Bonnie Carlson’s (Zoe Kravitz) mother, Elizabeth (Crystal Fox), is a force to be reckoned with.

A hippy type who arrived like a storm into Monterey in episode two, and has been quietly traumatising her daughter ever since. Bonnie is edgy when she is around. We’ve seen a flashback of her ducking Bonnie’s head underwater as a child. Watched as she performed some sort of reiki ritual on Bonnie while she slept. We’re being given reasons to be suspicious by the bucket load.

This episode, Elizabeth has a stroke at a Seventies themed party for Amabella. Guests are hysterical. Renata, dressed in head-to-toe metallic gold, shrieks. Bonnie takes control. Later, she’s distraught (bloodshot eyes, trembling hands, curled in on herself totally). What does Elizabeth’s husband ask when he arrives at the hospital? “What did you say to her?” The implication is that whatever is wrong with Elizabeth, right now or at large, Bonnie is to blame.

Motherhood, and being the right kind of mother, is at the centre of Mary Louise’s (Meryl Streep), storyline, too, this season. She is childless now that Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) is gone (his brother died as a child), and she wants Celeste’s boys for herself. She files the papers. Celeste is unfit - “unwell!” - she’s telling anyone who’ll listen.

I imagine that at night, right before she closes her eyes, she pictures her two perfect grandsons that look so much like Perry and his brother, and tells herself silently that, this time? This time, she’ll do it right.

Here are three more thoughts on episode four.

Big Little Lies season 2, episode 4 recap: motherhood ain’t simple