The Watch - Lessons Learned From 'The White Lotus' Season 2

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about the finale of 'The White Lotus' Season 2 and whether they were shocked by the death in the episode (1:00). Then they talk about some of the questions left unanswered by the finale (16:20) and some of the broader TV lessons that can be learned from this season (45:03). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line. He owes me a huge carmic payment. It's Andy Greenwald! And people make fun of me for bringing my backpack with me from room to room.

You never know who's going in your stuff. Andy, it's great to see you, man. I hope a West Ham fan didn't steal your phone over the weekend. We are going to be talking about the season finale of Season 2 of White Lotus, which aired last night. I want to get into the nuts and bolts of the episode, and then I also want to talk big picture, kind of like what White Lotus and its success this season tells us about TVRN right now.

I saw you over the weekend, but it's still lovely to see your visage right now. This is great. And it's, you know, it's always nice to have a guest on the podcast. And by that, I mean Brian Tyree Henry, whose presence is always welcome on television episodes, more than one three's not on. But it's, you know, it's just us again. It's just us. You may reference to our year end TV podcast that we do annually with Sam Smail. We want to say thank you so much to Sam, who will never be invited back on the pod.

He's worried about that. Sam's welcome. Sam could do multiple times per year. I may not do all of them. But if Sam just wanted an outlet for his takes, he could have him in the watch. We love Sam. I do feel bad. I didn't tell him we were done recording.

I just backed out. I believe he's still there at Spotify HQ. That's right. Hey, so speaking of our year-end pod, you on your top 10 list had White Lotus Season 2 as your number 8 show of the year. So I thought we would start

here. Did the finale improve White Lotus's standing? Did it drop or did it stay the same? It's a great question. I have to say, like as a parenthetical, post-revealing our list and having a robust conversation about them with Sam, I am more anti-list than I was last week,

if only because I understand the reason for the exercise and the fun that can come from it. But like communicating to people that just because Severance was our 11th favorite show over the year doesn't mean we hate it is really exhausting to me at the moment. It's funny you should say that because I went the opposite direction. Because something happened to me over the course of that podcast. As many people I have noted, I got a little fired up. And often I'm like, I would like to think of myself as either someone. would say non-confrontational, but others might say agreeable, you know. So somebody has an opinion,

and I just am like, that's cool. It's your opinion, you know? Uh, and that's why you thrive at Twitter. I didn't mind Sam yelling at me about, say, Atlanta season three or whatever. But what I did mind is like when Sam would explain his rationale for his picks, I was like, you got to be fucking kidding me, you know? So it's really actually like, reawakened in me. It's like, I don't actually think the list is the thing. I think it should be that you have to then defend the list with logic that actually tracks across

the entire 10 shows, you know? And that's basically impossible. No, I mean, I think that Sam's argument that House the Dragon was good because he had friends over every week and they all enjoyed it. But we were... It's a strong argument.

But we were basically like the people from the beginning of Wally because we were like, sometimes we like watching slow wars. By the way, I just, I really treasure both what you just said and the fact that you reference a Pixar movie. Did you watch that with my daughter also? No, I saw the first, I like to give Pixar movies like an opening 10 minutes because, you know, like, that's where all this, that's where all the powerful stuff is, you know? To be clear, the, the obese pod people don't show up to like 30

minutes into Wally. Okay. The first 30 minutes is they're just on the dust planet, picking flowers and dust and going, Eva, like that, that's the whole 30 minutes. That's right. Look, let me stay focused. What I wanted to say was the finale absolutely bolstered the White Lotus's case for excellence and to be very high on mine or maybe even anyone's list of best TV shows of the year. I think that if I was going to get like tickey tack about it, get into it, is it, does it jump? We own the city? Probably.

But the reasons for that are less to do with the excellence of the sticking of the landing of the finale and more about just my admiration for the project as an ongoing project. And again, as we say about we own the city, of everything else on the list, that feels more siloed to me. It's just absolute excellence from an excellence factory from Simon Pelicanos, incorporated. And they make, this may have been in some ways their most succinct and greatest argument for what it is that they do. But it does not feel connected to the larger cultural conversation in a way that I wish it did, but it doesn't. So I think that the finale, to answer your question in the shortest way possible, which is the way I always avoid bolstered the case without question. I was so impressed by this finale, both as an entertainment product, but also as a, just a statement of Mike White's artistic intent and his ability to execute on that.

You know, this show is greeted and obsessed over like a mystery box, which adds to the fun. And one of the most fun things about these last few weeks has been everyone, and I know it's a small sample size, but many people in our lives and beyond talking about it. watching it and enjoying it together. You and I love that. We always talk about that. But the show is not a mystery. It is, as, you know, revealed in this episode, kind of a satirical tragedy. And I love the commitment to being what it is, despite the trappings of other things that draw eyeballs, that draw attention, that draw clicks. It was so true to itself in the end. And I found that really impressive, especially with kind of the, I mean, the word bravery gets thrown around a lot. but like, I can't believe he did it, honestly.

Yeah, that was what I came away from this episode with is just a sense of Mike White's is a real one. Because think about this guy's career. I think that he has been widely or at least passionately respected. Let's put it that way. He's been passionately respected by a niche audience. He was sort of a writer's writer, a critic's fave, but had not experienced like a ton of commercial success, at least that we knew of them. Maybe he's rewritten some stuff.

No, like School of Rock. But school of rock, but like in his TV outings, especially with Enlightened, which I think was a very painful experience for him because it meant so much to him. And he had had this star vehicle for one of his favorite performers in Laura Dern. And it was, it's got a very devoted cult following, but did not ever catch on as like a massive hit show. Not the way White Lotus has. And so now he gets that. Now he finds himself making one of the truly like talked about shows of the year and of the last couple of years. And maybe one of the only actual authentic success stories to come out of the COVID production changes that hit television.

And he gets to the end of the season two. And what does he do? He kills his darling. You know, he kills what I thought was his muse on this show. And then when you watch the after the show kind of the post. host HBO wrap-up with him, he's kind of delighted by it. He's kind of delighted by Tanya's death

and finds it kind of amusing and has this sort of sick, dark sense of humor, which I think is definitely in the DNA. It's in the bloodstream of this show, and it actually is like an essential part of it. But I was so happy, kind of not because I was like, yes, Jennifer Coolidge no longer, but like, because I was like, this is a guy who could easily be making seasons

six of White Lotus, where does Tanya wind up now? And probably 75, 80% of the people watching this episode would be along for the ride. And I probably would be too. And then instead, he's like, that's not the worldview that this show has. It was, I'm going to say it. Fuck it. It's an incredibly brave artistic choice. And it was absolutely rewarded.

And we'll talk about the specifics of the scene. One thing that carried over this entire experience of the second season was quite simply, what is the White Lotus as an ongoing show? We talked about this, I think, a little bit last week as well. And there were a lot of possibilities. Most of them decent to good, if not great. And the version of it were it's a, you know, we swan around the world with Jennifer Coolidge as our tour guide, basically. That's a hit show. That's fine. Nobody's mad about that, you know. When we saw the, when the season began with bodies, I was like, okay, he's found a formula. When he on, and I know you're going to drag me for it, but this fresh air interview is really good.

