“Sorry That Chaise Is Taken. But You’re A Very Pretty Man”: A Thread for White Lotus on HBOMax

Discuss!

Give Jennifer Coolidge the Emmy for this scene alone #WhiteLotus pic.twitter.com/mfZWREXu6w

— Bimini Bon (Bo)ulash ✨ (@BoBayerl) August 16, 2021

I'm currently watching this with another board member and, let me just say, I have a lot to dissect, since I was born and raised in Hawai'i, am part Native Hawaiian, still live here, and used to work in the tourism industry.

I'm only on episode 2, but there's so much going on in this show. I'm not sure if I support the music choices yet or not.

Hopefully this is a link to where the WL discussion starts in the Enlightened thread.

itt we talk about Enlightened on HBO, seasons 1-1000000

this is v minor but when quinn decided to sleep on the beach i was like “he is def too dumb to understand tides” and i love that the show delivered that to me via his phone being washed out to sea <3

still mind-blown that jennifer coolidges terminally ill “BLM” fuckbuddy is uncle rico from napoleon dynamite

also on an acting level the guy who plays shane is insanely good bc he seriously feels like a person i have met in life

What was fun about him is that he’s mostly just played super nice guys in the past and now it’s har to imagine that.

still mind-blown that jennifer coolidges terminally ill “BLM” fuckbuddy is uncle rico from napoleon dynamite

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, August 17, 2021 1:10 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I couldn't stop thinking about how much this guy looks like Jonathan Richman.

I also saw Monster Squad and the episode of X-Files he was in over the last several days so this has been a veritable Gries Week for me.

The whole Black Lives Matter joke was pretty silly but pretty hilarious

Also probably based on at least one real incident https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/oregon-fires-antifa-rumors

“Ok we gotta clear this up now,” said one person on Facebook alongside a Bureau of Land Management announcement of area closures. “Blm does NOT stand for Black lives matter in this in reference to the fires.”

The whole Black Lives Matter joke was pretty silly but pretty hilarious

I disagree, I thought it was a rare moment when they relaxed into a more "sitcom-style" joke that wasn't up to the level of the show!

Eh, it might not have been entirely necessary but it was in keeping with the theme of 'well-meaning' privileged liberalism.

Agreed, and to me it wasn't delivered like a sitcom joke. Coolidge's character was the right type to do that sort of thing- hearing something and assuming the meaning without questioning that assumption, and even telling other people about it before verifying (a familiar quirk). And to that point it was something that she brought up very casually in conversations, which made it a little funnier too. AKA It was done believably imo.

yeah it’s a character note for Coolidge, not a rimshot gag for the audience

exactly.

Glad it landed for you guys

i mean she’s in a permanent haze of painkillers etc! she’s not really operating on a normal plane of existence

Maybe now HBO will let Mike White make that Jennifer Coolidge show he talked about

huh, in the end i hated this!

Why’s that

it seemed focused on the perspective of the occupier as opposed to the occupied and had very little to add of interest in its exploration of the subject. it abused and discarded its working class characters with utter disregard. the arcs of every white character were regressive, poorly considered, unsatisfying and ultimately very very stupidly. it rewarded terrible strawmen characters with closure and pathos and wrote off the secondary cast members as cannon fodder. it grew bored with subtlety and swapped subtext and text in episode four/five and never looked back. it gawked at local scenery and people with the same eyes as a tourist and the same level of insight. the pacing was bad: every storyline came to a head at the same time and muddled into a froth of anxiety and unlikely actions. it veered between exceedingly predictable, dragging a red herring and forcing its hand to move the plot forward.

i'm not gonna lie, it had me in the first half with the grotesque character studies, exploration of service industry strata and the quality acting. ultimately though it wasn't about much of anything but "premium HBO drama fumbles with shifting culture" and i'm sorry i sat through it.

so you're saying there's a chance

i'll probably watch s2 like a doofus

some of what you're saying forks is just up to taste but the idea that it focused on the occupiers/white ppl as opposed to the occupied or non-white subjects was a point that alex jung made in a tweet that mike white responded to in his vulture interview so it seems pertinent. ultimately it's a show that sets out to satirize white culture, white people & how they think/talk about and interact w/ people of color, privilege etc & i think it's legitimate to do that by centering the white characters (as objects of derision, it should be noted). to satirize white culture to the degree that the show does -- coming at it from different angles and storylines -- it prob ultimately does need to center the white characters over the non-white characters they interact with. mike white made this point kinda defensively in the interview but i think it's okay that he picked apart whiteness w/ a show that is largely made up of white characters. i had some quibbles in terms of which storylines it focused on over others and the points it ultimately really wanted to make but as a piece of satire i thought it was really funny.

