When Sex and the City aired its final episode in February 2004, a Manolo-sized hole formed in many hearts. Various programs since then have promised to ease the pain of that sad farewell to Carrie and cohorts—most notably the much-publicized Girls—but nothing has come close to filling SATC’s stilettos.
Until now. Enter HBO’s Big Little Lies, the finale of which airs on Sunday. It’s the best guilty pleasure about women since salted caramel and Real Housewives.
Based on the best-selling novel by Australian writer Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies was the brainchild of avid reader Reese Witherspoon, who loved the book and promptly rang up Nicole Kidman to see if she wanted to produce it with her.
Ally McBeal creator David E. Kelley wrote it and Oscar-nominated director Jean-Marc Vallée, (who worked with Reese on Wild), directed. As a mom of three herself, Reese saw herself in the book. “Reading it, I saw myself in different stages of motherhood,” she revealed. “I was a mom when I was 22, like Jane. Then I was a mom at 40, like Madeline. I’ve been divorced, I’ve been married… There are so many aspects that are relatable to women’s lives.”
Tired of seeing the “complete lack of interesting characters for women” on screen, Reese added, “I thought women have bigger stories to tell and if no one is going to develop this material on TV, then I’ll do it myself.”
No one would accuse the women in Big Little Lies of being one dimensional wallflowers. Here, female stereotypes are hard to come by. The sassy overweight best friend/secretary, the befuddled blonde beauty, and the whorish bad girl—they don’t exist here.
Instead the women are painted with broad strokes, fully fleshed out females that are lovely and horrible at the same time. Just like us.
Reese plays Madeline—an unapologetically bossy, belligerent alpha mom who behaves abominably and yet still manages to be endearing. As a Type-A personality, she is plagued by self-doubt, fiercely kind towards those she loves but a pain in the neck to everyone else. (If you’ve seen Reese’s arrest video, you wonder if she isn’t basically playing herself).
As Jennifer Wright of the New York Post wrote: “Like many male anti-heroes, there’s a strong element of wish fulfillment contained in Witherspoon’s character. Not only does she get to breeze onto the scene in a spiffy trench coat like an old-school femme fatale, she gets to do what she wants, when she wants…It’s pretty great to see someone who isn’t punished for not being a “good woman.”
As glacial beauty Celeste, Nicole Kidman gives one of the finest performances of her storied career, playing a woman obsessed with maintaining a picture perfect façade with a toxic husband—and hiding a dirty secret. Shailene Woodley plays Jane, a mousy newcomer with a troubled history; Zoe Kravitz is the sexy young new wife that everyone loves to hate; and Laura Dern tears it up as the spectacularly neurotic Renata.
This show is not about men. It’s not about finding love or the right guy. Put simply, it’s a love story to women for women. It’s about grown-up women navigating the emotional minefields of their adult lives. Watching how they struggle to handle the pressures of relationships with spouses and exes, raising their children and all the while trying to make the difficult or near impossible look effortless.
Here being ‘nice’ is not the bullseye—it’s not even on the target. It’s gripping but it’s not exactly cheery. It’s the darkness that gives it credibility. Being a grown up juggling the emotional needs of those around us never feels as cheery as it looks on Facebook.
Which leads me to Lena Dunham. I had high hopes for Girls… and was bitterly disappointed. Whatever you might say about Carrie Bradshaw—immature, fiscally incompetent and romantically stunted—there was something aspirational about her. You wanted to be her, to know her, to have breakfast with her in a diner.
Cut to Hannah Horvath and co., perpetual victims moaning about life, rich parents and their esteem-damaging encounters. These Girls are miserable, mired in self-pity and so completely unlikeable, I find it all so hard to watch.
It has been said that Dunham is the Voice of a Generation—that may be so, but it’s certainly not a voice I’d want to hear over breakfast in a diner.
Unlike any of the spectacular women in Big Little Lies, which tells us that the Biggest Little Lie we tell ourselves is that we have to be ‘nice’ in order to be a good.
It’s refreshing to see women who are unapologetically strong, opinionated and forthright. As Madeline’s husband says about her, “agitation is basically her preferred state.”
Who among us can’t relate to that?