The White Lotus (HBO) TV Show • Page 54

This was my favorite cast of characters and probably least favorite finale of the 3 seasons. I enjoyed this season, but it wasn't the best. That's okay though - it was still a good watch.

 

Season 2 is easily my favorite season.

I guess I'd rank Season 3 as my second favorite because I honestly don't remember a thing about Season 1. I remember enjoying it, but it had absolutely no staying power with me whatsoever.

Should probably go back and do a rewatch.

 

I didn’t love season 2 and I think that’s largely because I watched 1 and 2 back to back in the same week and I just felt super burned out on it by the end

 

Same. I prefer s1 and I watched 1 and 2 pretty close together

 

2 > 1 > 3 but like literally by a smidge, each time. I recently rewatched the first 2 so I can speak fairly confidently about my ranking.

The episodes in 3 had super good vibe but they were also so clearly building towards a catharsis that never came.

super thoughtful question. I feel like I wanted more closer, especially with the white family, and I do feel like some characters just got a little too lucky in the most predictable sense.

 

Season one is still the best because of Murray Bartlett

 

Thats the funny thing about the show. I remember loving each session but as time goes on I only remember what I recently watched. I went into s3 thinking there's no way they were gonna top s2....but now all I know/remember is the current cast.

To me the ending doesn't matter THAT much. It's the actors and characters and I thought s3 delivered.

3>2>1 (but if my brain actually brained it's probably 2>3>1... mostly because i don't remember shit from s1)

 

Season one was easily the best in terms of the writing. If I remember correctly, it was a Trump-era passion project for Mike White who was living in Hawaii at the time, who was processing his presence there among all its sociopolitical baggage. The murder mystery element in s1 was a red herring in itself for a deeper slow-burn about race/colonialism and class/wealth, and it wasn’t initially meant to return for extra seasons.

I think since then the show has sort of changed into something less personal and more of an outlet for satires built around the murder-mystery formula.

 

That scene was fucking awesome is what was the point of the scene

 

All criticism aside, White Lotus is hands down the best vibes/hanging out on TV, as that scene demonstrates. People were down on the hotel manager but I love how incidental his weirdness was to anything. Just a weird guy kinda existing around the place and then doing a beautiful cartoon scare jump at the end.

 

Also lots of media illiteracy on Twitter with people completely missing the point of Belinda's ending but that isn't shocking.

"hell yeah my girl won!" yeah there is a little more depth to it than that.

 

And Sydney Sweeney and Alexandra Daddario

 

And proto-Cameron/Saxon with unexpected Molly Shannon.

 

That would have been terrible

 

I'm honestly confused how this is the same mike white who wrote 2 enlightened seasons and the first two of this lol

 

I am 100% with you on this. Some extremely baffling choices and it really did bring down what I thought was going to be my favorite season of the show. I enjoyed watching it, but like, huh?

 

I definitely wanted more from the Ratliffe family story. I wanted some closure on what happened there. Not getting the family’s reaction to what happened in any way sucks.

Otherwise, I was fine with it outside of being sad about the deaths.

 

This would add nothing and make little sense. I really don’t know what Mike White is trying to say about spirituality or sex or identity this season.

 

Awooga (respectfully)

 

This is gonna be a bananas comparison but Mike White outing himself as just like a quasi-doofus who can stumble on some great writing but is not as deep as people think he must be reminds me of how John Vanderslice was my favorite musician for many years and I really enjoyed his records And thought he had some pretty interesting things to say and talk about through his songs. Then he relocated to Los Angeles a little bit before the pandemic and I went to several of his first shows here, including a living room show where he was just hanging out before and after with a few much younger hipster ladies. He was just kind of being annoying and silly and his much younger friends were rolling their eyes and going “Oh, John” and I sort of realized he was just an older little weird guy who just wants to microdose LSD and liked having these ladies have to take care of him and act like he was their incorrigible scamp boy. Which is fine if that’s who he is and his friends enjoy it, but it kind of killed some of the mystique I had around his music. And I sort of get shades of that when I see Mike White in the behind-the-scenes interview recapping all the storylines as shallow-ly as possible like he wasn’t taking any of it seriously at all or trying to be deep. They are just little stories for him that seemed interesting.