The White Lotus

Aubrey Plaza sounds like the place whores pick up johns at.

The dynamic between Olivia and Paula is the best part of the show. I don't know if Olivia has a crush on Paula, but it's probably weirder, more interesting if she doesn't. I like how Olivia thinks she's above her neoliberal mom politically. Paula lumps them both together, yet also hangs out and does drugs with Olivia. After all the craziness with Kai, Paula still ends up playing with it safe and going back with Olivia with er family.

The whole show is like this, but Olvia and Paula are especially interesting. Whenever you get this kind of realism, character contradictions and ambiguity, some people don't know how to handle it and write it off as "bad" or "unrealistic."

Some conservatives (and non-conservatives) read it as pro-conservative.

Some think it's anti-woke.

Some believe it's made a by a genuinely woke filmmaker taking potshots at neoliberals and the fake-woke.

I liked everything except Jennifer Coolidge. I know that's probably some kind of blasphemy on here, but her character annoyed the shit out of me.

My favorite parts were Rachel accepting her fate and Nicole's speech exposing the overly self righteous for who they really are.

I think Mike White is a neoliberal who probably doesn't realize he's a neoliberal. Like a lot of people in the industry.

We had long threads about it when it aired, hun. Why didn’t you dive into those instead of starting a new thread for your tepid, uninteresting take?

It was fine but I kind of felt it was ultimately a waste of many hours

Who gets rimmed in the new season?

Yes R4. Me, too. While everyone felt like a "real" person, she was a bit over the top. However, I understand that her character was important to show the dynamic between someone who is careless with her wealth and people and some peon who wanted to believe someone was going to change her life.

But, yes, Jennifer Coolidge could have taken it down a notch. The scene of her trying to hide behind the cabanas while watching her manfriend swim was like she thought she was in a Christopher Guest movie.

Does one really cast Jennifer Coolidge for nuance and subtlety?

The best part for me was when the hotel dude booked the Vida Mia for a sundown cruise with the dead mother ashes broad aboard & the newly wed couple. Hawaiian gay gold. Like a DL thread come to real life.

Paula thought she was above it all simply because she had darker skin, which was bullshit. She read Olivia the riot act and then encouraged her lover to rob the family who had invited her to vacation with them in the first place.

She felt entitled to look down on the others simply because she was an ethic minority despite appearing quite privileged herself, which was interesting.

I've never watched this. I think to enjoy a show about service workers getting shit on you need to be at least middle class. I hated Nomadland too.

[quote]Does one really cast Jennifer Coolidge for nuance and subtlety?

You're probably right, but it seems like Jennifer was acting in a different show. She was like that Weeping Wanda character from Good Times.

The White Lotus feels like it was made by a rich, neoliberal Gen-Xer who takes a few shots at his own kind to appear impartial, but saves the biggest blows for those damned crazy late Millennials/Zoomers with their "wokeness."

Armond definitely nailed dinner. Best. Seating. Ever.

Also, some just think it's just your standard, boring satire on rich people and materialism. I think the show is deeper, more specific than that, even if the writing and budget is not quite there.

When is the new season hitting?

I loved Armand. Sorry that his character is not returning.

This show is like a depressing version of "Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)"

According to Mike White, that bit of business with the teen girls reading those political books in public is based on James Franco's behavior on set. That is hilarious.

If you work in Hollywood you see far more performative wokeness than is healthy

Mike White could also be a secret neo-nihilist who enjoys making fun of the left because the right/conservatives are too easy of a target (especially in art).

It was satire and Mike White specializes in characters who are almost, but not quite, sympathetic. There is always some ambiguity on whether or not you’re meant to root for them.

From what I’ve seen of White’s work (which is not very much), he likes to make the audience cringe. I like it.

[quote] Does one really cast Jennifer Coolidge for nuance and subtlety?

Probably not, but she does both pretty well here.

Anyone got any neosporin?

Take Jennifer Coolidge's name out your molly frocking mouths!

