No TV show addresses pain in all 
its forms quite like HBO’s “Big Lit-
tle Lies.” In fact, deep physical and 
emotional distress plays such a large 
part in the show that it’s almost its 
own character. In Monterey, Cali-
fornia, pain permeates. It lingers. It 
digs deep into the skin of the women 
it afflicts, making itself known in 
every aspect of their lives. 
As we come to understand in 
Season 1, our five main characters, 
Madeline 
(Reese 
Witherspoon, 
“Wild”), Celeste (Nicole Kidman, 
“Lion”), Renata (Laura Dern, “The 
Tale”), Jane (Shailene Woodley, 
“The Spectacular Now”) and Bon-
nie (Zoë Kravitz, “Mad Max: Fury 
Road”) are no strangers to suffering. 
What on the surface was a generic 
whodunit crime story was elevated 
to a refreshingly empathetic exami-
nation of sexual assault, domestic 
abuse and many other ways people 
hurt each other, largely due to the 
talent of its cast and the excellence 
of its writing. 
Season 1 pretty much covered the 
gist of the Liane Moriarty novel the 
show is based on, culminating in the 
murder of Celeste’s abusive husband 
and Jane’s rapist Perry (Alexander 
Skarsgård, “True Blood”), a murder 
that was for the most part a group 
effort performed by all five central 
women. “Big Little Lies” could have 
easily concluded here — that was the 
original plan, after all. 
Nevertheless, we’ve been given 
a second season. After watching its 
first episode, I’m so grateful we have. 

It turns out that, at least under the 
supervision of the geniuses behind 
the first season, the aftermath of the 
central drama is equally, if not even 
more compelling than the central 
drama itself. 
This “aftermath” manifests itself 
in Season 2 through the grief and 
guilt the Monterey Five are expe-
riencing following Perry’s death, a 
death they’ve told the authorities 
was a complete accident. They’re 
all trying their hardest to move on, 
some doing a better job than others, 
but none of them actually can — at 
least not completely. 

Each woman has her own reasons 
for her inability to move on from the 
past. Celeste, while partially grate-
ful to have an abuser out of her and 
her sons’ lives, is also struggling to 
part with the man she once loved so 
entirely and so passionately. The fact 
that her mother-in-law Mary Louise, 
played by the beloved Meryl Streep 
(“The Post”), has established her-
self in Monterey to look for answers 
regarding her son’s death certainly 
doesn’t help. 
Bonnie, a woman characterized in 
Season 1 by her seeming perfection 
and perpetual vitality, is in a similar 

state of ruin. In an intentional allu-
sion to Jane’s angst-filled jogs from 
Season 1, we see Bonnie on a run, 
looking more miserable than ever. If 
any of the Monterey women seems 
to have healed the most it’s Jane, but 
by the end of the episode we come 
to know that even she hasn’t quite 
forgotten about Perry. We’re shown 
a portrait of him she finds herself 
drawing, the face of her rapist, a face 
that can never be erased from her 
memory. 
Clearly, “Big Little Lies” wants us 
to know that all five women are in 
distress, just as they were in Season 
1. However, the Season 2 premiere 
adds an entirely new dimension 
to their pain by letting us observe 
how it travels between them. The 
distribution of pain has shifted, with 
Bonnie and Mary Louise now here 
to take a large portion of it away 
from Jane. In a particularly mov-
ing sequence, we see Jane dancing 
next to the ocean to Sufjan Stevens’s 
“Mystery of Love,” a song which 
could not be more different from 
the angry, heartbreaking Martha 
Wainwright song she so frequently 
listened to back in Season 1. With the 
burden of Perry’s existence off her 
chest, Jane is practically floating, in 
a beautiful moment of reprieve from 
the pain she has endured for so long. 
Season 2 of “Big Little Lies” 
adds to the emotional depth of 
Season 1 by exploring not only how 
pain and trauma affect women, but 
how pain in many ways is a collec-
tive experience that bounces back 
and forth between its characters. 
It understands that shared trauma 
is something that bonds people 
together, but at the same time can 
also tear them apart.

