HBO's White Lotus THREAD THREE

Link to previous Thread 2

Welcome! Can I get you something from the bar?

I'll watch nearly anything with a rimming scene between two hot men. Not so sure if on The L Word or Hacks.

It doesn't seem likely, but I'd be thrilled if Murray Bartlett was in season 2.

Although I like all the actors and think they're doing an outstanding job, Murray Bartlett is the only one I want to return.

This season was so magical because it was a fresh and unique experience. I'm not sure if that can be duplicated, but even so, I'm all in for season 2.

While enjoyable to watch, I'm still wondering if there's a story here at all

The ultimate fake would be if the dead guest was someone not in the main cast, maybe someone you saw in the background once or twice and the main cast resolve their own stories with no concern that someone has been killed and Shane at the airport is concerned that the flight was delayed and/or Rachel left him.

OTOH, I'm thinking that if it was one of the Mossbachers, the rest of the family would be there to fly home with the body, they'd probably want to be on the same flight. Though if it were Paula, that would be her parents problem, not theirs (in their minds, anyway)

Maybe Lukas Gage is a nice guy, but not sure if he's a bit thick. In one of the "Behind the Scenes" he pronounces the name Armond as "ARE-MEND" and with equal weight on both syllables vs the more typical French pronunciation that stresses the second syllable and the "MOND" sound.

Just thought it was odd since I imagine as they were running through lines he would have heard the proper pronunciation a hundred times.

A younger Murray Bartlett gives me Henry Cavill vibes.

The whole thing is an extended episode of Fantasy Island for the 20s.

It's good for what it is.

But it is what it is.

[quote] This is a stretch but after looking at the promotional artwork, the lightning bolt is striking Paula. I’m thinking she’s the corpse.

The quote above is from the last thread, and it's true: the artwork shows two lightning bolts conspicuously striking Paula. And she is the only nonwhite visitor in the whole herd.

I wouldn't read too much into it. Similar promo has the lightening striking Rachel.

Hmmm the box loaded into the plane says human remains.

Tanya has been carrying human remains around all season.

Maybe the box is full of the ashes of everyone except the asshole and that's why they can't come back next season!

That's a pretty box for some ashes.

Armond is the only logical character to show up in S2. He's been transferred to a new resort because word of the rimming got out.

Unless it's Belinda working at another spa....or maybe she's opened her own spa with the money left her when she was murdered on the island......I could see that. Tanya's also the most unlikely to be in the box of human remains, whereas Armond....

The really big surprise is that the dead body is wearing the bracelets!

I think Rachel will bump into her mother-in-law while trying to run away in the middle of the night and something bad will ensue. I couldn’t tell if how vacant she seems more and more each episode was a character choice or just bad, wide-eyed acting. (She reminds me of a friend of mine who overdid the Botox and bugs her eyes out because she can’t move her forehead as much.)

This show got me to watch both Enlightenment (excellent) and Looking (good). Thank you HBO, Mike White, and Murray Bartlett.

They *have* to keep Armond in it. Murray is delightful in the role and no extreme contrivance is required to keep him involved. I think there should be some connection between seasons.

(of course he could be the one who dies)

Of all the characters, I think it's bizarre that people here hate Rachel and think the actress who plays her isn't good. I think she is as good as anyone on the show; she's playing a complex person who is self-deluded about her professional life, yet ambitious and wants to remain somewhat independent and do something of value, and she's having an epiphany about her "terrible choice." It's a lot to pack into a character arc over a week's time.

Molly Shannon is excellent in her role, and the prior thread had discussions about her exchange with Rachel. Rachel was completely oblivious that she was nothing but arm candy until her mother-in-law made her realize she is a trophy wife, and what a punch in the gut is that? She was offended and in disbelief that her MIL saw her that way and within seconds realized her MIL is right and she chose that lot in life.

Shannon's character's matter of factness is scary to me. Earlier, when her son told her that Rachel wants to work, she snapped "NO. Why would you want to do that?" The no came across like a command. Then this week, she confirmed that her son only married Rachel because she's attractive. That's really fucking disturbing if you're a normal person. My mind was reeling imagining being in Rachel's position. That means so many things: pressure to always look good, a guarantee he will trade her in for a younger model at some point, rude dismissiveness by everyone in their social circle, immediate pressure from the MIL to pop out pretty babies followed by criticism for being stretched out by motherhood. Even if she is a hack writer, to suddenly be reduced solely to her body and her beauty has to be a terrifying idea since she values her own intellect even if it doesn't impress others.

Yes but R19

There are many women for whom that is a goal in life--they;'re pretty, realize they are not meant for a competitive job and just want to find something relatively easy to do until they get married.

That is who Kitty assumed Rachel was, and in that context nothing she says is offensive, it's actually supportive.

She's not dissing her for wanting to work, she's telling her, "sweet of you to offer to work, but throwing parties will be much more fun"

It is, as you note, Rachel's realization that this is how the world sees her that is rocking her, right down to the fact that Shane knows she's not a real journalist, just a hack listicle writer.

R20 I'm not arguing. This is what makes the show so good. The characters seem really shallow and they are together for such a short period of time, but their interactions are incredibly complex because of all the layers each one has under the surface. I'm not suggesting her mother-in-law is evil and means to hurt her, but inside Rachel's world, she's not only confronting the annoyance of her mother-in-law and the realization she hates her husband, but also a really devastating self-realization. And on top of that, she has zero support around her. She called her mom and her mom was too busy to talk to her. She's there with Shane and MIL, who she now realizes don't see her as a person of value. The college girls were assholes to her, the dad was a creep to her. She's totally isolated and having a world-shattering wake-up call about her life.

[quote]she's opened her own spa with the money left her when she was murdered on the island.

R14 That's a pretty neat trick.

Did anyone get sorta existentially depressed by the 5th episode. I mean it coulda just been because I was in a shitty mood but honestly it felt so dark.

Isn’t Rachel a little old to be having these “realizations”?

Plus, her interactions with the bitchy teens show flaunting her body is her go-to power move.

She’s a skank (and more than old enough to know better) but we’re supposed to feel sorry for her for being a skank?

R24 Yes, I think it's ok to assume Rachel 1) isn't the brightest penny in the pocket and 2) is pretty self-absorbed and ambitious... without a clear idea of what she wants to do to "achieve"

I don't hate the character or the actress, but if Rachel WAS smart, she would know that her looks could work to her advantage far more in this world beyond just marrying Shane. If she wants to do something more meaningful, then do what the mother suggested. Get involved with running a charity. Learn how it all works. The hobnobbing with rich people and draining them of their money. Build your network, then start your own charity and/or get on the board of directors of other charities. Pursue the "journalist" thing again. Whatever!

Life is a lot easier to figure out when you create options for yourself. Instead she's preoccupied with feeling ashamed, worrying people only care about her looks, and staring into space. The fact that she's just realizing all this about herself now in her 30's is odd. You work with the talents you're given and maximize them while they last.

Rachel: (spends first 35 years of her life flashing her tits to get her way )

Also Rachel: “OMG, how dare you think I’m a bimbo!”

Rachel is, what....24 years old? Clearly she's just a couple of years out of college yet some of you think she should have the hindsight and wisdom of a 50 year old gay man.

R28, she is written so, but the actress is mid thirties and looks every day of it.

That's a spectacular body for a woman in her mid-30s, r29. Are you gay?

R28 It's rare for the well-to-do (or anyone for that matter) to get married that young these days so I don't think they're meant to be college grads who just got hitched. The average age of marriage in the US is about 30 years old.

Physically, the actors couldn't pull of college age either. They look like they're in their prime.

R24 She wasn't shown flaunting her body, she wanted to get away from those awful girls and take a swim. Should she out in a burka to take swim? And nothing about her so far has shown her to be even remotely skanky. You are either just a sexist asshole who likes to call women skanks and whores or a plain dumbass who doesn't understands what he is watching.

Just finished binging White Lotus due to your threads.😉

So far, what I have:

- It's not Rachel, too obvious. At the airport, Shane is upset because one more thing happened that ruined his perfect honeymoon. Not his mother, he's angry, not sad. Same for Armond - he'd be happy. It appears Rachel left him, though. He's nervously playing with his ring and he cuts off the other couple when they ask about her.

- It's not any of the privileged guests. The show's theme is that their privilege will never go away and that the underprivileged are just looking for a better seat at the table; not changing the system. I find that interesting because there are two persons who are actively looking for an upgrade. In fact, a white lotus is a flower the blooms naturally in creepy dark waters and is impossible to uproot.

---Paula: Olivia's nonwhite friend who is jealous of her getting Kai. Yet she's not going to stay with him and does arrange a theft to assuage her conscience. IMO, Kai gets caught, Olivia suspects and poisons Paula. Or otherwise provokes an accident. So much talk about her allergies, seasickness, pill-popping may foreshadow this.

---Dillon is also looking to improve his position having been gay for job advancement already. From the preview, he seems to be worried about his standing and we see some sort of sex play involving Dillon, Armond, and someone else.

---Belinda is also looking for an upgrade and we know Tanya is going to flake off on her. Something could happen between these two.

My bet: Paula, who is already mimicking the behavior of the wealthy, but not there yet. She's the one breaking the barriers the most at this point.

I'm with you R33

If this was a roulette table with chips, I'd put mine on Paula

Might even be Kai that kills her because Olivia convinces him that Paula set him up. She's just the sort of bitch to do something like that too.

The official-official series artwork seems to be the poster with the lightning bolts hitting Paula. It was used by press for all the initial coverage and it was used at the series premiere, where it can be seen in the red carpet press photos. I have a feeling someone had second thoughts after it was out and started putting out alternative artwork to throw off Internet sleuths, but time will tell.

In any case, the poster is still telling in that it really shows all the vacationers except Paula to be wealthy white straight people, greeted by the gay and black servants. She stands alone among them, and as the show has played out, she had been revealed to be an imposter of sorts with sympathies for "the others."

There's so much to pick apart about the relationships and themes that this show presents. On one hand, it seems like all the rich white assholes should be getting comeuppances by the end if the show were operating in a moral universe, but that's not how reality works, and as of the penultimate episode, they're the ones whose lives have suddenly shifted for the better while Paula, Kai and Belinda are all set up for huge failures with one episode to go.

Since racial and ethnic differences are important to the show, are we supposed to assume Rachel is Jewish because of her name? I've never known a Rachel who wasn't Jewish. I assume someone named Shane Patton is not...

[quote] I've never known a Rachel who wasn't Jewish

You need to get out more R35

"are we supposed to assume Rachel is Jewish because of her name?"

No.

OK, just wondering. Writing like this encourages probing into meanings, particularly with such a stark divide between "white privilege" and everyone who is marginalized in any way (nonwhite, gay). Since Rachel has been totally ostracized by everyone she has encountered on the resort, I thought she might be written as intrinsically "other," as well, in a way that's hidden in plain sight.

I suspect you do know a non-Jewsih Rachel R35

It's not that deep, R38. "White Lotus" is a soap opera for a certain kind of person. It's given a WOKE overlay to make it seem like more than it is. Without that, a certain kind of person could not talk respectably about this at parties.

Rachel is "othered" because she is middle class.

SUNY Potsdam vs whatever private college Olivia and Paula go to

Why is everyone mentioning this Dillon guy? Or even know his name. He's an extra, that had two lines. He's not important.

R42 As a kind of a whodunnit, all info shown in the story is either important or else a red herring. He told Armond, "you said all kinds of shit. You owe me." So the deal he made and the threat he made may be significant in the end.

[quote] Why is everyone mentioning this Dillon guy? Or even know his name. He's an extra, that had two lines. He's not important.

Perhaps, but his upper butt crack is delicious!

He’s basic and bland R44. Toss him in a vat of sulfuric acid and he will neutralize it into water.

ALSO R45 "I don't think Brad Pitt is that hot. Give me a hot threeway with Danny DeVito and Abe Vigoda and I'm in heaven.

I imagine that all of the actors in the series will find their careers boosted by this series, and deservedly so. Suddenly I'm finding myself searching for past TV/films with Jennifer Coolidge, Steve Zahn, Connie Britton, Murray Bartlett and all of the actors new to me. I wonder if they realized going into it how popular the series would be?

The actor who plays Kai. I want him in me, quite deeply.

It really is just a soap opera when you strip it down. But a good one, nonetheless. Mike White should be writing and producing Gossip Girl.

Is this a bot-geneerated comment? It turns up, without fail, over and over again.

Get some new material, r48.

I agree part of the reason Rachel is puzzling (at least to some of us) is because I assumed the character was in her 30s. At that point in life it’s hard to be so naive about your own motivations that don’t wake up to the reality of your relationship until after a wedding. If she’s in her 20s instead, the character makes more sense—as does her belief that Connie Britton should have been flattered by whatever spamclick article Rachel wrote. Or maybe she’s just a person with good intentions who’s not that smart? There are a lot of those in the world…

It's the very antithesis of a soap opera, as its meant to make you question and think about things, but whatever.

R47, if you want a good Steve Zahn movie, check out Safe Men, where he and Sam Rockwell play bad musicians who get mistaken for safe crackers. Early Paul Giametti and Mark Ruffalo, too. Its sublime.

I love Steve Zahn, especially in the few episodes of Modern Family where he guested. He and Andrea Anders play the neighbors who are always suggesting impliedly bisexual four-ways with Phil and Claire.

Rachel doesn’t want to be a trophy wife.

Yet she doesn’t really have a career. She didn’t go to a good school or even a mediocre one, which tells us she probably didn’t get great grades.

And she has her tits out basically all the time. I realize they’re at a resort, but wearing the very low cut dress for dinner with MIL was a bit eyebrow raising.

The constant emphasis on her looks coupled with seemingly lackluster academic / professional credentials, and the “drifting” into marriage with a wealthy asshole… these are classic trophy wife traits.

The thing that’s interesting is she seems to be in deep denial about it. Maybe she grew up in a podunk town where she was the smartest kid in class, but not so much in the world at large.

But she probably wouldn’t showcase her tits so much if her self-concept truly were “smart kid.”

It’s interesting.

Brad Pitt was never hot R46. Raise your standards and some day we may respect you.

R52, exactly. Comparing this to a soap opera is ludicrous. Sure it’s not Tarkovsky either, but the characters are multi layered enough to make you question their motives and think about them after you’ve switched off your tv. Paula is a typical example. Why is she crying at the end of ep 5? Because she genuinely cares about Kai and realised he’s now in big, potentially life changing trouble because of her? Or because she thought this action would break the Mossbacher apart, whereas in fact it brought them together? Or maybe she doesn’t care about Kai but is worried he will implicate her to the police? This is great tv.

"Comparing this to a soap opera is ludicrous."

No, it's not. It's a soap opera, filtered through An Important Conversation on Privilege. But it's still just a soap opera. That doesn't make it uninteresting.

