Fall TV Round-up | chess, hauntings, paris, and more!

If I’m being perfectly honest, the past few months haven’t been very book-filled. What with virtual college, slogging through a never-ending workload, a deluge of final exams and projects, and – ahem – the global pandemic, I’ve lately been taking refuge in some delightful TV binges.

Since I don’t have much in the way of books to review, I thought I would instead take a closer look at some of my latest Netflix (and Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc) indulgences.

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The Queen’s Gambit

I think this is one of the best dramas I’ve ever watched. I watched the show over two breathless evenings and was completely captivated by the plot, the acting, the characters, everything just came together flawlessly.

This show follows a young chess prodigy, Beth Harmon, as she navigates the thorny world of international chess competitions along with addiction, loss, and more. The writing and directing are simply on another level, while the costumes/design are clever and cohesive. It’s visually stunning with well-chosen close-ups, but the best part is definitely the characters and the writing. Anya Taylor-Joy is a marvel, and the supporting cast is fantastic. From her adoptive mother, to Jolene, to Benny Watts, every character was perfectly fleshed out. And the chess sequences were gripping and suspenseful.

Maybe the best part is that while show itself is quite serious, it ends on an uplifting note — it left me optimistic, satisfied, and excited for the future.

The Haunting of Bly Manor

I’m quite faint-of-heart when it comes to horror. The first horror book that I ever read was Carrie. I spent half the night tearing through the book, and the other half cowering under my blankets with the lights on. So this Halloween I decided to prove to myself that I could handle horror by binging this show. Turns out it wasn’t actually that scary; instead it was ABSOLUTELY TRAGIC.

Objectively speaking it was a great, ambitious show with an unnervingly twisty storyline, wonderfully developed characters, and a very sweet love story. Episode 5 in particular is fantastic. It explores themes of guilt and grief, and the dark mood is anchored by a strong heart and wonderful acting. I just wasn’t prepared for the ending because I’m such a clown I forgot that no romance can end well in a gothic horror show. I do recommend Bly Manor, but maybe keep a box of tissues handy for the finale.

Emily in Paris

Let’s be honest — this show probably wouldn’t have gotten a quarter of the attention it received if we hadn’t all been trapped in our living rooms for the past eight months. Like everyone else I binged it basically the day it came out. It’s light-hearted, funny, and mindless with enough beautiful shots of Paris to be everyone’s fall escapist travel fantasy.

The Morning Show

I haven’t yet watched a show produced by Reese Witherspoon that I haven’t liked. The Morning Show was simultaneously intensely watchable and very heavy-handed. It tackles an important topic, but isn’t nearly as thought-provoking as I hoped it would be, and at times the message is obscured by the more WTF elements of the plot. Overall though, its a good binge and a nice showcase for Jennifer Aniston’s acting.

The Crown (Season 4)

The Crown was probably one of the most anticipated releases of the year. And this season was the one that everyone, from avid fans to casual viewers, was waiting for. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying.

A lot of expectations rode on this season. This is when we finally enter the “modern” era — the time that many if not most viewers lived through and remember vividly. This is when we finally get the payoff that Season 3 carefully built up to. This is when we finally get Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana!

This was, in my opinion, the best season of The Crown so far, and I’m not just saying that because it had the juiciest drama. This season is when the show finally draws back the veneer of intrigue and takes a hard look at the darker sides of the royal family, depicting them with a pointed clarity that was missing from previous seasons. The show casts aside the nostalgia from previous seasons, and instead offers a front row seat to witness how an imperialistic relic of an institution slowly crumbles.

Gillian Anderson and Emma Corrin both turn in fantastic performances. Anderson is perfect as the polarizing, forceful Thatcher, adding wonderful shades to her relationship with the Queen. Meanwhile Corrin is breathtakingly fragile as the young Diana, portraying her with such empathy, emotion, and implicit tragedy that as the viewer you just must root for her.

