's about something else when it's clear it's not, after a certain point...just to add interest.

I didn't get the impression that they were hinting at supernatural elements at all. Like Rust has weird hallucinations but from the beginning they tell you he's prone to having weird hallucinations. There are allusions to supernatural works like The King of Yellow or whatever it was called, but those are for literary and thematic reasons- namely drawing a parallel between the "unknowable" evils of Lovecraft and the evils at the Lynchian underbelly of society at large that people pretend aren't there.

Big Little Lies is deceptive too, though...but in a good way. They make it seem like some stupid 'Desperate Housewives' type of show, but you slowly see it's much more than that as they peel off the layers. The ending feels more satisfying because they're not subtly hinting at a mystery - to manufacture intrigue - that it never quite delivers on (the way 'Lost' does)...it's mystery is interesting on it's own, and it delivers. They don't try to make it seem like more than it really is.

I don't think there's anything wrong with something like Desperate Housewives (I haven't seen the show but I'm assuming its about romance or sex or whatever- there's nothing wrong with a story about those things), but you do make Big Little Lies sound intriguing none the less.

[Cassius Clay]

Fair enough.