R56 All of those things, but based on her behavior, my read is that her being implicated is what drove her to tears. It was her idea and she will do anything it takes to stay out of trouble...maybe even killing Kai, the only person who knows it was her idea for him to break in.

That would make this a trickle-down tragedy. The benefits of being at the top of the totem pole by tagging along with awful people drove her to compromise herself to the point of the ultimate consequence.

Of course, Kai being loaded onto an airplane makes little obvious sense given that he is a local Hawaiian and so it's probably not that. But it would be heart rending if that were how this turned out. In the end, Paula, Kai and (we all expect) Belinda would end up fucked in the end while the white people go back merrily to their miserably indulgent lives.

R41 Yep, the series (soap opera or not, I mean Dickens was soap opera, Austen was soap opera... um, the Greek myths were soap opera) is all about privilege: status, power, insiders v outsiders. Or said more simply, it's about class. The "college" labels are one of America's most explicit signifiers of class. Shane wearing his Cornell hat declaring ivy league. His wife from SUNY Potsdam, the least "elite" of the SUNY system.

Olivia was wearing a "Bardo College" T-shirt on the boat ride to the resort. It's a quip on Buddhism of course, but it just seems too perfect that the two girls met each other at Bard... about as elite as your can get for privileges kids who fully question the structures that produce elitism. Hence the superior attitude of the girls toward everyone who doesn't question superiority as skillfully as they. They'll both wind up with good jobs comfortably in the upper 5%.

[quote] it just seems too perfect that the two girls met each other at Bard... about as elite as your can get for privileges kids who fully question the structures that produce elitism. Hence the superior attitude of the girls toward everyone who doesn't question superiority as skillfully as they. They'll both wind up with good jobs comfortably in the upper 5%.

Surely, you meant Brown, not Bard.

No, Bard. The political radical deconstruction as a fashion accessory is more common at Bard than Brown. And it matches the "Bardo College" T-shirt.

[quote] They'll both wind up with good jobs comfortably in the upper 5%.

And then just as likely marry someone they meet at that job and decide they'd rather be a full time Mom for a few years and it will never dawn on them that this is an option most other women (the 95%) do not have.

Soap opera, broadcast dramatic serial program, so called in the United States because most of its major sponsors for many years were manufacturers of soap and detergents. The soap opera is characterized by a permanent cast of actors, a continuing story, emphasis on dialogue instead of action, a slower-than-life pace, and a consistently sentimental or melodramatic treatment.....

[quote] vs the more typical French pronunciation that stresses the second syllable and the "MOND" sound.

Why would Armond necessarily use that pronunciation?

Americans and Australians don't use the French pronunciations for "Maurice" or "Robert," so why would they do it for "Armond"?

There's a difference between the girls.

Paula actually feels some of the social ideas she preaches about—and she is much less preachy than Olivia is. All the visual and sound cues associated with Paula suggest she is actually disturbed by the ignorance and hypocrisies of the people she is with. She is literally sick in part from it, and she was driven to make a very poor decision.

Olivia is pretty close to "evil" as far as I can see. She only draws from her social consciousness as a weapon that she uses to assault and manipulate her family. She is cruel to her brother, ungrateful to her mother, cruel to her father and she keeps Paula as a pet and preys on the things that give Paula pleasure. Olivia is in no way invested in the 'woke' ideas that she preaches. She solely uses them to back her family into a corner as a power play, and she brought Olivia along to disempower her parents because they will not say what they really think in front of a brown girl. Except that Olivia pushed them too far and they did say it, what they said disturbed Paula deeply, and what happened? Paula self-destructed, and Olivia ended up siding with her family. She gushed over her father's braveness to make him feel better, and now she is out to destroy Paula.

The girls are not one and the same. One of them is socially and economically dominant and using her power to quietly torment her supposed friend, and she has lured her into an isolated me-against-the-world environment where she is being destroyed.

R64 Because Armond pronounces his name as Ar-MOND (emphasis on the MOND) in the first episode. Not as "Ar-Mend" with equal stress on both syllables.

R63 - you must slay at parties with such display of knowledge.

R63 e.g. Dickens....

Old habits die hard. Armond can eat ass at any other resort.

How would you know, R67? You always stay in the kitchen on those extremely rare occasions that you actually get invited to one.

Kai roasts Olivia at the farewell luau.

Anyone mentioning Rachel's tits all the time or saying she's a slut, is a fucking idiot. Yes, women have breasts. Yes, hers are particularly large. Some women don't like to be dressed up to their necks, especially at a beach resort. Nothing she's done so far indicates that she's a slut, bitch, etc. She didn't flirt with anyone, unlike her husband. But I guess slut, cunt, bitch...are the go to words on this site, for women.

Calm down, Mary. It wasn't DL that tarted her up and filmed her walking around in a bikini. She decided to do that for her job, and so we get to comment.

I'm so gay I didn't notice Rachel's clothes at all until I saw a headline about Alexandra Daddario saying her clothes were too tight/small and very uncomfortable, so that tells me her revealing outfits are meant to define the character and aren't just a case of audiences wrongfully focusing on an actress's appearance.

I read another article about the clothes and they're carefully chosen to reflect character traits. For example, Armond wears a lot of linen not only because it's appropriate for vacation spots but because it is always rumpled and a linen suit is still a suit and so appropriate professional attire, but it's always also disseheveled as Armond is. Belinda is usually in her uniform and therefore is always playing the role of a servant, even at dinner. Etc.

I'm gay but even I have to admit she has a nice body. In episode 5, when she was talking to her mother, she had that fabulous robe open with a very flattering bikini!

I was like, "WOAH!" I'm sure she gives straight men boners left and right.

You made me curious in that article R74 so I went to find it!

I do wonder what the point of the character Lani was. You'd think she actually gave birth in real life so they had to write her out after the first episode. Unless she shows up in the last episode, I'm just confused.

R77 She has been on my mind the whole time. Maybe she comes back with a gun and kills Armond for being so oblivious to her pregnancy.

Sweeney's got a tight body too! This must have been during filming.

Lol.

Hello, White Lotus: Rehoboth

Rachel definitely intended to show off her bod after the college girls were mocking her to her face at the pool. A running theme of this show is displays of power/dominance—the girls were poking at her marriage, suggesting it was a trophy wife situation or she met her husband on an app (which is kind of a “we’re cooler than you” move or maybe even a social class put down, like “we would never marry for money, how tacky”), so Rachel played one of the easy cards she had, “I’m hotter than you.” It doesn’t make Rachel a slut, just human. I think it fits the running theme that people might be high-minded, but when they get pushed or cornered they try to assert whatever power they have.

R77, I've also been curious about the "point" of Lani. Maybe it's just that Armond is so stressed and out of it that he didn't notice a woman about to give birth. Or perhaps that the lowest level of staff/the caste system of service industries is so ignored that they can be about to give birth and the "higher castes" don't notice or give a damn. But I'd love to find out more in episode 6.

R83, to me, the part that stuck out wasn't that anyone failed to notice she was pregnant, it was that she was weeks from giving birth but was starting a job and deliberately not mentioning it because she was desperate. It sets up Kai's story, as well, that the locals have it kind of rough and all have to hustle for this job to serve rich white people.

[quote]a consistently sentimental or melodramatic treatment.....

Exactly. This show is neither sentimental or melodramatic. It's SATIRE, idiot.

R82, that’s likely also why Rachel wore the very low cut dress to the dinner with mommy in law. Again, she was feeling insecure and that was her power move.

It’s interesting that Rachel knows enough to use her looks as a weapon, but she’s not savvy enough to realize that she’s a trophy wife.

It would be interesting to know why SHE thinks Shane fell in love with her. She doesn’t seem to have many interests, and doesn’t seem that interested in her own career. Why does she think Shane chose her?

Even the mother in law seems to be able to break down power dynamics. Why is Rachel so shocked when MIL breaks it down for her?

R84, great point. I think that's a big part of it as well.

I think Rachel does know all these things, but she's been in denial about herself and her choice—even though they were right there under the skin. Throughout the whole trip, she has been quietly probing herself, her husband and others to ascertain her reality. Think about how she started unloading randomly on Olivia and Paula. She's been poking and prodding with some amount of fear knowing she has to confront reality and worried it might be exactly what she knows it is: she's a trophy bride and she hates the man she married.

Lani's desperation was overt. Besides the circumstance of her working at nine months pregnant, when she was asked why, she said "I needed the job!"

The locals are more than a little bit desperate. Hawaii is fucking expensive and the jobs are few and far between, mostly in service and they don't pay well.

It may sound ridiculous, but after this show is over, watch the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch. It's surprising for a kids' movie, and you see how much Lilo's older sister struggles to find and keep jobs that will support them, always on the verge of losing their home.

There's something really perverse about visiting Hawaii as a tourist. The kingdom was stolen by the US, rich white people moved in and settled and then invited more rich white and Japanese people traipse through as tourists who the Hawaiian people have to service to pay their bills. There's no small amount of resentment about it, but the people who work these jobs like Kai and Lani and Belinda are totally compromised and not only have to smile but have to buy into the whole aloha thing just to muddle through. I think Belinda's potential breaking point is that she had settled into going along with the bullshit of it all and was totally fine with that. She had no ambitions. But now someone has "seen" her and taunted her with an opportunity to make something of herself, and she let it all out by way of a business plan we all know Tanya will never even look at, and it could really devastate Belinda.

Lani and Kai never had the opportunity to get even that close to having their own personal ambitions to dream about because they are just taking what they can get.

[bold]The next season's White Lotus should be a glamping resort where sherpas escort guests to the summit of Mt. Everest. [/bold]

I want to be the line of guests waiting in line to the summit and be photographed.

I want to be the group of Silicon Valley technocrats who want to do this for their bucket list.

I want to be an early-retired husband and wife couple who--should--NOT--climb another mountain because it can be their last.

Agree with R88't take.

Rachel probably never had to confront these things because no one ever forced her to. She seems like she's been drifting since college, working the same job, hanging out with the same poeple.

At some point she realize that she was about to turn 30 or that 30 was in the rear view mirror,, her biological clock was ticking and here comes Shane "love bombing" her and telling her she's special and he wants her for more than just a booty call, he wants to marry her

I hope additional seasons don't turn out to be a long-running trash series like American Horror Story. One good season in 2011 and the shit just will not die.

Think how great this writing is. We just met all these people mere "days" ago storywise, and without a single flashback, we're invested in their personal dramas and know most of them better than they seem to know themselves.

The human remains are probably those of Jennifer Coolidge's new bald beau. Wouldn't it be funny if his coughing to get out of spending additional time with her turned out to be actually something serious, like maybe end-stage lung cancer?

^covid

1) I also think the BLM guy is the one who ends up in the casket. He probably has lung cancer, knows it, and that was part of the conversation Tanya overhead when eavesdropping at his door. (it would be great if it actually was Covid, but I think this is supposed to be a covid-free universe). The cancer doesn't kill him, but perhaps he has some kind of accident while swimming. ...and remember, although the tourist at the beginning says she heard someone was killed, it doesn't necessarily mean murdered. It could mean died in a tragic accident.

2) The reason we probably won't see Lani again is the story takes place over 1 week. Even if she were to come back, it wouldn't be so soon, (we also might not see the Kai storyline resolved).

R86, exactly! The mother-in-law directly tells Rachel when they're by the pool that Rachel's "secret power" is that she makes Shane happy. So use that power to be happy, whatever "happy" entails. At first, I thought the mother-in-law character was just going to be vapid and over-protective of her son (and to a certain extent she is) and out to get Rachel and ruin their honeymoon. But she's a bit more than that.

Throughout the episodes where she has appeared, I noticed the mother-in-law is always eyeing and gauging Rachel's reaction to things she says. She gets it, she understands the power dynamics going on, but I don't get the sense she harbors malice and ill-will toward Rachel.

The mother-in-law seems somewhat fond of Rachel, and well-intentioned (she wants her son to have “happy wife, happy life”), but very controlling. I’m still curious why she kept emphasizing that she barely remembered anything about the wedding.

R98 I didn't understand that either. At first I thought it was meant to be some put down toward Rachel, but it just didn't make sense how that would be the case.

R65 and R69 = Mike White.

Anyone remember how we used to meticulously pick apart the wardrobe in “Mad Men”? Every piece of clothing meant something.

Now, when you point out a character’s consistently revealing clothing (which is clearly intended to convey something about the character), we get a lot of screechy, hysterical “how dare you say she’s a slut!” nonsense.

Building on what has been observed about Rachel earlier: her life wasn't moving like she thought it was going to, NYC but mediocre... I wonder what her East Village place was - either 300sf single or with a number or roommates - handsome rich guy falls for her; she thinks "hmm, this could be a good next step. He seems ok." She agrees to marry, but at her core she knows he's not a good match for her. The MIL's advice not only doesn't help, it reinforces the inescapable truth that she had been seduced by what was a transactional decision. As she said at the end of the last episode, she made a mistake. She was trying to see if it might work. It won't.

I think the BLM guy is a mass murderer and he kills Tanya. His listening to her "I'm batshit crazee" rant, and simply saying "I still want to fuck you" was a clue to, not a nice tolerant guy, but a sociopath.

Anyone here familiar with SUNY-Potsdam? Apparently it has 51% graduation rate and only about 3,500 (under and grad) students. That's a small ass school with a bad grad rate.

R103 see R59 SUNY Potsdam has the highest acceptance rate of all the SUNY campuses. It is the least elite in the system.

Who the fuck is running that school? Perhaps they still have some academic standards but because they accept almost anyone, it leads to bad grad rate? In any case, not a good look for any school especially one that small.

Might as well save money and go to a community college.

Kitty is a rather simple character: She wants her son to be happy with the wife he chose. Unfortunately, he isn't, and he calls her and complains like a whiny, little bitch. So, she flies to the resort and gives the new daughter-in-law "the talk" that Rachel should focus on making her beloved son happy instead of holding on to this delusion that she's anything but a trophy wife. And, in Rachel's case, she's really delusional that she has anything of value to offer to the world. But Kitty says it in a passive-aggressive way that Rachel's great "power" is keeping her son happy, and she should focus on that.

I didn't notice Quinn's shirts before, but I had to chuckle at his "END Homelessness" shirt in the fifth episode. That family is the very definition of Limousine Liberal.

Like Hudson U.

Truths that swallow hard going down.

Rachel is self-aware. She knows she is not a good journalist - altho it sounds like a cool profession. The honeymoon puts her in front of rich people who don't care about Shane's happiness like Kitty does. First off, Nicole tells her a few hard truths about her real financial standing in the relationship and follows up by showing her what a bad journalist she is.

Then the girls mock her as "not our kind." Good for Rachel showing off in a bikini. Tanya knows full well that money does not buy beauty. That's a separate currency altogether.