i also disagree w/ whether it gave terrible strawmen characters closure and pathos and treated secondary cast members as cannon fodder.. i don't read the culmination of the shane/rachel storyline as closure or having pathos. it's obvious that their marriage is destined to fail and that she's a fool for returning to him. the family of 4 comes together by the end but their 16 year old kid runs away, kinda the opposite of closure. armond dies by being stabbed by his enemy after shitting in suitcase while high on ketamine -- i'm not sure there's much pathos there. tanya goes out like a fool, and in turn belinda gets the closest thing i can think of in terms of closure and pathos -- telling off a random white stranger and shutting the door in her face. we never see kai after he runs out of the hotel, which i thought was interesting, and i think there could've been more exploration of what happens to him after being arrested, but the show also never leaves the hotel (aside from the few airport scenes) so i think some of that decision has to be chalked up to the constraints of the show (which was really the constraints of filming during covid as opposed to a purely creative constraint).

The show is also imo an indictment of the viewer, of the person sitting on their couch watching a premium cable show and to some extent luxuriating in the lush scenery and chill vibe like a vacation-by-proxy. It's about the rich people maxing and relaxing and other people's misery and I think it gets a lot of mileage out of getting us to, in equal measure, identify with and be repulsed by their 'plights'. I have seen the enemy and it is us, etc. There were logistical concerns that planted the production squarely in the resort but it would've been a whole different show if, for instance, it actually followed Kai home to oversee his day-to-day activities. The White Lotus guests don't really give a shit about that (and are actively trying to avoid any real-world concerns) and we're implicated in that lack of concern.

'maxing and relaxing in other people's misery'

i think it's legitimate to do that by centering the white characters (as objects of derision, it should be noted).

but not only as objects of derision

belinda gets the closest thing i can think of in terms of closure and pathos -- telling off a random white stranger and shutting the door in her face

she also gets a big wad of money

it's obvious that their marriage is destined to fail and that she's a fool for returning to him.

this is definitely not obvious to me

well, i don't think she's a fool for not breaking off her marriage after 5 days or whatever. but i think she has a legitimate realization as to why the marriage is not going to work for her, the kind that you can bury for some time but eventually splits you apart

do we know that belinda takes the money? i can't remember but i feel like it's left ambiguous. we know she puts it in the drawer at the spa front desk but i don't think we see her take it out

I think that's enough to assume she takes it? Seemed like, even then, she's not going to turn down what she can get. Unless I assumed wrong.

I was really curious how much money that was...just enough to be insulting, but not enough to start a business with?

Part of what Coolidge’s character was offering her was money. Most of it was support, belief and affirmation, all of which were to be ongoing. An envelope of loose notes does not contain that.

I would not say Belinda was particularly interested in whether Tonya believed in her or affirmed her, I think she mostly wanted the money!

Yeah agreed. Then with Rachel there was at first a vibe of "well, maybe this crying white lady will work out better than the last one", before "nah, it's not worth it".

I would not say Belinda was particularly interested in whether Tonya believed in her or affirmed her, I think she mostly wanted the money!

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, August 18, 2021 12:28 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I agree with this, but it was also more than just cold hard cash. Tanya was a potential *investor* who probably could have helped get the business off the ground in other ways (including, perhaps, by attracting other investors)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyZVIAfhyM

Yes, I meant financial support as an investor, and affirmation both personal and professional. She has no hope of the latter working in an environment where repeat customers cannot exist.

