‘Big Little Lies’ Season 2 Episode 2 Review: “Tell-Tale Hearts”

The jury’s still out on if we needed to add an additional wing to the perfectly bold, bitchy, beguiling Big Little Lies legacy that the series built in its debut season. But both the audience and the series seem to be on the same page that Season 2 isn’t about needing more Big Little Lies; this is all about wanting more. More Laura Dern screaming in a Gucci fanny pack; more Nicole Kidman leaving it all on the field (or the therapist’s couch as it were); more traumatic beach sprinting; more laughing and crying and screaming internally within any given scene…

Because boy, can an episode of Big Little Lies make me feel things.

Actually, let me try that again—girl, can it make me feel things. (Yes, “Tell-Tale Hearts” may be the Father’s Day episode, but Monterey’s fathers will get no breaks in this hour, because you better believe the mothers never do.) So even if it means eventually getting busted by the FBI for shorting stocks, or sleeping with a community theater director because we just wanted a little too much for our own good, I think wanting Season 2 into existence will have been worth the risk.

Mostly because with that risk comes witnessing what wild performance choices Meryl Streep is going to make now that she’s been let loose on the world of episodic television. Somehow, this week’s rubbing of a cross necklace across her chin while taking Madeline to task is just as much of an already-iconic Mary Louise moment as last week’s banshee scream. And even better—now there’s a new grandmother in town (played with devastating maternal candidness by Crystal Fox) who, should she ever be put in a room with Mary Louise, might level the town of Monterey altogether.

Of course performances aren’t the only explosive materials popping off in “Tell-Tale Hearts.” We’re talking big little secrets, people. “I see lots of water, and somebody’s drowning,” Bonnie’s mother tells her ominously near the end of the episode. And from everything we’ve seen thus far—it really could be anyone.

Celeste certainly isn’t doing well, as she starts the episode in the middle of an Ambien blackout, only realizing she’s driving her car once she smashed it into a guardrail. Madeline picks her up and takes her back home where Mary Louise has been “worried sick.” Naturally, Madeline covers for Celeste because Madeline’s whole adult life is kind of like an extension of a rebellious high school slumber party, telling Mary Louise that she needed Celeste for an emergency. When Mary Louise asks what kind of emergency, Madeline shrugs back: “The kind short people have?”

“You don’t like me, do you Madeline?” Mary Louise asks, transitioning into one of her now patented childhood tales about what her father told her when she was scared to start a new school as a girl: “Mary Louise, you just seek out the bully, and you make friends with her.” Madeline rightly asks if she’s supposed to be the bully in this scenario. If she is, Mary Louise isn’t following her father’s advice very well.

“On your awesome days, I suspect you are a godsend,” Mary Louise says with an evaluating eye trained on Madeline, while Meryl effortlessly invents a new genre of necklace-acting…

“But on your bad days…decidedly less so.”

Madeline finally leaves in a huff, but Celeste once again hasn’t been present for this showdown between her best friend and her mother-in-law. She has a lot on her plate, after all. The next we see her, she’s crying at Dr. Reisman’s office, saying, “I still miss him, I don’t think it’s ever going to stop.” Celeste’s constantly conflicting feelings over the loss of Perry are palpable, and it’s a wonder she can get anything done. Imploring her to at least attempt to move forward, Dr. Reisman asks Celeste to close her eyes and think back to a specific time Perry was abusing her.

“Now, I want you to put a close friend in your place.” Celeste tells Dr. Reisman that she can’t, but Dr. Reisman insists: “Let’s make it Madeline.” And so Celeste does: she visualizes Perry throwing Madeline to the ground, repeatedly punching Madeline in the stomach, and she comes out of the exercise gasping out a guttural, “NOOOO,” and slamming her hands against the table: “NO, NOOOO!”

Because even as painful as it is to watch Perry abuse Celeste in each new episode, seeing it over and over again can visually desensitize you a little bit—just as it psychologically desensitized Celeste being on the receiving end of it. But watching a friend go through it, Celeste can have more sympathy than she ever allows herself. “Did Madeline deserve that?” Dr. Resiman asks. “Should Madeline stay in that relationship?” No.