6

Thursday, June 13, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS

Big Little Lies

Season 2 Premiere

HBO

Sundays at 9 p.m.

‘Lies’ Season 2 starts strong

ELISE GODFRYD 
Daily Arts Writer

TV REVIEW

WARNER BROS.

The modern music industry is 
in desperate need of soul. Sure, 
many pop divas are capable of 
gospel-adjacent vocal acrobat-
ics, and most (if not all) chart-
topping chord progressions are 
stolen from the blues, but there’s 
just something about soul music 
that makes it special, makes 
it something to look for. This 
soul is what makes pop-folk-
rock outfit Lake Street Dive so 
intriguing — and so goddamn 
fun to listen to. Made up of five 
conservatory-trained jazz musi-
cians, the group manages to 
merge the funky sounds of clas-
sic soul and R&B with a modern 
folk sensibility, with lead singer 
Rachael Price’s smooth voice 
carrying every influence grace-
fully. 
It’s not an easy thing to mix 
all of these inspirations and pull 
it off without losing the music’s 
innate soul, but Lake Street Dive 
seems to only enhance it, bring-
ing their mix of sounds to a level 
each one couldn’t achieve alone. 
The band is hard to categorize, 
some calling it blue-eyed soul, 
others pop or folk rock, but ful-
filling a niche is not the point of 
their music — it is, quite simply, 
to tell true and lasting stories. 
All this is present in their 
records, but this Tuesday at 
the Royal Oak Music Theatre, 
the audience was in for a pleas-
ant surprise. There’s something 
almost magical about what hap-
pens when all five members of 
Lake Street Dive come together 
and make music, more so than 
could ever be caught on studio 
tape. 
You can tell the bandmates 
have been playing with each 
other for over a decade immedi-
ately, from the way they looked 
at each other and kept up with 
one another throughout the 
concert. Some would say that 
Price, with her stage presence 
and inimitable poise, is the star 
of their live show, but I would 
beg to differ. Bassist Bridget 
Kearney, 
percussionist 
Mike 

Calabrese, 
guitarist/trumpet-
er Mike “McDuck” Olson and 
newer member keyboardist Akie 
Bermiss are all consummate 
performers in their own right, 
bouncing the audience’s atten-
tion back and forth like a musi-
cal beach ball with every song. 
Although 
the 
Royal 
Oak 
Music Theatre was packed for 
the sold-out show, every song 
felt intimate, with the members 
of both opening act The Wood 
Brothers and Lake Street Dive 
themselves inviting the audi-
ence in for a truly shared expe-
rience. There was very little 
banter back and forth between 
songs, but it was unnecessary; 
the lyrics of each tune were 
like a conversation in every way 
except their musicality, as sto-
ries of love, loss and spiteful tri-
umph were told through Price’s 
lilting alto voice. 
By the time they reached 
halfway through the show, the 
audience had lost their inhi-
bitions 
completely, 
dancing 
and bobbing to the undeniably 
catchy beat of bass and drums. 
If there’s anything Lake Street 
Dive knows how to do, it’s put 
on a show. The group ran the 
gamut between their own new 
and old originals and perfectly 
placed covers like Hall & Oates’s 
“Rich Girl” and Sly & the Fam-
ily Stone’s “Everyday People,” 
without losing any of their sin-
gular charm. When they play 
other people’s songs, it doesn’t 
feel like it; they make every mel-
ody their own, infusing a mod-
ern sense of soul into every note. 
When I say that Lake Street 
Dive’s show was one of the 
best I’ve witnessed, don’t take 
it lightly. Their performance 
is beyond anything that can be 
described on paper, as cliche 
and hyperbolic as that seems. 
The band is capable of creat-
ing simultaneous comfort and 
energy in their audiences, lift-
ing them up while leaving them 
in awe of the music they create. 
When they played, they weren’t 
playing alone; instead, the voic-
es of hundreds in the venue rose 
to join them, dancing and shout-
ing out lyrics in a passionate 
embrace of the beat.

Lake Street Dive
shows some soul

CLARA SCOTT 
Senior Arts Editor

CONCERT REVIEW

