Yeah, It was Big But Should It Get An Encore?

I will start this review with the biggest disclaimer all year: I loved Big Little Lies. From beginning to end, it was a towering achievement. All of the performances were excellent. The writing was incredible - in fact, having read Moriarty's novel, I can see with considerable certainty that the miniseries was much better.  It more than deserved the Emmys it got, and I fully expect it to reap a similar number of awards from the Golden Globes and Critic's Choice Award. From the moment it ended, the only question was where on my top 10 list it would be, not if it would be there.

However, even considering all of that, I must speak with some moderation about what I heard. The series was such a big success for HBO that even before the Emmy nominations came out, people wanted a second season. I figured, given the demands on all of the cast and crew, it would be unlikely. But now, it seems like there's going to be a second season for the show.

Let's start with the biggest and by far, the most obvious reason why this shouldn't happen. The series had an end. This wasn't a series like True Detective or The Night Of, where you could see them to doing a variation of fewer seasons. We found out who was killed. We know who killed him. There's no second story. And the original book didn't leave much room for a second season, either. Moriarty, like with many of her other works, has made no effort to write a sequel. So, how can they honestly do a second season with, I presume the same characters. And frankly, given how disastrous the second season of True Detective was, one would think that the HBO executives would know better than to try to have lightning strike twice. (Then again, they don't always seem to learn from their mistakes: a third season of True Detective is coming in 2018.)

Now, I know, arguments in the tabloids to the contrary, the entire cast wanted to do a second project the second that the filming on Big Little Lies had ended. And really, if you've got Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, and Laura Dern wanting to work together on just about anything, well, you let them do that. The big question is, why do another season of this project? Why not find another similarly veined work, and get Jean-Marc Valee and David E. Kelley to work together on?  Because I can't see any scenario where a second season of this series would work. There's nowhere to take the characters, no real connection to make. Now, there were some character based ideas that could be used, but the fact is, I can see this all too easily turning into Desperate Housewives of Monterey. Would I watch that? Probably. But I have a feeling it would turn very quickly into a trainwreck, and all too easily lose the spark and energy that made Big Little Lies so perfect.

And I can't really see the other alternative. Should we turn into an anthology series, like American Crime or the various works of Ryan Murphy? Frankly, I'm not sure that would work much better. Because the other part of what made Big Little Lies work so well were the characters. Madeline, Celeste and Jane were three of the most strongly and originally drawn female characters of all 2017, and that's something, considering that they were all drawn from a novel at first. As incredible talents as all three actresses are (and Dern and Kravitz for that matter), I can't see any scenario where even a master talent such as Kelley could create a similar brilliant vision.

Now, don't get me wrong. If they make a second season of Big Little Lies, with the same cast (though I can only assume without Alexander Skarsgaard) I will tune into eagerly. Given the high level of everybody involved, it would still probably be worth watching. But I don't think for a second that it could match up to the highs of the original. And for anybody who will complain when it doesn't, I'm just going to say right now: this is what you asked for.