Elsewhere in Monterey, Renata is strutting out of a coffee shop, telling Gordon, “Guess who’s going to be on the cover next month of the number one women’s magazine in the U.S. of fucking A?” Then she does a little dance in her fully Gucci athleisure get-up because of course, the answer is: Renata Klein. But then Gordon has to go and ruin her fun by getting swarmed by FBI agents putting him under arrest for securities fraud. Naturally, Renata screams that’s her husband Gordon Klein, and so there’s no way he can be arrested…

But in fact, he can. Because Gordon has been up to some stuff. When she goes to see him later, in between bulletproof prison glass, Gordon tells Renata that he may have tried to short some stocks he had insider information on, and perhaps, compromised their entire combined estate in the process. But he assures her that Amabella’s trust will be fine. And while I’m sure Renata is concerned for her daughter’s future, there’s one thing she’s equally focused on: “Gordon, I’m not gonna not be rich,” she says simply in response to this info dump. And when Gordon tries to float this as a learning chapter of their lives, Laura Dern offers up her first meme-of the week:

So, it’s a pretty high-stress time in Monterey, what with the securities fraud charges, and Bonnie’s mom showing up out of nowhere.

Well, not out of nowhere; Nathan called her, because he continues to not know how to handle his wife’s change in spirits whatsoever. And Bonnie’s mother Elizabeth wastes little time suggesting that lack of understanding might just be a calculated maneuver on Bonnie’s part. “Nathan is a complete dolt,” Elizabeth says to her daughter on a hike (immediately endearing herself to me). “When it comes to emotional and social intelligence, oh Bonnie, he’s as dumb as a rock—but I often wonder if that’s why you married him.”

Now that’s interesting. Elizabeth tells her daughter that she’s out in this town where people don’t understand her, they don’t look like her—”I haven’t seen once other black person since I’ve been out here”—but maybe that’s exactly why she chose to be there; chose to marry Nathan. “Because we all know how fond you are of your walls.”

Well, we don’t know that. But we’re learning a lot about Bonnie, and we’re learning it fast, thanks in great part to the immediate familiarity in this crackling and complicated mother/daughter relationship playing out between Crystal Fox and Zoë Kravitz. We may not know what every veiled statement means precisely, but we’re coming to understand this big lie that’s bothering Bonnie so is likely not the first thing she’s tried to bury deep down. Elizabeth, however, doesn’t seem much for keeping things under the surface. At a dinner that also includes Nathan and Bonnie’s very straight-laced seeming father, Elizabeth tells Nathan that his problem is he’s oblivious.

He may not be able to narrow down when Bonnie’s mood took a turn, but her mother—and literally anyone else but Nathan—sure can: “Your wife watched a man fall down the steps, and blood spatter all over the places, and die.” Elizabeth’s husband tries to get her tone it down, and there’s mention of a prior negative relationship to alcohol, given that Elizabeth is partaking in a glass of wine now. But she shoots back, “Things are not okay, your daughter is not okay!” and to Bonnie: “And this mopey-dope shit, it’s not working for our husband, I doubt very much it’s working for your child, and from what I see it’s not working for you.”

Bonnie gets up and leaves the table because as it so often is with parents, they’re most insufferable when they’re right. Elizabeth’s husband asks why they can’t just have dinner like a normal family, and she tells him that this is normal: “Get in each other’s business, that’s what families do.”

At school, the new second grade teacher tells the class that includes Ziggy and Chloe and the third-generation gang that they never need to swallow their feelings, they can always come talk to him about anything that’s bothering them. “What about a dead father?” little Josh asks with his huge eyes, and the next thing we know, Celeste is there picking the boys up early. “Did I do something wrong?” Josh asks his mom from the back of the car, and Celeste tells him no, but she wishes he’d tell her his feelings, instead of doing it at school.

But Celeste’s boys have picked up that she doesn’t like to talk about their dad, and tries to pretend everything is okay. Startled, Celeste tells Max and Josh that she shouldn’t do that: “We’re a family, and family is meant to be open and honest with each other.”

“I don’t think we’re that kind of family,” Max says sadly from the backseat, and oof—that’s a tough one. Celeste arrives home defeated, with Mary Louise right there waiting with another antidote, this one about Perry’s childhood. She tells Celeste that when they “lost Raymond” (who we come to understand in flashback was Perry’s brother), that she only got through it because of Perry. And Celeste will get through this because of her boys. She also tells Celeste that she’s planning to rent an apartment nearby so she won’t be so underfoot, and Celeste brings up that morning’s encounter with Madeline.

