Hey, you! Person who spends all their time Netflix & chilling (alone)! TV Snide is your favorite new column serving television chatter that’s hot ‘n’ frivolous. Expect badly photoshopped images, tangents, and occasional sincerity.
This week: What’s Reese Witherspoon’s deal with naked puppets in Big Little Lies?
Big Little Lies, HBO’s new Emmy Bait for Outstanding Limited Series, is halfway through its seven episode run, with episode five, “Once Bitten,” airing this Sunday. It’s a dreamy, languid story where an A-Team of white, straight actors do unspeakable things to each other while also fretting over their 6-year-olds' music choices. We know someone will die, but we won’t find out the deets until (probably) the finale.
It’s easy to piss on this show and label it escapist fluff, mostly due to its leading ladies initially coming off as tone-deaf Californian stereotypes. They’re awful. Reese Witherspoon’s character, Madeline Martha Mackenzie, is the type of woman who gets kicked out of a yoga class because she won’t stop gossipping during Downward Facing Dog. (As she says, “I love my grudges. I tend to them like little pets.”) Nicole Kidman’s character, Celeste Wright, spends her time vacantly staring in the distance while other mothers whisper that she’s too sexy for a 40-year-old. In the third episode, Celeste’s abusive husband, played by Alexander Skarsgård, gives her a diamond necklace and then eats her out against a glass shower. It’s hot. And scary? Kidman and Skarsgård have a lot of… sex? rape? sex? rape? IDK. It’s hard to tell with this show.
That being said, Big Little Lies is a tiny masterpiece, clearly exploring the elusiveness of beauty and the violent acts people commit to control it.
But screw the high-brow stuff. I wanna talk about the puppets: WTF IS AVENUE Q DOING IN HERE!? I thought this was a high-brow, serious HBO show. What's the deal with the porny puppets?
Avenue Q, the Tony-winning musical, plays a big part in the Big Little Lies plot. Madeline (Witherspoon) is putting it on at her local theater and Renata (Dern), a badass maybe-murderer who’s on the board of PayPal, is NOT HAVING IT. Renata wants them to do a show that doesn’t have naughty puppets, like The Sound of Music. Normally, something like this would be a minor plot point, but it’s not. Avenue Q comes up in every episode, and Kidman’s coolest scene (so far) is when she tasks the mayor on why he can’t shut down the production:
"Legally, you’ve already lost. The California Constitution goes way farther than the Federal one to protect the First Amendment. But to answer your question, Renata: Who are we? I don’t think we want to become synonymous with suppression… We’re going to face accusations of being anti-American and anti-free speech. I mean, that’s not the politics that you’ve been practicing, Mayor Bartlett. So, I would say there are bigger black eyes than putting on a controversial musical. Especially ones that have won a Tony."
Someone has a bone to pick about Avenue Q.
I’d never paid attention to Avenue Q before I watched Big Little Lies. I knew about as much as the fictional Mayor Bartlett: “Naked puppets don’t bother me. Fuckin’ puppets, on the other hand… it’s vulgar.” I did know, however, that Dan Savage loves Avenue Q, so I triggered him by asking for a good track recommendation. He said "IT’S ALL GOOD," but specifically "The More You Ruv Someone," "The Internet Is For Porn," "For Now" and "If You Were Gay." And so I begrudgingly (and in the name of Reese Witherspoon) listened to Avenue Q for the first time.
And… after listening to the soundtrack many times once… I’m embarrassed to admit that I like it. The dirty puppets are endearing. Madeline (Witherspoon) is on to something when she defends the show and says it deserves respect because it “deals with the struggle of young adults feeling demoralized and defrauded by the false promises of tomorrow.”
From the song, For Now:
For now there’s life.
For now there’s love.
For now there’s work.
For now there’s happiness.
But only for now.
For now discomfort.
For now there’s friendship.
Only for now.
[snip]
Each time you smile, it’ll only last a while.
Life may be scary, but it’s only temporary.
Everything in life is only for…
Now.
Like I said before, the characters in Big Little Lies constantly try to control the beauty around them, often to the point of strangling it (literally). Perry Wright (Skarsgård) is the show's super strangler, always afraid that his stunning wife will leave him. When asked by a therapist to explain this fear, he replies:
"I always thought she'd go through me. She’d literally… outgrow me. Figure me out. Or something. I always had the sense that the day would come where she would just not love me anymore."
The therapist gave Perry a meek look when he said this, but she should’ve quoted the lyrics to For Now. At so many points in the show (and this is silly but REAL), the answers to the characters problems can be found in the lyrics of Avenue Q. The shows not only share themes (about uncertainty, impermanence, ambiguity), they also both feature horny puppet people trying to figure out their purpose in life. Yes, in the fever dream that is 2017, foul-mouthed Avenue Q is somehow the show-within-the-show of HBO’s latest award-grabber. Remember: “Life may be scary, but it’s only temporary.” Literally. Someone’s about to get murdered on this show. WATCH OUT.
BTW: Despite all the musical theater talk, the soundtrack for Big Little Lies is a soulful mix of Charles Bradley, Alabama Shakes, and Neil Young. It's perfect for watching sunsets while reflecting on a failed marriage. I made a Spotify playlist that includes all the songs from episodes 1–4. Listen to it and pretend you’re Nicole Kidman’s character, Celeste, moodily staring down the ocean like it’s the patriarchy.
Continue watching Big Little Lies on HBO this Sunday, March 19.
- Iron Fist (brand new Marvel series on Netflix, March 17; same universes as Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Lucas Cage...)
- Animals (season 2 of the dark animated HBO comedy, March 17)
- The Circus (season 2 of the political doc series on Showtime, March 19)
Bonus points if you agree Laura Dern is to Annette Bening what Glenn Close is to Meryl Streep. Double bonus points if you agree Bening and Dern deserve as many awards as Close and Streep.