I'm just kidding. Partially. I've wanted to either say or type "molly frocking" for quite some time and now I have. Thanks guys.

I liked the show overall. It's sly parody and satire. Mike White and Jennifer Coolidge's farmers daughter figure has me hooked. I can't get a read on Jennifer Coolidge's height or if she is family or not but who cares? There is only ever so far I go with my silly schoolgirl crushes anyway. Her character was supposed to have been "that way." Is it Xanax? Is it an Asperger's misdiagnosis and self medicating with Klonopin as an excuse? Who's to say? Who's to care? She acted as though she was hearing the characters speak to her for the first time but through some sort of haze and I liked that.

R21 I read an interview Franco did ages ago. He's on set. Going from one book to the next. They were pretentious tomes he probably couldn't fully understand. One hand he would have one book and in the other hand another book. He would go from reading one book in one hand and then tilt his gaze to read from the other. Let's say it was Lacan's later works in French in one hand and Plotinus in the other. Really?! He was probably scouting for ladies is what he was doing.

The show was about (white) privilege. Some of them were Limousine Liberals, others were proud and protective of their privilege. But they all treated the service staff like shit or as their personal slaves they could play with. Paula tried to fuck with them, but it backfired, and Olivia basically owns her, having to be her groveling sidekick, her companion, forever.

It was a satire on a certain type of person who we all know and love (or tolerate). My favorite character was Nicole. I also liked Belinda, but Belinda should have known that she was getting caught up in some white nonsense. Then there's Shane. Don't we all know a Shane.

I also loved it when Paula and Rachel each had to accept their fates, because that was real and relatable.

I think Mike White wanted to do a show about wealth and privilege, but not just another generic satire of rich people. He also didn't want to want it to be about conservatives/republicans because that's just too easy. I also think Hollywood sometimes gets off on making fun of/critiquing itself. Portlandia is a lighter example of this.

Republicans/conservatives can have a sense of humor about their world, but I don't know if they'd be as vicious on themselves as this show. I'm still not exactly sure what Mike White was going for. Maybe he's a secret conservative or libertarian?

It's special because it's so different from the shows and movies that are being made today. It got canceled immediately by woke industry critics, because it lacked black or Hawaiian writers or directors. I believe Mike White was the sole writer and director for all of the episodes. It also was criticized for not having enough diversity in the group of rich visitors (which having rich black travel guests would totally screw up the whole point of the plot). Also the teenage brown girl does something morally wrong, so they were upset about that as well. Apparently minorities have to be perfect angels 24/7. Anyways, the rich white non-gays are perfectly innocent the entire season, but they are annoying and awful to everyone. The minorities end up making bad decisions, but they are likeable and sympathetic characters. In the end the rich whites skate back into their new life harm free, and the minorities end up paying consequences for their own actions. The least spoilerish review I can give.

[quote]Then there's Shane. Don't we all know a Shane.

I was thinking that too. Though they have Shane some nuance. A douche, to be sure, but also someone who is clueless, not necessarily intentionally unkind.

Just binged WL over the holiday weekend. I know it was a plot device, but all this BS with the sleeping arrangements in girls & weird brother. Did the place not have any suites for families?

By the end of the show, I was sick of the Jennifer Coolidge character & had trouble believing that a wise Belinda type would fall for her nonsense. Even though Armand is going down, I love that his last night is a coke fueled orgy with the male staff

I care only for Murray and cock!

I hated it. It's a form of cringe-lite that just makes me impatient for the thing to end because it's so bad, and with none of the reward of some others who trade in other forms of cringy storytelling, Todd Solondz, for example, whose work I like.

Watching White Lotus was like listening to a stupid joke the teller of which can't believe you don't find it clever and funny...so he explains it, again and again, in excruciating detail for most of an hour, this joke you immediately understood and which requires no explanation. It just wasn't fucking clever or funny.

I think a lot of rich liberal types have a self-degradation kink. This show (made by and starring rich liberals) is a perfect example of this. Movies like "Get Out (2017)" "The Hunt (2020)" ,"The Forgiven (2021)" and "Triangle of Sadness (2022)" are other recent examples. They love to trash themselves.