She asks Mary Louise to at least try with Madeline. “Well, I have tried, but she’s not a very likable person.” Wow, wow, wow. Celeste says that Madeline once saved Max from drowning in an attempt to endear her friend to her mother-in-law, but Mary Louise takes a beat, and says, “Huh, where were you?”

And that finally irks Celeste. She tells Mary Louise that she feels like she’s always looking at her with such suspicion. But about that time, they overhear the boys fighting outside. When Celeste gets between them, Max screams, “Fuck off,” and begins hitting his mother. Celeste throws him off of her, and screams again in that guttural scream of hers, “NO! YOU WILL NOT BE LIKE HIM!”

Celeste immediately gets down on the ground and apologizes to Max, pulling both of the crying boys to her, and it’s devastating to see the ways that Perry’s violent legacy continues to haunt this family—all the more present as Mary Louise looks on with her ever-assessing stare.

And before we get to the even more devastating reveals of the episode, let’s just quickly catch up with Renata and Gordon Klein, who are sharing a tense car ride after Gordon has been released on bail. Renata shuts off “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” on the radio, and Gordon says he thought she liked that song. “I used to like to sit on your face too, you think that’ll happen again?” Renata fires back. She asks Gordon why—why he did it. “We’re creatures of want,” Gordon responds smugly. “Me, you—god, especially you.”

Oh, Renata does like that. She brings her car to a complete stop in the middle of the highway and demands to know if Gordon is really trying to blame her for this. “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING CAR,” she screams at him over and over again until he finally does, and she squeals away, poking one middle finger through the sunroof, and one through the driver’s side window, offering her second #relatable moment of the of the episode:

The answer, Renata, is absolutely not. The good life comes at women fast in Monterey, and it simply does not stop coming. Celeste stands at her kitchen counter flashing back to her first date with Perry where she told him she was an only child of a mother who passed away, and a father who she’s not close with. “Now I don’t want to be presumptuous,” he coos: “But if this works out, I would have you all to myself.” Oh, the pain of watching a smile spread across Celeste’s face at what she saw at the time as a romantic notion…

But we know the kind of man Perry was and what getting a woman to himself meant to both Celeste and Jane.

We hear Mary Louise’s voice as she comes in from putting the boys to bed, though the camera stays trained on Celeste’s dawning look of horror as her mother-in-law speaks to her back: “The boys are all tucked in. They tell me they have a brother. Evidently Perry had a son with another woman, and the boy is in their class. It seems I have another grandchild.” And finally the camera swings over to Mary Louise, now lurking like the dangerous, oppressive sort of presence that her son once was: “Might you have the decency to tell me…his name?”

It turns out that Chloe inherited her mother’s skill for wielding information, and having overheard Madeline on the phone talking about Perry, told Josh and Max that they had a brother in the second grade. But she didn’t tell them who…

The full details she saved for Ziggy alone. Which means that Jane has to have a very difficult conversation with her son, and wow—what a moment between Shailene Woodley and little Iain Armitage. Jane asks Ziggy if Chloe said anything to him about his father, and he responds matter of factly that she told him in August that his father was Max and Josh’s dad. Overwhelmed, Jane asks why he didn’t say anything. “I figured you’d just lie,” he says sadly. Trying to hide her tears, Jane tells Ziggy that all these years he’s been asking about his father, she didn’t know. And then she asks if Chloe told him anything else…

“She said something about Mr. Wright giving you salt…and that’s how I happened. He salted you.”

The innocence on Ziggy’s face, in contrast with the pain on Jane’s as her son tells her what he both knows and doesn’t know, is completely heartbreaking. How does a mother handle something like this? As for Jane, she simply gets in bed beside her son and tells him that the word Chloe overheard was
“assault”—and then she tells him the truth.