Then Shane and his mother tell her what she has to do. Almost like in other cultures an older woman goes on the honeymoon to help the virginal bride adjust.

Rachel's problem seems to be that she knows this new glamorous world she's living in can be taken away on a whim by Shane. Kitty wants Shane married b/c he has been a bachelor too long.

If I was advising Rachel - honey, you need to get pregnant right away, stash whatever cash you can get your hands on, and make friends among his friends. Sure they'll side with him, but it will expose her to other men who may want her or who can help until Shane finds someone else.

Rachel was just delusional. She thought she would stay in charge of her own fate even while married to rich douchebag Shane. And then Shane did the unthinkable: He said no to her plans. Big shocker. And then mother-in-law says no to her, too. What? For real? Who could say no to a fully empowered woman who has plans? How can this be????

r109 - Maybe Rachel thought that now the rich guy would help find a cushy job.

I hope it's Paula who dies from one of her many (made up) allergies and ailments. Like, Armond removed her EPIPen from her bag by accident, and she gets stung by a bee.

I hope they make each resort and season a different color.

That one native boat rower guy who invited Quinn to join as added weight was hot as fuck... I hope that actor starts an Only Fans soon!

R82 No, she didn't meant to show off. She was hurt by the girls mocking her and wanted to get away. It's not like they couldn't see before she took off that tiny piece of clothing, that she isn't hot. She wasn't wearing a burka, everyone could see she has a hot body and beautiful face. If she wanted to show off, she would look back at their reactions, but she didn't. Showing off would be totally out of her character and everything we learned about her so far.

R89 Belinda is a black American, not a Hawaiian native.

R106 "And, in Rachel's case, she's really delusional that she has anything of value to offer to the world." So, just because she isn't some big shot news journalist, she has nothing of value to offer to the world? So clerks, cleaning stuff, fast food employees etc. have nothing to contribute to the world? What are you offering to the world?

More evidence of the show's brilliant writing is what it reveals in conversation among viewers.

People watching on one hand are able to identify terrible aspects of the rich characters' elitism, such as END HOMELESSNESS tee shirts—even as they say a woman who graduated from a non-elite public university and has a struggling career to earn a living is valueless and should shut up and make her husband happy since she has no worth otherwise.

The observations and interpretations are remarkable.

It seems like the consensus here about Rachel is that she's dumb as a rock, her life is an embarrassment and all she has to offer in life is her body.

Another way to see it would be to listen to Rachel as she describes herself. First, she was grateful to be at the resort and excited to be on her honeymoon. Her husband was ungrateful from the beginning, and eventually his complaints wore her down. Nothing was good enough. She later admitted that his attitude made her doubt their future—will she be good enough as years go by? He dismissed her, leaving her hanging. She tried to confide in two random girls and they were cruel to her. So she approached Nicole out of admiration and flattered her (genuinely; she was impressed with Nicole), and Nicole, too, told her she has no worth.

She told both Nicole and her husband that she didn't come from money, acknowledged that her job is not what she had hoped for but that it has gained some traction recently and therefore a source of a sense of identity, income and independence, and both Nicole and Shane laughed at her. She did find out from Nicole that the "repackaged" articles she does are poor journalism, which she seemed not to understand, so that represents an actual failure and weakness and not only rejection.

So she has gone from feeling bad about her decisions and relationships to now losing confidence in her abilities. It's a major wake-up call.

At the end of the last episode, she woke up and said "I've made a terrible mistake." (I expect this to be subverted somehow in the next episode...)

I don't think she is a total idiot or someone who believes herself to be a worthless human being except for exceptional boobies. She told others (and us) that her life has been a struggle and she has done what she can to make a life for herself, and now she's got a pathway to the easy life but recognizes it's a deal with the devil.

I don't think she is stupid and incompetent. I think she's naive and ignorant (regardless of her age) and this honeymoon is forcing her to determine what kind of woman she is going to choose to be. She could go this way and become her mother in law whose future is clear (miserable life, miserable husband, flaunting wealth to compensate for lack of self-worth, certain to become a divorcée) or she could go another way and use this experience as a kick in the ass to learn what she never learned about proper journalism and combine that with the networking skills she has proved she has (she's getting job offers regularly) and earn herself a better life.

This show is way too layered and nuanced for this character to be nothing but a stock "bimbo with nice boobs" type. And I suspect we may find out she and Nicole have more in common than meets the eye.

Someone's been sniffing their own farts

A watched an interview with Coolidge (who is funny on her own, but not with the out-there nature of her characters) the other day, and she said that her face has always made people laugh—her features and something about the way she moves her face when speaking—and that's how she ended up being pigeonholed as a comic actress.

I think we see that in this show. Part of what's funny is her strange affected way of speaking, of course, but she's simultaneously funny and tragic when she plays the scenes about her mother straight while her facial expressions are just hilariously strange.

[quote] [R106] "And, in Rachel's case, she's really delusional that she has anything of value to offer to the world."

[quote] So, just because she isn't some big shot news journalist, she has nothing of value to offer to the world?

No, because her character believes that her journalistic career does good. That is her mind set. And she thinks that is her big contribution to this world. And, as we learned, she's isn't good at her job at all. That is what makes her delusional and that is what makes it impossible for her to offer anything of actual value to the world.

[quote] [R82] No, she didn't meant to show off.

Watch that scene again. Look how awkward her body language is while taking her robe off and when she slowly steps into the pool. That wasn't for her benefit. She wanted to make sure that these girls can take a good look at her body.

Coolidge is what you get when Muppet and Spitting Image puppet had a baby and that baby was raised by Ernie and Bert.

That Rachel swimsuit power play was not about her *consciously* trying to prove to the girls she was hot, so it would not have made sense for her to turn around to check that the girls are watching. I see this show as asserting that when people are feeling powerless or threatened—even good people, well meaning people who don’t want to buy into sexist or racist crap—they revert to instinct and animal nature and lash out with whatever power they do hold, to protect the status they have. The girls were making Rachel feel insecure and lesser (of less status) for putting effort into finding her man (she used an app, she married rich, etc)—they made her feel like a “striver.” If you asked Rachel, she would probably deny she thinks women with hot bodies are better than other women, or that women’s power and status has anything to do with their bodies, because that’s a harmful and antiquated notion. She would have never turned to them and said “I’m hotter than you guys, so I’m better.” But she was feeling insecure, cornered, and angry, she wanted a way to say “I’ll show you assholes,” and she lashed out on instinct, and that’s what her animal brain came up with when it took over in that moment—because in moments of stress or powerlessness, we all unthinkingly fall back on the cultural patterns we’re taught.

R120 I don't know that she thinks her 'reporting' does much good. She tells both Shane and Nicole that her stories are repackaged reporting from other people with minor new details added for color. She didn't seem particularly proud when she told Nicole that she profiled her; she admitted it kind of bashfully and seemed a little embarrassed to say specifically what the story was, and if I am remembering correctly, she was also surprised that Nicole even noticed it, which would tell us that she is not delusional about the importance of her writing. When she acknowledged that she threw in the MeToo thing, she didn't seem to suggest that she thought that was societally important, just an interesting detail to "freshen up" the story she retold. She's guilty of ignorance and limited understanding but I certainly don't think she has any delusions of grandeur.

Quite the opposite; she has an inferiority complex.

She is ashamed when Shane treats "the help" poorly. She cringes and shrinks down in her seat, turns her face away. If she were the type to think her work is very important, then she would expect that people treat her better, not be grateful for any little bit of kindness anyone shows her.

When the creepy dad began talking to her, she looked initially bothered to be interrupted, and then she seemed to decide to engage in a little chat with this man, and then she got pissed off when he turned out to be another person who only objectified her. A woman who uses her body for power would have probably dropped the shirt, popped her chest out and pranced by Creepy Dad as a show of power to demonstrate that she's too good for him. She buttoned up, folded her body in on itself and scurried away. She did not feel empowered by the lecherous attention.

What I've registered her saying about her work is that it's a job and it's as good as it has ever gotten for her. She doesn't want to give it up not because she thinks she's doing Ronan Farrow's work, but because it's all she has accomplished on her own and her identity is tethered to it.

Die in a grease fire, cunt R50. If you don’t like it, get the fuck out of DL.

R123 it’s a good illustration of the catch-22 for women—if you’re feeling competitive with other women, a hot body can make you feel more powerful, but if a man is making you feel vulnerable, a hot body can make you feel even less powerful, like a target.

[quote]Part of what's funny is her strange affected way of speaking, of course, but she's simultaneously funny and tragic when she plays the scenes about her mother straight while her facial expressions are just hilariously strange.

It's like she's processing ewverything in real time and not quite getting it. It's amazing.

I think we're supposed to be left unclear as to how Rachel views her work

She's freelance--no one has ever taken her on staff, which means she needs to be constantly hustling and that he has to pay for her own health insurance.

In the real world, people with jobs like hers often do burn out. They're "creating content" not writing stories--for instance the "me too" angle was likely in there because it gave the piece more Google juice, not because it had any real relevance.

And real journalism jobs are shrinking rapidly as local papers go out of business and even web-based sites like Vox and Slate mostly rely on a series of "content creators" with some actual journos thrown in for good measure.

It seems like Rachel has been on auto pilot. She does her puff pieces, she's reliable enough and competent enough, but there's not clear next move in sight.

Mostly though I just keep coming back to the fact that several of my hetero friends have also remarked that she and Shane seem like they're on a second date, that the conversation is still at that somewhat stilted level of people who don't know each other very well.

Which is not out of the ordinary. How many times have you known someone who fell in love with their image of what a boyfriend or girlfriend should be and were crushed when the actual person did not live up to their fantasy.

R90, I would adore that. A cross of 2 really great DL threads.

Nobody on The White Lotus is a "good" person. They all have flaws that trigger some viewers to express how these characters are "worse than Hitler". And that is the true genius of discussing the show. Watching other posters point out what triggers them in these characters.

Rachel is a wonderful character in that context. So much dissect.

Take that conversation between Rachel and Carol, for example. Rachel having a personal crisis reaches out to a fellow guest, Nicole, to ask for career advice, which Nicole is more than happy to give. They connect on a general women helping other women level. Then it gets tricky. It's Nicole who asks questions about Rachel and Rachel happily, kind of humble brags, that they have a connection because she "wrote" an article about Nicole. That's when Nicole turns on her fellow woman and sets her straight about not being a good journalist (and it's true. Rachel didn't do any investigation herself, she just copied and pasted random stuff from other interviews showing she never met or interviewed Nicole for the article she's so proud of). Rachel can't understand why Nicole turns on her since she thinks her article was great and showed Nicole in her best light, and then we find out that Rachel's article includes a passage where she claims that Nicole got her career through affirmative action. But for Rachel that is no reason to turn on her. She still believes she did good, and that Nicole is a bitch for no longer being nice and supportive to her. She thinks the claim of Nicole being a success story for affirmative action is her being nice and supportive to other women. And Nicole strongly disagrees.

And, I believe, she expects that from Kitty, too in their conversation at the restaurant when she reveals her plan to keep working at a non profit and then gets shocked that Kitty dismisses her well-intentioned plans to remain an independent woman with a job that keeps her busy.

Rachel is the kind of gal who expects women to support other women, but doesn't seem to really return the favor (doing the hatchet job in the article) and resorts to juvenile responses (she's a bitch! or showing off her body) when it comes to fellow women.

Between Mark's drunken rambling at the bar, and Shane and Kitty gossiping at lunch, Rachel at least has enough to get a job at the new Gawker.

That’s true, R129. I see Belinda as sympathetic and representative of the oppressed working class, seeing opportunity in the nice, but kooky, rich white lady, who ultimately proves that nice, rich white ladies only care about themselves. My partner sees Belinda as a user, exploiting a nice, rich white lady to get ahead when she doesn’t even like the nice, rich white lady. He sees Paula the same way since she doesn’t seem to like Olivia, but clearly likes to benefit from her parent’s money.

[quote] She thinks the claim of Nicole being a success story for affirmative action is her being nice and supportive to other women.

Not sure about that.

I got that she added in some words that would help pull the article to the top of search results since "me too" was trending and didn't think about what her words seemed to actually be implying.

[quote] She thinks the claim of Nicole being a success story for affirmative action is her being nice and supportive to other women.

[quote] Not sure about that.

It's either that or she didn't even read her own copy and paste article. She believes her article is pro women in business. Nicole disagrees, but for whatever reason can't convince Rachel who is so sure of her original intention.

It crossed my mind that maybe Quinn is gay and will be got gang-banged by those hunky rowers. But maybe he's just in the autism spectrum?

R108.....Brilliant post. That's what she should do, but I don't think I could take 9 months of Shane's abuse and Kitty's "advice". And Shane's the type that would cheat on her while she was giving birth. How much money is that worth? I guess for some women it's worth a lot. Just ask Marla Maples.

R129 Who the hell is Carol?

r136, my apologies. I meant Nicole.

The other funny/quirky thing about Jennifer Coolidge is the way she uses her ample body. She seems to be in constant pain and even the slightest movement is difficult. All of that curvaceous flesh that's so uptight. Coolidge still has great legs though, at least from the knees down.

I think Lani and her giving birth in E1 was a red herring, just like Greg's cough after fucking Tanya,

R138 I love Tanya's huge body and her great caftans.

I just don’t get the love for Coolidge, a very little goes a long way and more then a few minutes each episode is enough for me.

R131 Do you always fall for racists?

R138 she mentioned in an interview that she put on a lot of weight during the pandemic and when Mike White called her to be in the show, she was like, "SHIT!"

Alexandra Daddario is always playing younger than her age for some reason. She even played The Rock's college freshman daughter when she was 28 (absolutely ridiculous). You can also count on one hand the roles in which she wasn't sexualized (even when it's completely unnecessary).

I read Rachel’s cluelessness as millennial-style arrested development.

One of my family members is like this. Born on third yet thinks she hit a triple.

Seems utterly clueless about interpersonal dynamics and human motivations because she’s never had to figure out any kind of angles to get ahead.

Rachel THINKS she’s been “struggling” her whole life, but I wonder how true that is. I’d guess she’s received a lot of breaks because of her looks, but doesn’t even realize it.

Where did she meet Shane, anyway? Not while slaving away at some minimum wage job— which is where an unattractive woman with Rachel’s qualifications would have been working.

I just groaned out loud. Lani!

I am rewatching the first episode and I can tell already that this is going to be a revealing second viewing.

Armond is being SO patronizing to Lani. "Wave, Lani. There the are," he says as the boat arrives. Then, "I don't know how they do it on the other properties where you worked, but here, self-disclosure is discouraged. Especially with these VIPs who arrive on the boat. You don't want to be too specific...as a presence, as an identity. You want to be more generic. We are asked to disappear behind our masks as pleasant, interchangeable helpers. It's tropical kabuki."