I really disagree with your assessment forks, I think it's a more powerful statement because all the characters had pathos, they weren't just evil strawmen but at the end of the day they still leave the same wreckage in their wake whether they were "good" or well meaning in some ways

Also I took the ending as just a commentary that yes, the rich leisure class never has to pay for what it's done, which *gestures at the world*

I mean sure, but that seems a really on-the-nose message for a show that made stabs at being notably more subtle and complex for almost three hours before it opted to have lines like "what do you expect me to do, give away all my money" lead to wannabe-antifa liberal arts study girl arranging for her summer fling to rob the joint.
I'm pretty sure i _got_ what White was going for here but I found his conclusions to be insufficiently astringent and ultimately not differing much from in perspective and aim from the culture he was critiquing. The call was coming from inside the room as it were.

most damningly, it's had as much staying power in my mind as The Flight Attendant (which incidentally had similar commentary about service industry serfdom without the pretension and similarly devolved). once it showed its hand fully, white lotus didn't give me much to think about.

of course you shouldn't kill people, take their land, and make them dance. that's bad.

this is a fantastic show.

ums is otm. what separates people with power from those who don't have power in this show is whether you have to face consequences for your actions. in the end, armond is dead and kai is in jail. lani may have lost her job -- we don't see her at all after she gives birth in the office. shane, meanwhile, is on the plane home even though he stabbed someone. and paula never takes responsibility for setting up kai.

paula is a really interesting character because her resentment of the family is very understandable. and she does have a foot in both worlds--but i think she misrecognizes the privilege she does have, and it is notable that the "solution" she offers to kai is one that will hurt him more than olivia's family. i was disappointed she didn't own up to her role in the robbery. i don't know if that could have helped kai, but it might have.

paula misundersatnds a lot, really. (tbf she is only 20). like, she sses that olivia wanted to get close to her guy, but she doesnt' see that the only reason she was drawn to do that is to get closer to *her*. i don't know if it the attraction is sexual, but olivia loves paula in a way that isn't reciprocated. the cynicism of the characters means these aren't feelings they could even discuss frankly even if they wanted to.

all of the privileged characters are oblivious though -- they never need to look reality in the face. rachel is another one of these borderline characters. as with paula, in the end she chooses to live in the cocoon of wealth, despite her reservations. i guess the idea is that it's really hard to throw away this kind of luxury, the luxury of carelessness, even though it is a condition that over time erodes the mind and spirit (look at jocelyn)

i read Rachel's return to Shane just through a lens of total cynicism, like she had this awakening to the reality of what she signed up for, recoiled, but then calculated that she'd be insane to prioritize intangible things like dignity and authenticity over money, status, power over others (even if she will never have them in the context of her marriage)

Ultimately I didn't love the series in part because the plot eventually forces all the characters to fall sharply on one side of the have/have-not line. I mean, that is probably totally accurate for a place like that. But it deprives the commentary of some depth and nuance. It was damn pretty to look at though.

she sses that olivia wanted to get close to her guy, but she doesnt' see that the only reason she was drawn to do that is to get closer to *her*. i don't know if it the attraction is sexual, but olivia loves paula in a way that isn't reciprocated. the cynicism of the characters means these aren't feelings they could even discuss frankly even if they wanted to.

I think you're giving Olivia too much credit - she idealizes Paula as an exotic other and uses their friendship as a tool to give some cred to the self-righteousness and condescension she throws at her family and their wealthy milieu. When they talk about Olivia wanting whatever Paula has, and then when she hits on Kai, I think it underscores that she doesn't actually care about Paula too deeply beyond that function. She likes her when she (Olivia) has the power but rushes in to reassert her dominance (or pout at the failure to do so) when Paula achieves something that is beyond Olivia.

Of course genuine friendships can still evolve out of weird power dynamics like that so I'd say it's otm that their cynicism is the barrier - absent that, could see them working through that shit and having something more genuine. also you could certainly read Paula's relationship with Kai as Paula herself enacting that exoticized other thing, like just her way of asserting that she's not really like all these other pampered white guests. Her ultimate plan, pushing Kai to steal the jewelry, supports that read, let alone that she takes no action to implicate herself

she idealizes Paula as an exotic other and uses their friendship as a tool to give some cred to the self-righteousness and condescension she throws at her family and their wealthy milieu.

This is what Paula accuses Olivia of but for some reason I don’t think it’s really true. If it was, I think Olivia would have been defensive or apologetic when called out but she just seems confused. And at the very end, when she turns toward her in bed, I just feel like her biggest anxiety in that moment is losing her friend.

