In episode 102, “Serious Mothering”, of Big Little Lies we continue to see the struggle of these 3 mothers to live their lives and raise their children the best way they can.

Reese Witherspoon has done a lot of movies and her acting is always on point, but here in Big Little Lies it feels like she is not just perfect for this role, but beyond perfect. In fact, there may not even be a word that describes how well this role suits her. Her Madeline is funny, loyal to her friends, mean to her enemies, a great wife and an amazing mother. All the characters are different in their own way, but Madeline is my favorite character in this show. But no one is flawless and it was a little unfair of her to use Chloe to ruin Amabella’s party. I understand she is trying to protect her friend, Jane, and she should definitely continue to go for it, but she shouldn’t use her daughter like that, since she hadn’t even talked to her about it (not even after saying that).

All shows nowadays try to touch on a sensible subject, and Big Little Lies “chose” domestic violence. But what we see in this show isn’t really what we usually see: man and woman argue, man beats woman, woman cries and stays defenseless and then man leaves coming back later to apologize. Here we see that Celeste and Perry start arguing and he slaps her, like what usually happens on TV’s domestic violence. The unexpected about this is that Celeste fights back. Right after she gets slapped, she slaps Perry back. Then he pushes her, apologizes almost immediately and they have make-up sex (which kind of felt like rape). This is to say that, unlike what TV makes us believe in, there is more than one kind of domestic violence, and just because one of them fights back doesn’t mean that it is any less a crime. Celeste later mentions this to Madeline and, probably against what she thinks, she should see on Madeline’s face that this isn’t normal. The problem is that she probably thinks that it is. She is in a good relationship with a younger and a good looking man, she hears people say that their relationship is the best, and so maybe she thinks that there has to be a price to pay, because not everything in life can be good. That last part is obviously true, not everything in life can be good. But shouldn’t we be able to feel safe in our own home, with our own family? Yes, of course we should.

In this episode we are pretty much introduced to Ed (Madeline’s new husband). I know that he was in the pilot, but he also wasn’t at the same time. Sure we saw him in some scenes, and heard him speak a few lines, but I think all we learned about him in last episode is that he is Madeline’s husband. I don’t think we even knew that he was Chloe’s father (I actually thought Nathan was). But I understand that some characters have to be sidelined in some episodes for others to shine, because there isn’t enough time for everyone to be in the spotlight in the same episode. Happily, he wasn’t sidelined this time and we learned more about him. We even saw him being a little bit badass in the scene he spoke with Nathan. It appears that in this show the roles are reverse, because man are usually more direct than women. However, in the scene with Nathan, Ed definitely left his intentions clear, but in a more indirect way. It was an amazing scene though.

I thought that Madeline didn’t like Bonnie because she was her ex-husband’s new wife, and it seemed like she was overreacting a bit to what concerns her, but my perspective definitely changed in this episode. Bonnie took Abigail to the “Planned Parenthood” and that was completely not her job. Even though it was Abigail who asked for it, she should have called Madeline. But this is not the reason why I think she is a little bit of a bitch, at least not on its own. After Ziggy kissed Amabella (the poor kid was just trying to make amends) and after the school director said that Skye incited the kiss, Bonnie said that she didn’t believe Skye would do that, since she is very peaceful. This is definitely a big piece of sh*t. She doesn’t mind lecturing other girls about whatever she wants, but when it comes to her own daughter things obviously change. I guess she is not as OK about the subject as she seemed.

This was a great episode and it seems that the flash-forwards are getting more and more close, because Renata already started talking about a fundraiser dinner, which is probably THE fundraiser dinner (you know, the one where someone will get killed). I am giving this episode an 8.0/10.

Stay tuned for my next review of episode 103, because it seems that things are starting to heat up because “war” was already announced and our new favorite TV mothers will be “Living the Dream”.