Or some variant of the truth. We don’t know exactly what Jane says to Ziggy, but later she tells Celeste that she told Ziggy “the circumstances.” They had previously agreed she wouldn’t, but Jane says that his life has been so full of lies, she had to be honest with him this time. Ziggy knows he can’t say anything to Max and Josh, and Celeste says she’ll tell them “later,” but there’s still one person who is age-appropriate to handle the truth of Perry Wright’s violent life, though not exactly emotionally equipped.

As Mary Louise has quickly shifted into full-villain territory, it’s easy to be annoyed with her for being a bespectacled thorn in the side of our many glamorous protagonists. But it’s also important to remember that she’s a mother who’s lost her son—her second son, apparently—and maintain some empathy, even if that son was a monster. However, there’s no amount of empathy that could have absorbed the shock of hearing Mary Louise say outright, “I don’t believe you,” when Celeste tells her that Perry used to beat her up.

Mary Louise asks Celeste if that’s so, why wouldn’t she go to the police, why wouldn’t is she so willing to “assassinate his character, his memory, who he was” by believing Jane.

And it’s clear then that Mary Louise came to Monterey to protect one person, and anyone who stands in opposition to her son, is no longer under her protection. The visage of concerned mother-in-law suddenly falls away, and Mary Louise speaks in a slow, calculating manner we’ve only heard her use with Madeline. But here it’s much, much more dangerous as she tells Celeste that she plans to go to the police because, “You left some things out, didn’t you?” That Perry fathered another child, that she rented an apartment and was planning to leave Perry the night he died, “and that you—you learned of his infidelity just 10 seconds before he went falling down a flight of stairs to his death…”

So that latent danger that seemed to be lurking around in Mary Louise’s unpredictable presence? Yeah, it’s safe to say that’s surfaced.

As has one of Season 1’s biggest little lies. Given Bonnie’s current state, Madeline asks for Abigail to come live with her again, and her daughter doesn’t put up a fight, but Abigail is still Madeline’s daughter, so they find a way to argue about her college attendance over some light vegetable chopping. Abigail spits back in retaliation to Madeline’s speech on “fundamental building blocks” that Madeline certainly seemed willing to throw away her family building block when she was “fucking the theater director last year.”

“What’s going on?” Ed asks from the doorway. And there’s no going back. Madeline tries to cover it up, but Ed has seemed suspicious as long ago as the Season 1 finale, and now that he’s heard the truth—there’s no un-hearing it. Ed leaves the house “to get a hearing test” (jokes! Ed!), and when he comes back, he’s had enough. He isn’t vindictive, he isn’t shocked, he is simply heartbroken, and Adam Scott nails the idea that this man’s lie has been utterly devastated by this one overheard comment. Madeline keeps trying to tell him that the affair wasn’t about him, it was about her, or maybe the two of them together, and Ed finally snaps. “When you says ‘us,’ what does that even mean? Because it can’t mean honesty, it can’t mean truth, or trust.” Madeline asks Ed what he’s thinking, and he tells her: “I think we’re done.”

A little less matter-of-fact is Bonnie’s final conversation with her mom before she asks her to kindly leave. Bonnie brings out a crystal and a bone that Elizabeth snuck into her bedroom the night before and says he doesn’t want that in her family’s life. “I’ve been having visions lately, and I know you’ve had some too,” Elizabeth says to Bonnie, cementing something that’s been suggested throughout the episode. There’s something more than just yoga to this family’s mysterious aura, and there’s something more to Bonnie altogether. She tells her mother that she doesn’t need her protection from evil spirits or visions of drowning, and Elizabeth asks what it is she needs protection from then…

As those final two words—”this time“—linger in the air, the episode ends with a montage of all the women in various states of turmoil. Though there’s just a bit of hope when Max and Josh arrive at Ziggy’s house with plates of snacks in their little hands, ready for a play date with the friend they’ve recently been informed is now family. And let’s just savor that sweet moment before being devastated once more by the sound of Ed’s Elvis performance from the Season 1 finale crooning out over the credits: When no-one else can understand me / When everything I do is wrong / You give me hope and consolation / You give me strength to carry on … That’s the wonder/ The wonder of you.

Jodi Walker writes about TV for Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly, and in her pop culture newsletter These Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Stream Big Little Lies Season 2 Episode 2 ("Tell-Tale Hearts") on HBO Go

Stream Big Little Lies Season 2 Episode 2 ("Tell-Tale Hearts") on HBO Now