When he's on with Terry Gross and he's talking about the importance of Fantasy Island to him as a kid, you know, and the kind of TV Sam hates where it's just like wrapped up every week and started over again. Like, there are worse things to use as your totems, as your inspiration. You can still do good work within the boundaries of something like that. But that's not what he's interested in. It's just not. And it's interesting, it's an interesting comment on, I think, how all of us have, and not necessarily negative one have kind of absorbed TV not just as what's on our screen, but the experience of it,

the creators, we pay attention to what's going on behind the scenes, what it means, the working relationships, et cetera, et cetera, work-life balance, you know? And you could say, well, Mike White has found this success where not only can he make something good that people like, but he can travel the world with his good friend. Because that's also been a subtext, right? It's that he and Jennifer Coolidge are very close, and he sees something in her that maybe others missed, and so he's given her these showcases and these opportunities. Who begrudges someone for like going to luxury properties with their pals on HBO's dime? Nobody.

Yeah. But he respects her and he respects the audience and he respects the opportunity to make something so much that he's like, no, I'm not just going to coast here. I'm going to take someone that I love and a character that I love and give them the ultimate showcase, which means treating them fully without kid gloves or without any emergency handbrakes, right? And this was, to my mind, she won an Emmy last year. This is exponentially a more interesting and better performance.

Oh, yeah. And the path that it took, what it meant for the show, what it meant for him, what it meant for her, as a character and an actor, pretty unparalleled. And it was surprising. You know, I said at the beginning, it's not a mystery box. But this was, this was surprise. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe I'm mixing up the words.

Maybe it was shocking and not surprising, but it really was. something that took me back. Yeah, I think that we can talk a little bit about how the mystery boxing of this show sort of subsumed or took over the discourse around it after a while. But I think it's like, you know, you basically have to like keep people coming back, right? You have to leave the breadcrumb trail now. And I found that where this breadcrumb trail led was by far the most interesting use of that tactic that we've seen in recent memory.

So you basically coach people into, they must sit down at 9pm, wherever they are, and watch this show as it happens because something could happen. And they don't want to get it spoiled or they want to be able to start talking about it as soon as possible. But that's just the Trojan horse to put in all this stuff about the transactional nature of sex or how to really be happening. in your life or like what it what it is to you know all these questions that Mike lives obviously

Mike White's obviously more interested in than a murder mystery in Italy although he's obviously quite good at telling a murder mystery in Italy you know that's the thing is I think he actually got way better at doing the genre stuff if or at least threw himself into the genre stuff in the second season as compared to the first season where it was almost like in the first season there's a body bag and it was like eh I just did this for HBO and now here's this show. Again, like, in interviews, he's very upfront about the fact that, like, he figured people would be interested if there was a body.

Like, it's not cynical. It's actually just kind of smart business, you know? He gets that, and that, and it works. So why wouldn't he continue to do it? But I agree with the substance of what you're saying, which is, I think he was more inspired and excited by it here. And I think it was clearly influenced by the setting, too, and, you know, Italian cinema. And, you know, we've mentioned, Sam mentioned Antonioni, and, you know,

Fulini, like, these are things that he's watched and he knows. And what's interesting about him, though, and I think it's not unique, but it's rare in creators, is that he's very comfortable being the writer that he is and letting that kind of seep into or ooze into other genres, but never really straying from what it is that he does and never being self-conscious about that. And what I mean is the entire Tanya Quentin plot is not complicated. It is not full of. of twists and turns and surprises. It seems too good to be true. And then it is.

And we see the flash of darkness in Quentin almost, you know, as soon as they get to Palermo. We've known that something was cooking since episode five. When she goes into it, I was referencing it at the beginning, has Nicola or Niccolo's bag. Nicola's, yeah. And it's literally a bag from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Yeah, it's like the clue pieces.

It's like a candlestick, some rope. Yes. like a bear trap? I mean, what else could be in the... I mean, she finds the props for the murder of an heiress. I mean, she is, in a way, all of it is performance, which is part of it. But the emotional devastation and inevitability of it and the way it tracks to the type of humor that he has, the type of story that compels him, I don't... I guess what I want to say is it's really impressive and inspiring that it's just what he

wanted to do and he stayed true to it. at the end, it is, yeah, it's surprising. It's violent in a way the show hasn't been. It goes to some unexpected places. But when she's pointing the now emptied gun at Quentin, who is drowning in his own blood on the floor of a yacht he can't pay for, and she says, is Greg cheating on me? That's everything, right?

Yeah. It's horrifying and human and cringe and true, and that's what this whole show has been building to. And he pulled it off. He pulled it off with a plum and style. And we all watched it like it was a murder mystery. But it wasn't. Yeah.

And I thought that the best part about it, the best part about the episode in general was the what wasn't said and what wasn't explained and what wasn't on screen. So let's talk about some of these unsolved mysteries. For one thing, Quinn does not have a last gasp expository speech about meeting Greg, fly fishing on acid, having some kind of, you know, illicit affair, or maybe he's just got like a longstanding candle for this guy that's never burned out.

He doesn't talk about the mechanics of their plot against her. He doesn't talk about how Greg has always felt like she was using him and now he was using her or that she had always wanted. She was never going to be happy with him, so he wanted to... There was never any explanation. Just the same way, there's no explanation of

whether or not Ethan and Daphne consummated a relationship while they went on that little walk to Bella Isla or whatever it was. And we also never really get deeply into this psychology of Lucia and her con, I guess, of Albi. You know, like, she never says, like, well, I really would like to go back to Los Angeles with Albi or this is the one time where I've really liked a guy

that I've been with, but this is ultimate. No, I mean, they go traipsing off. Like, as I know in fresh air, he based Lucy and Mia on Laverna and Shirley, they go traipsing off like the title sequence for Laverna Shirley at the end. That's all left there

for us to kind of fill in the blanks. And there are so many moments in this episode. My favorite being probably when the three generations of de Grasso men ogle a woman as she walks by and it was almost like Albi had just himself kind of settled into the transactional nature

of sexual relationships and kind of accepted, well, you get what you pay for. And if I pay for it, I get to just turn and look at a woman. You know, you can see these people get corroded and corrupted. And I thought that the fact

that he didn't fill out every word of it was quite brilliant. It's really a testament to his ability as a writer to get a large swath of the American television viewing public to not only sign off on, but, you know, given an enormously high approval rating

to a show where no lessons are learned. You know, I'm trying to figure out, like, where did we, what did these people figure out? What have they learned? And I think what's amazing is, again, you know, the spirit of what I was saying last week about a show made by people who've gone to therapy and are kind of frustrated by it.

Like, they've seen things. They've seen things in themselves that maybe surprise them or, you know, made them uncomfortable. But what are they going to do about it? Vacation's over. You know, back to the real world. And you think about before we get into the other stuff,

because I think you could make an argument that, like, there wasn't room for some of those things. And, you know, for more of a punctuation mark on the end of those other plots sentences. But the thing about the Tanya story that's really worth circling back to, I think, even before we get to the other characters is she got everything she wanted right up to the very end.