It's a great show. Pretty much all of them are loathsome or pathetic in their own way.

^agreed; and it's beautifully shot and the soundtrack is lovely. It was a fun watch.

A slew of Emmy nominations. Really overkill.

Fully deserved, the whole thing was a breath of fresh air.

I saw the glass lotus tea light holders they used often as props at World Market.

World Market jawn

Sydney Sweeney getting nominated is absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, I love the character and her whole dynamic with Paula was the most interesting thing about this show, but Sweeney is not exactly a good actress. Neither is Daddario for that matte (even though it's the best performance of her career).

It's not the sort of show that appeals to DLers who are not fans of subtlety.

The new movie "Bodies Bodies Bodies" is yet another example of rich Hollywood liberals making fun of themselves.

We do have to come back and understand the concept of laughing with someone vs. laughing at someone.

Daddario is like the Rachel character in real life. She recently became the trophy wife of a fairly older rich producer.

I loved it. The production values and music were spectacular. But the rimming and shitting...a bridge too far.

I agree completely R49. It's my favorite show of many years. The 💩 degraded the shole series in the end, and it's lodged in my mind when I think of the show, but I love everything else about it.

I think the discussion about whether Mike White is 'neoliberal' or 'woke' is irrelevant and reductive. I think the series speaks for itself. It's satirical and sincere at the same time, and I think it does have a moral center but at the same time, paradoxically, it's amoral like Shakespeare is amoral in the sense that it simply depicts the best and worst parts of human nature in an unmediated way.

It's the kind of series that only HBO makes, like Six Feet Under and The Sopranos.

The mother played by Connie Britton is basically an arrogant, ambitious executive, and we all know that type, except here we don't see that type at work, but on vacation with her family, and we see how much she loves her whole family as demonstrated through behaviors of a ruthless executive. She's not a 'bad person' at home by any measure, but she's still a dick. And we see that her daughter is the only one in her life who calls her on how much of an asshole she is, even as her daughter studies and begins to emulate her. She loves her husband, her son and her daughter sincerely, but she's a but cold and aloof while also doting. That's a real kind of person.

Jennifer Coolidge's character is a satirical character and performance, but also the kind of person you'd meet in reality and think, "wow, this lunatic is too bizarre—you wouldn't believe her in fiction!" Her mood swings are insane and I buy them totally. Her obsessive magnetic hatred with her dead mother is probably overly dramatized, but it's as if she is peforming publicly the sort of internal struggle someone with a mother like that would have. I love most that the character tells everyone how awful she is, and they comfort her and get drawn in, and then they're shocked to discover she's exactly who she described herself to be.

On an individual level, the characters are brilliant.

And then the social and cultural and political dynamics are as ruthless as nature is ruthless. This is how the show is simultaneously moral and amoral like Shakespeare is. We get the moral message—we see how certain people are harmed by systems—but that doesn't change the systems at all. Most contemporary storytelling is morally based, and the bad guys get their comeuppance. Here, we get the point even as the amoral and immoral ways of the world keep on cycling and people are victimized by injustices.

Tolstoy hated Shakespeare because Shakespeare's writing didn't always punish bad guys and reward good guys. He thought Shakespeare was a hack because he felt "good writing" must dramatize the way things should be rather than the way things are. I think most of the general public thinks like Tolstoy, and that's why we've been overtaken by DC and Marvel dreck instead of made to think by more Mike Whites.

R50 , great post, especially your take on the Britton character. We always know persons like that and, as you say, they are usually extremely portrayed as bitches with no redeeming features. Here she loves her family, though she dotreat them very well. This applies to most other characters in the show, almost everyone does awful things but no one is 100% awful (though the Sweeney character comes close).

What I mostly like was being surprised all the time by the direction of the story and how it avoided all the feel good moments that were expected at times. Having said all this, i think it benefited a lot from being shown at the time of the pandemic, where people had more time to discuss it.

