Only about 100 people watched Enlightened, HBO's early 2010s oddball dramedy about a woman who has a philosophical awakening after a nervous breakdown upends her life, but we all loved the show with a frightening intensity and were devastated when it was cancelled after two wondrous seasons. It seemed like perhaps that show's early demise took alot out of its creator Mike White as well, as he mostly stayed away from television in the years after, alternating between writing well-received but little seen indie films and large studio movies meant to keep food on the table. It's not as if his focus on cinema was an alien turn for him, since some of his earliest critical successes (Chuck & Buck) and best-known works (School of Rock) come from the big screen, but it's hard not to feel like TV is the medium he's meant for.
Well our wishes were finally granted with the premiere of HBO's miniseries-turned-ongoing-show The White Lotus earlier this year, the first series created by White in almost a decade. His penchant for social satire, his interest in New Age spirituality and wellness culture, his simultaneous love and hatred of humanity -- it all gets ported over to this story about a high-end Hawaiian resort and the three groups of guests who stay there for one fateful week. The first group is the Mossbachers, an affluent and dysfunctional tribe enjoying their family vacation. Then there's the Pattons, a newlywed couple made of Shane (Jake Lacy), who was born into money, and Rachel (Alexandra Daddario), who was not. Rounding it out is Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge), who has come to scatter the ashes of her recently deceased mother. In between all of that, there's also a focus on the people who work at The White Lotus, primarily hotel manager Armond (Murray Bartlett) and spa manager Belinda (Natasha Rothwell).
With such a heavy focus on the lives of privileged people, obviously the biggest struggle that detractors had with the show was that they felt it was hard to get invested in the main characters in a time like the one we're living through. In fact, even a friend of mine to whom I recommended the show -- and if you're that friend and are reading this, I'm sorry for the call out -- watched the first episode and their reaction was "So far all of the main characters are unlikable and have the POC working for them." To me, this poisonous need for likable characters in TV shows is a trend exacerbated by shows like Parks and Recreation, Ted Lasso, and Schitt's Creek that are so overly concerned with making the audience feel warm and funny at the expense of creating friction and challenging viewers.
The White Lotus eschews those desires and is all the better for it. This is a satire, and unlikability feels like the name of the game, the only way to understand its commentary on the difference between the haves and the have nots. Something that crystallized in a recent rewatch is just how clear the show makes the delineation between the characters who stay at the resort from those who serve them through its writing and filmmaking. "New Day," the show's second episode, opens with a montage of all the main guests at the hotel starting in a state of bliss, and then pointedly shifts to Belinda coming into work exhausted and Armond contemplating his sobriety. Later in the same episode, there's a scene where Shane is at the buffet piling food onto his plate and the camera cuts to a shot of two unnamed attendants who look on as if they have a world of problems we're not given access to. It's not a coincidence that Lani, the pregnant trainee who gives birth in the first episode, is shunted off after that, never to be seen again. A working class woman of color basically doesn't matter to this world of privilege.
It helps that there's a gradient of likability amongst the main characters, where some seem more endearing in contrast with others. Sure, Armond is kind of a jerk and he did genuinely mess up by double booking the room the Pattons were supposed to be in, but his struggle to stay sober is genuinely sad. Yes, Mossbacher patriarch Mark (Steve Zahn) is a buffoon, but his health crisis in the early episodes and the rumination it inspires is truly engrossing. These are examples of what's at the heart of Mike White's strengths as a writer: his characters can be prickly and difficult, but he gives them such a depth and dimensionality that it's impossible not to find something engaging about them. He's so attuned to the facets of these people that he even puts incredible, character-revealing details in their reading choices. Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O'Grady) reading Freud and Nietzche, Rachel reading My Brilliant Friend, and Shane reading a Malcolm Gladwell book are all inspired choices that make you think "Of course they would be reading that."
Even if you don't pick up on the more subtle moments the show has to offer, it also happens to be such pure pleasure on the surface. Each episode is a blast to watch, so funny and sharp and lively. And even though there aren't any grave stakes save a dead body teased in the very first scene (we'll get to that later), the story manages to feel propulsive, a sensation no doubt multiplied by the claustrophobic score that stampedes over every scene. White's longtime history as a TV writer comes into play as he knows how to craft an episode, giving each one a consistent day-night cycle that keeps everything structured and rhythmic. The plotting is intricate, keeping many plates spinning at once. There's a beautiful cause-and-effect nature, like the events all exist on a labyrinthine pinboard, where small moments such as Paula losing her bag full of drugs play into seismic stories like Armond falling off the wagon. Emotionally, the show works on that wavelength too, with temperaments stirred in one scene bleeding over and affecting that character's interactions with somebody unrelated.
That elaborate storytelling supplements the wild tonal highwire act The White Lotus pulls off. Scenes can veer from levity to bracing pathos in a blink, often mixing the two together in a potent blend. It asks you to laugh at these characters and take them very seriously at the same time, and it always works. Tanya may be the the silliest character thanks to Jennifer Coolidge's delightfully spacey performance, but the scene in the first episode where she's telling Belinda about her dead mother is one of the most moving scenes of the entire series.