Well, I think that's the point of what is happening in Palermo and on that boat is that in some ways, to my read of it was Greg and Quentin cook up this plot, but that the way they either make themselves feel okay about it or the idea for it is that we're going to give this woman everything she's ever wanted. Yes, we're going to, I mean, as she says, another amazing thing about the show is

Mike White's operating strategy for dialogue seems to be Michelle Obama's when people show you who they are, believe them. Like, everyone says who they are. Right. We don't listen or we squint or we see it through someone else's prism or lens or she says to Portia, right? Like everyone is just always

dressing me up as a doll and then they let her live La Dolce Vita. Right. You know, she's so happy with them in a way that we haven't seen this character be because they are celebrating her. They celebrate who she is, her quirks, or bright colors, her interest in substances, whatever. You know, yeah, to your point, like, it's a celebration of her right up until the,

right up until the very end. That's chewy. That's sticky. That's kind of interesting. Yeah. And it also helps because you could look at this and do something that I think is not productive, which is, wait, what was their plan? Why was their plan?

Her husband, who seemed like a nice guy for two episodes, shows up and then lures her to Sicily for this very extravagant murder by yacht? I mean, it's ridiculous. But it is tonally appropriate, A, for the, you know, the sort of when you're on vacation, when you're in Sicily rich indulgence of the season, it tracks. But more importantly, you stay with the character

and you see what's being done to her and you feel all of the things that you're meant to feel. Yeah, I thought that Tanya's plot and Albi's plot both both were kind of about if it feels good does it matter that you're paying for it you know and for tanya it was like if it feels good to be the center of attention to finally be worshipped to finally be taken seriously and to be paid attention to does it matter that it could cost you your life and for alby if it feels good to feel virile and sexually wanted and important and not like this kind of beta who Porsche pushes around and probably has happened in other relationships,

does it matter that you're paying for it? And in some ways, I guess that also applies to people like Harper, where it's like in the end she finally rekindled Ethan's sexual interest in her, but had to drive him to the point of a breakdown. And obviously, I think it may be into the arms of another woman. So she, she in a sense pays for it, you know, like in that sense. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about those guys. Yeah, because I found that at the end of the show, I think if you could make any, not complaints,

but if you were going to, like, just throw some critiques up on a whiteboard, one would be that I found Ethan's character to be almost so blank that I didn't really know how to, not even how to feel about it, but, like, what really was going on behind his eyes, you know, like, did,

his sort of, like, you know, increasing, like, a sense of mania about Harper's infidelity and his conviction that she's done this, which I guess turns out to be right. And then he goes off with Daphne. It was like a little bit of like feeling around in the dark for me there. How did you feel about that?

Well, again, I think one of the great triumphs of the scaffolding of the show is that Mike White could make a story about two couples, about four people and not really move the needle too much. Have it kind of just sort of boil and boil or simmer and simmer and simmer. and then end the season because there were highs and lows around it. So just in terms of like the orchestra, that was really well done

because you can't make that show be its own thing. Because the lesson of it, which I found really profound and not something I've seen on TV so much, is everything is choices. There is no larger carmic scale of restorative justice in emotional and interpersonal relations.

You know, the fight that that Ethan and Harper have where he's just like, but I didn't do anything wrong. He thinks that entitles him to something. And her opinion is, so what? Because to her and her internal scale of justice, that didn't matter. The greater sin needs to be addressed.

Yeah. And his negligence is a crime. Yeah. And those value systems are never going to be aligned, which is low key, one of the interesting things about those two couples all season, right? Because at the beginning of the season, Harper is turning to Ethan being like,

we're not like them because we have morals and we read newspapers. But what this season revealed was that they are all in these very fraught balancing acts, but only one couple is enjoying it. And that's a choice. And it was almost, it's interesting. The moment when they get up from the dinner table and join them was, to me, one of the most masterful things of the season, almost underappreciated. And by me, I think even by audiences with so many other things going on,

I'd like to rewatch that scene. Because so much is in it. You know, as they're sitting down to dinner, I'm watching the show, and I'm like, first of all, I can't believe they're still at this fucking restaurant. Like, just, just once. You know what I mean? Once more to the breach, baby. It's just insane. Bring out the linguine and bungole.

I was like, I can't believe they're going to eat together again after everything that's happened on this day. And then they're not. And then what Cameron and Daphne teach them is. almost the abiding creed of their existence, which is you fake it till you make it. Right. They are choosing to say this was a good experience. This was a good trip. And by the end, I believe by their behavior in bed and afterwards, Ethan and Harper agree.

They're like, we can hold on to this, these resentments and these angers and these things about how things should be. You don't do that. But clearly, you do these. People do these things. You can do them. and you can then choose to be okay with it or not. But you can't, well, I guess you can.

Many people do, but the one thing that maybe isn't the best outcome is to choose to kind participate in it, but be angry and resentful about it. Like someone's making you do it. And I think by the end of that meal, they're like, this wine is good. These vongolet, it's been consistently good for the last eight nights of dinner. Are we sure it's not the vongolet from Monday? It could be. It's unclear.

I would be interested in the specials board at the White Lotus restaurant. Like, do they, you know, does chef have like Taco Tuesdays? Does he keep it moving? Well, that was one of the things that was funny about this season is that, you know, the first season is much more about these sort of spoiled guests who are very much paying to be weighted on hand and foot and made to feel special by the staff and so much so that the Murray Bartley character essentially goes crazy doing it. And then this season is much more about these guests wanting to feel important in the eyes

of their partners or in the eyes of their, you know, loved, like, it's a little bit more the transactional nature of these relationships moves from, from like the sort of employee, employer kind of dynamic to the lover dynamic, which I thought was pretty savvy on White's part. You know, another savvy thing that he did was he cast this show impeccably. It's only seven hours about, you know, give or take, maybe 745 after you add up all the other stuff that's in it. And, I feel like I've been living with these characters for seasons. And one of the reasons why is because I think once you get used to the way performers have their rhythms,

the Ethan Harper casting, especially the Will Sharp Aubrey Plaza casting, it's like, that just feels like a real couple. That feels like a real couple of like kind of very flat affects. You know, she's flat, but has like a little bit of like some porcupine needles to her.

And then Ethan is very much like everything is kind of a post. poker face for him and you never really know how he's feeling about a situation until he explodes. And I just have to say, I mean, like, and then contrast that with Megan Fahey and Theo James, who even though we never really find out if they've brought Harper and Ethan on

this trip because they're trying to get money or because they actually just don't really have any friends and this is like, we can only travel with people as rich as us because you don't want to get into a situation where, like, certain people can't afford stuff. I thought, like, the contrast between those sets of casting was great.

I think that I ultimately, again, this is so hard to pull off. I love that I don't care about the Cameron and Daphne reasoning, you know, I think because what they did do is they turned them. They have turned Harper and Ethan into them or a version of them or people that they can actually, I don't know if get along with, because they seem to be able to get along with anyone, but that they can understand by the end. So it's an incredible turn. Like the money part, the professional part, becomes irrelevant, right?

And I thought it was a really nice, as we always say, Mike White is very, very, very, very aware of what people are tracking, even as he's writing. Like, I think he really relishes dangling chads, if you will, to a degree that doesn't feel manipulative. It feels celebratory. So I think he was aware that people would be clocking. Does Cameron even have money?