Besides being such a statement on the relegation of local Hawaiian people as set decoration and servants to the mainlanders, it also gives further reason for Lani not to have disclosed her pregnancy. She was told to disappear and have no fucking identity.

Argh!

Bitter much R144?

She is slaving away as a freelancer writing listicles for a few hundred dollars a pop.

She was born pretty far away from third base too.

SUNY Potsdam.

(Which I assume was chosen more for the comic value of the name than the idea that more than a handful of people would know anything about it.)

Do you have any idea how trite your “bitter much” routine is, r146? No wonder you identify with Rachel.

I'll take trite over bitter any day.

Yeah, the scrutiny that the university is getting seems like an unfair focus to me. I'm kind of shocked that people are basically saying this fictional character has zero worth besides her body and would be working a minimum-wage job if she were unattractive because that's the only kind of job a graduate from that real university could get. That's pretty fucked up. Completion stats don't tell the full story about the quality of an education at any specific institution. Most recent research has proved that most public institutions with poor completion rates have students who are under the greatest financial and other life pressures and drop out to pay their bills, take care of their families, etc. No surprise that the universities that have the highest completion rates are the wealthiest universities with the wealthiest students.

Let's face reality: Anyone can graduate from any college today if they can afford to stay enrolled for long enough to be awarded a degree. It's not a matter of merit. Graduation is guaranteed for wealthy people not because they are smarter but because money makes it possible to get at least the minimum necessary done to finish.

Am I the only person bowled over by all the "Rachel is so hot" comments? Yes she has a great body, BUT THE FACE. She looks like Smeagol. I don't get it at all. And her hair is just terrible.

And none of what you said, r149, goes towards the point made earlier that extremely attractive people get lots of breaks in this world without even realizing it.

Rachel is always so bug-eyed... like a deer-in-headlights vacant and perpetually-dumbfounded stare...

R150 I think she is beautiful. Her eyes are stunning. I didn't notice her body except in the gratuitous shot where Olivia notices it, but I think her face is very pretty.

I'm feeling bad for the actress reading the comments about her in all these threads here. People are conflating her with the character and implying she's a terrible actress whose only asset is her body. I think her performance is quietly nuanced and harrowing given how simple and superficial the broad storyline is. I really don't get the hatred. I'm not familiar at all with her outside of this show but I think she's perfect in the ensemble.

They should've had Alexandra's brother Matthew play Dillon. Would've loved to see him being rimmed by Murray Bartlett

R150 No straight man cares about fucking hair.

[quote]I read Rachel’s cluelessness as millennial-style arrested development.

This is exactly how I saw it, too. She actually thought she did a good job "repurposing" a WaPo piece for a Buzzfeed type site and it took someone from an older generation to inform her that that isn't journalism. To me, this was a take down on the state of journalism right now. A lot of it is copy pasta and a whole bunch of college grads start out their careers this way. I read so much shit at legitimate sites its kind of shocking what passes for journalism these days. I think they have a great line about this in Succession, as well. But Rachel needs to get away from that hustle and just try to write someone of her own before she closes up shop.

R156 -- see R88 and R91 for further agreement with that take

Considering how many of you hate Rachel/Daddario it's fascinating how she's gotten so much more attention here than Armond/Bartlett, Tanya/Coolidge. Mark/Zahn and even the hot Hawaiian stud.....all who would normally be the focus of DL attention. I credit the writing and the acting.

[quote][R156] -- see [R88] and [R91] for further agreement with that take

Yeah, I said the same thing two threads ago, but just thought I'd add to the chorus again. And it should have read, "write someTHING of her own."

The critics have been trying to make Alexandra Daddario happen. They may get their wish, because this is probably the only time she's been decent in anything.

Alexandra Daddario is currently dating producer Andrew Form. She hit the jackpot there.

R158 don't blame me! I said I wanted to fuck Bartlett waaaay back in THREAD ONE, and Kai more recently in THREAD TWO! But we keep coming back to Daddario.

R158 I think you've misunderstood... "critiquing" her character is not hate, is, in fact, confirmation of exactly what you suggest - good writing. She's the most complex character, with immediate psychological conflict in every scene. And she is exactly, literally, in the middle class, in the middle of elite class and lower class - which contrast is the theme of the teleplay, no? It's not a surprise she's gotten so many comments here and other places. It's also why I think it may be a double fake, she is the one who is killed.

As for the actress - she has those piercing eyes, and superior body, but nothing else seems stunningly "beautiful" as others suggest. It's trivial to pick on the hair.. but I can't get past that Eddie Munster hairline.

We are all Rachels.

How the fuck is this thread greyed out??

DL hates Rachel because they want to be Rachel.

Why is the OP's post crossed out? I don't see anything controversial about it.

Paula's t-shirt on the incoming boat had "Post Hope" written on it. Make of that what you will.

Paula and Rachel are at the White Lotus because of their beauty. Rachel was invited to some party b/c people want good-looking people at their parties and met Shane who decided she was "the one." (For now.) Paula got invited to the trip b/c Olivia wanted a pretty hip black friend. If Paula was a young Belinda, Olivia would not have brought her along. Beauty is a separate currency.

Kitty named dropped Miss Porter's School which made me wonder - What advice would Jackie give Rachel, assuming she was speaking honestly.

I just re-watched episode 1. It's like watching a whole new episode. I now see every character in almost a completely different light. I strongly recommend it.

R158 If there's one thing that DL likes more than hot studs, it's hating on women and calling them sluts and cunts.

Not going to lie, I’m happy this is wrapping up Sunday and I will follow the deconstructing of the finale, but glad to not have to keep up with these multiple threads and circular discussion after Monday.

[quote] Brad Pitt was never hot [R46]. Raise your standards and some day we may respect you.

Pitt was sexy for a brief period, back when he was still chain smoking. early aughts. Described by his costar to have "swallowed the sun".

r171, Nicole Kidman's new show Nine Perfect Strangers on HULU is just around the corner. It looks like catnip exclusively made for DL's basement dwelling kitties.

[quote] like catnip exclusively made for DL's basement dwelling kitties

Oh damn. I just began my 10 month embargo on all Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon content.

r174. I'm sure you will be missed in the thread or threads discussing the show.

Alas, what the DL archive is for.

R171 It is possible to watch the show and not follow discussions of it. You're not under contract to DL.

Die in a greasy fire R171

Brad Pitt was hot once upon a time. I jerked off many times to the pap pictures of him goofing around naked in front of Gwyneth Paltrow.

It was a different time back then.

Brad Pitt has a ripped, tight body, which is an automatic "hot" to most people, and when he was young, he had a wild blond mane and kind of leonine features that hit the spot for a hell of a lot of women, if less so for gay men.

To each their own, but it's silly for anyone to claim he never had any pinup appeal to a lot of people, even if he wasn't your personal taste.

(But why is this being debated in an HBO series discussion in 2021?)

How did the dad know that the hotel manager is gay? There's nothing stereotypically gay about him. I didn't even know that the actor was gay before looking him up. So how would that dad know, especially when he is so clueless about gays. Didn't even know his dad was gay/bi.

Maybe the dad saw him in "Looking."

R181 Obviously, Armond is written to be obviously gay. And while I was also a little surprised because he's not played as nelly and flamboyant, I wasn't that surprised because on reflection, he is obviously gay. Watch the first episode again. He greets the guests in a pink linen suit. He tells Lani to "cover your boobs" with a platter, which is something a gay man is more likely to say in a professional setting these days than a straight man.

Also—hooray for the nuances of this show. Armond doesn't have to act like Paul Lynde from scene one for me to accept that he's obviously gay to some of the guests. (Maybe he caught Armond glancing at him? We can fill in some blanks ourselves.) But we are seeing Armond at work, and he is doing his job and therefore not in a sexual context. We don't need every gay man on screen to act like Jack MacFarland.

What's important are the personal and power dynamics. The father is totally inappropriate asking Armond if he is gay, but the father is stuck in his own world and sees Armond as just generic help. Armond's already-tried patience is pushed further with this and so he finally crosses the professional line and propositions the father as a rebellious hostile act. It's the moment that pushes him over the edge. I don't think he was even necessarily wanting to bang the father, but when the guy asked him if he was gay and if butt sex hurts, he punched back with an aggressive "offer" to fuck the dad up the ass, which he knew would terrify the father.

Someone asked earlier why Armond wouldn't have resolved the Mossbachers' double booking in a way that would be more likely to satisfy them. But when we first meet Armond, he is already tense and frazzled, and it doesn't take a lot for him to lose his cool. Every guest pushes his buttons and he is trying to maintain sobriety. When Lani has the baby and he realizes what a self-absorbed asshole he is, it seems to catalyze his self-destruct mode. His being gay is incidental to what he is dealing with in life.

[quote] Someone asked earlier why Armond wouldn't have resolved the Mossbachers' double booking in a way that would be more likely to satisfy them.

Because he dismisses them as whiny little babies who can be pacified with a few empty words, making them feel important without actually providing a special service. And then something messes with his sobriety (the trainee giving birth?) and he pushes back against Shane.

Re Kitty's name-drop of her prep school (r168)--no one who went to Farmington ever referred to it as "Miss Porter's School for Girls". Ever. It made me immediately suspect that Kitty's lying about her background.

I also highly recommend watching the first episode again before the finale debuts. For that matter, I'm watching the entire series again before Sunday and loving it even more.

[quote] -no one who went to Farmington ever referred to it as "Miss Porter's School for Girls". Ever.

Only on Datalounge.....

SHE'S NOT A REAL PERSON R185. SHE IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER

They had her say "Miss Porter's School" because the name sounds extra posh even to someone who has never heard of any prep school and that's what they were going for. It worked better than Choate or Andover or even St. George's. There's something very old fashioned about the name which is what makes it appropriate.

Sort of how they chose "SUNY-Potsdam" because the name sounded funny and like what you'd name a fictional second rate state college, not because they thought that most of the audience would know

I was also surprised when Mark knew Armond was gay but figured Armond must have said something earlier that cued him in. We don't get to see their entire conversation.

I think you're missing the point, r188.

Mark's presumption that Armond is gay is where the humor lies. And it's why Armond answers him with snark.

I just assumed he picked up on it. Gaydar. My peers had been demanding to know if I was a 'faggot' for a full year before I even hit puberty and found out I was. We only see short scenes of interactions among the characters. It's likely Armond is seen scuttling about here and there, gazing at Dillon, glancing at other guys, and that people noticed it. I really admire writing that leaves space for us to fill in the world rather than drawing out every single detail that will become involved in a plot point.

(quote) "He tells Lani to "cover your boobs" with a platter, which is something a gay man is more likely to say"

But dad doesn't hear him say that. Most important thing is, dad is clueless about homosexuality, which is he was asking him about gay sex, do gays rest like it up the butt, etc. So dad has no clue about gays and no gay far. So he would be the last person to figure out that Armond is gay. Especially when he's not flamboyant.

Some people get hung up on the damndest minor details. Burgeoning writers are always told to "trust your readers; they are intelligent and will figure out what's going on without having to spell everything out." Then the audience obsesses over calling every detail that is not spelled out a flaw.

R158 = Mike White.

A lot of this is "well, now that you bring it up..." type stuff R192 because we are overanalyzing the show on DL

The fact that it wasn't immediately clear how Mark knew Armond was gay did not ruin the show for me and I did not think about it other than in the moment.

R194 The discussion makes me picture a horrible Hollywood focus group discussion, with producers' assistants taking notes to send back to the writer: Audience doesn't buy Armond is gay. Needs to be more up front. Character should do or say something gay off the bat—mention drag show, say "yaaas gurl" to Belinda, etc. Maybe Belinda calls him gurl, chile to be more subtle. Etc.

Next season they'll cast Andy Cohen so there's no doubt.

I've seen so many reviewers who've already seen all episodes referred to TWL as a murder mystery. So would that mean somebody killed someone? That would ruled out death by natural causes.

R197 I'm not telling you not to ask—just wondering: does it really matter if it's a murder mystery or not? It has been thrilling, it'll be over this Sunday, and the question of who died is only one small part of the show's intrigue. Kind of like Gosford Park, which crammed in a murder mystery at the end, which was basically irrelevant to the joy of watching the characters interact up to that point.

Well given that the older Jewish couple at the airport said "we heard someone was KILLED there" R197, it's pretty safe to say that's already been ruled out.

Killed could technically mean that someone was killed by a wave, a volcano, a shark, a falling coconut.

But it would feel like a major story cheat, so it's likely a murder.

People are not really discussing it here, but the whole mini-series has been setting us up with reasons various people may have to kill someone:

Armond might want to kill Shane (but Shane appears to be alive in the end) to prevent blackmail.

Shane might kill Armond because he's pushing his buttons.

Shane lost his temper with Rachel in one scene and visibly freaked her out. He could snap and kill her if she says she is leaving him. Or he could do it by accident.

Kai could kill Paula for setting him up.

Paula could kill Kai to keep him quiet.

Paula could kill Olivia when Olivia calls her on her deceit.

Kai could kill Olivia to protect Paula.

Belinda could kill Tanya for obvious reasons.

Rachel could kill Nicole in a sudden jealous rage—who knows?

Anyone could kill anyone by accident.

Most characters have some motive, though, which is obviously a huge point of the show. Everyone is pushing everyone to the edge in one way or another.

All we know is that Shane is or appears to be alive in the airport and he is upset and he watches "human remains" loaded onto an airplane. (Remember that Tanya carried human remains with her...maybe she violated FAA rules by bringing them into the cockpit and they have to be loaded into the luggage section? Again, who knows? We will in a few days.)

I would guess that Shane being upset is a red herring. Everyone I have heard describe the series begins it with "we see this rich guy's wife loaded onto the airplane in a coffin," and we really don't see that. We see that he is annoyed and we see him watch a box of human remains loaded onto the plane after someone mentions a killing. The audience assumes they are connected.

It's not a murder mystery. We don't know if someone was murderer or not, and won't know until the last episode

HBO's original press release reveals objective insights into what we are meant to see in the characters, including facets that have not been described here: Nicole is an executive who treats her family like disobedient employees; Mark has an inferiority complex; it confirms that Quinn "experiencing the wonder of nature for the very first time" (and so given that HBO highlights this, that is his character arc, probably not coming out and a gay gangbang with the rowers).

All the other character definitions are more or less as have been discussed here.

It refers to the show only as a social satire, not as a murder mystery.

[quote] Nicole Kidman's new show Nine Perfect Strangers on HULU is just around the corner. It looks like catnip exclusively made for DL's basement dwelling kitties.

The only that could get me to watch that is a scene of Luke Evans eating Manny Jacinto's ass.

