The highest compliment I can pay this season of The White Lotus is this: When Tim Ratliff opened this episode by blowing his brains out, I bought it. When his wife Victoria discovered his body and began screaming in grief and agony, I bought it. When Piper, their daughter, raced in to see what was the matter only to be devastated in turn, I bought it. I fully believed that what was once a sort of low-effort wealth comedy had become a tragedy.

What’s more, I believed that writer-director Mike White was perfectly capable of pulling the trigger, so to speak — not just in general, not just in the finale, but right now, at the start of Episode 6, with three full hours of TV ahead of us before the closing credits roll on the season. I was fully on board with the idea that not only was White capable of taking away a main character and making it really hurt — the previous deaths on the show came at the end of what amounted to gross-out comedy sequences — but that he’d do so abruptly and unexpectedly enough for it to come as a genuine shock. I didn’t see it coming, but I didn’t see Sam Rockwell’s monologue or Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s amazing new theme music coming either. 

Now, it turns out that this is only a morbid fantasy in Tim’s head as he thinks through the ramifications of killing himself and letting his beloved family find him like that. But the tsunami dream from earlier in the season was just that, a dream, and its discomfiting power has lingered all season long. The physical stakes in this week’s opening scene turn out to be illusory, but the emotional stakes are real, and high.

But you probably just wanna talk about the incest, don’t you. You’re incorrigible.

I reviewed this week’s terrific episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

It’s wonderful, is what it is. Much of it is bathed in red and green light, as is the ladies’ night back on the mainland. As such, it fits right into one of my favorite microgenres: the New Lurid. These are stories that use saturated colors (especially red), explicit sexuality, outbursts of disturbing violence, and an unhealthy fixation on propagating the tangled family line, all as a way of satirizing and excoriating the wealthy. Think of it as Saltburn-core. The brazenly sexual vibe, the vivid colors, the incest, and — in a separate storyline that’s intercut with the rest as if providing commentary — Victoria Ratliff’s wildly bigoted and reactionary response to Piper’s desire to throw away her heritage to seriously study Buddhism — nearly all the ingredients are in place.

But there’s a gun that doesn’t go off, and it’s, well, the guns that don’t go off. Rick’s friend gives him a gun at Rick’s request, but Rick is too busy being dumbfounded by his pal’s tale of erotic transfiguration to do much with it just yet. Tim refuses to return his stolen gun, but is prevented from using it on himself — while wearing a Duke t-shirt, one of the most mean-spirited and hilarious gags in this show’s history — by Victoria, who unwittingly interrupts him just as he’s mustered the strength to pull the trigger. Of course we know bullets will fly by the end of the season, but so far they’re still chambered.

My admiration for this show, on the other hand, is ricocheting all over the room. What a fuckin’ feast this episode is: sleazy, scary, riveting, written in a way that takes real risks in exposing the filmmaker’s understanding of what desire is and what it can do, with that masterful monologue as the centerpiece and incest as a closer.

I reviwed this week’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

I don’t want to give the impression that this isn’t a funny show, because it very much is. (Much funnier than the seasons that felt more like a comedy, imo.) Tim does a big comical take to the camera at one point that’s only slightly more subtle than the one Paul Rudd does in Wet Hot American Summer. Belinda and Greg have a slow-motion staredown that clearly has unpleasant implications for Belinda, but which still amounts to a couple of people at a luxury resort reenacting the Avon Barksdale/Lt. Daniels bit from The Wire. Parker Posey and her anesthetized accent are a scream. So is Aimee-Lou Wood, who along with Belinda is basically the only person you actually want to see have a good time at this place. There’s a zoom-in on the Ratliffs walking like the Reservoir Dogs for crying out loud. 

But it’s been a while since I’ve watched a show this suffused with an all-encompassing, omnipresent sense that Something Bad is going on. It reminds me of Mad Men Season 5, an experiment in just how freaked out a show about rich people completely insulated from lasting consequences by money can make you feel on an episode-by-episode basis. And now the boat’s sailing off, and Rick’s on his way to Bangkok, and the trio are out partying, and the pink moon gonna get ye all. 