Derry Girls

I’m closing with this one because I absolutely ADORE this show. It’s a sitcom about five crackpot Irish teens amidst the backdrop of the violence and turmoil of ’90s Ireland. It’s short — each season is about the length of a long movie — but possibly the funniest show I’ve ever seen. It has everything — raunchy humor, lightning quick dialogue, ridiculous situational humor, warm sincerity, and dumb yet lovable characters. As a bonus, you’ll learn some fun Northern Irish slang.

Quarantine Baking | SO MANY CAKES

I’m taking a break from book-blogging to write about my other obsession: Baking! I’ve always loved baking, but in the past few months in particular, what with being stuck at home and the increased stress of daily life, I’ve been on a baking spree. Something about the world ending just gave me the urge to bake as many things in as short a time as possible. Baking equals stress-relief, a way to procrastinate on virtual classes, and delicious treats all in one! Quarantine has been a tale of cakes, biscuits, pastries and more — so many that I had to split them into two blog posts to avoid this getting too long!

Birthday cake #1
It all began with my brother’s birthday. Since I was unexpectedly home a week before spring break — having been evicted from my college due to the pandemic — my parents naturally assumed that they no longer bore responsibility for producing a birthday cake. I happily took charge because it gave me something to do besides sit around and mope about the dumpster fire that is 2020. This two-layer, heavily frosted/decorated, double-chocolatey goodness was the result.

I used this recipe for the sponge, and a simple chocolate buttercream for the frosting!

Birthday cake #2
Just a few days later it was my mom’s birthday! So I jumped back into my apron and whipped up a lemon-berry cake. I mostly used this recipe for the sponge but added a few tablespoons of lemon juice for some more flavor (you can also use a few teaspoons of lemon extract). For the frosting, I used vanilla buttercream, but once again with lemon juice added. Then I topped it off with some berries and voila!

Coconut tea cake

I actually don’t have a picture or a recipe for this one; it was a really old recipe that I got from my Grandma’s old baking book (which has pretty much fallen apart at this point oops). It was pretty much a two-layer sponge cake but with SO MUCH COCONUT added — coconut milk, coconut flakes, you name it. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first but it turned out delicious, perfect to eat with a hot cup of tea.

Lemon poppyseed muffins

It’s something of a tradition that I bake these whenever I’m home on break, and then eat as many as possible before my brother finds them. These are an absolute delight! This recipe produces about twelve light, fluffy, delicious muffins with a taste that floats somewhere between a lemon cake and a sour cream cake. If you’re interested in trying these out, check out the Tasty-style video I made of how to bake them!

Victoria Sandwich Cake 

In my humble opinion, The Great British Bake-off is one of the most delightful shows to ever grace our screens. The Victoria Sandwich cake is both a staple of the show and Mary Berry’s specialty. After several quarantined weeks worth of binging,  I realized I just had to try out this cake using Mary Berry’s own recipe! I think my favorite part was the homemade jam.

Vegan Tres Leches cake with dulce de leche

What possessed me to attempt a vegan version of one of the most non-vegan baked goods in existence? Temporary madness brought on by the prospect of many, many virtual midterms? But in the end, this light, airy cake, made of a combination of almond, coconut, and cashew milk, tasted delicious!

Cinnamon rolls

This recipe plus a vanilla glaze produced 14 sweet, fluffy, absolutely GORGEOUS cinnamon rolls filled with a cinnamon brown sugar filling — perfect for an indulgent morning.

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So those are some of my favorite treats that I’ve baked over the past few months. Look out for part 2 and feel free to drop any recipe recommendations in the comments!

Review: Hulu’s ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ (Episodes 1-2)

When I first finished Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (check out my review of the book here), there was nothing that I wanted more than for Reese Witherspoon’s production company to scoop it up and make a dramatic, Big Little Lies style miniseries out of it.

As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

Since the world is collapsing around us, there’s something comforting about getting to kick back and immerse myself in a juicy drama starring two powerhouses, Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, going head-to-head. Set against a backdrop of racial and class divides, Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere promises to be the enticing, complex mystery that we all need to escape into right now.