R201 But the scene at the start of the first episode with the human remains of a "killed" guest loaded on the plane poses a mystery. There is no way that it doesn't color everything else we see.

I've re-watched all the episodes. Here's the betting odds:

Quinn - 85% "Killing" could mean dying in the ocean... a boat (outrigger) accident, a shark, drowning while scuba diving. All possibilities foreshadowed. A common transitional visual has been very powerful waves crashing against the ocean. Mother Nature takes Quinn home to her.

Tanya - 8% BLM guy is a sociopath. He's dying of cancer and doesn't give a fuck. "Come here crazy" so I can kill you.

Dillon - 5% Armond is threatened by Dillon that he'll spill the beans about spilling the Special K, Armond, high as fuck, panics and kills him. (5% even though Dillon is not a "guest", which is our assumption about who dies).

Paula - 2% Her giving up the 1026 safe code is discovered. The Mossbachers as a mob mete out justice. (Or Kai returns an offs her to keep her quiet).

[quote]Kitty named dropped Miss Porter's School which made me wonder - What advice would Jackie give Rachel, assuming she was speaking honestly.

A real ancient would refer to it as simply Farmington. And from the looks of those legs, I thought she was more of an Ethel Walker girl.

"Someone was killed" could also be more than one person, in theory.

It could also be someone random killed by accident by one of the primary characters.

So many possibilities.

I think death by natural circumstances would feel like a real fakeout, though, and a lot of people would find it irritating.

Shane's mother just left "too early to say goodbye."

Her islandhopper plane could crash—ergo, she was "killed." That would explain why Shane is so upset and storywise, it would explain why Molly Shannon's entrance came so late. Since the narrative went straight from the coffin to Shane's troubled marriage, delaying bringing Shannon on gave us time to settle on the idea that his wife was the one in the box and not possibly his mother.

I've talked myself into this scenario. I think the way Kitty blew in and irritated but was not totally hateable and then left with an emphasis on not having time to say goodbye makes her a likely victim. Also, it punishes Shane in the worst way possible since he idolizes his mother, and it's Shane's fault since it was his kvetching that brought her there to solve his problems.

So speculating further...maybe Rachel determines to leave Shane because she's "made a terrible decision," but upon learning his mother has died, Rachel can't work up the courage, ends up comforting him and seals her miserable deal with the devil by staying with him.

Shane seems very irritated but not distraught when chatting with the couple at the airport.

Seems like he’s be a basket case if Kitty died.

But I do like your theory r207.

Friend was relating what sounds like a reasonable explanation for the one-bedroom suite: the parents are so detached from the kids they don't think through that Olivia and Quinn are teenagers and can't be put together in the living room the way they had been when they were much younger and didn't really need privacy.

Also, we never find out what Mark Mossbacher does for a living, do we?

I'm perfectly satisfied to see the weird hotel room setup as being solely a power play by Nicole. She's paying, so she decides where people stay. She has been show several times rearranging furniture arbitrarily just to be in charge of where it is.

Olivia telling her brother to sleep in the kitchen is a power play against her mother. She and Nicole argue about it constantly, while Quinn doesn't care. He learned in the household to stay out of the line of fire.

My mom was a scorpio and a little bit like both Nicole and Olivia, and I (gay guy) am a little bit like a mix of Olivia and Quinn. My dad and my sister both always just lay low and do their own thing without ruffling feathers, and my mom and I were always in a tug of war.

It's crazy, I found out a few years ago that my sister grew up thinking our mother was verbally abusive, and I always thought I had the most caring mother in the world. I always saw her argumentiveness as challenges to argue back, not to win but to sharpen our blades, and my sister always thought we were beinng stabbed for no reason. She has changed her mind since our mother died. She keeps telling me "she was right! Mom knew EVERYTHING!"

This is why I love this show. Not everyhing makes sense, not everything is explained, everything is more complicated than it seems on the surface, open to interpretation based on personal perspectives and past experiences.

[quote]"cover your boobs" with a platter, which is something a gay man is more likely to say in a professional setting these days than a straight man.

R181 LOL! I say that all the time to my female coworkers.

^oops I mean R183

Ugh, frau central. No wonder m banned all soap threads. It's like the frau piranhas get a scent of it and attack.

R208 Don't you think if Shane's mother died or if his wife left him, instead of showing that he is upset, he'd take it out on the people around him? He told the woman to shut the fuck up, he's likely to go off on the flight attendants in the end and to remain obsessed with getting back at Armond.

Maybe the resort company will compensate Jake by sending him a voucher to go to White Lotus II in Bali. (Corpse-eating Komodo dragons, y'all!)

He didn’t tell her to cover her boobs he told her to cover that stain on her shirt.

OMG, r187, they're NOT "real people?"

Are you always so literal? Giving the school its formal name is inconsistent with the character.

R215 He literally said "hold it over your boobs."

[quote] Giving the school its formal name is inconsistent with the character.

I AM NOT FROM A BLUE COLLAR FAMILY!!

I SWEAR I AM NOT!!!

LOOK AT ME!! I KNOW THAT WOMEN WHO WENT TO MISS PORTER'S SAY "FARMINGTON"

IT SAYS SO RIGHT IN THE PREPPY HANDBOOK!!

I AM SO NOT BLUE COLLAR

SO NOT!!!!

I have a friend who went to Miss Porter’s.

She uses Miss Porter’s. Of course, she may use Farmington when talking to classmates, but to me it’s always Miss Porter’s.

She’s fascinating. She doesn’t disavow her past, but married a Latino-Japanese man from Berkeley who she met at grad school for deaf interpretation and have three kids. And struggle. One of her kids is trans. And they are all wonderful. Some of my favorite people.

Anyway, long way to say girls from Miss Porter’s School for Girls are not monolithic and some end up being wonderful people.

Well, no Emma Willard girl would say she want to school in Troy, that’s for sure!

I want the next season to be set in Aspen, with rich fuckers that came to ski and snowboard in the mountains.

[quote]Anyway, long way to say girls from Miss Porter’s School for Girls are not monolithic and some end up being wonderful people.

Unfortunately, I'm not related to many of them...

The White Lotus is probably the most elevated hate watching entertainment there is. You just love these characters and point out all their delicious flaws. It's like what Tanya said with her onion metaphor. You just take great joy in peeling off layer after layer after layer.

Everyone is shocked Jennifer speaks like a normal person.

That's from 2011. I think she's had a bit of work done since then

[quote] How did the dad know that the hotel manager is gay? There's nothing stereotypically gay about him. I didn't even know that the actor was gay before looking him up. So how would that dad know, especially when he is so clueless about gays.

Isn't fairly common knowledge - certainly to a likely world traveler like Mark - that this type of work draws in more than its share of gay men?

[quote] Someone asked earlier why Armond wouldn't have resolved the Mossbachers' double booking in a way that would be more likely to satisfy them.

The honeymooners are the Pattons, not the Mossbacher family.

R226 Are most gay men people pleasers that would enjoy hospitality? I get mixed signals from DL.

I'm basically a people pleaser, but I have a switch like Armond does. I would go out of my way to satisfy guests but I would draw a line with an asshole like Shane and possibly would do things like sending him on the death cruise while smiling cluelessly and apologizing for my mistake until he goes home.

Overly dramatic and lazy writing: Armond running through the lobby, as well as shouting an order to one of the staff at the same time, when he got the call that the police were in the hotel investigating the robbery (episode 5). The last thing a hotel manager would want is to create a scene like that in front of guests. Of course we know Armond isn't the definition of discreetness himself, I still laughed at the silliness of that short scene.

R230 He's unraveling and on a drug bender, making terrible life decisions.

I'm rewatching the first episode, as some have suggested on here, and the first things I noticed in the first scene are Shane fiddling with his wedding ring, and telling the nosy couple that they BODY is on their plane. They are loading the body on their plane.

How would he know that unless he was next of kin or involved with the deceased somehow?

R232 I'm Shane-level cockily confident that it's his mom after thinking through it.

(If it's not, that's fine. I have no hangups about being wrong.)

R234, as his mom's already left the hotel, how would her death, accidental, natural or otherwise, be attributed - as it was by the woman at the airport (who heard someone was killed at the hotel) - to the "hotel"?

Of course, the body is Molly Shannon.

Do you really think she'd accept the role and only appear in a couple of episodes (she's also BFFs with Mike White)? You just know we're going to see her disastrous exit from the island in the finale.

R234 She hasn't already left. She is planning to leave in the morning for another island, "too early to say goodbye to you." Small boat or plane crash?

I stand corrected, R236. But based on the airport talk, I'm still expecting a murder - not an accidental death - that occurs at the hotel.

R237 Time will tell!

And this WaPo article, the subject of another DL thread, notes that this is a "murder mystery." And many other reviewers have opined similarly.

I'm really hoping the finale is 2 hours, or at least longer than 1. So many plot lines and characters to tie up and I want them to take the time they need.

R239 I like Armond's pink/salmon/coral linen suit. I hate that linen gets so wrinkly but I think I could pull off the pants if not the full ensemble at a resort.

Rewatching episode two now. Rachel is talking to Nicole.

Some people here have written that Rachel is delusional and bragged proudly to Nicole about her career. She didn't at all. She said her husband is "way more successful" than she is, said her career is "mediocre" and "my career, it's like, whatever." She got up to leave the table and Nicole asked her what she does and that's when she told her about having written the profile of Nicole. Nicole tells her it was damaging to her and Rachel says "it was a puff piece."

Rachel is not at all proud of the work she does. She even kind of flinched when she said "I'm a journalist." When she told Nicole and when she told Olivia what she does, both times, she said, "profiles, mostly" and said she repackaged other people's writing.

So no, Rachel doesn't have delusions about her career.

I don't think we are supposed to be getting, from the way this is written, that Rachel is an entitled brat so much as that she feels like she has struggled her whole life not to get very far, settled on a husband she can no longer pretend she can't stand, and has to make a choice between going back to struggling or sacrificing her joy to the asshole for an easier ride and no self-identity.

Thanks for that, r242. I think if more posters here re-watched the series they'd be surprised about some of their first impressions.

I just re-watched E4 tonight which included the scene where Shane approaches Belinda about getting into Armond's office. There were so many questions here about why Belinda would be at the hotel at night after the spa closed but seeing it again I noted she was there because she was working(still in her uniform) on her proposal for Tanya and printing it out.

[quote] So no, Rachel doesn't have delusions about her career.

Oh, for crying out loud.

Rachel is delusional, because

- she thinks her copy and paste article, where she claims Nicole's success is based on affirmative action, is a puff piece and Nicole is a bitch for being offended by that claim.

- she thinks taking on a work assignment during her honeymoon is more important than keeping the peace between her and her rich husband.

- she thinks she has what it takes to work at a non-profit. Even after Kitty sets her straight that the job would require her to ask rich people for their money (now really, does Rachel seem the type who is good at that?).

She's completely delusional about her work, her talent, and what it means to marry a man way above her station.

[quote] How did the dad know that the hotel manager is gay?

The moustaches and his oleaginous manner? But those traits alone would make Basil Fawlty seem extremely gay.

Armond was pretty gay in the scene where they discussed fun activities during their stay at the resort with Quinn.

R235 "Of course, the body is Molly Shannon.

Do you really think she'd accept the role and only appear in a couple of episodes"

Yeah, cause she's such a huge Hollywood celebrity and can pock roles as chooses. She would be lucky to be working, so yeah, she would accept a role and only appear in a couple of episodes of the show that only has a couple of episodes.

If it was Kitty, Shane would devastated, not angry.

This show is nice for what it is. But it's not much. Not unlike Mare of Easttown. All things considered, there's not much there there.

[quote]If it was Kitty, Shane would devastated, not angry.

Not really, at least not in this universe. We don't yet know how or why she was killed.

I rewatched the first scene and I think there's enough there to suggest Shane is devastated. He is really upset, possibly barely holding himself together, which is why he tells the prodding strangers to leave him the fuck alone. He does play with his wedding ring, but his whole arc is about marital tension (although he seems oblivious to everything Rachel is dealing with internally), so that is no surprise.

The only thing that makes me question my guess that it's Kitty who will die is that Shane refers to "the body" being loaded onto the airplane. It's hard to think of anyone referring to his mother or his wife as "the body." But at the same time, he is visibly very upset, and the way he stares at "the body" does suggest it's someone he has some relationship to—so I'm sticking with Kitty. Rachel either leaves him or she chickens out.

One thing I just noticed that I have not seen discussed at all yet: Shane is in the airport by himself without any of the other White Lotus guests. That is strange. Several mentioned that they saw one another on the airplane on the way there, and they all traveled together by boat. Yet none of the White Lotus guests are in the terminal with Shane: it's just Shane inside and the dead body outside. 🤔

In other boards, the top candidates for coffin dweller are -

- Paula (losing support as people rewatch the series).

- Quinn—Lots death foreshadowing upon second viewing, including referring to him sleep in the kitchen "as in a dark box," the imagery of canoeing team deal with a massive wave in the picture of the Mossbachers suite, this personal belonging being watched away, etc.

- Armond —He's completely unraveling as of the last episode' preview and he could be killed in drug-fueled situation.

- Tanya's BLM guy—coughs on screen, which seems to be a tip-off to the genre-savvy.

It could obviously be a red herring to focus on Shane at the beginning if he has no connection to the dead person, but it's not a good red herring. To show him gazing at the box if it contains a teen boy he never met would be sloppier writing than this series has demonstrated so far. If Armond is in the box, then I would expect Shane to show at least a little hint of 'he had it coming' somehow.

What's great is I would still care about the story even without the dead body.

IDK - Quinn would be the gut-punch, Armond is circling the drain, I discount BLM guy b/c he's not developed enough.

Still, Paula is more in keeping with the overall theme of the rich destroying the underprivileged strivers. Two more points

- In the poster, the two people not wearing sunglasses (in film, a symbol for blindness) are Rachel and Quinn.

- Quinn has a weird magenta sock obviously painted on. There is more imagery of the canoeing crew encountering a rogue wave—opening credits, huge painting in the Mossbacher suite, a canoe as an ornament in the said suite.

So, as of now, Quinn is the odds on favorite.

Shane flirted with Paula and Olivia at some point. I could see him doing some petty power move to piss off Rachel, or put her in her place and that is somehow connected with the way Paula, if she's the one, dies and not only that, but Rachel is fed up and leaves him for good.

What’s in the booooooooooooox?

Major spoiler alert: Gwyneth Paltrow's head is in the box!!

Clearly the corpse in the box is Anne Frank. The Nazis found her, because Shane screamed that she's in the attic to get back at Armond who completely forgot that he put Anne up there. Ooops.

Since Shane is watching the box being loaded into the plane, can we expect to find out who is in it by the guys who are carrying it dropping and the body falling out?

Bets on this happening?