I am not saying that Olivia is a good person. She is cynical and opportunistic and there is a way in which she uses Paula for “cred” with her family. But I think there is also a deeper attraction there. And I don’t think going after Kai was about taking something from Paula, it seemed like a classic homosocial triangle.

In the end, not an important part of the show, really. But I think it shows that deeper feelings between people can complicate these clean divisions based on social and economic power.

parker posey + jason isaacs = inject it directly into my veins please & thank u

More new season 3 cast members announced today - Sarah Catherine Hook, Sam Nivola, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Aimee Lou Wood. But they had me at Walton Goggins!

I always get Jason Isaacs confused with Julian Sands (RIP), who would have also worked.

In Harry Potter for sure. In other shoes I get him confused with other people. The internet seems to suggest people confuse him with Jon Hamm but I don't really see that. Maybe a bit of Clive Owen. I'm not sure.

Would have loved to see Meghann Fahy win the Emmy, but can't be mad at Coolidge winning!

The White Lotus drops Miloš Biković after Ukraine accuses actor of supporting Russian invasion

Details of the season are being kept under wraps, but according to Deadline, Biković was expected to play the "small recurring role of Russian Valentin, a flirtatious yogi and the hotel's Life Enhancement Mentor."

they should’ve kept him for a 5 min cameo, then some guest asks “oh, where’s valentin?” “didn’t you know? he got drafted.”

there's a lot of good phone stuff in jurassic park 3 if you're into that

Man, S02 still haunts me

https://rave.dj/Th-8o_w_m9-Dag

Turns out S3 of “Hacks” has a few instances of “phone stuff” that goes above & beyond the “phone stuff” I complained about in this show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwQRkOK5KC4

Already renewed for a S4 too!

Thoughts on s3e1?

I ain’t got much yet. White really isn’t interested in varying the formula at all. That said, the setup is intriguing enough, as always.

Is it one episode at a time? I saw and liked S2 but still haven't seen S1, should I see S1 before we start S3?

S1 is definitely worth watching

Oh yes, definitely watch s1. While the seasons are relatively self-contained, s3 is already referencing thing from s1, so it might be worth it even for background.

There was a lot of awkward expositional dialogue in the first episode, but the cast seems good.
Schwarzenegger Jr so immediately, viscerally hatable I'm already worried he will be redeemed

I tried S1 of this recently but had to bail. I watched into the third episode because the flat tone of it was intriguing, but that quickly gave way to a sense of 'oh, it is just a bunch of privileged people being awful', which is obviously a time-honoured telly tradition but also, nah.

That's why I didn't watch the first season, but I really liked the second season.

There's an added bonus to the "rich people are awful": the locales are so scrumptiously photographed that you can't help but be wishing your next vacation was at a White Lotus (thus putting the viewer in the sightline of the satire)

I think my issue was that the satire was so thinly spread it didn't feel like satire at all. It felt like rich people porn. Which again, time honoured and all that but my feeling when watching wasn't 'I secretly wish I was there and oh, aren't we awful' but more like Jamie Lee Curtis driving her car into the lounge.

The first season turns a corner about halfway through. IMO

I think the selling point to me is the staff of the resort and the people who have been swept up into the orbit of the moneyed, like last season's plucky assistant and, it seems, the character played by Aimee Lou Wood from Sex Education. I'm already wondering what the deal there is, how she ended up at the resort with Walton Goggins' character, and what that dynamic is going to look like because they both have such unique screen presences

tbh though, I'm just here for the different remixes of the theme song each season

Yeah. The satire stays at a low simmer to make the viewer complicit with the hideous assholes before turning up the heat.

xp

funny to see Christian Friedel from The Zone of Interest and The White Ribbon in this

and Babylon Berlin!

My husband tells me that gay social media is going crazy over the Schwarzenegger (and siblings) stuff.

First episode was remarkably efficient at setting so many things up. Great writing, great cast, great little character beats that tell us just enough but still all we need to know (so far). I was really impressed and, per the "Severance" discussion (#onethread), utterly confident Mike White is going to pull this off (as much as I don't want any sibling incest in this season). Maybe because there is no central mystery in these shows, just a bunch of mysterious stuff surrounding these rich (in both sense) character studies?

Well, and the seasonal murder mystery.