Review of Episodes 1-2

Little Fires Everywhere is set in Shaker Heights — a “planned community” whose welcome packet includes warnings about the regulated height of grass (six inches) and which colors are allowed on which types of houses. Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) fits in perfectly, with her love of rules, and planning out every detail of her household, from her four children’s lives to strictly scheduled sex (no, I’m not kidding, and yes it’s weird as hell). She’s a classic upper-middle-class suburban mom who works part-time as a journalist but devotes most of her energy to running the household.

Enter Mia Warren, a bohemian artist and single mom who moves in nearby with her daughter, Pearl. Mia is THE foil for Elena. She is constantly in motion, uprooting Pearl and moving every few months, overall preferring to just “wing it”.

Elena tries to be helpful, renting to Mia despite lack of references and employing her as a “household manager” (read: maid) but does so with a liberal dose of condescension that Mia feels sharply. She immediately takes Pearl — who quickly bonds with her children — under her wing. Mia, meanwhile, constantly maintains a careful distance, reminding her daughter that “we’re not like them”. Even the few unguarded moments between Mia and Elena inevitably ignite into a simmering tension.

So far, these first 2 episodes get Elena and Mia’s relationship right. And that’s crucial because it’s the core of the story. From the beginning, every scene with Elena and Mia crackles with tension. It’s the little details that top it off — Witherspoon pasting a bright smile over an awful remark, Washington gritting her teeth, her face muscles twitching.

I’m especially impressed with Reese Witherspoon because on paper, Elena is kind of a psycho. But Witherspoon humanizes her to some extent, making her relationship with Mia seem far muddier and more complex than it might appear at first glance. Through her performance, we see that Elena isn’t immune to regrets. She sees Mia recoiling, mourns that her relationship with her daughter is beyond broken, but lacks the self-introspection or empathy to understand how to fix it.

One important change is that Mia and Pearl are black in the show (this was not implied in the book). This adds a fascinating new dimension to the show, including an uncomfortable white-savior dynamic between Elena and Pearl. It definitely amplifies the show’s complicated racial and class dynamics. The show does not hold back at all in this respect. From interactions with cops, to Pearl’s guidance counselor preventing her from taking advanced classes, to simple interactions Mia has with the community, we are constantly reminded of the racial divide.

Honestly, the right way to sum up these two episodes is probably not holding back. The show lacks the subtlety of the book, and that’s okay because it’s a different medium. It picks up the main themes of the book and hammers the viewers with them. Izzie is utterly tragic in these two episodes — maligned, bullied, misunderstood. Her relationship with her mom is simply awful. They don’t understand each other, cannot connect with each other, and every interaction erupts into conflict. The mirroring of Elena and Izzie’s interactions with Mia and Pearl’s loving relationship is especially effective.

The show started a lot of different plot threads in just two episodes. Mia and Elena’s tension, Elena’s mothering of Pearl, the introduction of Bebe (Mia’s immigrant coworker who gave up her infant), Izzie bonding with Mia, Pearl and Moody’s friendship. All are very…complicated.

Hopefully it stays that way. Complicated is the reason that the book was so good in the first place.

2018 Recap: 6-Word Book Reviews

We are officially half-way through 2018! And that means that it’s now time for me to look back and recap all of the books that I’ve read over the past six months.

I’m trying something new here: Lightning reviews! For every book that I’ve read in 2018 (so far), I’ve written a 7-word summary and 6-word review. For books that I have already reviewed on this blog, I’ve added links to the full-length critiques.

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These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Summary: 1890s: Rich girl investigates her Dad’s murder.
Review: Gripping mystery; surprisingly mature for YA novel.