Is that what this show is about? Does it matter in the end? No, but he does pay Lucia, you know, which then, whether it's the reason why she goes on Albi or not, it reminds the audience, whether it reminds her or not, we don't know, that this is transactional. Yeah, I was going to ask you if you thought two things. I had two unanswered questions around that, which is one is, do you think that Cameron Paying, Lucia changed the calculus as to whether or not she was going to go to L.A. with Albi or if that was ever even in cards? Did you think that

there was a causal thing there, a cause and effect there? I don't know if I have an answer in terms of the character. I think it's places. in the show suggests yes and is important for that. You know, that especially she's paid and she's happy and she turns to Mia

who's achieved what she wants too and it all works out for them. Yeah, it does. It does. And I mean, because she has that crisis, literally a crisis of faith earlier in the season

where she's just like, this is bad, like we're doing bad stuff here. We shouldn't be doing this. And then Mia kind of turns and I think that Lucia is like, what have I done? And then she,

meets Albi and off-screen concox this. Alessio is going to be my fake pimp who's going to like con this guy. But is it fake? Yeah. He's like a doorman at a hotel. He's like a lovely, like he seems like a lovely little guy. Yeah.

I wanted to track that. I was a con. I think that was all a con. That like him following them and smoking and being like the rough pimp is like completely fiction. I thought that was what's happening, but I was not tracking it. But I wonder whether or not,

earlier in the season she's like, this is a Mug's game, like, waiting on these guys to go to the bank to cough up euros. Yeah. Is a losing proposition. But then at the end of the season, she's like, holy shit, like this Pimp thing works and this guy paid me and I walk out of here with, what, 63,000 euros or whatever.

But also, isn't Romance a Mugs game? I mean, I think that that's the other piece of it, you know? I'll be being like, I'm going to take this woman back to Los Angeles with me, is a Mug's game. Literally everything on this season that appears too good to be true is too good to be true. Whether it's, you know,

Tanya being celebrated by the high end slash murderous gaze, whether it's... Porsche finding the one soccer hooligan who's going to like keep it together and show her a good time in Palermo or in Zislero? But also it's, you know,

the Tanya storyline isn't exactly subtle, but the small things that we're not going to spend a lot of time focusing on, right? Like you referred before to the Albion Porsche dynamic. And like, we know from early on in the season by episode two, Portia's like, whether she says it or not, she's like, I have bad instincts when it comes to men, you know,

or it comes to relationships. It doesn't mean she should be attracted to Albi. Based on her clothing choices, based on her clothing choices, she might just have bad instincts. The clothing really is triumphant. And there were some articles written about the design and especially with the Gen Z character.

Like, I loved it. I think that's just an unsung hero of the show is the wardrobe department. But, but, you know, like, we, the show exists in a place of nuance that a lot of shows just aren't afforded the opportunity to get to, whether they're able to or not, whether the creators can even pull it off. Like, Albi is a better choice for her than the fucking lunatic, Jack, but the heart wants what it wants. That's a great filmmaker who we don't talk about it anymore once said, right?

Like, that's just, that's what the show exists in that. and allows that to be the game. Michael Chimino, who are you talking about? It was Michael Chimino. He wanted to keep spending on Heaven's Gate, from what I understand. I wanted to... I have one more unanswered question I wanted to. Okay, because I did want to go back to Ethan and Harper, but let's do unanswered.

Good job, because I want to know whether you thought that Ethan and Daphne slept together. I love that we don't know. I feel what was interesting to me about that scene. And again, if you're doing stuff, self-MvPPs of the season, Megan Fahey, is maybe number one. I loved her performance throughout. And she does a thing in these scenes. She basically gives the same speech twice, right?

She gives the speech to Harper where she shows the picture of her kid who may actually be the son of her trainer. And she says it essentially, again, which is you have to find a way not to be the victim in the story. And when you make that decision, it's easier. it's literally easier. That money makes things easy, but actually choosing... She's modeling how to like enjoy life no matter what's underneath the hood.

She's like, I want a massage. I want to go to the island. I want to do this. Like she wants to go to No-Doh and get drunk with a friend. And it doesn't matter if it winds up setting off all this stuff in motion. And I think that, you know, that you can take a step back from the Harper Ethan Megan, Harper, Ethan, Daphne, Cameron's storyline and be like, there's almost a mythical quality to what Cameron and Daphne extract from Ethan and Harper.

They're almost like their guides through another world, you know, the underworld. And this is the thing that I love about this entire arc. She's not wrong. Now, do I condone mass infidelity? Do I condone mass online donations to cute bunny charities when you're drunk at night? On this podcast, we don't. We don't. We don't.

This is a very Catholic podcast. For monogamy, yeah. And hot carry lake takes. That's just what we do. Those two things are not related at all. No, apparently not. It's just like when people try to pin us down, you know what I mean? That's right.

What did he say? My pronouns are prosecute Fauci? That's what Elon Musk said. Yes. Sure. You can't tell with that guy. guessing. Love it. So good faith, all of it. Why do you act like

you're not on Twitter? You fucking pulled, you had that pulled out. So quick. You really are not on Twitter. I told you yesterday every Sunday, I open the app to read people talk about how good the Eagles are because it fills me with happiness. And when you open the app,

it's generally a reply guy whom I follow quote tweeting Trump or Elon Musk being like, not so, sir. you know, so that's how I learn about the issues of the day. Okay. Ethan and Daphne.

Is the reply guy you? Maybe. It's not. You know it's not. On your burner. All I do is reply to Carrie Lake. Like, yes, queen. Keep serving this diffused look.

That is also accurate. I think that, I think that Daphne is really, is onto something in the sense, as someone who has an experience, you know, like many people, like has a relationship with anxiety or can, whose mind can cause problems or obsess over problems that might not actually have happened yet, you know, you could just, you remove yourself from the present and you park yourself in some future catastrophe because that feels more familiar or more manageable. It can be, you can work on that. Like, that is change that you can do or you can be present in it. Now, would I perform my life the way she does? Unclear. But I think that what's interesting about her,

is like with many of the characters on the show is that they are kind of flawed avatars for interesting points of view that come up either in therapy or in actual adult life. Did something happen? I think it became mythical at that point. I think she took him to an oracle, essentially. She showed him something, you know,

and whether it was just the content of what she said to him or whether they had some sexual experience on this island, the result is the same. Right. He learned something about how to be, be in the world that was not working for him. Yeah, he has that weird grin for like basically the rest of the episode. Yeah, he learned something. And I, and I am a big fan when used correctly

and sparingly of the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction, which essentially that's what this was. You know, there is something more than this that causes human behavior. And you could say there are a hundred solutions, there are 100 possibilities or hypotheses as to what it is. Now, behind all this, I think you said at the beginning, like Ethan was a pretty blank character. And I think that I'm actually, I think the performance is really cool and really interesting. And I'd love to see him.

I can't wait to see him in other things. I'd never seen. And you can get away with that in an ensemble, especially one where you've got Haley-Lew Richardson and the Italians and F. Marie Abraham and Jennifer Coolidge. Bigger performers. Going for it in a big way. You can have like also a muted corner of the show.