Seriously, though, why are none of the other vacationers in the terminal with Shane?

[quote]Tanya's BLM guy—coughs on screen, which seems to be a tip-off to the genre-savvy.

Ya' think?

Maybe Shane is actually upset because he's not in the first class lounge

It could be BLM guy. Why else would they have him cough so much in the last episode? Would make no sense

Remember, the old Jewish couple at the airport said "Someone was KILLED."

BLM guy would have died from the cough, not get killed.

R261 - probably because Shane was not supposed to be traveling back with them--he was supposed to go on to Tahiti with Rachel. Plus we have no idea if they were all leaving on the same day.

R265 Why would the human remains be loaded onto his airplane to Tahiti? Even if it were Rachel, that would make no sense. They wouldn't ship her corpse off for leg two of the honeymoon.

And what are the chances the old couple would be flying on to Tahiti after lying around in Hawaii?

LOL R266 --- he's not going on to Tahiti, he's just not on the same flight back as the rest of them--maybe that flight was full--but he did not have a ticket on it, so it would make sense for him to be on a different flight.

^^It's not like there's one flight a day from Maui to Honolulu

Maybe Rachel takes some random guy to Tahiti and Shane is forced to fly back to the US

...mainland

I'm going to re-watch all the episodes before the big finale. I've noticed that people on this thread who have re-watched have changed their minds on something they originally believed and/or discovered something they missed the first time.

Uncle Rico is maybe not the one that will get killed and who's body is on the plane but he's gotta die. Why else all the coughing?

R272 All the coughing was another red herring....just like the birth in the first episode.

Matt Roush: Parting is usually such sweet sorrow, but the end of vacation may actually be a relief for the miserable travelers and the harried staff at the Hawaii resort as the addictive first season wraps on a sourly bittersweet note. We’ve known from the start that someone gets carried out in a coffin, but first there are plenty of meltdowns, reconciliations and reckonings—and an act that’s shocking even by pay-cable’s standards.

[Quote]This show is nice for what it is. But it's not much. Not unlike Mare of Easttown. All things considered, there's not much there there.

Watched all the episodes today and I couldn't agree more. I don't get why DL is so obsessed with this show. I seriously don't get the hype. It's nice. It's ok. It's not great. And it doesn't have enough gay sex to keep me watching. I expected more.

Shane's accompanying his mother's body back to the mainland, that's why he's pissed.

[quote] and an act that’s shocking even by pay-cable’s standards.

I think we can assume that this involves what has already been spoiled, that is, what Armond does to a piece of Shane's luggage.

I don't recall this having been posted,

I watched that a while ago R278. Fred (Quinn actor) talks like an idiot. Just sentence and word fragments that lead to nowhere. He needs to get his interview game together if he's going to be successful.

Shane is aggrieved because Rachel was killed before she had the chance to leave him, so he has to accompany the body back home out of marital duty rather than go to Tahiti. And he’s thinking, “I didn’t even get a BJ on my honeymoon.”

BLM guy is there to catch Molly Shannon, who is using the fake “Miss Porter’s” story as a cover for having accumulated her riches by running drugs through the national park system, and something goes wrong in the arrest because Tanya and the ashes get in the way.

Quinn goes out for the scuba he missed, except he goes by himself in the early morning and the scuba equipment malfunctions with lethal consequences.

- DL frau who can’t stop watching Murray Bartlett content

Re-watched episode one. Previously unnoticed takeaways, airport scene Shane seems to find his wedding ring very uncomfortable. And the actor who plays Quinn has incongruously bushy axillary hair. unless it's been augmented for the part.

The guy who plays Quinn is extraordinarily hairy for his age. Check out Fear Street on Netflix. He evidently shaved for TWL.

Yes R282, I recall he also went to "pound town" as the kids say these days.

Upon further reflection... "bittersweet" ending, huh? So murder wouldn't really be bittersweet. Suicide would. Two possibilities:

1. Quinn just can't see a future. Sister humiliates him. Decides he just can't take it anymore.

2. BLM guy. Why is he alone in a swank hotel? Gov't job doesn't pay enough for that luxury, right? Cough. Terminally ill. Once last swing at bat in the luxury hotel. One last lay with cray cray Tanya. He shoots himself. (Tanya worried about him leaving, huh? The Big Leave.)

I really hope it’s not Quinn. That will put me in a funk for weeks.

But I think it will be him.

I think BLM is going to die soon, but isn't the one in the coffin. I think the storyline is that he was meeting his friends one last time and was ready to die and then meets Tanya who now has to deal with someone else abandoning her through death (just like her mother) and going either totally bonkers or "gets it right", this time by not falling apart and instead savor the moments they have left and make peace with it.

It's pretty crazy how a recurring cough over a couple days' period signifies certain death to an audience.

Didn't BLM guy say he is there for a conference or something and didn't he talk on the phone about business? That makes me think he isn't on death's door throwing caution to the wind in a Hawaiian last hurrah.

[quote] Tanya who now has to deal with someone else abandoning her through death (just like her mother) and going either totally bonkers or "gets it right", this time by not falling apart and instead savor the moments they have left and make peace with it.

I know Tanya becomes attached quickly, but this is a lot of emotional growth to accomplish in the one day that's left on the vacation, isn't it?

Every time BLM guy coughs it's when Tanya asks him questions like, "do you love me? The first time he had a "coughing fit" I thought it was pretty obvious that he didn't want to answer Tanya's question.

Which, to be fair, is a bit much to be asking someone after just 1 fuck.

I wonder if Kitty has Alzheimer’s and this is her last hurrah before killing her self.

Would explain the forgetfulness, the wanting everything to be “perfect,” the exhorting Rachel to “just be happy!”

R290 well it would explain the whole "it was all a blur! I can't remember a thing!" her character kept repeating. I would think it would have some significance because it was repeated several times, but in all the threads here no one has been able to explain it. She also went off on some tangent and forgot her train of thought during the breakfast scene with Armond. Maybe it will be explained in episode 6 or maybe it's just a way to have her character seem flighty.

On the other hand, would someone with advanced Alzheimer's be able to travel by themselves from NYC to Hawaii?

I thought the BLM guy used the cough as an excuse to avoid coversations with Tanya

[quote] On the other hand, would someone with advanced Alzheimer's be able to travel by themselves from NYC to Hawaii?

Kitty was perfectly fine to remember the names of the acquaintances she gossiped about in one scene.

Kitty's "it was all a blur to me!" = "You'll gonna regret rushing into that marriage"

I think the "I can't remember it, it was a blur!" is shade from Kitty. "I can't even be bothered to remember your Special Day."

Could someone please explain something to me? I must have missed something in the first episode, but I don't understand why the Mossbacher family and Paula is in a suite to small to hold then five of them when Connie Britton's such a big mucky-muck in Silicon Valley. Why couldn't they either afford or request a larger suite?

Oh shit, r295. You’ve done it now.

R296 Yeah really. Actively discussed, was their was a consensus? I must have missed it. Chalk it up to Nicole's inherent frugality.

Watching her rearrange the suite, I thought Connie is the perfect person to play a mid-life Martha Stewart, it there's ever a call for one.

We've had quite the DL TV thread renaissance this year with Mare and Lotus.

What's next on our docket DL after tomorrow's finale?

Whatever it is, R298, I hope it opens and closes within 8 episodes. I love the length of TWL. I'm hoping if it goes to S2, it's a new story with maybe one or two continuing characters - hopefully Armond and/or Belinda.

Not sure if DL would be interested but I started looking at Natasha Rothwell's (Belinda) other works out of curiosity and found a show she's also in called Insecure. She's not the main character, and the character she plays is SOOOOO different than Belinda but extremely funny. And the show has 4 seasons so plenty to binge watch.

And there's male nudity.

I just rewatched the first five episodes. I'm so excited for the sixth part, but sad that it'll be over.

I'm not sure who is in the box. Rachel would be kind of obvious. Kitty would be as well. The series isn't unpredictable, so it might be one of them after all. And, if it is, I imagine the show will handle it in a poignant manner. Perhaps Rachel killed Kitty, lol. I don't think it'll be too complicated. Maybe Rachel offed herself after realising that she doesn't want a life without professional success and money.

Perhaps the opening scene to Episode 1 was a red herring, and we just need the context to see why Shane is so bitter and depressed. Maybe the death was the cherry on top of the shit sundae his Honeymoon became when Rachel decided to leave/divorce him.

Whatever the case, I hope the series doesn't end on too dark of a note.

r301

Just finished rewatching, it appears to be a dead heat among Armond, Paula, and Quinn. Also, noticed how sinister the ocean looked after a particularly tense scene.

If this show didn't have the "Who's In The Box?" framing we would all be denouncing it has boring and poorly written but we love Murray and Jennifer.

Brittany O'Grady is a terrible actress. Did the world ever need another Vanessa from Gossip Girl?

R301 Rachel is neither suicidal nor homicidal person, so no.

R303 Most people that love it now would still love it. I don't even think about the death/murder when watching the show. And it wasn't it even discussed that often in the threads here, until now, when we came to the end. I think it's the egzotic/tropical theme surrounding it, that draws in most people.

R304 She's great. And hot as hell.

[quote]If this show didn't have the "Who's In The Box?" framing

I actually forgot about the opening scene while watching the subsequent episode and was confused by the "who's in the box" discussion this whole time. The acting and writing are quite good and this is an extremely well put-together series even without the framing device.

Now that I rewatched the first five episodes, I'm chiming in. [quote]Rachel is neither suicidal nor homicidal person, so no.

You're right. I was just throwing stuff out there.

[quote]Just finished rewatching, it appears to be a dead heat among Armond, Paula, and Quinn.

If those are the options, I guess I'd go with Quinn. With all the talk about straight white men needing protection (Nicole), but doing "fine" (Paula, Olivia), maybe it will be him. He's an innocent that means well and he's the only whitie who has bothered to embrace local culture. So, yeah, I'd go with him. We just need to have the red herring explaining.

I guess it could be Armond and that could actually tie into Shane's attitude in the opening scene. Perhaps his actions led to Armond overdosing and dying and he feels guilt for the first time in his life. I thought maybe Armond was untouchable, because I convinced myself that he's the only character who would make sense to appear in Season 2, until I realised Belinda could easily fill that role (unless the entire cast gets an overhaul).

R297 Control. You observed it yourself. Nicole rearranges the furniture needlessly because she has to control everything. She tells everyone where to sleep, inconveniently for them, but they abide because she's paying for everyone. Like most executives, she is all ego. Her daughter is the only person who challenges her authority, which she does by telling her brother where to sleep, pissing off Nicole by emulating Nicole. Since she's not allowed totalitarian control of her family, she has a breakdown and tells them they all use her as a punching bag, when the father and especially the son are the family punching bags in reality.

R303 I watched the first two episodes without having seen that scene! I was interested in the opening credits in ep one but became bored quickly and so I fast forwarded instead of clicking "skip intro." I went a little too far, straight to the boat scene and skipping over the airport scene. I assumed I only missed the exposition shots.

After ep two, I was discussing with coworkers and one described the show as a mystery to find out how this newlywed woman ended up dead, and I was like, "Uh, what?" She said, "IT'S NOT A SPOILER. It's the very first scene of the show!"

So I did watch two episodes without wondering 'who's in the box?' And throughout the first episode, I waited and waited and wondered what in the hell the point of the show was supposed to be. It seemed to just be a montage of different annoying people's relationships. Then I was hooked during episode two with no idea there is a mystery.

The people insisting that this show is a soap opera or that "nothing happens" are the reasons why superhero shit has taken over all entertainment. (And you wanna talk a soap opera, look at the MCU.) No this is what an adult story looks like, a good old fashioned one with "complexities" and "relationships" -- the drama lay not in the plot, but the questions the show is asking us, the viewer, in how we see the world, want to see the world, understand the world. People seem to think that "soap opera" is "a show where people stand around talking to one another" when that used to just be called " a show." Believe it or not people talking about idea or emotions used to be enough to get a sizeable audience off -- now if there's not a mile high squid monster "nothing happens"

It may sound pretentious to most people, but I consider this show a great character study.

Marry me, r311!

R297 -- the other theory is it is meant to show how out of touch she is with her own kids.

When they were 6 and 9 years old, having Olivia and Quinn share the living room of the suite would have been a good idea and probably fun.

But she does not seem to have noticed that arrangement no longer works for them and that they're not little kids anymore, because she's so wrapped up in her own world and barely notices the kids.

The ocean will be the killer, whoever the victim is. Every episode, the sea becomes more and more menacing and we get more and more shots from an ominous perspective between the waves.

Translated into book jargon, this series would be literary fiction, while Mare of Easttown would be genre fiction and The Flight Attendant would be upmarket/book club fiction.

Literary fiction focuses on the enjoyment of the language itself (in this case, the direction and cinematography), the character development and often on symbolism. It often plays with form, including different approaches to depicting time, using motifs for symbolic meaning (e.g., the overcoming waves between scenes). It may incorporate elements of different genres but it can't be exclusively reduced to any given genre.

Genre fiction typically is easy to define (Mare = page-turning murder mystery), emphasizes plot and pacing over character development or language, and usually has broader appeal and is more likely to be consumed by more people than literary fiction.

Upmarket/book club fiction is a relatively new convention. It's basically literary fiction to which the author has given more attention to plotting and pacing to make it more popularly appealing; or else, it could be genre fiction that is more thoughtfully written than your standard-issue page turner (as opposed to a Dan Brown or James Patterson book that is effectively an outline with zero interest in artful language). This is called book club fiction because Oprah, Reese Witherspoon et al. tend to choose these sorts of books. Oprah leans more literary (Beloved, Paradise) and Reese leans more toward genre/commercial (Pretty Little Lies, etc.), but their choices are basically conventional stories but more artful than the average best seller.

The White Lotus is literary fiction in the way that HBO does best. If the visual storytelling is a little unconventional and challenging to make sense of at first and the story is hard to summarize when describing to other people, then it's 'literary fiction.'

Mare: It's a murder mystery about a woman cop in a small Pennsylvania town. Everyone seems to be a suspect. There are so many twists!

Lotus: It's about several families on vacation in Hawaii. It's kind of a murder mystery. Kind of a black comedy, or maybe a satire? But it also deals wirh a lot of social issues, especially race and class. The characters are so crazy. No one is likable. Some people hate the music, but I like it. It's interesting, hard to describe, you have to watch it to get it. It's not *really* about the murder mystery but that is part of it but I wouldn't necessarily call it a murder mystery. Jennifer Coolidge is a hoot. I'm not sure if her character is tragic or funny or just drunk? Anyway, you should watch it so we can discuss!

One great aspect of the series which I don't think has been discussed here much is the costume design by Alex Bovaird. Such a luxurious visual feast, most of the guests haven't repeated a garment all week. You can just smell the coconut oil in the sunscreen on everyone's skin.

