Directed by: Andrea Arnold  |  Written by: David E. Kelley

Official synopsis: During a pumpkin-carving party at Madeline’s house, Mary Louise turns up uninvited. Mary Louise gets an apartment in the same building as Jane, which Celeste deems overstepping her boundaries. When Mary Louise subtly insinuates that Perry was womanizing to seek refuge from Celeste, Celeste slaps her. The next day, over coffee with Celeste, Mary Louise admits her husband left her after the death of Perry’s brother and that she deserved the blame. Mary Louise approaches lawyer Ira Farber to gain custody of her grandchildren, citing negligence by Celeste. Madeline and Ed’s marriage continues to deteriorate. Renata and Gordon have a disastrous bankruptcy hearing when she refuses to co-operate. At Amabella’s birthday party, Jane tells Corey about her rape, and Bonnie’s mother has a stroke after seeing a vision of Bonnie drowning.

I had thought that, in the aftermath of Perry’s death, this follow-up might turn into an investigation of what happened that night, with the police pursuing the women. But it has become less obvious than that. After last week’s wickedly funny episode – Renata’s face during Madeline’s school-meeting meltdown might be the highlight of the season for me – this saw the rot of guilt truly setting in, and the police slowly coming closer. As usual, it’s an occasionally dizzying jumble of tones, but I enjoy its ability to swing between farce and trauma, from scene to scene, with such casual grace.

Perhaps it’s time to rename BLL “Mommies Dearest”. Mary Louise has a vampiric ability to appear wherever she isn’t wanted, and she employed it to full effect this week. She turned up at the pre-Halloween pumpkin-carving party – something about the way Meryl Streep said “Jack O’Lantern” managed to give it an extra-haunting quality – and then, of course, she upped the ante by moving into the same condo as Jane and Ziggy. Personal space is not her forte. When she talked to Celeste about Jane, she managed to both express doubt that Jane was a rape victim and simultaneously blame Celeste for it, an impressive double whammy of awful. It was all leading, of course, to her applying for custody of the twins, to the horror of Celeste.

Clearly Mary Louise is a villain, but is there an argument to be made that Celeste really is not holding it together? It’s tough to see how she’s capable of looking after the twins when she keeps having Ambien-induced blackouts for significant chunks of time. I’m not sure them moving in with their grandmother, who is either simply ignoring the violence of her son or refusing to hear it, is necessarily the answer, but Big Little Lies is very good at making grey areas seem very grey indeed.

Laura Dern continues to steal this season with a bankruptcy hearing that was a masterclass in how not to deal with authority figures. Her gesturing to her expensive forehead while saying “from dealing with men like you all my life, OK?” to the judge, may not have endeared her to him, but it did to me. Her brash fury has been a wonderfully entertaining foil to the careful rebuilding being done by Jane, and the lavish disco party thrown just before bankruptcy kicked in gave us Ed and Nathan bickering in grotesque shirts. Bonnie’s mother continued to make an entrance with a dramatic exit, as she had a stroke, as well as a watery vision of her daughter’s demise. “Everything feels like it’s unravelling,” Renata told Madeline. It’s hard to argue with that.