They’re All Checking Out; One of Them In A Coffin
The White Lotus Concludes Its First Season
I was overjoyed beyond words when I heard last week that HBO, arguably without knowing my wishes, decided to renew its exceptionally entertaining comic limited series The White Lotus for a second season. According to them, it will involve a resort of the same name in a different location with different characters. And I was truly happy knowing this — until the Season 1 Finale. Now I still want the series to continue, but I didn’t realize — even after knowing full well how it opened — just how painful it was going to me.
The White Lotus has essentially been a series about the one percent and just how corrupt and self-centered. We were fully aware of this going in — Armand told us as much in the Pilot — and its become even more horribly obvious with each successive episode — but some of part of me was still hoping that at least one of the guests would emerge with some kind of realization as to just how wretched a person they were. And sadly someone did come away with that kind of realization — but it wasn’t the person we hoped.
Tanya went through the series looking like she might get there. Considering she seemed to be realizing just how toxic her life had been under the control of her mother, you really hoped she would get there. She actually seemed to be trying with her relationship with Belinda. Then she found Greg. She seemed to open her life to him, and then she went to Belinda and thanked her for helping her break patterns. And then she crushed Belinda’s hopes for her own business by saying that transactional relationships weren’t healthy for her. She’d been basically ignoring Belinda for the last two episodes, but for a character that was as close to the most sympathetic guest, it was gutting. The fact that she decided to stay close to Greg even though she knew he was dying actually makes it worse — she views this as a better experience than helping someone who is living.
The Mossbacher family was probably the most oppressive group of the bunch. Nicole controlled every aspect of the vacation as if it was work, and with each successive episode we realize just how toxic her job has made her. Mark seemed to keep going through epiphanies every day on his trip as he dealt with realizations about first his health, then his father’s sexuality. But each successive made you realize how fundamentally hollow he was — he might have been symbolically castrated by Nicole, but he really had nothing to offer. And Olivia, who spent most of her time appearing to be a challenger to her parents, was basically as shallow as any of them. She went after her best friend Paula’s boyfriend, for the sole purpose of thinking she should have what she wanted. Paula actually seemed the one closest to be truly aware of everything — she was, after all, the only guest of color we met — and of the entire clan, she came the closest to saying the truth to Olivia — “I’m a prop to piss off your parents.” It really did make you question everything about their friendship. But even the end, after she essentially set someone up to go to jail because of her actions, she seemed more concerned with her friendship than the man she’d slept with.
There was a fair amount of chatter online about whether Steve Zahn’s portrayal of Mark made him the cliché of the useless, offensive white protagonist. This is a little ridiculous because there was one in The White Lotus — Shane. Shane spent the entirety of the season more upset that he hadn’t gotten the room he paid for than enjoying the company of his wife. When we actually saw the suite he got (arranged by his mother) and it was clearly inferior, we realized the point of the exercise. Shane has always gotten what he wants, even if what got was better. And over the course of the series, as his psychological warfare with Armond clearly became more and important to him, Rachel seemed to realize what a mistake she’d made marrying him. In the finale, it actually seemed like she was going to make a break from — the first real action of consequence — and his mind seemed more concerned about his room.
Which actually brings us to what made this comedy turn, in the last ten minutes, truly tragic. Because the person in the coffin that we saw in the beginning turned out to be the only person we cared about during the length of the series — Armond. His psychological warfare with Shane pretty much cost him everything, though it’s pretty clear he was as much the architect of his own destruction as Shane was. He chose to steal Paula and Olivia’s drugs and get high when things got hard. Then after Shane made an effort at apology, he decided purposely to ruin his honeymoon. He kept going back and forth between decorum and utter chaos — trying to be cool at the desk one minute, snorting lines and screwing the help the next. But in the last episode, he did come to a conclusion that trying to tend for these spoiled rich people — who he fully admitted in the previous episode he loathed — was a waste of his life. On the verge of getting fired, he engaged in an orgy of drugs and debauchery and in a last action of defiance, took a shit in Shane’s luggage. And that was one step too many — when Shane returned, he accidentally stabbed and killed Armond, who died in the tub that Shane had wanted so badly.
And what makes this all so sad is that everybody who checked in gained nothing from the experience. Nicole and Mark are happy at the moment, but having been with them in close quarters, we know it’s a matter of time before they stop having sex. Olivia and Paula will go back to being the kinds of college girls you don’t want to know at college. Jennifer will be with Greg, and after he dies, will be exactly who she was before. Shane won’t have to pay anything for his crimes — it’s basically understood the police will let him walk because of who his family is. Even Rachel, who knows everything her husband and her family are and that they basically consider her a possession, left Hawaii with her husband. She’ll say she’s happy, she won’t be, but she’ll just find a way to live with it, just like the Mossbachers. Only Quinn, the son who started the series unable to look away from his phone, and who now seems to truly appreciate the beauty of nature might be able to get away from this. As we see him in the final moments, paddling with the natives, he gives perhaps the only pure, unadulterated smile we’ve seen on the entire show.
The only one who might have gained wisdom is Belinda. In the last episode, we see her listening to Rachel, whose complaints are actually more real than Tanya’s ever were. But having spent her hopes on Tanya, when Rachel asked for advice, she simply says: “I’m out,” and walks away. There’s a sort of catharsis in this — but I can’t escape the final image of her, near tears mourning her mentor — and then putting another fake smile, waiting to welcome the next group of guests who know only the vaguest of details about the last group but want the same treatment anyway.
That’s a lot from a series that basically spent most of its run as a comedy. And yet, one can find a lot of links to many of the great HBO series of the past. You see the false epiphanies that Tony Soprano kept going through without any real change. You see that the utter triumph of capitalism that the men like George Hearst on Deadwood represented that allows them to literally get away with murder. And in a lesser sense, you see the continued breakdown of system that allows minorities like Kai, the native who owned the land the hotel was built on, is exploited by the people who now own it, and pays the price when he tries to go against the system, that we saw taken to its natural conclusion on the streets of Baltimore in The Wire. Pretty good for a comedy set in a Hawaii resort.
I don’t know how well The White Lotus will end up doing among the award shows this coming year, leading up and including the Emmys. There’s a lot of bigger limited series coming up in the next month — David E. Kelley’s and Nicole Kidman’s latest adaptation Nine Perfect Strangers, the much delayed next installment of American Crime Story, centering on Clinton’s impeachment, and HBO’s heavily publicized remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain in the leads. And it’s not like humorous series do that well in awards races. (Granted the field is small, but it does include such recent works as TBS’ hysterical Miracle Works, Amazon’s Good Omens, and HBO’s Mrs. Fletcher, all of which had good casts and excellent stories but received no love from any awards show.) That said Murray Bartlett’s star-making turn as Armond and Jennifer Coolidge’s scene-stealing work as Tanya certainly deserve recognition, as does Mike White’s writing. The White Lotus is a gorgeous, funny and very dark series. I’m very glad I stayed there, and I’ll be more than happy to take a return visit.