Every episode has at least one scene like that, where you can feel the ground shift under you and take you to a completely unexpected emotional terrain. There's that scene which happens in the dead center of episode two, where Nicole (Connie Britton) and Rachel have a thoughtful moment of connection between two career-minded women that totally takes a turn when Nicole finds out Rachel wrote a piece about her that she didn't like. And there's also the scene in episode five where Nicole confronts Mark about telling their son about an affair he had. For the whole series leading up to that moment, Nicole had been sketched like this laughable girlboss neoliberal who still loves Hillary Clinton, and then all of a sudden you're reminded that just like everyone else, she's a full human being with feelings that are capable of being hurt. The mastery of tone that these six episodes display is honestly staggering. You need the silliness to make the dramatic moments hit the way they do, and vice versa.
The show's interrogation of its characters only gets more precise as it goes on, especially with the aforementioned Mossbachers. One of the treats of each episode is the recurring family dinners, which invariably become a discourse on class, privilege and gender, giving us ample opportunity to laugh at the irony of moments like Nicole and Mark going off on cancel culture while they enjoy being served at a resort on stolen land, watching indigenous people perform for their entertainment.
Paula's arc is the most fascinating thread in the Mossbacher web. She sees herself as the good guy, the person of color outsider who's different from the out-of-touch people she's vacationing with and chooses to try to help Kai, the local guy she has a tryst with. It's tempting to see her that way in comparison to the Mossbachers too. But it's notable that the thing that pushes her to hatch a plan for Kai to steal jewelry from the safe in their hotel room while the family's away is Olivia flirting with him, which makes her actions seem more driven by getting revenge on her friend than any kind of altruism. Her plan is also one where all of the risk is on Kai and virtually none of it is on her.
(I also just love that the Mossbacher marriage is saved by Mark assuming a traditionally masculine role of the protector when he defends his wife from Kai, especially since his whole arc is centered around his crisis of masculinity, between his testicle issues, finding out his father was a closeted gay man, and wrestling with his own role as a father.)
"Departures," the show's finale, is a masterclass. Of plotting, of theme, of emotions. Everything. One of the two main themes that dominates and adds complexity to the episode is that one person's self-actualization serves as a detriment to another. Tanya realizing that she shouldn't have transactional relationships is a promising breakthrough and moment of personal growth for her on its own, but it comes at the expense of her not helping Belinda start her business. And consequently, Belinda discovering that she doesn't need to take on so much emotional labor for the hotel guests is great, but maybe if that didn't happen, she could've advised Rachel not to commit to a marriage that's crushing her soul. Rachel's decision bleeds into the next overriding theme of the season's conclusion: people choosing what's easy over what's right (which we also see when Paula ultimately comes to terms with the fact that the Mossbachers are her people).
Tanya and Rachel's conclusions are the ones that hit the hardest for me. The former hurts so much because she felt like the most endearing and least monstrous hotel guest of the ensemble. When it turns out that the rich will perpetually be who they are, it stings that much more because we were hoping that wouldn't be the case for her. Ditto Rachel, whose arc is enthralling mostly due to Alexandra Daddario's performance. Daddario is an actress who has mostly been stuck playing Hot Girl With Big Boobs roles, so it was a surprise to see her give such a layered turn here. Rachel may not be the person who ends up dead in a box at the end, but in a way she chooses a different kind of death.
Speaking of dead people in boxes...if there's a quibble I have with the show it's that I wonder if the dead body mystery should've been excised altogether. Granted, I found the conclusion of Armond being the one who gets killed at the hands of Shane satisfying narratively. Not only does it feel like a perfect capper to the chest-puffing back and forth the two of them were embroiled in throughout the season, but it also fits into to the pattern of all of the guests coming away from this week with their lives essentially returning to the status quo, while all of the staff characters end up with tragic fates. But the tease of the coffin in the first episode feels like something out of show in the Big Little Lies milieu that subsequently caused some people to focus too much on that aspect miss out on the other richness this world had to offer.
One criticism I cannot abide by, however, is the charge that the show doesn't have anything interesting or new to say. Judging from the previous 14 paragraphs I wrote, obviously I disagree with the "interesting" part of that claim. As far as the "new" goes: The shows criticizing the rich that we get are often in the vein of Succession, painting the upper class as douchebags of the highest order, living on a completely different planet than the rest of the word. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. Succession is the best show on television. But The White Lotus is the first show I've seen that really examines this new strata that's come to prominence in the last decade and a half, which is the rich liberal who doesn't think they're a part of the problem. White uses lots of in-the-moment terminology in the series -- "triggered," "cucked," #MeToo -- and it's clear he's having fun with it, but he's also commenting on the fact that all of the political things that get discussed are just abstract ideas to these people. Olivia may accuse her mother's tech company of "dismantling the social fabric," but at the end of the day, she's unwilling to acknowledge or give up the privilege she holds. That it's characters are unaware of or deliberately obtuse about the power they wield might be the savviest thing about this terrific show.
