The lure of The White Lotus
Am I the only one who didn't hate it? Spoilers ahead, bbs.
Welcome to The Middle! I hope you enjoy this selection of my thoughts, feelings, etc. Access to this post and future posts like it can be yours for just $2 a week. Hit the button below to sign up. Thank you so much for your support. Sian x
Thoughts
Hello everyone,
Are we all hanging in there okay? Is the planetary energy under control now that the moons or whatever have stopped colliding? I’m still unsure myself but I generally gauge the level of astrological fuckery by how my toddler is behaving on any given day. Is he driving me to the brink of insanity aka am I drafting a listing to sell him on eBay? Mercury must be filthy again. Is he choosing to cuddle into me on the couch instead of taking the opportunity to test his latest WWE wrestling move? Aries must finally be helping a gal out. ’Tis my season, after all.
For those who read my last missive, I made the ragu and it was fucking phenomenal. I’m unsure if my body was craving the read meat, which is highly likely given my stage of pregnancy, or the carbs given the cooler weather. Regardless, I spent Sunday alternatively coughing a lung up and stirring my slowly bubbling, decadent sauce. There’s nothing groundbreaking about my recipe except to reiterate that a sauce like this needs lots of time (and wine) on the stove to let the richness develop and leave you in a state of bliss after you finally get a forkful in you. I’m writing this up for you to put in Volume II of The Pasta Edition (coming in May/June). Perfect for your autumn and winter recipe rotation.
I’m reaching that point of pregnancy where I’m existing in a constant state of mild brain fog while also being acutely aware of how many weeks I have left to go. This is both a source of worry and excitement. Worry because I have so much to do before the baby comes and excitement because very soon, the baby is coming. I finally get to meet this little one and get my body back. It’s a weird space to occupy and novel to this pregnancy, unlike my last. I’m surprised at how ambivalent and almost detached I feel. Some days I just want it to be over and others I’m wishing for more time to sit and enjoy it (impossible while renovating with a toddler). I’m taking comfort in the fact that my baby is healthy and that this will end eventually. Shoutout to all the pregnant ladies currently battling it out with me.
But onto more exciting things occupying my brain, such as my unshakable conviction that Josh Heuston will be playing Xaden Riorson in the Fourth Wing TV show. Or my obsession with Old Gold Peppermint Cream choccie and Nigel Slater’s dark chocolate muscovado banana cake. And obviously my big feelings about The White Lotus below.
Enjoy x
Feelings
Everyone is having some big feelings after The White Lotus finale aired on Monday. Like, a lot. I’m feeling them too. People have a lot of questions. And thoughts about the behaviour of some guests in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting at the resort in which they were staying for the week (fair). What I’ve seen of the sentiment online ranges from extremely bittersweet at the demise of star-crossed lovers Rick and Chelsea, to wild disappointment at the anticlimax of the other main storylines.
And I agree to a point. Why did Fabian the hotel manager get to yap on so much about his long-held dream of singing in front of the guests to only have a few seconds of his questionable performance shown? Why was Laurie sitting at that dinner table crying with gratitude instead of ripping her fake friends a new one? How the fuck are all the Ratliff’s still alive? Did we really need the entire flirtation between Mook and Gaitok to anchor Gaitok’s actions in the last 38.4 seconds of the gun fight? We all know the Russians survive another day to get lit.
All this simmering frustration rising with the expectation over the season and bubbling over into internet discourse after the final episode is to be expected. But while I feel 95% of viewers hated it, I think it’s actually made me love the show and Mike White, the writer and creator, even more. I’ve been trying to articulate my feelings for weeks now, mulling over why I was feeling mildly frustrated at the show at the same time as thinking that feeling of frustration was one of the most clever things Mike White could do to me as a viewer.
As avid watchers and fans of the show know, there’s a rabid energy that envelopes you when a new season drops. You sit down and rub your hands together with glee, anticipating the fuckery that is about to be unleashed upon your eyeballs via the television screen. You wonder what will top a hotel manager defecating into a guest’s suitcase or a band of extravagant, murderous gays in a crumbling Sicilian villa. So you set those expectations high, knowing that it’s The White Lotus and it’s Mike White and the guests are in Thailand: surely we enter Unhinged Level 1000?
