by Eric Blume
With the Emmy Awards ahead of us this coming weekend, it seems like a good time to start discussing a show that will likely make a killing at next year's Emmys, Mike White's HBO show The White Lotus. It's been the talk of the industry this summer, and rightfully so, as there's nothing quite like it. This intense ensemble comedy-drama-satire-tragedy is incredibly dense, so to start off the discussion, I thought I'd offer just a few of the very difficult things that writer-director Mike White accomplished with such intelligent success...
Mike White writes almost one dozen characters with full arcs. An inevitable challenge with a multi-character piece is that usually at least a few of the journeys feel limited, not fleshed out, or less involving than others. But White wrote his ten lead roles with incredible precision and great care. Every single one of them has their own odyssey, and each one changes or calcifies based on what happens during the week at that resort. Because White charts these experiences with such delicacy and depth, there's never a lull where you're hoping one scene ends so you can get to the good stuff. Everything is the good stuff.
Mike White directs those ten actors, plus others, to devastating performances. The acting fireworks are off the charts throughout this show, and you can practically smell the live-wire energy bouncing off these actors. You get the sense that every actor knew they had a great role, and moreover that the director believed in them and specifically what they were bringing to the part. Hopefully in the comments you'll offer your thoughts on who the MVPs were (for me, gun-to-the-head it's Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge), but not one player disappoints. It was particularly fun to see White bring Steve Zahn back and tap into his abililty to find complexity in comedy, and to see him continually find new, revealing layers of confidence and vulnerability in Alexandra Daddario. He even casts Molly Shannon against type for a non-comic role to deliver some juicy dramatic weight. Another director certainly wouldn't give Jake Lacey so much texture to convey in his white-jerk-guy role, and he keeps the wonderful Natasha Rothwell at just the perfect tempo of pathos for six hours.
Mike White shifts perspectives. White set up the show with protagonists from various social and economic strata, placing them in a strategic roundelay of interplay. The scene where the two young girls torture Daddario's character at the swimming area because they think she's stupid gets a harsh, final trump card when Daddario takes off her robe and descends in perfect physical power into the pool. Daddario is then later humilated in a harsh scene against Connie Britton. White launches the show with a horrific side plot of a local Hawaiian woman who feels forced to conceal her advanced pregnancy so she can get that desperately needed job, butted up against a shocked boss (Bartlett), who himself is lying his way through the days to keep his job. But part of the deep beauty of the show is that White gives everyone their absolute full due. The most privileged of this clan (the Zahn/Britton family, Coolidge, Lacey) aren't judged by White...we see their pain as well, and their pain is real and beautifully realized. But White is smart enough to place them in scene after scene where we see the perspective of the other characters who don't have that privilege, and he doesn't need to push the subtext. It all plays out naturally in these shifting perspectives, and he has the confidence and artistry to let it ride.
Mike White sticks the landing. The series' finale episode wraps up its many plot strands with scenes that satisfy dramatically in the traditional sense, but also reek of ambiguity and a linger that will continue offscreen for these characters. There's a noted evolution for everyone, but not a tidy resolution. Most of them will continue the patterns we've watched them wrestle with so painfully. But the writing and direction of these scenes is exactly what you want from these final confrontations...the language is so lean and economical, and continuously true to character. White gives us the joy we want seeing Fred Hechinger literally run from his family's deeply-entrenched privilege, but he denies us the pleasure of seeing Daddario leave Lacey. He gives Jennifer Coolidge's character a twisty surprise happiness, but one that won't last very long. Murray Bartlett gets one of the most twisted but true redemptions we've seen in a character in a long time. The final confrontation between the two young girls (beautifully performed by Sydney Sweeney and Brittany O'Grady) grimly cements their vast divide. White's accomplishment in this final episode is really pretty mind-blowing.
I could go on, because I think the show is a stone-cold masterpiece, and a genuine original. But what are your thoughts about this summer's hottest TV show? Favorite characters? Most hated characters? Favorite performances? Anything that didn't work for you? Please drop your thoughts in the comments as always...