Artemis by Andy Weir

Summary: Smuggler attempts massive crime in moon city.
Review: Cool science and tech, weaker plot
(Check out my full review here)

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Summary: Kidnapped man wakes up in alternate reality.
Review: Mind-bending and twisty; crosses many genres.
(Check out my full review here)

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen

Summary: Jewish girl infiltrates school for Nazis’ daughters.
Review: High-pressure spy thriller; fully fleshed-out characters.
(Check out my full review here)

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Summary: Stark family in trouble; winter is coming.
Review #1: Lots of moral ambiguity, death, sex.
Review #2: Everyone goes crazy at some point.
Review #3: Expected to love it and didn’t.
Review #4: Ned Stark is such an idiot.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Summary: Type-A, rules-loving mom clashes with artsy non-conformist.
Review: Thought-provoking family drama; a little preachy.
(Check out my full review here)

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Summary: Wife goes missing; husband is prime suspect.
Review: Intense, freaky thriller with massive twists
(Check out my full review here)

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Summary: Suburban moms deal with lies, trauma, abuse.
Review: Funny read; darker than it seems.

The Breach by Patrick Lee

Summary: Ex-convict investigates a mysterious rip in reality.
Review: Crazy plot, weird ending, very gory.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Summary: Elizabeth Bennett meets Charles Darcy; sparks fly.
Review #1: Hilarious story and characters, beautiful writing.
Review #2: Didn’t expect to love it so much.
Review #3: It is a truth universally acknowledged…
Review #4: I’m converted to the Austen cult.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Summary: 1970s African-American woman thrown back to Antebellum era.
Review: Perfectly blends sci-fi and historical fiction.
(Check out my full review here)

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Summary: Suburban mom loses ten years of memories.
Review: Starts slow; both light-hearted and thought-provoking.
(Check out my full review here)

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Summary: Broken family moves out to Alaskan wilderness.
Review: Heart-breaking, gorgeous writing; tackles serious themes.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Summary: Post-WWII American socialite meets former WWI spy.
Review: Complex, badass characters; awesome dual chronology.
(Check out my full review here)

Home Front by Kristin Hannah

Summary: Helicoptor pilot’s Iraq deployment strains her marriage.
Review #1: Raw examination of the cost of war.
Review #2: Only book that made me cry.

Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

Summary: Polish rebel sent to all-female concentration camp.
Review: Incredible story, but gruesome and brutal.

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In total, I’ve read 15 books over the past six months — 2 and a half books per month. Not bad!

Breakdown by genre:

• 4 science-fiction books
• 5 historical fiction books
• 4 family-drama type books,
• 1 classic/romance
• 1 fantasy

This is interesting. Usually, I read way more science-fiction, and before this year I’d never really read family-drama/contemporary fiction before. It just goes to show how quickly reading interests/tastes can evolve or change. I think in recent months I’ve become more drawn to books that focus primarily on the relationships between characters (not necessarily romantic). Besides, who doesn’t love a juicy story of a dysfunctional family?

Nevertheless, in the second half of 2018, I plan to shift back to reading more science-fiction, and maybe some more YA too.

So that’s it for me — I really enjoyed writing these lightning reviews! It was a fun challenge, and hopefully for anyone reading this, gave a small taste of these books.

4 Genre-Bending Books that Will Blow Your Mind

There’s this idea often voiced in the world of writing that “everything good has already been written”. It’s the depressing notion that good book ideas are so hard to find because they simply don’t exist anymore. It’s also totally false.

Maybe many of the core ideas that genres are built upon have been exhausted. Maybe it’s hard to dream up a classic epic fantasy that wasn’t written to death by J.R.R Tolkein or George R.R Martin. But all that means is that the future of innovative writing ideas lies in the spaces between genres. Nowadays the books that are truly, refreshingly original are those that cross, bend, and blur genre boundaries. The deepest, most creative stories are told by books that straddle genres and defy convention.

So if you’re like me, and you love dabbling in all manner of different genres and ideas, here are 4 of my favorite books that cross genre lines:

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This enduringly incredible book has often been shoe-horned into science-fiction. On one level that may seem right because dystopia is one of the biggest subgenres of sci-fi, and The Handmaid’s Tale is about as dystopic as it gets.

The problem is, that’s a gross oversimplification.