I watched Enlightened, finally, after The White Lotus, and I found it equally great. Mike White's characters are brilliant to me because (to be redunant) they're like Shakespeare's in that they just don't do what they *should* do and that's unheard of in modern popular entertainment.

In Enlightened, Amy Jellicoe does her damndest to "be a good person." And that's the common thread among everyone in The White Lotus. That's where the tension comes from. Britton's character tries to be a good wife a mom. Sweeney's tries to be a good 'woke' prejudice police officer and defender of her Friend of Color. Coolidge's character tries to honor her mother who she hates and to give an opportunity to a servant she is sucking the life out of. Belinda tries to be supportive of a white woman she knows will disappoint her. Shane tries to behave better than he wants to to please his wife and so as not to be a total dick. Paula wants to do right by other marginalized people.

All of them, from Amy to Shane, have "good intentions," and in our contemporary world we say it's intentions that matter. We believe that.

And what Mike White's shows dramatize is that our intentions have little influence over our worse natures. We are who we are, and we strive to be better than we are, but mostly we are fooling ourselves, and everything we do is motivated in our minds by "being a good person" but actually motivated via our egos by being self-serving.

White is great at giving his characters several dimensions. Like Sean, who is a total douche, but is sort of right going after Armand for fucking up their reservation (double booking the suite and then giving Sean and his wife a cheaper room but still charging the price of the original suite, because Sean's mommy sure can afford it, but Sean's the bad guy for making a fuss).

Oh I’d forgotten how good that show was. I do know a woman IRL who is like Coolidge’s character.

The characters were so compelling that I forgot who died. I have to go look it up.

The only thing I knew about Mike White, prior to this, was the movie “Chuck and Buck”. I started watching it because I thought it was going to be a comedy, and it made me cringe so hard I couldn’t watch the whole thing. He’s really good at that.

I want to marry Shane. Entitled, clueless, gorgeous, arrogant assholes are my type.

It was ok. Don’t need to see another season

The fact that this won too Emmy honors is ridiculous. It’s was just fluff

I imagine if White had known beforehand the show would be a success and HBO would want it to continue, he wouldn’t have killed off Armond … since he was the most natural character to carry over to another season, whether at that resort or another.

There’s no way, if that family was stuck in a one-bedroom suite because of some impossible to imagine situation, that they would then agree to take along the daughter’s friend.

Also, if you’re going to pretend to be a small boutique resort where the manager and staff come to meet your boat and all the guests arrive and depart together for some reason—don’t film at a massive Four Seasons. It just doesn’t make sense.

And the hotel stole the land from the local natives? Please.

R60 All of Hawaii was stolen from the Kingdom of Hawaii and its people. The US deposed its ruler and colonized it long after we had condemned colonization.

This show was so overhyped. I made through the 5th episode and never felt motivated enough to continue watching.

PLEASE is Lucas Gage coming back? Because I love him!

Pity they killed off Armond...he was hilarious. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing at that scene in the bar.

They can just bring him back and say it was “just a flesh wound.”

It was everywhere for a hot minute.

I want to Jake Lacy getting rimmed...and possibly fucked!

Lukas is not coming back. He is very busy...as he should be.

I was hoping season 2 would go for a similar kind of thing, but better executed. Judging by the trailer and interviews with Mike White, it sounds like a 180 sex farce and not as interesting. At least to me.

I remember liking it but I swear I couldn't begin to tell you what the plot was.

The Connie Britton character is like the ultimate neoliberal Democrat. These types are all over Datalounge.

R70 Miserable people in Hawaii. One of them dies. Classism, racism, comic hijinks.

I forget who died. But I remember many other small details.

This was one of those programmes which had too many well-known faced in it. I never actually knew any of the characters’ names. The were just “connie Britton” or “Stifler’s mom” or “guy from looking”.

It detracted from the plot a little.

Sorry, I fear my multiple spelling errors and poor grammar may have killed off this thread…

The new one doesn't even seem to be connected to the first. Pass.