And then his sort of unraveling over the course of the season, I thought was very effective. You know what I mean? Like, this is a guy you can kind of imagine him being a really fastidious. If he's doing something in tech or in software or whatever, like, you know, if he's coding, a lot of this stuff is like ones and zeros to him. And if he's like, I didn't do anything, but I know that you did. So I am morally like justified in demanding a reckoning here. that's like it really made sense to me

even though they never really got into a side speech where Harper tells Daphne well Ethan's this coder and he sees everything in binary you know what I mean you don't have to say that you don't have to say that would I could you make the case that I would have liked a little more about like what makes him tick or

not what makes him tick what he does and maybe about their relationship maybe I don't want the Vangoli every night you know what I'm saying that's all I'm saying but if you go down that path and you consider you know in the way would if you were in a writer's room or if you were Mike White, like, there's not a ton of real estate. It's a very busy ensemble with a lot of different things to, you know, to give time

to and attend to and explore. The broad strokes are that he's kind of insully, right? Like that there's a element of him that could go in that direction. He was slightly bullied and introverted. Right. And everybody he's ever expressed romantic interest in, not everybody, but during college, he would express interest in a woman and Cameron would just go and sleep with him. And he's furious. There's anger. And there's anger and resentment about all of his circumstance because he is essentially coding his way out of it just as he is performing his own physicality in a different way. He is, you know, he's super jacked and ripped. He runs every day. He's transformed himself and he's transformed his circumstance financially as well and hasn't really advanced beyond his

reasons for doing that, right? Like, it was kind of, it's clearly all of fuck you, but what do you keep saying fuck you when you've plateaued? Like, he did it. So then what? And I think there was some meat on the bone, as Jalen Hertz likes to say after another dominant win, like in terms of the attraction stuff, like, why does he, I mean, porn is porn, but like, does he feel deserving of a different type archetype of partner or wife or multiple, does he? Does he feel deserving of a different type of a different type, feel deserving of that? You know what I mean? Did he want to be with Lucia and Mia that night? But he insists that he's better than that. Like all of that, you could say you want more of it, but as I'm saying it, I'm like, it was there. Right. On a rewatch, it's probably all there.

And the other thing that Mike White does really well, that is to all of our benefit, is not just the casting, but the partnerships, the scene partnerships. Aubrey Plaza is a very specific performer. So who you pair her with has to work. And it has to work and build over time so that when they have the scene, the confrontation scene, you're buying both of them. You know, you're believing the lived in nature of it and that her quirks and peaks and valleys line up with his in a way.

And I thought we really saw that in this. You know, I wonder how much of that is also, it's casting, but it's also all these people really are living in Sicily together. Do you read the interview with Adam DeMarco who plays Albi where he's just like... Yeah, no, Phoebe did, because Phoebe did like a whole thing. She interviewed Aubrey Plaza for GQ,

and Aubrey was like playing like these sort of long-term pranks on Adam DeMarco. Do you see Adam DeMarco had never seen the godfather? Yeah, I did. That was good. That's cute. Yeah. What did you, speaking of him in that storyline, I mean, there's a version of this where

the de Grasso plot line, nothing happened. I mean, like they arrived and then they left, which maybe is the point. It's interesting. It's hard to say, I'd like to take each one of these sort of little micro storylines and then say, here's what this was about. And in some ways, I think that the DeGrosso's was about like sort of like having their illusions wiped away. Like obviously Bert thinks they're going to go back and that this connection with their homeland is going to somehow enrich or save a life of perhaps, you know, not great behavior by him. You know, that like connecting to this like far flung part of his family.

will redeem the fact that he's probably broken the family that he he had, you know, in America. And for Albi, it's the illusion that he's the guy in, you know, that the sex worker with a heart of gold is actually going to fall for. And that he broke the curse of the family. He's enlightened. Right. And then for Dom, I'm not really sure what it is. Maybe it's that, like, you know, for him, I think he's in.

purgatory this entire time. He's like serving time and needs to come out one way or the other on the other side and kind of, I guess, by just standing steady throughout this entire season after the early trespasses, thinks that he's like, he's under the illusion that he has like sort of served his penance. I mean, let's specifically let's talk about that. I think what's cool and why we love and why everyone loves, especially people with podcasts, love talking about the show, It can be multiple things at once, and it's open to interpretation. There's an argument to be made that no one was more underserved this season than Michael Imperiali and that character, that, to your point, he began with a head full of steam and other

things and then settled into Dante's purgatorio for the remainder of the season, and he was either playing his anger up towards F. Marie Abraham or his disappointment and condescension down towards Albi. you could then take another step in a different direction and be like that's part of the sneaky triumph of the show that the plight of the incredibly rich and successful philandering white man is not necessarily the main A story of the show

the way it was the A story of the last 20 years of prestige television and that because $50,000 means nothing to him except as a karmic payment he doesn't need to learn. The rich guy wearing cool sunglasses is no longer the main character. And he's fundamentally. fundamentally uninteresting because he doesn't have to change because he can use his status and his power and his money to bend reality to accept him back. He hasn't changed. He hasn't learned anything.

He's seen some things. If he's suffered anything at some indignity or embarrassment in the eyes of his son, which does matter to him. But it doesn't matter to him enough to see beyond the short-term gain of like, you'll make things good with your mother for me based on nothing other than what Albi wants. I mean, so that's kind of what I love about the show. Like, hidden in, it's not just that he hides, you know, the things that interest him character-wise or emotionally within a murder mystery and he gets away with the Trojan horsing it. He's doing a lot of other things, too, that I think are significant. Like having a character just sort of settle into purgatory for the entirety, the majority of the season and leaving us with that. You're not supposed to do that.

That flouts all note-giving. It flouts all television structure advising. It doesn't make sense, but it lands because there's so many other planes in the air. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back. Getting you exactly what you need fast and reliably so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines.

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Pepsi prebiotic cola in original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love with just 30 calories and no artificial sweeteners. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola, unbelievably Pepsi. Let's talk a little bit before we get to some sort of macro lessons that this show taught us this season. Let's talk a little bit about the Italians. Let's talk a little bit about Valentina and Lucia and. and mea. For Valentina, she also learns

that happiness can be bought to some extent as well, right? That these tradeoffs that you can make in life, she starts this season repressed, I think, very much like has a lot of her guard up all the time. And then over the course of the season,

learns to use her power in a non-petty way. Like usually it's just like rearranging who's going to stand next to Isabella at the front desk. That's right. that's her name. And then she sort of accepts her kind of, I am the director.

That's what she says to Giuseppe. She's like, I am the director here and I can call security. And this is who I wanted to have singing and playing piano. And she's like, yeah, like, I can have this girlfriend for a night. And then these girls are going to hook me up with some Palermo lesbians or whatever.

And just get it rocking from there. What did you think of the sort of conclusion of that plot line? to me, interestingly, as you're asking it, Valentina and Ethan are similar. Yeah. Your moral outrage and unhappiness is a choice. She's much happier at the end.

Yeah. Because she's not fighting it, you know? And to her credit, like, everything Mia does in the back half of the season is transactional. Is the lesson of the show that people need to get laid? I think that's, I think Mike White would say yes. Yeah.

