OT: "Big Little Lies" and the Travails of Female Stardom

SPOILERS (but not whodunit or who it was dun to)

Unable to commit to multi-season series at the moment, I keep browsing the cable backlog of series for "something interesting to watch." I've almost finished the full three seasons of "Deadwood." I love going back in time to watch tough Rip Torn coddle spoiled star Garry Shandling on "Larry Sanders."

And I watched ALL of "Big Little Lies." It was fairly easy. It only ran 7 episodes, start to finish.

Weird: that finish was pretty much of a FINISH. A mystery was solved, a major confrontation was had to the death, in any other world, that story would be OVER.

But we are told a second season will be produced. And that Meryl Streep has been added to the cast.

Hey, now. The cast already has two Oscar winners: Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman. Plus a third, younger star -- Shailene Woodley -- who played George Clooney's older daughter in "The Descendants." (Tricky for Shailene -- the slender and lissome young teen of the Clooney film has grown over 6 years into a very different looking adult.)

I'll linger on Big Little Lies for a moment because I was intrigued by what it said about Hollywood stardom these days. Once upon a time, Nicole Kidman was a major star with a decided sexual component -- a girl next door with va-va-voom sex appeal and the willingness to do the deed with glee. Once upon a time Reese Witherspoon was a female star and, for my money, a more acquired taste. Her expert playing of a soulless driven student council nerd in "Election" seemed to inform her later roles: brittle, humorless, self-absorbed. Reese seemed the polar opposite of Nicole.

And I guess they knew that. For while they play total friends on "Big Little Lies," the characters have those opposing qualities. I never found Reese less than irritating. I never found Nicole less than sensual and captivating.

But they aren't really movie stars anymore of that type. Nicole has comebacked in indiefilm, but not well paid or much seen. Reese has kinda sorta comebacked, but not really. So HBO was there to save them.

"Big Little Lies" sure comes dangerously close to feeling like a cross between a soap opera like "Knots Landing" and reality show like "The Real Housewives of Orange County." Its an HBO production which means that once-big stars like Nicole and Reese can "graciously downsize" their careers(I'm assuming lower pay) even as joined by Laura Dern(on a bit of a character actress roll these days) and that young actress from The Descendants.

It is set in the northern California beach community of Monterey(not all that far from where Hitch filmed Vertigo; he kept a home in the area, too), and the married couples are all rich, rich, rich. Which makes it a bit hard to watch. But, they are all miserable, miserable, miserable. Which makes it easier to watch.

I'll cut to the chase: the show makes sure that it has a lurid heart. This is HBO; there will be sex.

Nicole Kidman seems to be in a happy and endlessly sexual relationship with her hot, younger husband -- until we see that behind closed doors, he slaps her, beats her, comes close to killing her on the basis of a controlling jealousy and a hair-trigger rage. And Nicole puts up with it. There are two young sons who know nothing of the beatings. There are "appearances." And -- awfully -- one senses that Nicole in some way desires this kind of SM relationship with her on the receiving end. This part of the series plays to "Fifty Shades" sensibilities: there are a few scenes of non-violent consensual sex between Nicole and her hubby, alternated with the beatings. One isn't sure if arousal in one scene is punished with the violence of the other.

Meanwhile, young Shailene has come to town poor, in search of bookkeeping work, and with a young son in tow who, we eventually learn , was the product of rape.

And Reese Witherspoon is, well, the busybody activist who takes on the town bully(Dern) while cheating on her second husband, who is actually jealous of her FIRST husband, who lives nearby with his hot black wife.

What ultimately makes Big Little Lies compelling is how flashforwards are intercut all through the series about how the story ends: somebody is dead, somebody is the killer. But who, in both cases?

I must say that the revelations were MOST satisfactory, in one of those climaxes I personally love, where all the stories and all the characters come together for a rip-roaring finale in which evil squares off against all sorts of good, and differences are put aside in the name of solidarity against a foe. Its old-fashioned and its satisfying.

But honestly, once was enough. HBO, co-producers Reese and Nicole...MERYL! What are you thinking? The story has been told.

Except on soap operas...the story is never finished.