The White Lotus

[therewillbeblus]

The White Lotus was pretty good though not as brilliant as my friends/the reviews had me hoping. When the miniseries (well, technically now it'll be an anthology) succeeded, it was due to White's balance of dark humorous satire that scathed his characters, and barely-detectable empathy buried beneath the surface. The running joke of Jake Lacy needing to be heard paints him as a total douche, but because he is being manipulated, there is a soft affection for his position. White's ability to both deflate the outcrying self-defined marginalization from the privileged class threatened by woke western civilization, and validate these experiences as half-truths at least as far as personal sensitivities that matter, is a tough mesh to pull off. He doesn't always hit the mark, but just the fact that he's trying is admirable, and the didactic paths the show postures at are rarely the simplified solutions in execution.

Murray Bartlett and Sydney Sweeney should be in everything.

[senseabove]

I think its the best of HBO's recent word-of-tweet hits by a long shot. Mare was dire, a sloppy, salacious hike to a miraculously strong final episode, made bearable only by Smart and Nicholson; and Hacks is great once its finds its footing, but the first few episodes aren't and leave a few albatrosses the rest just couldn't escape. The White Lotus isn't coherent or clean, but it builds so beautifully—I May Destroy You came to mind as the last show I saw that's explicitly aware of the edges of contemporary "right" and "wrong," earnestly exploring how they dictate each other, and uncommonly willing to let characters exist entirely between them. But if The White Lotus is worth watching for one thing, it's that it's completely chockablock with great acting. The whole cast is just fantastic, from the bits to the leads. Bartlett and Sweeney are both a cut above, but I thought Coolidge, in particular, as well as Rothwell and Hechinger were the standouts.

[cantinflas]

The White Lotus Season 2

[beamish14]

The White Lotus Season 2

This is a wonderful show, and I think this season is far superior to the first. The best ensemble I’ve seen on a current show, with Aubrey Plaza in particular being a standout, and every single plot strand is compelling. I hope it continues indefinitely

[RIP Film]

I just finished both seasons of The White Lotus and it was a nice distraction over the holidays. Not sure why I avoided it, maybe because it seemed like more of the ‘rich people behaving badly’, dark humor thing. It has that but I think it’s more so using these people as lightning rods for our judgements, while at the same time exploring everyone’s cognitive dissonance. I was surprised to find that by the end of season one, the character I was most sympathetic toward was the mother CEO, because she seemed the most in touch with her shadow. Each season explores these kinds of surface judgements but zooms in on themes that are amplified by the location. The creator, Mike White, has said the first season is about money and the second sex; but more specifically I think the first season is about privilege. It takes place in Hawaii, which was colonized by the U.S., and culminates in

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Paula coercing a native Hawaiian to give up his autonomy and (unknowingly) throw his life away to satisfy her internal justice narrative, and possibly guilt, while at the same time getting back at her friend for trying to steal him. Then there is Shane, who literally kills the hotel manager for not meeting the standards he believes he deserves.

I felt the first season was more tidy and confident overall, whereas the second in Catholic country was more broad and unfocused in what it was trying to say about sex, it’s all original sin, sirens and infidelity. Though its plot points do come together well in actualizing its characters, and overall the characters were probably more likeable than in the first.

Lastly, I was trying to figure out why each season is bookended by a death— and to me it seems like some reference to the garden of Eden, where the White Lotus is basically paradise, and these characters are banished… though it’s less an indictment of them than the whole arrangement.