Reese Witherspoon (Madeline MacKenzie), Nicole Kidman (Celeste Wright), Shailene Woodley (Jane Chapman), Laura Dern (Renata Klein), Zoë Kravitz (Bonnie Carlson), Meryl Streep (Mary Louise Wright), Adam Scott (Ed Mackenzie), James Tupper (Nathan Carlson), Gordon Klein (Jeffrey Nordling), Kathryn Newton (Abigail Carlson), Iain Armitage (Ziggy Chapman), Robin Weigert (Dr. Amanda Reisman), Merrin Dungey (Detective Adrienne Quinlan), Sarah Sokolovic (Tori Bachman), Martin Donovan (Martin Howard), Merrin Dungey (Detective Adrienne Quinlan), Crystal Fox (Elizabeth Howard), Ivy George (Amabella Klein), Mo McRae (Michael Perkins), Douglas Smith (Corey Brockfield), Robin Weigert (Dr. Amanda Reisman), Michael Andrew Baker (Defense Attorney Steve Gartner), Linda Burzynski (CHP Officer Lydia Seabrook), Maryfrances Careccia (Agent Sparks), Howard Chan (CHP Officer Joel Maron), Chloe Coleman (Skye Carlson), Elizabeth Liang (Federal Courtroom Deputy), Charles Maceo (Agent Nelson), Duvier Poviones (Daniel), Jeryl Prescott (Cecilia), Scott Alan Smith (Federal Prosecutor James Taylor), Sunday Rose Kidman-Urban (School Child), Faith Margaret Kidman-Urban (School Child), Leonard Kelly-Young (Judge Vincent Pagano)

The message this week is clear: buy your children earplugs, and make them mandatory. The multiple secrets being carried by the women bubbled up to the surface abruptly, because children listen, and talk. It all tumbled out as the episode progressed: Perry’s violence towards Celeste; Jane being “salted” (how heartbreaking) by Perry; Ziggy and the twins learning that Perry was Ziggy’s father; and Madeline’s affair with the theatre director. The kids may be all right, but they’re terrible at keeping anything to themselves. Family relationships were at the heart of the episode. Celeste has no family to speak of, and the isolation of her situation appealed to Perry, as a horrible flashback revealed. Eventually, when Mary Louise learned the truth about Ziggy, Celeste tried to tell her mother-in-law about Perry’s violence, but she wasn’t having any of it, and barely even seemed to listen. “He wasn’t capable,” she insisted, using the fact that Celeste did not go to the police as evidence that she was lying. The show can be very clever at examining the idea of complicity; it’s something that also comes up in Celeste’s therapy sessions, where she is clearly continuing to see herself as responsible for Perry’s violence.

Then there’s Bonnie’s mother, invited to stay by Nathan in an attempt to get through to her, though her presence is unsettling and there are hints that all is not well between them – a mention of previous alcoholism here, a crystal and a feather there. Zoe Kravitz is doing an excellent job of showing Bonnie being haunted by her conscience (the title of the episode, of course, is a nod to Edgar Allen Poe’s classic story of a murderer consumed by guilt), and it rectifies one of the only flaws in the first season, which was that Bonnie was underwritten and underused. For all of the emotional subtleties of Bonnie and Celeste’s storylines, there is a kind of light relief in Renata’s fury at losing everything thanks to her feckless husband – Laura Dern really goes for it – and in Madeline butting heads with Mary Louise, while Ed and Nathan’s rivalry continues to be pleasingly silly. But for the most part, this was a gut-wrenching week for the Monterey Five. Jane’s distress at having to tell Ziggy about Perry, particularly after that sense of freedom she had last week, that she was moving on with her life, was sad, and kudos to Shailene Woodley for that performance.