The White Lotus

[PinkTeeth]

WOW! This is great!
I think the last episode is this weekend... really hoping they stick the landing, but so far I think this has been phenomenal.
Kudos to Mike White and the whole cast, can't say enough good about it!

[WorldForgot]

I'm hoping this can develop into an anthology style where every season we meet new guests

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(and staff?)

Something I admire about Mike White's work is its sincerity. This show iz in line with Enlightened in that the characters - though heightened - have reached boiling points that don't feel contrived. When they spill over onto the flame it breaks your heart as much as it may nudge you toward laughing. This isn't quite pity - it's wholeness of vice and insecurity.

[wilberfan]

Probably my favorite Sunday Night viewing at the moment. Well cast (particularly Jennifer Coolidge).  Scoring is superb. 

[WorldForgot]

For me, Fred Hechinger has seized the center of The Woman in the Window, Fear Street 1994, & The White Lotus. He gets at an anxiety that feels true to those years when your life is not your own.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Just watched the first ep, and it was predictably great. Alexandra Daddario is surprisingly effective as the audience surrogate. I didn't even recognize her for a while. She just always has this look like she's accurately judging everything around her.

And yes, Fred Hechinger is perfect in this.

[Reel]

Yeah, I couldn't place where I knew Daddario from in the first few eps ( she was Woody Harrelson's mistress in True Detective ) she has a really subtle performance in this. I find her eyes haunting

[Drenk]

I like Enlightened.

I couldn't stand the first episode of this.

I swear I like things. 

[Reel]

I wasn't completely in after the first ep, it took me a couple weeks to follow up on it. There's a lot of setup for a story it seems like we've seen a billion times littered with rich, unlikable characters. You gotta settle in to it a bit, like Enlightened

[Drenk]

I mostly couldn't stand the way it felt like a filmed outline. The scenes didn't feel like scenes. It was plot delivery upon plot delivery, setting up characters in the most heavy handed way possible. It barely cared to film the hotel. No sense of space.

A perfectly crafted series to watch braindead after work.

I'm sure it gets better. And I've been waiting for a new Mike White show. So I'll keep watching.

[WorldForgot]

It was plot delivery upon plot delivery, setting up characters in the most heavy handed way possible.

A perfectly crafted series to watch braindead after work.

My impression of its script iz that there's a dynamic something like the combination of this -- maybe after ep 1 you'll find this more to be the case, but I think there's less "plot" and more "bits." Like character work and dialogue usurps "events." Although plenty of stuff happens it's nested in moments that the characters aren't lucid enough to not take for granted. This creates a situation where like Paula is a developed character that actually doesn't have to have her own scene articulating the silence for you to understand her internal crisis.

Sort of agree about the "sense of space," but the show feels unconcerned with that. There's the spa, the shore and its sea, the rooms and its chambered hormones, a liminal lobby, Armond's office. A poolside bar, etc, but I don't need to know the geography because I understand the function. In this way it hits me the way a stageplay might, without sacrificing the vistas of its location or the kinetic potential of parallel action.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Couldn't help myself and binged a few more episodes. I know a lot of this show seems super heightened and on the nose, but I think it's actually doing a lot of subtle work. Linda Holmes had a good insight about this. Most characters have an internal story where they're sympathetic and an external story where their effect on others is kind of monstrous. Daddario's character and the masseuse are pretty close to purely sympathetic, but they're still sort of complicit.

Shane and Olivia are on the other end for me – nothing redeeming about them so far. I'm prepared to be surprised though.

I don't know. You just rarely see something that's such a complex stew of empathy. You root for Paula in one scene, then she's being deeply cruel to her friend's brother in the next scene. (And the fact that she's friends with Olivia at all is an indictment in itself.) Armond's introduction makes him look pretty awful, but by the end of the first ep he has enormous sympathy for the pregnant employee. Even characters who are outrageously mean have flashes of good-heartedness as their humanity forces its way to the surface, if only for a moment.

[wilberfan]

HBO just ordered Season 2

[WorldForgot]

Hell to the yeah

[Jeremy Blackman]

I forgot to talk about the music! Amazing stuff. Gets you in the right mindset. The less melodic, more percussive scoring is reminiscent of Punch-Drunk Love, fittingly.

[WorldForgot]

This dude's a great composer. You'll notice similar motifs linked here to the White Lotus score.