I think that that's a strong argument. Okay, so what are we for? What's our platform on this podcast? Sex positive. Counting every vote. Counting every election integrity. Yeah. Those are our hallmarks.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I wanted, like me, everything Mia does is transactional. She gets what she most wants, but she's not mean about it. You know what I mean? It's a little mean when she double doses Giuseppe, but that wasn't intentional. The Valentina thing, was so interesting because she's just like, that was great. You're really cool. I had a nice time. I should introduce you to some proper lesbians. And Valentino's like, okay, and then she gets her job from that. I don't feel like that was a con. I kind of like the different layers of it on the show

where people use pressure points to get what they want, but I don't have a moral judgment about that. That seemed to be fine. And it was surprising. That was an example where season two zagged from season one when we were introduced to a kind of harried manager of the resort, right? I think that was a worthwhile change from what expectations may have been at the start of the season. I only had one other thing that I wanted to throw at you about the sort of scene to scene work that happened in the finale, and that is that this was an episode that I thought showed the totality of Mike White's grasp of filmmaking and storytelling, because I have to To admit, again, my wife, Phoebe and I really did it up last day.

We made like a lemon ricotta pasta. Look at you. We popped like a sparkling white that had like some tangerine over like notes to it. It was really quite nice. Would you characterize me as a sparkling white? Sometimes. Sometimes. Not always.

Sometimes a little flat. And it took us basically two hours to get through this episode between the pausing and the chatting and stuff like that. And I think part of it was that like there was some real nail bite. white-knuckle moments in this episode, no more so than the the Jack Porsche stuff, which I thought was just fucking awesome and breathtaking.

And really like, yeah, I saw a bunch of Rembert, our buddy Rembrandt, especially being like, I can't believe she waited until she gets in the car to start asking all these questions.

Yeah. But I was like, damn, I don't, like when he takes her to the outside of the airport in Katanya, I was like, this is a incredible place for this to end.

And I thought, the kid, is that Leo Woodall's name of the guy playing Jack? What a fucking fine, that guy is. You know, I mean, I know that he is basically

like, I'm from Essex, and I feel like he's going to be in stuff for a while now. And I thought he was dynamite. I thought Haley Lou Richardson did a great job completely filling out every part of Portia.

And I was like legitimately, like, this is a great thriller during those scenes. Do you know when, um, when actors are interviewed, even sometimes when we interview actors, and something that almost always comes up is,

did you fill in a backstory? Or did the director or writer give you the backstory so you could play the scene? And the answers are very. Sometimes people are like, yes. They've been asking White Lotus folks about this, especially in Vulture, they've been like, oh, yeah, well, like, Valentine's,

the woman playing Valentina said, like, Mike did not give me a lot. Real Sharp seemed to have, like, a lot about Ethan, though. So every actor is different. Some people want things. Some people don't. Every writer's different. Some people love to load people.

I mean, you know, there's no one way to get to it. The reason I bring it up is I rarely think about any of that when you're actually, when I'm engaging and watching something. And the moment in the car when Portia says, so you fuck your uncle, what Leo Woodall does in that moment with his face and with his emotion and with his body, especially in comparison to the person that he's been for her and for us, all I was thinking about was he knows everything. that happened. And it doesn't actually, you know, I want to be clear. I don't mean that like he had like a PowerPoint presentation of the events of Jack's life. I just mean his body remembers. You know, there's that trauma book like body keeps the score. Sure. That's what I thought of in that scene. It was so, it was such an amazing performance in moment. Top five trauma book for me. Is it? Did you seek solace in it after the disappointing events of the election this year in Arizona,

in your home state? Your adopted home state. Um, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, thought that was just wild and the attention the show does pay to class and employment dynamics too. You know, there's a version of it where Portia like becomes a hero, right? And like, gets the carabiniere and they have hydrofoils out to the yacht and they rescue Tanya. But this show doesn't exist in that world. The show exists in a world where... Self-preservation. Working for Tanya is weird and fucked up. Yeah. Bad shit. Like, catastrophically bad you will be written about in TMZ and there will be a lifetime movie made about you in 10 years shit. It doesn't really happen. You can't move through your life expecting it.

So she gets on the airplane, right? Yeah, I mean, she knows. She knows when Albi says there was a shootout on the boat and there's dead bodies in the water. I mean, she's like, that's time. She knows. But it wasn't her Italian tragedy. It wasn't her story. She wasn't supposed to be there. She wasn't supposed to leave her room, right? And so, again, like, there's just these little moments that sprinkled throughout that were, you know, it's Tanya's is Greg cheating on me while Quentin's coughing up blood. It's, it's Porsche finding out what happened to people and then saying, can I get your number? Right. You know, life goes on and sometimes life's kind of trite.

It's just wild. By the way, speaking of life going on, Maldives next season? No. Was that an intentional reference? My brother, we are going to Japan apparently. Who says? Mike White says they're going to Asia. And Kaya was just,

Kaya was like, I think they're shooting in Japan. Okay, so I predicted not on the microphone, so it doesn't matter. Kaya, do you want to? Kaya, are you going on the record with that? This is like from what I've seen on an Instagram account I follow called Du Mois. So like not super shot on the record. Hell yeah. Way to go, Kaya.

Way to get in the streets. Get the shoe leather going. A non-please, Kaya. Come on, pretending we don't know about that. We're not that old. Excuse me. So the reports are... Okay, so Mike White hints at Asia set season three

focused on, quote, death and eastern religion. Yeah. Asia would feel like the inevitable choice. I thought the reference to where they might go next was baked in intentionally. Yeah, and to be fair, he did actually say,

he said a little bit about, like, he teased the idea of basically continuing some of the storylines. So I don't know whether or not anybody from season two will show up or, you know, I mean... I'm sure that they will. I feel like that's interesting to him.

I thought, like, a place like Bali would make sense in terms of the like, the occasionally uncomfortable overlap between the performance of Eastern cultures and Western tourists and all of that. But, look, he knows what he's doing, wherever he chooses.

I wonder if Mike White will stay in Michael Mann's Tokyo apartment that he used to make Tokyo Vice. Maybe they could get a lease together under the name Michael White Man. I believe that's the person who's just put up a deposition for Carrie Lake. I think that's right. I think that's right. So I have a, to wrap up, I had a, I thought we could have this conversation.

Which is essentially Lessons of the Lotus. So we just got through seven weeks, two delightful months, basically, of talking about this show. this show has reached, I think, heights beyond even the wildest expectations of HBO, but maybe I'm wrong. I think that it has become a legitimate sensation in the incredibly small bubble that we exist in. You and I were at a gathering on Saturday night, and it was honestly the number one conversation topic, I feel like you would walk into a kitchen and, you know, people were talking about it, and then you'd walk outside and people were talking about it. So, big old hit. Remembert overalls?

Yeah. But, but. It was a big old hit. Let's just put it that way for HBO. So I thought we could come up with some lessons of the Lotus. Number one lesson for me. Sunday nights matter. They still matter. There's still nothing like it, at least for our purposes.

There's nothing like the anticipation that comes with people being excited for a show that ends the weekend and starts the week that slots right in so that the next day you can go in just be like, Jesus Christ, you guys see that? What do you think is going to happen next? And, you know, we've sort of experienced so many different versions of this, whether it's 1899 going up all at once, whether it's Andor going up three at first, and then one, one, one, one, one, but then also going on FX. We've had so many different kinds of release models that have emerged of COVID and now

have become standard. but there really is nothing like Sunday night, 9 o'clock, your stories are on, and this is the one that sort of transcends almost all watching behavior. I feel like some people like to have these things built up so that they can binge them, and some people like to watch Mandalorian at 6 in the morning on Wednesdays, but I don't know a single person who's like, I'm not so into Sunday nights hanging out and watching TV. Also, shows about adult humans matter.

