Really enjoyed watching this week to week (long live the weekly release format!) . I'm still bitter about the ending, but I guess this was a dark comedy that poked fun of the white privileged scum, so in order to stay true to that they'd be the ones with the last laugh. Best performance here was definitely Murray Bartlett as the manager of the hotel who reverts to his drug addiction due to the unbearable demands of his spoiled patrons. That being said, the finale pissed me off since the character I rooted for gets killed by the worst character from the show. We get an ending reminding us of the privilege the guests have, but this is a bit depressing since this is a comedy where we see these rich monsters get called out for what they are. However, they leave unchanged and unaffected.

Anyways, I'm eager to see another season of this but I'd rather Mike White not be David Simon and try to show us "this is reality" since White's work is satirical where Simon's is actually journalistic. I'm guessing the other White Lotus resort won't have a death at the center of its story, but there will indeed be scandals. If we see characters return, hopefully they receive they cumuppins.

This show always leaves me wanting more...

To pass the time before episode 3 comes out, I'll speculate about some of the characters' arc. Please feel free to reply or debate, if you'd like!

- Albi and Portia? [spoiler]He's almost too good to be true, c'mon. I don't really believe the whole spiel about "only being attracted to pretty wounded birds", right after implying that "he's a nice guy" and that "girls don't really like him for that reason". Plus, Portia's already been pretty upfront about wanting to just have fun, soooo my guess is that they're maybe gonna get together, only for her to leave him because she doesn't want anything serious. He's gonna get revenge by divulging everything she confessed to him about her boss, knowing that she signed an NDA.[/spoiler]
- Tanya and her husband? [spoiler]Ok, we already know that he's - allegedly - cheating. She's gonna come out of it unscathed, as rich people usually do. We're just gonna have to see what/if she does anything to hurt him back, though.[/spoiler]
- Harper, Ethan, Cameron & Daphne? [spoiler]It's pretty clear that Cameron is a sleazebag and only wants one thing from Harper, who, annoying though she might be, was right all along about him and his wife. I don't yet get Ethan's motives for hanging out with him, but he might just surprise us! Cameron and Daphne remind me of that rich couple from The Great Gatsby who end up messing up Gatsby's life, only to run away without a care in the world.[/spoiler]

Oh, and let's NOT forget about [spoiler]all those dead bodies floating in the sea from the first episode...[/spoiler] Just who might they be??

It is rare for me to recommend television series because many shows do not intrigue me; in other words, I am a cinephile. When I recommend a series, it should mean significantly to the reader's interest. In the case of The White Lotus, it is not merely a superb miniseries, but it is a major comeback for its creator Mike White. White's last two efforts--Beatriz at Dinner and Brad's Status--were thematically shallow. Since it includes six episodes, White can develop each plot thread completely for the audience to grasp the complexity of his characters. The White Lotus concerns a wealthy group of guests at a Hawaiian hotel--The White Lotus--who enact or endure troubles during their trip for the hotel's employees. White begins his narrative with a clip from its ending to acknowledge a murder--like Big Little Lies. The initial question for the viewers is who the victim and killer are, but the mystery is the human behavior White examines. As a satire of classism, White humorously acknowledges the generational and ideological hypocrisies of the elite--specifically a family. White's writing has the kind of sociopolitical intelligence Luis Buñuel would respect. White derives his humor from a state of awkwardness, but he is never smug towards his characters. Whether they are amiable or obnoxious, there is a strange beauty to how White's satire causes audiences to care about these characters. Each performer--young and old--delivers the performance of their career. Jennifer Coolidge's performance, in particular, is hilariously manic and deeply moving in equal measure as a woman dealing with her traumatic past. As the series evolves, audiences witness the characters at their best and worst, and they are always believable due to the ensemble and White's astute writing. With The White Lotus, White successfully writes jokes with an undercurrent of tragedy, and the result is an oddly affecting achievement.

Side note:
I am unsure how to feel about this transforming into an anthology series.

A good show, but maybe not as focused on its satire as much as I would've wanted. It does kind of rub me the wrong way that its non-white character are the more clumsily written (see Lani, one of the first characters that we are introduced, that only serves as set up; Kai, the hotel's employee, whose background is explained in one scene, shoehorned in at the beginning of an episode, and Paula, who most people learn to hate despite the clear intention of the writer, as one can learn in the 'behind the episode' segments). Maybe that can be explained with Mike White not trying to speak for characters, he may think, he couldn't possibly do justice, or as a statement, a really lazy one, on the objectification (as a means to an end) of POC by white people.

I guess it can be read that Mike White couldn't really get away with it in anyway, but I do think it was a good job after all. I just think the overall tone comes more of a slice-of-life white people series, than a satire. And then, I kind of understand how people can ultimately see Paula and even Belinda in a rather bad tone.