Big Little Lies Recap: The Truth Hurts
Need to catch up? Check out our previous Big Little Lies recap here.
A whole lot of painful secrets came out this week on Big Little Lies… and it looks like several of the Monterey ladies’ lives will never be the same.
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Celeste smashes her SUV into a guardrail after taking an Ambien, and Madeline has to come pick her up — and lie to Mary Louise about what happened. (Madeline, quit making up lies when the truth would be just fine!) Celeste is also still defending Perry to her therapist, but when she’s asked to remember a time when Perry abused her and picture Madeline in her place, Celeste lets out a guttural “Noooo!” at the very thought of it. Then she gets primal again when breaking up a fight between her boys, shoving one to the ground and yelling, “No! You will not be like him!” Yep, Mary Louise heard that.
She also heard that Perry has another son in the boys’ class… meaning Ziggy. (The rumor originated with Madeline’s chatty daughter Chloe, it turns out.) Celeste has to tell her boys they have a brother, and Jane is forced to tell Ziggy that she does know something about his father after all. (She even tells him it was an assault, which Celeste wasn’t ready to reveal yet.) Now that the uncomfortable truth is out in the open, though, Celeste and Jane get their boys together for a family playdate, and it all seems sweet and friendly — for now, anyway.
Renata, riding high after scoring a coveted magazine cover, comes crashing back down when her husband Gordon is arrested by the feds for securities fraud. Renata is dumbfounded by the charges, and she’s even more stunned when Gordon, behind a thick glass wall and clad in an orange jumpsuit, confesses that he used inside information to sell off some stock a little too early — and she’ll be held financially liable, too: “We stand to be broke by the end of the year, and it might be sooner.” Renata is not having that at all, though. She snarls at him, “I will not not be rich!”
Gordon does eventually get out on bond, and when Renata badgers him about why he resorted to white-collar crime, he coolly replies, “You wanted a Gulfstream.” For that, she throws him out of the Tesla and drives away holding a middle finger out of the sunroof — but she caves and comes back for him. She ends up cuddling in bed with her beloved Amabella, looking completely lost… and it’s actually kind of touching? Are we sympathizing with Renata Klein?
But maybe the most hurtful secret of all comes out when Madeline is idly chatting with Abigail in the kitchen, and Abigail mentions her affair with Joe the theater director… just as Ed walks in. Oops. Madeline tries to act like he misheard, but the damage is already done. Ed storms off, and when he returns, Madeline tearfully admits to the affair, promising that “this has nothing to do with you” (like that makes it better?) and suggesting they try therapy. But Ed says he can’t trust her anymore and declares, “We’re done,” walking out on a sobbing Madeline. Guess some little lies are bigger than others, huh?
Big Little Notes:
* Bonnie got a visit from her mother when an out-of-ideas Nathan reaches out to her for help. Mom is no fan of Nathan — she calls him “dumb as a rock,” emotionally — but she knows something’s very wrong with her daughter, and she demanded answers at a tense dinner, sipping wine and tracing Bonnie’s foul mood back to the night Perry died. Her tough-love approach didn’t work, though: Bonnie eventually told her to leave, and even joined forces with Nathan against her.
* Mary Louise, meanwhile, continued to be a real pill. She still hates Madeline — when Celeste said her friend is “a wonderful person,” Mary Louise shot back, “Well, you’re mistaken” — and won’t hear a negative word about her darling Perry. She refused to believe that Perry raped Jane, or that he ever laid a hand on Celeste, wondering why Celeste never pressed charges against him… and she’s keeping close track of all the details about the night Perry died that Celeste has been conveniently leaving out, too.
* Renata noticed that Detective Quinlan was lurking nearby when Gordon was arrested, and told Madeline they confiscated her computer and iPad as part of the investigation. Uh-oh.
* An interesting detail about Bonnie and her mother came up when Bonnie handed her back a few voodoo talismans — a bone, a feather, a crystal — that Mom had placed by her bed and said, “We’re not having that conversation again.” What conversation is that, exactly? There’s still a lot we don’t know about Bonnie’s past, we’re thinking.
* A sweet flashback to Celeste and Perry’s early courtship turned creepy when he learned that she’s an only child, her mom’s dead and she doesn’t talk to her dad. “I’m gonna have you all to myself,” he purred. That was kind of a red flag, don’t ya think, Celeste?
* The song that played at the end? It’s the Elvis standard “The Wonder of You” — the same one Ed sang to Madeline on Trivia Night.
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