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

The thing to understand about this season, it seems, is that it’s no longer a satire. It’s a drama with satirical elements. It’s darker. It’s weirder. It’s more serious. It does dream sequences about tsunamis. It’s not Succession anymore, it’s Mad Men. It may not seem like it, but the gulf between the effects of those styles of writing and directing is cavernous. It’s not that there’s no longer room for humor — watching the stars of Fallout and The Zone of Interest compete to properly pronounce Sritala’s last name is funny, I don’t care who ya are — but it’s not the focus. The focus is deeper.

I get the impression that what is at the very least a vocal minority of White Lotus fans feel, therefore, that the show is slipping. I don’t know what people used to see in it that I didn’t, and I don’t know what I’m seeing in it now that people aren’t, but if you’d hid the title of the show, changed the name of the hotel, and simply screened these first three episodes for me, the only way I’d be able to tell it’s the same series from the same filmmaker is the presence of Greg and Belinda. Otherwise I simply would not have believed you. I mean, that opening scene alone is more interesting than anything that happened in the first two seasons by a comfortable margin. Emotionally, tonally, visually, aurally, it feels like a different show. Maybe that’s why people who were happy with what they’d been getting have soured on it a bit, but it sure is sweet to me. The episode closes with Victoria asking a pilled-out Tim “Is something going on?” The answer, in every sense, is yes.

I wrote about this weekend’s The White Lotus for Decider.

There’s something in the water. Or someone. That’s the sensation the opening shot of this episode of The White Lotus gives us: We’re bobbing up and down on the ocean, dipping beneath the waves and then rising up again, gazing at the dark shore through the eyes of…no one, as it turns out. There’s no one out there spying on the hotel and its patrons — no one except creator-writer-director Mike White and his camera. Somehow, that’s even creepier. 

In lingering shots like this one, or the long interstitials between scenes showing us the flora and fauna and statues that surround the action, White creates the sense that there’s some animating spirit behind the camera, an unknown intelligence observing the events as they unfold for reasons we cannot understand. What’s more, these lovely, eerie shots routinely whisk us away from the world of these rich, egotistical assholes, instead showing us a world where their dreams and schemes mean nothing. It’s a mesmerizing effect, one the show has utilized in the past but never nearly this well.

The White Lotus feels like a more serious show now than it has in the past, too. Or I dunno, maybe it feels exactly the same and I’m projecting because I like this season more than the others so far. But from where I’m sitting it now comes across like a drama with the occasional funny moment, rather than a comedy that gets serious every once in a while. It seems like a minor distinction, but it makes all the difference in the world for the characters: In a comedy their primary function is to deliver a punchline every 30 seconds or so, with other considerations secondary. In this season, I really feel like I’m watching people’s lives unfold, weird as those lives may be.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

The theme song for The White Lotus is, or was, musical cilantro. Created by Cristobal Tapia de Veer for writer-director-creator Mike White’s anthology series’ first season, then tweaked in a Mediterranean direction for Season 2, it is, or was, chirpy and screechy and unlike anything else on television. To many people, it’s the banger theme music of the decade. To my ears, it was basically unlistenable. 

In this sense, the theme matched the show it accompanied. The White Lotus is, or was, a cheaply cathartic satire of the rich and useless, inviting you to pull up a chair and have your mind blown by the fact that wealthy, attractive people are often, get this, huge assholes. (Glad you were sitting down, aren’t you?) The beautiful resort-hotel settings — not to mention White’s obvious, infectious, seemingly out-of-character love of filming nature, especially water — distinguish it somewhat from your average anti-capitalist dramedy, but it’s still basically just Succession: Hawaii Nights.

When what to my wondering ears should appear but a whole new theme song! It’s less abrasive, and I suppose fans of the original, uh, “melody” will miss it, but it’s just as propulsive, and its ominous, bassy synth washes toward the end suggest both depth and menace. Based on this initial episode, the show may be following suit. It’s weird to say a filmmaker as accomplished and acclaimed as White has finally found his sea legs, but with this particular project it may well be the case. 

I’m covering The White Lotus‘s third season for Decider starting with my review of the season premiere. For the first time, I really liked it!