I don't, I'm not relitigating House of the Dragon. I think there's room for big monocultural genre things up and down the board, and there should be. But there was something extra about this, right, that like people were watching it for a lot of different reasons, not to find out, you know, who the dragon eats this week or whatever or who who washes up on the shore, but because they saw people. of themselves, maybe pieces of themselves they don't like, or other people that they know, there were a lot of different ways in, which felt really good. And I think the other part of it that was surprising to me in a good way, the approval, this is again, this is all conversational, this is anecdotal. But people seem to really like the season. People seem to really like liking this season in the show. It hasn't reached a point where people don't seem to be hate watching

it. They didn't seem to be watching it with an expectation that, oh, I hope we achieve the heights of the Connie Britton storyline in the first season, people were ready with these people and engaged with it on its own terms in a way that felt kind of rare, right? It did not feel, to me, maybe after the first or second week, to be constantly looking backwards,

like people were comparing it. Right. That's pretty rare, too. You know, second years of things, you can see diminishing results, even if those results are still at a benchmark that's successful for everyone involved to get you a third season.

This feels like it's opening up and growing, and then you get this punctuation mark at the end of the season. and it's like, nope, it's not just going to be what you thought it was. We're going to draw blood, even though we're an ongoing series now. Remarkable. And I didn't even answer your question. Sunday nights matter.

Yeah. It matters. 1899. Guys, I'm still watching it. But do I feel the sense of fun or urgency in watching? I mean, it's not a very fun show. Even when I like it, it's not a very fun show. But it does feel a little diffuse, you know, just to be checking in with my homies on the ship.

They are on the ship, right, Chris? Absolutely. Totally. It's a nautical adventure from what I... One hondo on that ship. Thank you. Okay, so lesson number one, Sunday still matter. Lesson number two from Andy is adults matter.

And having like shows where people can see something of themselves or their experiences, that matters. This is the one that I was most interested to get your thoughts on. Is all shows are mysteries now, question mark. So you kind of touched on this a little bit about the idea of drawing blood. And I just thought I would throw this in there. like praising one show at the expense of another, and God knows that I, you won't find very many bigger succession fans than me. But I did think that these two shows were both like,

dromedies that got subsumed by the mystery box conversation around them in some ways in terms of the discourse. And I thought that that probably benefited those shows, Succession and White Lotus, for in terms of like week-to-week audience, and especially probably if you miss the first one or second one, and then you get caught up with it, and then you're part of the, you know, the avalanche of speculation and people are breaking down, you know, the art in the hotel and what dress Tanya is wearing

and how it's the same dress as Apollonia and Godfather and all this stuff. And a lot of that same kind of Easter egg hunting and deep textual analysis happened with succession last season. And it was really about like what's going to happen and what's going to happen and what's going to happen. And then as you got towards the end of the season of Succession, and this is, I guess, a spoiler for Succession. But there's that pregnant pause of a week where everybody is wondering whether or not Kendall is dead. I was incredibly excited about the idea of Kendall Roy dying, even though he's my favorite character on that show, because I thought it would have been brave and I thought it would have been a logical conclusion for that character. it was interesting to go through the Tanya experience. I don't know that I feel as deeply invested in Tanya as I do in Gendell Roy, but that's what it feels like when nothing's sacred. And I think that if shows are going to commit themselves to being mystery and name only

or everything but a mystery but still a mystery or whatever you want to call this sort of phenomenon of turning adult dromedies into lost, then I think that the creators need to have a trigger finger and be willing to get rid of stuff because you've got to feed the beast when you start to get into this to this kind of industry. The White Lotus is the perfect show for this moment. You'd think it was designed in a lab or a focus group, but it was just suggested by one person during a pandemic, which makes it even more incredible and probably makes it feel more vibrant and alive and worthwhile.

But like, it is the answer to a question that hasn't. really been, it can't really be consolidated into a single question, but it is an industry-wide wondering of like, how do we make TV in this moment? It's a question that also touches the, wait, it's an ongoing now, but it's winning in limited series. What is it? It's both. It's almost unique in that, in that it starts new every year. It's new settings, new cast, new opportunities. You can rebrand. You can reboot. You can get that marketing push that does matter. I mean, I remember this from conversations when I was on the other side of the ball, that like, it's in some ways easier to break through with something new. It's hard to sustain, of course,

but there's value from the marketing department on that. You get all that, but you also get some continuing DNA like the classic TV shows, you know. So it's remarkable for that. This is a bigger conversation maybe to be having, maybe it's the conversation that we have on the pod when we're not talking election integrity, which is, in some ways, related to what Sam came in with Hot last week when he started the, you know, talking about TV regressing. Yeah. Maybe there are essentially three eras of, of television. There was all of TV until, I don't know, the Sopranos, right?

Which is just like, we're just going to keep churning it out. This might be biased around our lifespans, but yes. Sure. Yeah, but I also don't think Sergeant Bilko broke the mold. You know what I mean? I think we could talk about Love American style and fold it in comfortably into this conversation. It is funny, though, how you'll be like, there's all of TV up until the Sopranos and, like, all the good shows where, like, 51 million people were watching.

Yeah, look, we were talking about this with Sam off Mike. Like, cheers and mash and twin people. These all these things matter to me. Yeah. I just, it's hard to compare them. But one of the reasons it's hard to compare them, but it's to the present day is at a certain point, all shows did become lost. Not in the way that we watch them, but the idea that shows or pilots need to be motivated by a question. and that the work of the series will be answering the question.

Not in a Reddit theory way, but like, who's going to succeed Logan Roy? Yeah. That's a question. Yeah. Now, what's different, though, and is worth putting,

maybe I don't know what the exact moment where things broke in this direction would be. We could talk about it, maybe on another pod, but like the Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, did not start with a central question. You could sort of fudge it with Breaking Bad

and be like, well, how did he end up as Scarface? But he didn't, it didn't start with a flashback. It didn't start with, this guy is the drug, Lord of New Mexico. But now he's a teacher, huh? If you're pitching it today, it would. Those three shows start the way every show did for 30 years, which is, here's a situation. Let's hang out for a while and we'll see what comes of it and see what happens. Those shows

don't get made anymore. They don't. Even the shows that, the reason Succession is a good thing to talk about is that Succession in some ways is the most normal of our leading contenders for Best Drama Series every year. But it has a central question that motivates it, that fuels it, and that will ultimately end it in a way that, you know, Northern exposure didn't end when he was less exposed. I mean, West Wing went on beyond Jed Bartlett's presidency. But West Wing wasn't a question. West Wing was like, hey, here's a guy who's president now and the people who work for him. Okay.

What's next week? You know, it just, ER was, here's a hospital. Questions come up with terms of character arcs or plot points. But they are, but those shows were vessels that were built to the star of, we've done this before. The star of ER was the hospital. the star of the West Wing was the West Wing. Yeah. And Roblo, but the West Wing.

Right. And then maybe the Star of White Lotus is the hotel. But I think that the fact that maybe what felt like a, eh, I'll put a body in a coffin and to start just to kind of like get people interested the first season. The second season, I thought it was much more leaning into the idea of like there was a, you know, and it's no accident that this thing, you know, the volcano going off the entire episode. We didn't even talk about that.