Without spoiling too much, this book is set in a future totalitarian, Christian theocracy that has violently overthrown the US government. Women are completely subjugated, stripped of all rights, and the eponymous ‘handmaids’ are women who exist to bear children for their masters. If much of the premise revolves around a future society totally abandoning science and technology, can it truly be called science-fiction?

Margaret Atwood herself has argued that this book really belongs in the category of speculative fiction, which isn’t as much a genre as a collective of dystopian dramas that don’t follow sci-fi conventions and lack clear genre boundaries and definitions.

In fact, the book is rooted in history; Atwood has said that, “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened… nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities.” In short, everything about the horrifying future society in The Handmaid’s Tale is taken directly from the past.

2. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Though often overshadowed by its famous predecessor Ender’s Game, in my opinion this sequel is the better book. Speaker for the Dead takes place 3,000 years after the events of Ender’s Game, focusing on the far-off planet Lusitania.

What makes Lusitania so special? It’s the first planet where humans have encountered intelligent life-forms, dubbed the “piggies”. It harbors a deadly disease, the descolada. Oh, and the piggies have an unfortunate habit of brutally murdering researchers that get too close to them.

Ender arrives to Lusitania for the funeral of a recently dead researcher, and quickly becomes embroiled in the rising tensions between the piggies and humans, the mystery of the piggies’ strange ways, and a dysfunctional family.

Unlike Ender’s Game, this book lacks the exciting space-fights and action sequences. It may center around futuristic space travel and sentient aliens, but it’s far, far more than just science-fiction. It’s a philosophical contemplation on sin, redemption, and the visceral human fear of the unknown. Above all, this book asks whether humans can truly, peacefully coexist with another species. It also draws upon history, paralleling the human-piggie dynamics with the interactions between Portuguese conquistadors and Native Americans. As if to punctuate that point, Card makes the human society on Lusitania both Spanish speaking and very Catholic.

It’s a mystery, a family drama, a space opera, and a musing on humanity’s most strongly held fears, all rolled in one amazing novel.

3. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred was born out of a unique fusion of science-fiction and historical-fiction. It’s the story of Dana, a modern African-American woman who is thrown back in time to the Antebellum South. The main events of the book take place in the early-1800s era history. It’s full of rich, incredibly immersive descriptions of everyday plantation life, interspersed with brutally sharp accounts of everyday brutalities. It’s fascinating to read about how Dana somehow settles into her new life posing as a slave, and the uncomfortable ease with which she eventually adapts to her dire situation and accepts the institution of slavery as a reality.

Most books treat the past and present as two solidly separate entities, yet Kindred blurs their lines to the point where Dana starts to lose her grip on which reality she truly belongs in. It also doesn’t demand concrete explanations of the mechanics behind time travel (as most sci-fi books do). Instead, Kindred is content to simply speculate.

It’s a book that blurs borders often assumed to be concrete, and in doing so, effortlessly interweaves both sci-fi elements (like the causal time loops) and the main historical narrative.

(If you want to read more about this book, check out my official review).

4. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter threads so many genres together that it’s nearly impossible to identify them all, and that’s probably why it’s such an original, innovative book.

The plot is simple: Jason Dessen is captured by a masked abductor, wakes up in an alternative-universe world that he does not recognize, and struggles to find his way back home.

At its core it’s an action-packed thriller that sprints to the finish line at a breathless pace, and practically brims with suspense. Sci-fi elements drive the plot, yet they’re presented in a simple, easy-to-understand way that melts in with the quickly-moving story. The science is worked into the book, but it’s not the most significant part by any reasonable measure. In fact, romance is perhaps the most crucial element that drives the main characters and defines their relationships. Yet it’s also written with the feel of a mystery as Jason strives to uncover the reality of his situation.

The best part of Dark Matter is that because it blends so many genre hallmarks together, it’s able to be totally original while also appealing to an incredibly wide audience. It cherry-picks the best of suspense, thrillers, mysteries, romance novels, and speculative sci-fi, and mashes them up into a book that’s equal parts engaging and thought-provoking.