9. Interview With the Vampire

“Home Is Where You’re Happy” by Charles Manson

“Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.” Controversial, Daniel Molloy! The conductor of this vampire drama’s titular interview, played by Eric Bogosian, has very little patience for the bloodsucker in question, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and even less for Louis’s psychotic, pubescent protégé, the teenage vampire Claudia. It’s her Molloy compares to Manson, the cult leader who defined the death of the Age of Aquarius … and much to my everlasting surprise, it’s Manson who soundtracks the end of this episode. Molloy is right: Manson could be a talented songwriter in very limited doses, as his buoyant ode to personal freedom, “Home Is Where You’re Happy,” makes clear. It’s just hard to hear that happiness when you recall the fate of Sharon Tate, which is what makes the song a strong choice for the soundtrack of a show about magnetic mass murderers, even when they’re of the supernatural variety.

I wrote about ten of the best uses of popular music on TV this year for Vulture.

Well, you’ve certainly got to give it up for Jennifer Coolidge, that’s for one thing. A lot of Coolidge fandom is that weird performative thing that all actor fandoms seem to do at this point where it’s more like you want this person to be your parent or best friend than a dude who happens to be really good at acting, but let’s put that aside, because she really is good at acting! It’s hard to convincingly play a stupid person without it devolving into a million old jokes, and Coolidge has consistently pulled that off as Tanya. This episode in particular is the ne plus ultra of the role, as Coolidge portrays Tanya’s final realization that she’s surrounded by men who intend to murder her for her money like a cocker spaniel figuring out calculus.

I reviewed the season finale of The White Lotus for Decider.

Are there dramatic moments that moved me, or comedic moments that made me laugh? Very much so! Bert’s open distress as he connects his failed family reunion with the fact that he’ll never be romantically or maternally loved again. Quentin telling Tanya that doing coke after a prolonged period of abstinence is like “riding a bike.” Jack semi-drunkenly asserting that we live at the best point in history despite all the signs to the contrary, which have been brought up by Portia primarily to burst his bubble rather than to make any kind of real point. Harper and Ethan’s grueling conversation about whether or not their marriage is dead, the tightest and hardest-hitting discussion of relatable human misery in the show’s history, I think. Ethan’s increasingly insufferable stone-faced fury at it all. The revelation that Isabella and Rocco are engaged. The genuine sexual chemistry between Valentina and Mia.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

My emotional journey with Season 2 of The White Lotus continues to take unexpected twists and turns. I’ve been entertained, bored, vaguely disdainful, but as of this week’s episode (“That’s Amore”) I’m disconcerted. Like, what if Mike White is right? What if people really are like this — all of them grasping, self-deluded, hypocritical assholes? What if my friends and loved ones are secretly like this. What if I’m secretly like this? How can I ever have a healthy, trusting relationship of any kind ever again? How can society survive???

I reviewed the fifth episode of The White Lotus Season 2 for Decider.

So it was a mixed bag, this White Lotus ep. In a way, I can’t help but admire White for trying to stuff so many different things inside that bag, and the result may have been the most entertained I’ve been by an episode this season. I just wish the results more consistently matched the ambition.

I reviewed episode four of The White Lotus Season 2 for Decider.

Let’s talk about The Godfather. More specifically, let’s talk about The White Lotus talking about The Godfather. 

The colloquy in question happens between family members Bert, Dom, and Albie and Albie’s would-be inamorata Portia, at the tail end of a Godfather-themed sightseeing tour. Portia, who hasn’t seen the movie — whether that’s writer/director/creator Mike White making a point about ignorant youth or the out-of-touch olds who would view such youth as ignorant is anyone’s guess, but you can bet a point is being made — has to get filled in on the details by Bert, who recounts the murder of Michael Corleone’s Sicilian wife Apollonia with relish. Portia, noting the replica of Apollonia’s blown-up car complete with a female mannequin inside, finds the whole thing a little tasteless for a tourist destination, which, y’know, fair. 

Here’s where things get interesting, or annoying. Bert says hey, let the place do it, the best American movie ever made was filmed here. Albie scoffs at him, then argues that the reason older men like The Godfather is because it’s a patriarchal fantasy that glorifies violence, philandering, and the loyal wives kept at home. Now pay attention to what the magician’s hands are doing: Rather than take issue with this take, both Bert and Dom agree, arguing that there’s nothing wrong with men having such fantasies.