Beautiful. Mount Etna, which is also where talented Mr. Ripley is set. Like, this was much more of a Hitchcockian kind of,

like murder in a foreign land kind of story. And I wonder whether season three he'll, Mike White's a very interesting cat. Like he, you know, his interviews at the end of season one

were very, very, very provocative, I thought, in terms of like both his kind of creative vision for the show and his awareness of how people were watching it.

I haven't seen those yet. You know, this, this season, they didn't send screeners out. There wasn't like a bundle of Mike White. For the finale. And there wasn't like a ready, like there wasn't already done Mike White interviews that dropped at 10.01 on last night. So we'll see what he says about the show going forward. But I wonder whether or not he'll be like, this isn't a mystery. Like I don't want to make a who done it every, every season.

What this is about is putting people in what's supposed to be the most comfortable. positions but wind up being the most uncomfortable positions. I also got to say, he's just not built like the autors of previous shows or generations. He doesn't, and maybe it'll be different when his interviews drop today or next week or whatever. But, you know, like when Matt Weiner would do interviews about Madman, which, you know, I am not criticizing that show, which is almost total perfection for me. And I don't begrudge his willingness to do this. But his interviews would be like, well, the state of American manhood in the 20th century,

was this. Like he ran towards the larger significance and context and wanted to be on that, you know, at that lectern, having a say, having a stake, making a comment. And I think Mike White, especially in these interviews, it's partly effect. I mean, he's a performer too, you know, but I think it also seems very genuine. He's just like, you know, I like kitchen sink dramas from Broadway because I read those and they felt classy to me. And I like probably Patricia Highsmith novels, but I also like Survivor and Fantasy Island. And I have some friends with interesting personality quirks, and I took a trip with my dad once.

Yeah. You know, I really think that one of the things that sustains and will sustain the success of the show is his humility about it. He's like, you know, I have an opportunity now in an audience, and it's so fun to have that. Right. But what interests me still interests me.

And I don't think, I just love that about the second season. I did think the first season tried to wrap its arms around some really big things and have something, to say about them. And this season didn't shy away from big, big things, but I don't think it, I mean, that's kind of a straw man argument. It was not a didactic season of television, you know, but this one just, it just kept circling back into the kind of mushy middle of the people, which is really, really the kind of drama I like and is really, really, really hard

to do on TV in any era, but particularly in this overheated, how are we, you know, what questions are we solving, who did it, what's going on era? Yeah, and I thought that, you know, he, he obviously knew what he was doing because the set dressing, the, not Easter eggs, but like, there was grist for the mill for people to analyze, like, okay, what's the myth about this statue? Why is this head in the room? Why is this painting of St. Margarita, like, on the wall? Like, why is, you know, the things that he was doing in that regard, I thought really did propel the conversation. It'll be interesting to see if he does that again next season. The last lesson I had from this show, which isn't unique to this show, but is a lesson done just the same.

And we haven't really mentioned this person's name that much in this pod today is how desperately and how necessary it is for shows, be it a show in its fourth season, be it at a show, it's a limited series, is that somewhere in the course of the season, there needs to be a gear shift. The gear shift and White Lotus season two is Tom Hollander. It really brought a sense of A, romance, B, mystery, and C fun to the season that I didn't know that it had necessarily with just Tanya and being on the back of a Vespa. And it made me realize like you manage these things like a bullpen, you know, and you can bring an arm out to change the game if you want to. and I would love to see more shows do this. Like, I think sometimes you can see the kind of like, this person has been hired for a three-episode arc. Or I've also seen, frankly, you're not going to really care.

But on Yellowstone, they've made a lot of mistakes where they've been, Yellowstone's made some mistakes where they're like, John Dutton has a vegan girlfriend now, you know, and it's like, eh, who among us? This is really not working, you know? And I don't really know, like, how much longer you can sustain this, but, or how long Piper Parabo's contract is for, but this is now kind of getting in the way of what is already,

like a show that seems to be a little bit aimless. Like, I think that Mike's ability to say three episodes and then we're going to bring in a fireballer at the third or fourth episode. He did it with Molly Shannon. He did it with Tom Hollander. And it's just like an absolutely, just a perfect maestro way of controlling the orchestra. But I love that observation. I also think it's relevant to what we were just saying about how to straddle the eras of television

because I think that bringing in someone to change the game, like that's a hallmark of long-running serialized or not shows. Like I remember when Justified was out and then Margo Martindale comes on the show and everyone's like, oh my God. Yeah. This is a totally different thing now thanks to her. Or, you know, what was really good about that was damages. You know, like guess who's doing this now?

Oh, Ted Dansans here? Wasn't Forrest Whitaker on the show? Like they would just call in these heavy, heavy hitters or big free. agent signings to come wreck shop and change the show that had maybe, it hadn't even grown stale, but the perception that for another, which is another year of the same thing. I think Andor had that by the changing of the settings and like you get to, exactly. It's like fucking Andy circus is here. This is like a completely different vibe. So what I mean is bringing that energy making limited, making even short games, bullpen games. I mean, it's White Lotus season two.

It's seven episodes. You have however many credited cast from Jump, nine people. people, Tom Hollander doesn't show up until, what, three or four? Well, it's really only six episodes if you take out all the shots of water. That's fair. That's fair. I feel the same way about 1899, because that also is a show set on water from everything that I'm understanding from the discourse. But, you know what I mean? Like bringing that, that's a pretty exciting chaotic disruption to bring to the limited series space. Because usually, I think, you know, again, you're always looking for a way to switch it up, to surprise people. And I think that we have settled into like, okay, six episode limited series, look who they got for this. Like, Fleischman's in trouble. It's like, okay, we got Eisenberg, we got Kaplan, we got Danes. They're on the poster. We're good. You know, we don't need to start scouting the waiver wire in episode three.

Right. But it's a good, it's a really good observation for how to keep people entertained and to just not settle. Yeah. Even within something that is relatively limited. We can wrap it up there. I thought it was a great season of television. So fun. Yeah. That was. was really fun talking about it this season. Andy and I will be back on Thursday. I think we're going to talk about the English because that is a show that wound up on Andy's top 10. Kind of out of nowhere. I mean, you know, really without much discussion on this pod. And I've since caught up and I got a lot to say about it. So if you don't know what that is, that is the Emily Blunt Western that's on Amazon Prime comes from Hugo Blick, who did one of our favorite shows

of the last 10 years, Honorable Woman. And really excited to chat about that. It's really, really, really unique and inventive show. It is really worthwhile. You may not like it. You may love it. It's beautiful. It's confounding. It's surprising.

It's really worthwhile. And I think people should check it out. All the episodes are on Amazon now. So we're going to chat about that. We're also going to get really deep into finding out whether or not Henry Cavill's coming back as Superman, Andy. I've got... I'm dying to know. I got reporters on the ground in four different countries trying to figure it out.

Thank you to Kai McMill. all in for producing us today. We will be back on Thursday. Hope everybody enjoyed the season of White Lotus and we'll talk to you again. Michael White Man versus Black Adam. That's all. I've just been tweeting that at James Gunn. But we're not ready to have that conversation. Bye.