The colors and patterns and prints on the clothes are so enticing and I love how the guests clothes have become more tropically themed as their week on the island progresses. I'm guessing the gift shop at the resort has done very well. lol.

Is The Flight Attendant worth a look? I don't remember DL having a thread on it.

R318 It satisfied me during the period of the pandemic when there was nothing new to watch. But there’s an extremely annoying running conceit of the lead having conversations with a dead guy in her imagination, multiple times per episode.

If the ocean is the killer, that would mirror the opening credits that get darker and more menacing the closer the camera gets. Will there be a heavy storm in the final episode?

R318 Yes. It's really good. DL did discuss it and had similarly mixed feelings about it. It also crosses genres and some people are bothered by what they feel is an inconsistent tone (dark comedy vs suspense) but again, that what sets it apart from basic genre fiction, as well as the structure (how it plays with time and perception). Kaley Cuoco is very good in it, and as with Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet and Nicole Kidman (notably all with HBO), Cuoco executive produced this show for herself to star in and does an excellent job. Women actors are making much of the best entertainment today by producing interesting projects that big studios wouldn't.

R319 I cannot stand Kaley Cuoco. Is it watchable despite her? Most HBO stuff lately such as Hacks and The White Lotus has been great.

R322 Yes, and Madame Satan is in it, great as always.

I love The Flight Attendant. I only wish Michelle Gomez was more involved in this. Like, Kaley and Michelle playing two opposites attract leads who join forces to fight a crime syndicate or solve a murder mystery. A genre usually occupied by straight men.

R324 She was just a flight attendant in season one, not a crime fighter.

In season two, however...

[quote]If this show didn't have the "Who's In The Box?" framing we would all be denouncing it has boring and poorly written but we love Murray and Jennifer.

"Who's in the Box?" is the least interesting part of the show for me. I skip over discussions here about who it could be because I don't care. I'm enjoying the show in the moment.

In the end, a tsunami sweeps across the resort and washes everyone away except the one body and Shane, who spends all of the last episode complaining and trying to get a free vacation comped.

Good god, the posts here of people patting themselves on the back for watching this show like it makes them an intellectual. How insecure are some of you?

The press release describes reconciliations in the end.

The Mossbacher family all made peace with one another in the last episode.

It's possible that this will subvert most of our expectations. There's lots of discussions of systemic injustices and so it would certainly be in keeping with the tone of the show to resolve everything by leaving it status quo:

The Mossbachers continue their oblivious, self-serving lives.

Maybe Olivia gains a little more control over Paula and Paula loses her tenuous attachment to 'white privilege' by reaching for justice.

Shane convinces Rachel to stick with him. He's never fully aware that she was about to leave him; she settles for the opportunity having weighed her options and realizing she has to stick it out to get a divorce settlement. This is her job now.

Tanya's clingy love interest bails on her and she carries on claiming not to be able to carry on, making a lot of drama and obliviously using people as emotional crutches. She never looks at the business proposal and never gives it another thought.

Armond and Belinda wave goodbye to the tourists, frustrated but used to it, and then wave hello to a new boatload of rich monsters...the tide comes in and goes out.

I read a great observation in one review that described how the show is so smart. Shane is an asshole. No one could like him. But he is also right or justified about pretty much everything he says. The resort did cheat his mother out of money. Armond did owe him an apology. Rachel's notion of accepting a gig while on her honeymoon in paradise is disrespectful and selfish. And what's more, although he obliviously only compliments Rachel's looks, he dotes on her. He says the whole time he just wants to make her happy. He tells her about the life he has envisioned for them, abd he wants to pamper her. In his way, he does love her. They don't share any values and he's too forceful about everything, but he comes across as more of a monster than he is because we spend more time alone with Rachel understanding her trapped feeling and her aspirations. The idea of her accepting a writing job during their honeymoon is never suggested by the show to be *rude* which it is; Shane doesn't express that he's offended by the idea, just that he doesn't want her to do it. She in turn is offended.

Almost all of the characters are justified in their perceptions and what they do, or at least sympathetic. Even Armond's poor choices and Paula's poor choice are totally understandable when considering their lots in life. No one is really at "fault" (except Olivia, IMO), but they're all causing friction with one another.

I think Olivia is sort of shown to have inherited her mother's controlling personality but she's in a postadolescent phase of applying it in a more harmfully manipulative way. Nicole only moves furniture around and tells people where their places are. Olivia controls through belittling people, manipulating them with social injustice theories, and in the case of her best friend, she has attached herself like a leach and is slowly draining Paula's life force. Paula hangs on for the privileges afforded by the family, but she is alienated from the family, isolated from anyone relatable, and the one person she thought was her ally is the one person who actively threatens her: first, she took one of Paula's boyfriends, then she hunted and stalked Paula's new lover, and now Olivia has the opportunity to ruin Paula's life.

I don't think it would fit the satirical/dark theme of the show for all the characters to grow in profound ways. Character arcs like that are requisite in almost all genres of fiction except satire.

But this satire is smart because it is objectively condemning in a way while also beint subjectively relatable.

In the end, some minor character, an extra, we haven't even seen so far, will be the one that dies.

Possible outcomes -

1. Armand realises he is in real danger of losing his job and being blacklisted from the industry and knows that Shane will stop at nothing to get him. He gets into a physical fight with Shane and accidentally falls off a cliff meeting his death.

Or, Armand takes a fatal dose of the stolen pills, either deliberately or accidentally.

2. Rachel leaves Shane. (This is a given)

3. Tanya commits suicide or drunkenly meets her death accidentally.

4. Paula kills Olivia. She hates her for having stolen her bf Trevor, alluded to earlier, and this is why she was crying at the end of ep 5.

5. Armand fucks Mark and then Mark attacks him and he dies.

BLM takes Tanya out on a boat to help her scatter the ashes and pushes her in?

[quote] Armand realises he is in real danger of losing his job and being blacklisted from the industry and knows that Shane will stop at nothing to get him. He gets into a physical fight with Shane and accidentally falls off a cliff meeting his death.

Why would Shane and Armond be fighting on the edge of a cliff when neither has been shown off the resort throughout the series? Do you think they're going to arrange a duel to take place at sunset?

Shane and Armond will engage in the kah-lee-fee at sunset by a cliff's edge as the Vulcan Fight Music plays. During a particularly difficult move with the lirpa, Armond plunges to his death.

Kroika!

The obvious inheritor to this show drops Wednesday for eight weeks on Hulu and has an even more star studded cast including gay actor representation with Luke Evans and will have the ever popular DL pastime of critiquing of Nicole Kidman’s wigs. Nine Perfect Strangers also includes privileged, wealthy people in an isolated beautiful location probably being awful to each other, each with their own mysterious reveal of secrets and salacious behavior. The two announcement threads were dead ends, so I made this viewing thread. Come say Hi, and add your expectations!

[quote]Armand realises he is in real danger of losing his job and being blacklisted from the industry and knows that Shane will stop at nothing to get him. He gets into a physical fight with Shane and accidentally falls off a cliff meeting his death.

This isn't Dynasty.

Spoiler alert at r335!!!! Yes! That’s clearly where this is all heading, complete with that specific music cue, please.

Or Hamilton.

I absolutely love how self-aware Jennifer Coolidge is in r278's video, and how much everyone else in the cast LOVES her and are tickled by her self-observations. Her description of how she arrived at the shoot in a perfect state of decreptitude for Tanya's character and couldn't fix any of the damage she inflicted on herself during lockdown was brilliant. "I could have been in a diaper and still would have been sweating!"

I don't think anybody's linked to the article about THE CAFTANS yet

R278 Thanks for the link. Jennifer Coolidge is hilarious and the rest of the cast seems to love her. Murray is great. Yikes, Fred is a lucky guy to have been cast. He needs a coach before he agrees to interviews. Granted, he's a young man but he has no clue how to present himself.

Murray needs to lose the moustache. I loved him as Dom but now he reminds me of Dabney Coleman.

Jennifer Coolidge's performance is riveting and actually quite true to life. Sadly, I know women like that. They are tragic vampires. She seems to be channelling Shelley Winters.

I nearly fell over laughing at the bar scene between Mark and a very hammered Armand..."What's it feel like to get fucked up the ass?" "Would you like to find out?"

[quote] Murray needs to lose the moustache. I loved him as Dom but now he reminds me of Dabney Coleman.

You're right, he does look like Dabney Coleman with the moustache.

He doesn't always have it--it's just for this part. Here he is normally.

And takes Rachel with him R338.

R344 Thanks for the link. Murray is gorgeous. Never saw him in anything before TWL; now I want more.

Love Murray! Who doesn't? I don't think he's necessarily the most gifted actor but he just has so much charisma and his sexiness is off the charts.

It'll be fascinating to see what kinds of roles he's offered and accepts after making this big splash.

I looked for The Flight Attendant on HBO Max on Hulu but it's not being offered. I wonder why.

Anywhere else it might be streaming?

The theories some people are coming up with on how things may end is hilarious and a somewhat intriguing glimpse into the mind of DLers. I imagine it's going to be something rather mundane and plausible though and not some outlandish "Kill Bill" style fight to the death with Shane and Armond fighting on the rooftop of the resort.

Perhaps an inadvertent drug overdose since the drugs still seem to be a prominent feature in the episodes.

Murray Bartlett looks QUITE fine now but had a more "hunky" look back in the early 2000's.

[quote] No this is what an adult story looks like, a good old fashioned one with "complexities

Hapless guilty parents, ungrateful bickering kids, arrogant rich people, gormless poor people, disinterested employees…

Yeah. Such complex, original writing which doesn’t read like a first draft commissioned in August 2020 and filming in October 2020 at all. Not a bit.

[quote] The people insisting that this show is a soap opera or that "nothing happens" are the reasons why superhero shit has taken over all entertainment. (And you wanna talk a soap opera, look at the MCU.) No this is what an adult story looks like, a good old fashioned one with "complexities" and "relationships" -- the drama lay not in the plot, but the questions the show is asking us, the viewer, in how we see the world, want to see the world, understand the world. People seem to think that "soap opera" is "a show where people stand around talking to one another" when that used to just be called " a show." Believe it or not people talking about idea or emotions used to be enough to get a sizeable audience off -- now if there's not a mile high squid monster "nothing happens"

Is “If you dislike White Lotus, you must watch Marvel movies” the new “If you don’t like Christopher Nolan, go watch Michael Bay”?

Tanya gives her mother's ashes their final resting place: The coffin.

You're as high as Armond, R343!

I love Murray with the 'stache. Jack off material for me.

[quote] Plus we have no idea if they were all leaving on the same day.

In the last episode it was mentioned that someone was supposed to be staying for two weeks — was it the Mossbachers? (I assume after being robbed they will want to leave early…)

[quote] He doesn't always have it--it's just for this part. Here he is normally.

Murray had a moustache as Dom too!

I agree with r352.

If we can take her for her word, when Olivia approaches Kai in the restaurant, hoping to steal him form Paula, she tells him that they're staying for another week.

In the second episode, Rachel tells Shane that the Mossbacher daughter was “a bitch” at the pool that day. So Shane flirting with her in a later episode isn’t him being oblivious to his wife, but more passive aggressive. He acts like he’s thoughtless, but I think he’s putting some effort into pissing Rachel off.

Oh, I think he was DEFINITELY trying to piss her off her in that moment. If I remember correctly (and I may not be), she was nattering in about her career and he just dove into the pool and avoided the conversation.

[quote] Thanks for the link. Murray is gorgeous. Never saw him in anything before TWL; now I want more.

You don't have to go far, he plays a regular character on the HBO series and movie "Looking". 2 seasons with at least one butt naked shower scene.

Yeah, just re-watched that and Shane definitely swims over to flirt with the girls because he's fed up with Rachel and her new job possibility.

It fits with him not even caring whether she came during sex on their honeymoon (and I bet he did notice).

I even tried watching Tales of the City for Murray, but I couldn’t get through it

Holy shit

Just watched the cast interviews at r278. As great as it was to hear them all talk about their characters, there's not really a lot of insight offered. But I think,, as they all vehemently expressed it, the writing was so intelligent and funny and honest, they didn't have to invent anything to play their characters. They simply had to play the scene as written.

I was also so impressed by how fucking gorgeous every one of them was on Zoom cameras. Even more so than they are in the series. Even little Fred Hechinger.

Well. R365, knowing that Armond would defecate in Shane's luggage was our first clue about how crazy this would get.

I can't wait to unfollow this thread in three hours...

[quote]Love Murray! Who doesn't? I don't think he's necessarily the most gifted actor but he just has so much charisma and his sexiness is off the charts.

R347 It's that gorgeous chest hair peaking out of his shirt that does me in!

R368 You’re not going to stick around for a day for the after discussion?

Jennifer Coolidge being herself.

God no, R370. These three thread have been excruciating, but I can't look away just yet ;p

I can't wait for the finale and tomorrow's comments!

I hope everyone bought their kaftan ahead of the finale! 🍹

I love Tanya's caftans but those are a little pricey for me...

22 minutes in and it's pretty boring

Stupid, sorry but I can't seem to let this go. Contrary to other claims Murray and Jake Lacy are both 5'9". and Alexandra a statuesque 5'8".

R377 she might have been wearing wedges though adding a few inches, I need to go re-watch the scene now....

Okay, stfu you assholes. It’s on On Demand, now.

I hope it's more interesting On Demand. Because live on HBO ....

Don't listen to this person saying it's boring, I am loving it - that scene with Belinda broke my heart

what is seen can't be unseen

Is there another thread? This one's surprisingly dead.

Like Armand.

Oops.

That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on TV.

Showing a turd fall out of Murray's ass was supposed to be shocking, I guess. But the episode itself was a turd, so why not show it?

Rachel is a NINNY

What a waste of time.

I was wrong about who was killed but a little perturbed to have been right about most of the rest of it—all the servant-class people and people of color suffer in the end, the rich white people are all obliviously carrying on except Rachel who inevitably did the wrong thing.

Just want to say that I got the murder at about the 40 minute mark, as soon as Armond decided to go to dinner.

I suspect I am not the only one.

Thank you Chekhov.

Is that all there is?

I love the way Daddario delivers those last lines, "I'll be happy" while absolutely miserable, she really nailed that

At least Sméagol escaped to join the kayak team.

Did. Not. Stick. The. Landing.

After episdoe 5, everyone was like "how are they going to tie up all those loose ends? There's just too much to cover"

Apparently by neatly tying things up in the most banal and boring way possible and leaving everyone feeling like they had been cheated.

The final moment regarding Rachael was disappointing, but at least Quinn chased his dream.

Charlene of Monaco vibes

We were all disappointed with the ending too.