To have such expectations is normal and expected. To have them unmet at the conclusion of eight episodes feels cruel. But if you reflect back on the season as a whole, did it really have the tone of unhinged shit show? No. It was a gentler glide into madness than previous seasons and I think it’s genius. Everybody wanted this season to follow the previous two in tone and format and it didn’t. But isn’t that the most brilliant trick of all? To subvert all the expectations we have of how a show will go? It’s a refreshing change from the American tendency to flog a dead horse until you become so bored as a viewer, you could write the script yourself.
The same can be said for each of the characters and their decisions throughout the course of the season. Unlike in previous seasons, this one was where Mike White’s writing was so, so good on an individual character level. I was much more invested in how each person was going to react and what that meant for their overall journey than in previous seasons.
The great tension in the writing is in what the show alludes to and what actually happens. For example, we keep expecting our resident lorazepam thief, Tim, to explode and finally tell his family about the serious financial trouble he, and therefore they, are in. But he doesn’t. He keeps rawdogging Victoria’s pills (poor woman) and holding the news in, culminating in the almost-murder of his wife and two of his kids. You think: finally, he’s cracked! But they don’t die and the tension returns again when Lochlan, the other kid, makes an unwitting suicide smoothie (idiot) and you think: finally, Tim has some consequences! But then he doesn’t actually die either and now you don’t know what to do with all of these unresolved feelings as you watch Tim on the deck of the return boat, yet again not telling his family that their lives are about to implode when they turn their phones back on.
Repeat formula for: Laurie/Kate/Jaclyn, Laurie/Kate/Jaclyn and the Russians, Saxon and Lochlan and the brother ‘worship’ (we don’t have time to unpack this), Greg/Gary the corpse, Belinda the nice masseuse lady, for God’s sake! Poor Pornchai!! Left on the beach like Belinda in season one! The mirroring! We’re not even going to touch Rick and Chelsea, no matter my love for them. They were doomed from the start.
But that’s what is so delicious about this show. We are led to believe something will happen and then when it doesn’t, the frustration is smoothly palmed off into expectation again, oscillating between the two until the final outcome is reached which somehow still feels authentic to the characters.
I think Mike White was trying something new. I think he was trying to see what we would do with this slightly new version of The White Lotus world he created. Not all of it paid off, I’m still annoyed about the song, but you can’t deny what you’re thinking now: how is the next season going to unfold? You’re already hooked. I know I am. You don’t quite know what to expect now he’s rewritten the rules just enough to unsettle you. Isn’t it brilliant?
I am gagging to see Gwyneth Paltrow basically play herself at The White Lotus ultra-luxe ski resort in Switzerland. I’m ready for season four.
Etc
If you’re a millennial and have any cultural soul at all, Grey’s Anatomy would have been on your radar in the oughts. And if it wasn’t, I’m very sorry for you and I’m about to tell you how to fix it. A few weeks ago, Ellen Pompeo was a guest on Call Her Daddy and I almost squealed with excitement when I saw the episode teased on Instagram. As an OG Grey’s fan (I stopped watching after Derek, you know, dies), I was so excited to hear her talk about a show as iconic as the one she has worked on for twenty years and the goss that was sure to come with it.
Ellen did not mess around. I love how much of a straight shooter she is, I could have listened to her talk for hours. She is very honest about her life and her choices to stay on a commercial show like Grey’s Anatomy and how she navigated that professionally. She speaks candidly about motherhood and the richness the experience that being a mother gives you instead of the constant talk of what it strips from you. And she had so much good Grey’s intel. Please listen to this even if you’re not in the Ellen Pompeo/Grey’s Anatomy pipeline.
And when you’ve done that, go and watch the show on Disney Plus. I’ve slowly been working my way through the early seasons. At first I thought I’d cherry pick my favourite episodes so I could scratch that nostalgia itch after listening to Ellen’s interview but I went right back to the start and you bet I’m sucked in now, baby. It’s hooked me with the perfect combination of factors: nostalgia + approaching winter + nesting + upcoming postpartum period. There’s also a million episodes of the thing so I’ll likely still be occupied until Christmas.
See you in Switzerland,
Sian x