Outside of Tanya and her boyfriend, the showrunner said it would be an anthology show when it got renewed, I don't know how you're surprised by this.

How? Why?

Genuine Defecation.

“Awwww. You have an email from ya mutha?”

I hated the first season. Hated the story, the writing. Hated Murray Bartlet's character and his acting. Hated Jennifer Coolidge whom I'm inclined to like otherwise. Hated the washed up cheap film look of the series. And fucking despise Mike White's everything.

But other than that...I hated it.

Just a ball of fun, aren't you?

I wasn’t keen on the ending. The shit in the suitcase moment was gross, but it didn’t even make sense in the context of the series. The manager would have found a much sneakier way of pushing Jake Lacey’s buttons. It was a dumb way to wrap up the series. It felt as if the writers were much more interested in the build-up of the story, rather than its conclusion.

And yet you watched every episode R80

No, R83. I watched the first two episodes, and maybe 10 or 20 minutes of scattered subsequent and the last episode.

Why R84?

Most people don't watch shows they hate.

The next series has Theo James, who I am destined to marry just as soon as we meet.

I like the show, I will be watching the new season. It’s slow paced but keeps you interested.

[quote] The shit in the suitcase

Didn't look real (see link at R78)

I loved the first season. All the accidentally horrible people were hilarious.

I only felt bad for Belinda, the masseuse, but it was clear that she has lived a lifetime of setting herself up for disappointments and is never going to learn her lesson.

Well, no, I also felt bad for the Hawaiian woman who had the baby at work and was never seen again and the guy who was arrested. Belinda's downfall was written that way to serve a purpose, but the way local people were fucked over wasn't done to make any kind of point and that was a failing on Mike White's part. Presumably, that won't be part of the story in Sicily.

The poo at the end was a big mistake. I LOVED the show and that brief moment was a big hit to my appreciation for it.

Badly done, Emma.

People seem to be creatively bankrupt, thinking a scene where a character shits on another's clothes will impress and delight viewers.

Mike White's creative superpower is that he has a unique perspective and he doesn't abide by mainstream storytelling tropes. There's not a 'hero' or a 'villain' to be found, exactly. The heroes are villainous. No one is entirely sympathetic.

At the moment, the term that comes to mind to describe his work is 'lyrical expressionism.' And it is a weird yin and yang. A lot of what he writes finds grace in uncomfortable situations, and then occasionally, he's just all-out unmediated distasteful expressionism involving feces and a dead mother's ashes and engorged balls.

Why is Tanya the one they brought back? She's the least interesting character next to Shane.

I wonder who is getting naked this season? Will Tanya have a threeway with her assistant and Greg?

[quote] who is getting naked this season?

Who can be more sensation tan last season.

Visible Analingus!

Visible Defecation!

I want a decent ORGY!

The early reviews for season 2 are solid.

The good thing about a show with a gay (or, here, bisexual) showrunner is that there is a guarantee of at least some hot men. Theo James this season, for instance, and I'm sure there will be more in walk-on parts, at the very least.

Aubrey Plaza is apparently the standout. Playing someone similar to the Rachel character from S1, but with more attitude. I was hoping Aubrey would be playing a really nasty character. I bet Mike White wrote it for her specifically, because I think they were about to work together when the pandemic hit.

A true bisexual man is rare. I guess Mike White one of them? I'm not talking about a guy who is just horny and desperate. I mean, both men and women cause your stomach to do backflips and you obsess over them physically and emotionally.

I just watched the first four episodes and it sucked. It reminds me of that Jordan Peele movie Us. Only half-successful yet somehow it's "good enough" and critics fall all over themselves for it. I'm surprised to learn that Mike White directed this. He directed Enlightened and that show was far superior to this one in every way; acting, writing, characters, etc. Enlightened was a deeply moving show that made you think about the title and the lives of the characters. White Lotus has 0 interesting characters so who the fuck cares?

This show is more open-ended and morally ambiguous than some give it credit for. You can (justifiably) read practically anything into it.

If Mike White were straight, he'd be getting a lot more shit for the way he writes women.