So to sum up: When presented with Albie’s moronic argument — only a real dum-dum could watch The Godfather and conclude Francis Ford Coppola is saying “and this is fine,” not that there’s any shortage of such dum-dums — Bert and Dom, two of said dum-dums, make an equally moronic argument in return. 

Is Mike White’s point of view really that The Godfather glorifies the life of Michael freaking Corleone? Or is he simply presenting us with three characters with separate but equally stupid opinions about art? Perhaps a better question to ask is, does it matter? Either the creator of The White Lotus thinks something very dopey about a much better work of art, or he’s so intent on making the same “rich people are stupid assholes” point in different ways over and over that he’s exploring a new frontier. Not my idea of a good time on a Sunday night either way, I’m afraid.

I reviewed last night’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

I’m not one to complain about the absence of likeable characters on a television show. I mean, find me a halfway decent person on The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire or House of the Dragon or, god help you, Too Old to Die Young. The difference, I suppose, is that while all of those unlikeable characters are grasping for something larger than themselves, the unlikeable characters of The White Lotus are all on a luxury vacation. They’re annoying people who aren’t even doing anything interesting. 

Yes, I get that this is the point of the show; it’s a character study, about characters whose worst qualities only intensify over time, whose eventual epiphanies, if they come at all, only reinforce their current insipid lifestyles. None of this is artistically invalid. The problem is that all of this is easy to grasp in an episode or two. After that, you just…you need shifting sands under your feet, you know? You need crises, you need struggles, you need some kind of crescendo. Otherwise you’re just watching, I dunno, the first reel of Visconti’s The Damned on loop, with none of the descent into hell that makes the banality of evil something more than banal in the end. The White Lotus has the banality down pat. It just needs something more, is all.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

Have you enjoyed your stay at The White Lotus? No, seriously, I want to know: What did you make of the first season of writer-director Mike White’s anthology satire, about the trials and tribulations of the white upper class and their overworked, underappreciated servants at a luxury Hawaiian resort? Because here I am, filling out my comment card, and I’m just not sure what to write.

Of course I wish I loved the show. That’s easy: Don’t you wish you loved every show you watch? Particularly when you’re a TV critic who considers himself to be in the liking-things business, it’s always more fun to be over the moon for a series than to be left scratching your head. With a show as widely beloved and acclaimed as The White Lotus, that goes double.

But a part of me also wishes I hated the show. Hour-long comedy-dramas are the Coward’s Television: On a surface level they appear as character-driven and attention-demanding as your standard prestige-TV drama, but because the characters involved are joke-delivery mechanisms first and “characters” second, they are in fact neither. Unlike the people on, say, The Sopranos or Mad Men or Better Call Saul, their purpose is to be funny, which makes them a lot different than people who happen to be funny sometimes. You’ve met lots of people like the latter; people like the former don’t exist. 

But unlike, say, Succession — another widely beloved and acclaimed HBO dramedy about the rich and awful, which has somehow managed to convince the critical and awards establishment to let it have its cake (everyone telling variations of the same over-elaborate dick jokes season after season) and eat it too (sometimes characters get sad and, hey presto, Drama!) — The White Lotus tended to fall firmly enough on the black-comedy side of the spectrum to dodge that obnoxious neither-fish-nor-fowl nature. 

It took its time to get there of course, after an opening couple of hours so dry it wasn’t clear what the show was up to; and in its final episode or two it made sure to have several important female characters get really upset so you knew you were watching something real, man; but there was a sweet spot in the middle there where the assholishness and/or obsequiousness of the players just kept ratcheting up and up to such hilariously uncomfortable levels that it was hard not to root for the thing.

Which I suppose is where I find myself with Season 2, the first episode of which (“Ciao”) takes us to a new locale with an almost entirely new cast of characters, but with almost all the same thematic and comedic preoccupations. Everyone’s still rich, everyone’s still horny, everyone’s still either completely oblivious or so ostentatiously tuned into the world’s suffering that they’re oblivious to their own obliviousness, and the staff are still oh so happy to serve you.

All that throat-clearing is to say that I’m covering The White Lotus Season 2 for Decider, starting with my review of the season premiere!