I keep disagreeing with bad things people say about the new White Lotus. HBO’s resort-panic melodrama beat the anthology curse with its second season, all sex and Sicily and a funny yacht massacre. There’s another big boat in these Thailand episodes, plus an escalation of violence toward a yet-unidentified gunman. I’ve read complaints that creator Mike White is repeating himself: Another moral-decay dad with a dork son, another helpful employee healer, more lonely luxury.
This past Sunday ended on a hell of a tease, various main characters arranging themselves for various club-night cuckoldries. Next week’s episode could enter the proud lineage of HBO Party Hours, stretching from Sopranos barbecues through Game of Thrones weddings to the epic teen drugdance in We Are Who We Are. (Episode Four, watch immediately if you haven’t.) Or it might not. Viewers could tune out. Buzzy anthologies die quickly, or hibernate for years until HBO reboots with a new writer.
I already like Lotus 3, though. Like the shifting alliances in the girl-group, like Walton Goggins’ bald spot and Aimee Lou Wood’s teeth, like Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey doin’ Bi-yig Suth’n Ayex-Sense while their children sound like white kids from nowhere. I don’t enjoy that Natasha Rothwell’s plotline is Remember The Stuff That Happened?? But I’m into her collision course with fellow returning castmate Jon Gries. Jon Gries! Four years ago, he was a charming half-dead love interest. Now it’s like he became the cancer, all the money in the world leeching him into a vampire of the tropics.
Could be I’m just a cheap date for this material. Sun, fun, big performances, ambient boobdick. And there’s a smart trick White employs to keep Lotus watchable even when it’s repetitive. The trick, I swear, is repetition. Every episode marks one day in the hotel’s life, tracking characters from breakfast buffets to evening entertainment. The structure isn’t set in stone. Some episodes pick up late at night, most characters sleeping while insomniacs putter moodily or share secret smooches. And this Full Moon Festival is a legitimate two-parter. Departures from the usual narrative rhythm are noticeable, however, because White Lotus has a usual rhythm. Even when subplots tread water — Young Girlfriend Begs Old Boyfriend to Please Let Her In, Nice Employees Flirt Nicely — there’s a sense of forward progression. Call it earthly momentum. The sun beats down, the stars come out. Pajamas become swimwear become suppertime florals. Behavior slackens from excess lubrication. People get tired or wired.
This sounds simple — Time Passes — but I worry TV shows have forgotten simple things. Long ago, television was all rhythm. Sitcoms had laugh tracks, procedurals had clues, commercial breaks, time slots. That was another world, worse for many obvious reasons, better only because the streaming era invented so many new problems. One unwatchable fact with a lot of TV now is the lingering formlessness. Comedy episodes amble towards forty minutes. Big-budget dramas drowse past an hour. Everyone understands Netflix Bloat, that pointless nothing feeling from a midseason episode where gigantic production design and indifferent performances background a go-nowhere plot.
Mike White came up in the old world, staffing on Dawson’s Creek and Freaks & Geeks before creating a shortlived drama and a shortlived sitcom. He was also doing indie films, because some individuals are talented, but White Lotus is less Sundance than the WB. Does White worry about the formlessness problem? On paper, this show is people relaxing. Constructing a murder mystery adds macro-tension. A day-to-night routine gives him a strong foundation for — well, whatever, really. Every third act is nighttime, and an empty bed waiting to be filled. Every new arrival sets a ticking clock to an eventual departure.
Twenty years ago, while White was producing forgotten Fox shows, a couple famous series adopted their own daily rhythm. Deadwood observed mining-camp malcontents from dawn past dusk, with some inevitable midnight shenanigans because almost everyone worked in a tavern. Lost was more famous for hopping between timelines, but its present-day was anchored in the castaways’ struggles through their early weeks after a plane crash. White Lotus is lighter than either drama, yet I think it’s merging both instincts: The mysterious island and the nomad community, the flashforward tease alongside a Statement About American Capitalism. Shows influenced by Deadwood and Lost tend to aim big with themes or vast settings while missing critical textures. To a fault, White Lotus is all texture: monkeys out the window, athleisure, how many whiskeys Dad has before dinnertime, lunch dates, evening assignations.
White’s a reality-show guy, too, who has literally lived inside The Amazing Race and Survivor. Those competitions depends on formulas — challenge, complication, elimination — while the glossy Bravo lifestyle soaps tune their clocks around packed social calendars (dinners, galas, bad-idea weekend getaways). White Lotus shares some Below Deck DNA, to the point that I wonder if a future shake-up season could focus entirely on one White Lotus hotel’s staff.
Maybe not. White certainly recognizes the gaudy vacation-porn appeal of his Luxury Sads. The impending finale promises his hugest-ever bullet climax, and I don’t know how you go bigger than an active shooter. A fourth season could be radically different or just more gigantic. (Some rich people do have spaceships.) White Lotus remains an absolute 2020s TV creation, this expensive globetrotting personal-expression soap opera, and there are so many ways 2020s TV can go wrong. What compels me forward are its old-fashioned virtues. Every twenty minutes or so, a meal forces the characters to sit down together. They might feel trapped, might fear or despise the people they’re sitting next to. They may, in fact, want to kill someone. But you gotta eat.