I tried to watch this show yesterday afternoon and made it to the middle of the 4th episode. I really don't see why this show has had such raves. It kind of reminded me of Best in Show, but not nearly as entertaining. I kept thinking it would get more interesting but that never happened. It was dull as hell and whoever wrote it tried to portray the characters as just people who are locked into their fates ( by their own choices) and I get that, but it had nothing that I found interesting. Too many shows and movies have the same formula.

R101 He got a lot of shit for writing *and not writing* stories of minority characters in the first season, which likely influenced his decision to change themes in season two.

He was lauded by many for showing how exploited indigenous Hawaiian people are by white people, but then he was skewered for bringing that to light and then just pushing all the less-dimensional Hawaiian characters offscreen with no fanfare and no explanation of their fates.

He gave a really interesting interview in which he basically said he cannot win and he thinks it's best that he simply keep his mouth shut when asked about what he is trying to accomplish because it will always be misinterpreted.

He said something that resonated strongly with me: he grew up picked on and alienated for being a gawky, nerdu, funny-looking gay (or bi or whatever he is) guy and that played a big role in forming his identity, his insecurities, and his insights as a writer.

Then, all of a sudden, being gay/bi wasn't only OK, it was trendy and cool, and so a lot of people began to treat him like he was cool when he never was or felt cool at all.

And then, all of a sudden, his sexuality was entirely irrelevant to people and he became seen as nothing but an oppressive white man, and he was treated as such—but it was that oppressive white-male culture that forged his insecure identity, and which he has always written in response to, showing powerless characters succumbing to that type of culture. But now that he is reduced to a bad white man, his characters are seen by many as intended to cause harm rather than to dramatize how people are made to feel and how their opportunities are limited.

He said that he consciously chose to keep the Hawaiian characters at a distance in his writing because he can observe their lives and hardships but he doesn't feel he has the insight or right to speak on behalf of their experiences through his writing. He didn't want to presume to understand their feelings from within.

That is regarded generally as the appropriate approach of a writer as of the 2020s, but it backfired on him because the characters were seen by many as offensively flat and disposable, which is not what he wanted to accomplish.

He's an extraordinarily insightful and sensitive writer, and he still can't 'win' in such a conflicted culture.

R103. I think that's the issue with modern culture. It's obsessed with "winning", as if you aren't successful as an artist unless EVERYONE loves your work and nobody has a harsh word to say.

Culture has always been conflicted, and artists have always felt that their work isn't appreciated enough (or at all).

People need to stop being so dramatic about it. So some people criticized you - so what? Move on. Jeez.

Am I the only one that didn't like Season 2? All I heard was praise and I could barely get thru it. Jennifer Coolidge is no leading lady. Lovely in short spurts.

R105 She stole the show in season one because of the combination of writing and performance.

Her character was an eccentric, rich narcissist in mourning, which is a pretty fascinating profile, and Jennifer played it as straight as she could, but she's so peculiar that it was also funny. It was a surreal but believable alchemy.

The season two version is not nearly as well written. She's "insecure, oblivious rich lady having fabulous adventures with GAYS! Plus suspense!"

Coolidge's character was basically converted from a complex, genre-smearing literary one to a genre camp-thriller antiheroine.

I don't think it's her fault.

She was extraordinary in the first season as she manipulated Belinda and had her bizarre breakdowns over "the onion" and her mother's ashes.

I can imagine someone like Parker Posey or even (really) Tori Spelling playing season-two Tanya hilariously, but I can't imagine anyone but Jennifer Coolidge making the first season's version of Tanya so bizarrely compelling, equally pathetic, hilarious and repulsive.

I just don’t understand the point. Is there a plot?

No, there's a theme, per season. Bullshit.

That’s what I get the sense of when I’m watching, R108. It’s like background filler.

I was rooting for "Lucia" to win the supporting actress drama emmy. I liked her.

R106 is right.

Even though she was manipulative, you find something to root for in Tanya in season 1. In season 2, she was painful to watch.