I did feel some sense of diminishing returns from first episode but plenty of time for it to heat up. I was most immediately interested in the Walter Groggins-ALW relationship, and great to have Parker Posey and Jason Isaacs.

xpost Is the murder mystery really central? Like I said, I've only seen S2 but don't recall any real interest in a who-done-it/who-died. I just figured it was a winking hook, like killing Kenny in South Park or ... didn't Six Feet Under (never saw it) start with a weekly death?

But yeah, in terms of the characters, any one of them (at least as of the first episode) is like a ticking time bomb ready to explode into who knows what. I could see each one revealed to be the total opposite of what we think of them. Or, sure, I could also see half of them murdering someone. It's all very clever and sneaky, like a meta Agatha Christie where motives and messed up relationships matter more than any actual murder.

I have nothing to contribute except to say that it's really fun to imitate Parker Posey's accent

Apparently it's her effort to fuse a Southern accent with a snobby mid-Atlantic accent? Def. quirky!

Ha, I guess there is a lot of online talk about her accent and Jason Isaac's accent, and whether they are terrible? Be funny if that became a plot point, I love it when shows and movies do that, though they rarely do it. Like, Cronenberg's "eXistenZ," I remember watching that and wondering what was up with all the off accents, and then it becomes important! Or Ryan Phillippe's Scottish accent in "Gosford Park."

Posey is originally from Mississippi, so she has a natural Southern accent, though it may not be a good North Carolina accent.

Jason Isaacs claims it's the very specific accent of Durham NC

https://www.eonline.com/news/1413614/white-lotus-season-3-jason-isaacs-and-parker-poseys-odd-southern-accents-explained

Eh, if he says so.

I can't say if it's accurate or not, but I did work on a project once with a contractor from North Carolina and that was damn near his exact accent! It was uncanny when I first heard Issacs talk.

Really enjoyed this, but I’m also living though one of the UK’s most dismal Februarys ever, so I’ll take whatever glamour and sun I can.

As ever, everyone except Natasha Rothwell is an asshole and that’s fine, although these assholes feel slightly assholier than Season 2’s. The balance wasn’t quite right for me, but it’s only the first episode, and White is usually skilled at getting the balance right without tipping into punishing nihilism. We’ll see!

I think it was a good move to change the intro setup this time round - a live shooter, rather than a corpse, instantly made things more tense than usual.

Posey’s daughter has a weirdly familiar face but I haven’t seen anything on her IMDB page.

xposts Fun fact, I was born in Durham. I don't have an accent, though, and anything I attempted would be some broad deep south Alabama-y variation on Posey's. Both she and Isaacs are leaning into the Daniel Craig/Col. Sanders in "Knives Out" kind of ham, which is fun. Wonder what legit southerner Goggins thinks of these poseurs, lol.

As ever, everyone except Natasha Rothwell is an asshole and that’s fine, although these assholes feel slightly assholier than Season 2’s.

I agree they maybe seem like bigger assholes than S2, which makes me wonder how or if our perceptions will shift. Carrie Coon, for example, definitely seems cut from a different cloth than her cohort. And Goggins, there seems to be a reason for his grouchiness.

I can't believe how slow I was in twigging who other-girl-at-the-bar's LBH boyfriend was.

Funny how he keeps showing up

The “black lives matter” thing is still the funniest bit the shows ever done.

Taking bets for who the active shooter turns out to be

Isaacs is trying for a specific North Carolina regional accent that I recognize, but he's not quite nailing it (one episode in obv)

Posey is doing something else entirely, with her broad Southern accent and WASPy mannerisms cranked up to 11 by medicated loopiness. When I first heard her I joked "Nobody from NC talks like that, only people from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, or some parts of Virginia." #narcissismofsmalldifferences lol

Both are recognizable as real types of people that I come into contact with.

I suppose it's conceivable that someone from another southern state could move to North Carolina

The active shooter thing could even be misdirection. It could be security shooting at a tiger, for all we know.

Is the murder mystery really central? Like I said, I've only seen S2 but don't recall any real interest in a who-done-it/who-died.

There's a really good Fresh Air interview with Mike White after season two where he says that basically HBO gives him a ton of freedom as long as he sets up a mystery in the first few minutes. (And after Enlightened was cancelled, I'm sure he was relieved to find a convention that lets him write his kind of relationship stories with a bigger safety net.)