(If you want to read more about this book, check out my official review).

7 Things I Loved About Big Little Lies (Season 1)

*WARNING: this will get spoilery. 

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Yes, I know this blog is called River of Reads, and this post is technically about a TV show, but it’s a show based on a book so I’m not too far off the mark, right?

I actually watched the show Big Little Lies and read the book (by Liane Moriarty) concurrently, which is the first time that I’ve ever done that. It was interesting to compare them side by side, and it gave me a new appreciation for how difficult it is to adapt a book to the small screen. There’s more time than a movie, but the serialized nature of the medium means that writers have to structure each episode in quite specific ways, which in turn affects the overall storyline.

The book was very compelling but for me, the real standout was the TV show. I’m not necessarily saying that the show is better than the book (I’m a firm believer in the book-is-always-better maxim) but compared to other TV shows — its ‘peers’ so to speak — I thought it was a truly fantastic adaptation, and I was so impressed by how well the book was translated into an on-screen drama. Without further ado, here’s what I loved about Season 1 of Big Little Lies:

1. The opening credits. Usually, I skip the opening credits of each episode on TV shows (doesn’t everyone?), but for Big Little Lies I watched the whole thing each time. It wasn’t just the perfect music or the gorgeous beach shots; overall it just feels perfectly constructed. Case in point: the shot of a pristine beach juxtaposed with the fading image of a person pointing a gun perfectly encapsulates the show.

2. The soundtrack. The music selections for this show are PERFECT.

3. The cast. This show has a seriously star-powered cast. Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, that’s a killer recipe for success right there. Not to mention, next season Meryl Streep is joining…

4. The acting.
Even beyond the star-studded names, every actor just slides so perfectly into their role. Shailene Woodley is surprisingly good at portraying Jane’s delicate rawness, while Alexander Skarsgard is perfectly menacing as Perry.

Actually, he was pretty terrifying.

One of the central storylines of Big Little Lies is the messed up, violent relationship between Perry and Celeste. In the book, it is a multi-faceted relationship that is deeply explored, and I was fearful that the show would lose the nuances. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry, because Skarsgard and Nicole Kidman (who plays Celeste) knock it out of the park.

Whenever Celeste would start to stand up to him, his face and eyes would shift, and I would mentally scream NO! Don’t trigger him! I can’t take anymore! I truly felt the constant tension, the sense that anything could trigger another cycle of violent abuse (more often than not followed by violent sex, which took it all to a new level of disturbing).

As the episodes progress, their encounters get more and more violent. In their first altercation, it’s somewhat ambiguous as to whether the violence runs both ways because Celeste fights back. But in subsequent episodes, it escalates bit by bit until there is absolutely no doubt who is the abuser in this relationship. In some ways, the viewer’s process of realizing the horrifying extent of Perry’s abuse mirrors Celeste’s gradual, awful process of understanding that her relationship isn’t just toxic, it’s actually threatening her life.

Kidman, in particular, approaches her role with a perfect fragility. The scenes of her in therapy are particularly heart wrenching — the way that her carefully constructed walls are broken down bit by bit as the therapist painstakingly pokes and probes at every inch of her denial. There is no doubt in my mind that Kidman deserved every Emmy, Golden Globe, and other award that she won.

Although Kidman is the breakaway standout, the rest of the cast dazzles as well. Laura Dern is amazingly neurotic as Renata, and I could write another paragraph or two about how much I loved Reese Witherspoon as Madeleine Martha Mackenzie.

You know what? I think I will.

5. Madeleine’s one-liners (AKA the humor).
Another one of my fears for the show was that, in doing the domestic-abuse storyline justice, it would cut out the humor. The book’s dark comedy is so important because it’s Moriarty’s way of recognizing how absurd everything gets. It’s a book that centers around the obsessive politics of kindergarten moms and makes fun of them the whole time.

In one sense my fears were confirmed because some of the satire is definitely lost. I dearly missed Madeleine’s frequent-and-funny affinity for phrases like “oh, calamity!” and the hilarious “Erotic book club”.

