Blame Big Little Lies' Season 2 problems on the writing, not the directing

Variety

Friday's Indiewire report that creative control of Season 2 was "yanked away" from British filmmaker Andrea Arnold, whose directorial and editing duties were handed over to Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallée, seemed to offer an explanation for why this season has felt "frustratingly not-quite-right." But it's not the directing that's the major flaw with Season 2, it's David E. Kelley's writing, says Caroline Framke. "There’s no saying just how different the season might have been if Arnold had the kind of control she might have expected when taking the job, or how much Vallee specifically managed to change when he took over post-production," says Framke. "Still, having watched all but the finale, the biggest culprit of the season’s decline (and in fact the series’ weakest component overall) isn’t the direction, but the writing. And one of the most damning details of the Indiewire report is its suggestion that the new edit scrubbed the season of Arnold’s particular 'grace notes,' especially her way of filming between the lines on the page... With vanishingly few exceptions, that Season 2 dulled Arnold’s specific voice and more wholly embraced that of writer David E. Kelley is obvious from watching it.  Kelley, best known for network procedurals like The Practice and Ally McBeal, has always favored a blunt approach to the Big Little Lies scripts. That can sometimes pay off; you don’t get characters like Laura Dern’s pointed Renata or Reese Witherspoon’s insistent Madeline without some seriously forthright writing. But other times, the writing’s clunky attempts to be cutting and memorable crowd the screen and blur the lines between satire and reality too much for the moment in question to stand on its own. This shortcoming was also present in Season 1; I spent many scenes in the early episodes wondering if Kelley’s ever seen two women speaking to each other out in the wild without a camera to capture it. The difference is that in Season 2, the lack of a cohesive directing and editing vision has made the scripts’ weaknesses doubly obvious."

ALSO:

• HBO releases a statement saying it's "extremely proud" of Andrea Arnold's work: “There wouldn’t be a Season 2 of Big Little Lies without Andrea Arnold,” said HBO in a statement in response to Indiewire's report. “We at HBO and the producers are extremely proud of her work. As with any television project, the executive producers work collaboratively on the series and we think the final product speaks for itself.”
• This is not a good look for HBO overall, but to snub a female director in such a fashion is beyond gross
• Where did the Big Little Lies spark go?: "One can’t deny the feeling there’s something way out past the horizon that wants to crest," Melanie McFarland wrote one day before Indiewire's Andrea Arnold story. "But more than halfway through the drama's current seven-episode season, the watch is feeling like a real bummer."
• Big Little Lies is drowning in its own good intentions about race
• Big Little Lies is being blamed for "overtourism" that's "killing" Big Sur