Despite this, comedy maintains a strong presence in the show, thanks to one Madeleine Martha Mackenzie.

Reese Witherspoon perfectly brought this spitfire to life with all of her wonderful verve and hilarity. Every time she opened her mouth and turned into a glowering, foul-mouthed, petty ball of rage I couldn’t hold back the laughs. I definitely could have gone without the cheating-on-Ed storyline, but her perfect delivery of some truly wonderful one-liners more than made up for it.

I think my favorite was “I love my grudges, I tend to them like little pets.” Or maybe “get laid, b*tch!”

6. The way the storylines tied together.
This is a plot point, so it’s more of a kudos to Moriarty and her storytelling skills, but the show executes it wonderfully. One of the best parts of Big Little Lies is the way that the different conflicts and storylines weave together to form a picture that’s so much deeper than it seems at first, centered around characters and relationships that are real and wholly human.

On the surface, it seems like a kind of silly, tone-deaf story about how bickering between rich white moms can escalate to murder. Yet the amazing thing is that it starts out with the shallowest part of each of the characters — their roles in the kindergarten mommy wars — and then carefully peels back that outer layer to examine the trauma and depth beneath.

Throughout the story, we find out that each woman lives in a web of lies, cowering behind carefully constructed walls. Yet the lies are slowly but surely ripped apart, secrets are exposed, raw and naked, and we see the stark difference between other people’s perceptions of them, and the reality that they themselves often deny.

Here’s an example: one of the central storylines involves Renata (pretty much the only full-time working mom) and Jane (the new mom in town) duking it out because Renata’s daughter is being bullied and she blames Jane’s son. The moms (and dads) in town take sides; Madeleine is almost ferocious in her defense of Jane.

Tte book/show take this storyline and use it to carefully pick apart Jane’s traumatic past, examining how it still affects her and how she must come to terms with it. Meanwhile, the real bully turns out to be Celeste’s son, allowing the story to point to the trauma that domestic abuse inevitably inflicts on a couple’s kids. Celeste and Perry are in total denial that their sons have any knowledge of the abuse, yet once they find out that their son is choking little girls on the playground, it’s hard to keep up that pretense anymore.  Ultimately, a story that on the surface is about five-year-old conflicts and their mothers’ overreactions, is really about heartbreaking secrets that fall apart.

7. The sets.
Those. Houses. Are. Gorgeous. Where can I get one, please?

BONUS: The one thing that bugged me…(MAJOR SPOILER ALERT)
One of my only real criticisms is Bonnie. I really, really wish the show could have taken a hot second to explain to the viewer why she ultimately lashes out at Perry in the ending.I understand that the demands of adapting a book to screen mean that some parts are inevitably lost in translation, but given the fact that she ended up being the murderer that the entire book was building up to, I’m sure many viewers would have appreciated a small hint for why she did it.

This is especially true because the majority of her screen-time is devoted to establishing her as non-violent, calm, and generally very zen. The book explains the shift really well, exposing the raw, hidden depths in a previously one-dimensional character, but in the show it comes off as a little weird because it provided no explanation whatsoever. In one episode she’s smiling foolishly about how her six-year-old daughter “doesn’t sanction non-consensual touching”, the next she’s forcefully shoving Perry down the stairs to his death.

If I hadn’t already finished the book, that would definitely have gotten me scratching my head.

I would have happily replaced the minute or so of Nathan’s karaoke with some kind of hint of Bonnie’s past (maybe that raw “we see” line from the book, although I suppose that would have disrupted the silent-effect in the climax scene). Really, any kind of indicator would have been much appreciated.

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This was the longest post I’ve written so far, and I didn’t even talk about everything else I loved in this show. Overall, this series — in my opinion — deserves every award that it has won. If you haven’t watched the show or read the book yet, I would absolutely recommend both.

It’s rare to find a show that manages to be complex, dark, satirical, sincere, and incredibly satisfying all at once. I already can’t wait for Season 2.

(All images are from HBO)