And I am sure I speak for many DLers in saying I was personally disappointed that (a) the three hot bellmen were down to their underwear and the scene did not go any further nor did we see any good shots of them in their underwear and (b) the gigolo who hit on Tanya at the pool was not there to join them.

And can we point out the complete unreality of Quinn realizing his dream.

In reality, they would have realized he was not on the plane, and either halted it till the airport security got him or dad would have gotten off the plane and gone after him.

Plus he's 16 and has no money

There may not have been any real surprises in the finale (except for the turds) but all was wrapped up very realistically.

Better to save your time and just watch the second half of the series finale of Good Times.

It is the same basic plot but in 1/6 the length.

The thing is, Shane isn’t terrible. I could handle his brand of asshole (my dad had a temper.) So a temper doesn’t faze me.

The trick in relationships is to find the person whose brand of assholery doesn’t really bother you. Because we’re all assholes.

Rachel is going to need to grow up or get out. She’s still looking for some kind of fairytale.

I'm nit disappointed. The ending for Quinn certainly is not believable. Rachel's ending is awful and totally in character. Same with Armond and most of the others. Saddest for Belinda and Kai. (Wtf? I really hoped Olivia was going to tell her mom and then tell Paula that they weren't going to press charges.)

Eesh I disagree with all the hate - agree with this Slate article, it was wonderful

R401 Shane is really terrible.

He isn't objectively wrong about what bothers him, but he obsesses about getting even, getting more, and he ignores his wife. He just keeps telling her she's his hot wife.

But she's made her choice. No more sympathy for that one.

Shane was fine. I hate the rich, but he was pretty boringly rich. His temper was - what? - one hand slam on a table? A knife when he heard an intruder in his room.

Meh.

Rachel had an MTM vibe about her when she was telling Shane how she felt.

In his defense, she's never demanded more of him R404

And so everyone is on the same page-- we all agree that Shane was able to point to the shit and the K snorting and claim self-defense?

How much was in the envelope full of money?

R399 The turds weren’t a surprise, he stated earlier that he wanted to do that, we just didn’t realize it was definitely a Chekhov’s gun.

R407 Of course. Armond was going to be fired the next day. He acted strange at dinner. He was in Shane's room late at night, pooped in his suitcase and had all kinds of drugs and alcohol in his system.

Who knew Jake Lacy’s casting was based on his large nostrils and his ability to flare them?

I was thinking the pineapple knife TBH, R409

I was thinking the pineapple knife TBH, R409

Shane needs a ball buster wife to tell him to cut the shit and he’s ruining their honeymoon. He’d probably respond pretty well to that, being a mamas boy and all.

Never stayin the Pineapple Suite, always choose Kiwi.

Armond is going to haunt that goddamn Pineapple Suite for the rest of eternity now

The color filter on this series (extreme blue- and yellow-push) makes almost all the characters look extremely and utterly JAUNDICED.

When will this trend of artificial coloring of digital video END?

Rachael brutally and desperately expressed to Shane what she had come to think of him, and here deeply biting words, especially to your new husband, can't be unsaid and quickly forgotten.

She essentially came back with her tail between her legs, an ending scene that, on the surface, seems quite predictable, but the truth the scene hints at is that people resign themselves to realities that are repugnant to them everyday, and end up surrendering to a life spent in quite desperation.

She married a rich guy with a big dick. It’s not that complicated. She’ll be fine.

R419 = Shane

Mike White: “Some people read it as cynical; to me, the thing that I feel about Shane is that even though he is a privileged asshole, he does really love her. Even if it’s just an idea of her.”

Loving the idea of someone and ignoring the actual person in front of you isn’t really love, though. Rachel gave into the temptation to hide behind someone else’s money rather than make her own way in the world. It’s understandable but still depressing.

Well it cleared up the fact that season two will not be built around Armond in a new location and likely not Belinda in White Lotus Aspen.

I wonder how many times Tanya has done that little routine she pulled on Belinda?

DL fave Lukas Cage is primed for S2 in another resort.

Was this episode filmed in deeper colors than the previous ones? Or was that my TV?

Same goes for the man whore who approached Tonya at the pool -- you know she's taken many of those offers up; she quickly and clearly knew what was going down

Oh, my fucking Jesus.

I can't believe that they showed someone taking a shit on TV.

Oh my god, something we all do every single day, shown on TV!!!! Meltdown!

Even after her big breakdown in mommy's arms the blond daughter still had to cunt up with that remark to her brother about paddling to Fiji.

R428 Not all of us are that lucky. Some of us suffer from chronic constipation!

I'm assuming Quinn has no money so he will be sleeping on the beach and picking pineapples to eat.

Now I'm even more curious about Murray Bartlett's next roles.

[quote]Oh my god, something we all do every single day, shown on TV!!!! Meltdown!

I'm sorry, I don't video in HD poop coming out of my rectum.

I don't need to see that.

[quote]I'm assuming Quinn has no money so he will be sleeping on the beach and picking pineapples to eat.

He'll be turning tricks.

The ochre-hued color filter used for the exterior shots makes the land on the horizon look like Catalina Island, rather than the lush green of Hawaii. Or is that global warming instead?

On a more serious note, I think the intention was for a semi-arid ambience instead of the expected tones of a tropical paradise to go along with the aridity of the characters and their upper class world.

[quote]The ochre-hued color filter used for the exterior shots makes the land on the horizon look like Catalina Island, rather than the lush green of Hawaii.

That is the dry side of the island. It is not lush, except where landscaped.

"You're a pretty man." Hell, yeah.

"I'm all out." —Belinda

SO GOOD.

Best study of class in a long time.

Loved Armand's party.

So --

The Mossbachers rejuvenate their marriage. Tanya has a new man in her life (even if he is terminally ill). And Shane & Rachel reach an understanding.

But the gay guy dies.

I really didn't expect Mike White to resurrect the "Bury Your Gays" trope.

[quote[ But the gay guy dies.

Is he the only gay one? Dillon is still alive. And Olivia seemed pretty much in love with Paula.

Great series. I enjoyed every minute. Poor Armond.

Does Rachel know that her husband is a killer now?

No, Rose. She napped through the entire aftermath in her newly booked hotel room.

Quinn certainly has a credit card or debit card. Every kid has at least one or the other for their allowance. He is probably bared from using the cards for big purchases, which is why he asked his parents for a cell phone since he was stuck on a resort and needs an account holder to activate a new phone.

But they 100% would have given their children credit cards. They won't let him starve. He was even doing homework the last day there so maybe they will indulge him some how for a week.

I wanted that thieving girlfriend to get arrested. She was so high and mighty.Kai would have to explain how he got the code. Not to mention all the security cameras of him fucking that moody bitch (love that actress though).

Rachel's true colors came out this episode. She sounded completely non-sensical. I expected her for ending it so another girl can swallow Shane's wealthy sperm, but no one is giving up millions. Shane was in a vulnerable space at the airport so she got lucky. Her ass should have been sent back to the poor house, given her actions. They will be divorced in under 5 years. She's too much of a wet blanket to be worth the effort. Ungrateful woman. Glad Belinda didn't indulge her childish white girl drama about having it all from the most expensive suite in that resort.

[quote] Same goes for the man whore who approached Tonya at the pool -- you know she's taken many of those offers up; she quickly and clearly knew what was going down

WHO WAS that actor? My GOD.

Do you all think man whores like that actually exist at fancy resorts? Do you think gay hotels ever get such men. I'd gladly spend a month indulging such a hot piece of ass if I had Tonya's money.

This episode cemented my feelings: I am 100% pro-Connie Britton’s family and 100% against Paula. The simplistic mindset of Paula and other SJWs of that generation is not sufficient to combat to the world’s inequalities.

I want to bury the "bury the gays" gays who always bring up that goddamned trope - the point of the show was all of the rich people skipped off to happier places having "learned a very important lesson about themselves" while all of the poor people / help ended up in jail or dead, a trail of devastation in the wake of a never ending tidal wave of Tanyas after Tanyas, washing them to sea. This was an amazing and rich and complicated gay role for a gay actor, he wasn't sexless, he got to be petty and funny and hot, this was an actor's dream role

Why were Paula and Olivia reading hardcover editions (rather than paperback editions) of "Gender Trouble" and "Ecrits"? College professors will always assign paperback editions if they possibly can because they are so much cheaper for students to buy.

And a Camille Paglia book--who the hell gets assigned a Camille Paglia book at a college in 2021? She is absolutely NOT taken seriously in academia and never gets taught.

[quote]I want to bury the "bury the gays" gays

So you're OK with gay characters being sacrificed so the straight characters can obtain peace/enlightenment?

Well, fuck you, too.

Paglia may have featured on a "Suggested Reading" page, which is also where some of these reading choices may have come from. Also, you can often find used hardcover versions of these books on Amazon for much less than a new paperback, and even rich girls like texts with notes already written in the margins.

The ending was shit.

r452 who the fuck cares? All of the characters are now effectively dead. The only ones coming back are Belinda and gay for drugs/shifts bell boy. If it makes you feel better, imagine everyone one of the straight people's planes crashed into the Pacific.

r451 apparently has reading comprehension problems -- no I am not "OK with gay characters being sacrificed so the straight characters can obtain peace/enlightenment" -- this show was a SATIRE, and is showing us the inevitability of the system, and how it will do this and continue to do this, without the elites even noticing -- the point is to feel BAD and ANGRY about it, but to maybe gain some awareness of how the world works

AND r449…dont forget…

He also got to SHIT ON CAMERA!

Belinda getting an envelope full of money is better than what I thought she’d get.

Was it like Tanya’s mad money for the trip and what she had left?

STFU R451.

WHO WAS THE HOT MOTHERFUCKER at the pool hitting on Tanya? Literally that is all anyone needs to be trying to figure out tonight.

It's Austin Stowell, he was in that Fantasy Island movie, and Swallow, and that Billie Jean King movie too I think?

Are the creators actually supposed to want us to feel sorry for and root for Paula???

The selfish bitch got her boyfriend---whose life was already f'd up---in more trouble, basically ruined his life and his family's life, all for her SJW campaign that was stupid to begin with. Her little speech to him when he said "they didn't steal anything!" and she's like "all white people steal!"

Gimme a break. Meanwhile she's freeloading of the white people she claims to hate.

They still never explained why the Mossbachers booked a one-bedroom suite.

They booked a bedroom because having kids in the next room gave the mother an excuse NOT to sleep with her husband. They did it anyway in the end, but as she said, she's been harboring a lot of anger and pain from his infidelity. She knew exactly what she was doing.

They booked a one-bedroom...^

Not sympathetic to Belinda's hurt feelings at the end. She must have encountered several flaky, shit talking rich white women by virtue of working there. And she did get an envelope stuffed with cash. Clearly Tanya felt bad and wanted to make amends somehow. I think that was a significant gesture coming from a vapid, self absorbed super rich bitch.

Rachel will become an embittered, pill popping, bored rich wife and Shane who I believe is in love with her will continue to try to please her / make her happy for a time, until he accepts the reality / futility of his efforts. Then he will cheat and leave her ass for a newer model.

I agree, r465.

I couldn't feel that sorry for Belinda either--that looked like several thousand dollars right there. She was stupid to take Tanya's pie-in-the-sky offer so seriously until she had something in writing.

And Rachel dug her own hole.

Thank you R460! I looked him up online and I wish he’d done more roles with that beard and long hair, or at least kept that as regular day-to-day look in real life. He’s a gorgeous man but vastly sexier with a full, flowing head of hair and beard.

Are the creators actually supposed to want us to feel sorry for and root for Paula???

I think Mike White wanted us to think that all the characters were vulnerable and suffered, but everyone of them compromised themselves and did something wrong, especially when it came to money.

There was no clear victim in this whole show. Even Kai, whom everyone keeps saying got screwed over the most, was trying to steal the jewelry of his own volition. No one forced him to break into the Mossbachers' suite and steal the bracelets.

Everyone in the series was guilty of something either legally or morally wrong, except perhaps Quinn (the only character to escape at the end)..

Since the series has been renewed, it's assumed there will be a completely new cast next season? Perhaps some of the hotel workers will remain. Well, not the one in the human remains box!

What was the point of the gigolo?

It was to show that a rich woman like Tanya could have had someone much hotter than Greg had she only been after sex, but she wanted something more.

I don't understand why Mike White needed to show us the poop actually falling out of Murray Bartlett's rectum.

I got the point of what he was doing when he pulled his pants down and squatted over the suitcase and then was shown face front, obviously straining.

Murray Bartlett will come to regret letting White film him doing that.

Eh, it'll get him noticed for his next roles. It was only CGI shit anyways.

In his interview for EW he suggested he was indeed filmed shitting.

People actually think he was really pooping on camera?

R474, without even reading the interview I am certain he was kidding about actually doing it himself. It was a special effect.

Sorry: it was for Vanity Faiir, not EW.

[quote]Tell me every detail about filming the poop scene.

[quote]Every detail?

[quote] Every one.

[quote]I mean, it’s so incredibly graphic when you watch it. I couldn’t believe it! I did not imagine it like that. I don’t know what I was imagining, but it’s shocking in exactly the way it should be shocking—but much more shocking than I imagined.

[quote]Fortunately, that was a fair way through the shoot. It was a great crew. I completely trust Mike, and there’s a sense of trust and respect on set. But any intimate scene like that is bizarre and weird, and you feel a little strange going into it. I’m shitting in a suitcase! What are you going to do? There’s no way around it. It’s just a very strange situation to be in with 50 people watching you.

R471, thanks. It seemed unnecessary and somewhat unearned. My hope is that he shows up in S2 to payoff such an extraneous scene.

From what I've heard, r478, season 2 will have all-new characters.

Nice piece about the title cards/wallpaper, I especially liked the cheekiness of the double papayas.

R474/R477, Really? I don't see anything in those comments in which he's saying that he actually dumped a dookie on set. He's describing the scene, not himself physiologically. Dropping your pants and showing your ass in a squatting position in front of a sizeable film crew is what Bartlett is referring to.

Your scat fantasies are getting the best of you.

Guess the crew had to wait around for Bartlett to get the urge to shit? How absurd, the turds were likely CGI. The actor was probably told to mention interviews that he might have actually taken a shit on camera, to basically drum up hype for this series.

Shit and piss scenes seem to be popular on HBO shows. There was a shit scene in an awful British HBO series which aired last year. Some unhinged female character had a man shit on her face. The character was an actress who, apparently, would do anything for a role. Thankfully, that literal shitfest wasn't renewed.

Didn't Adam Driver's character piss on Lens Dunham's Hannah character in GIRLS?

Next up, Nine Perfect Strangers.

I'm going to take a hard pass. I'm done with Nicole's awful wigs and awful acting on television anymore.

[quote] Your scat fantasies are getting the best of you.

And yet here [italic]you[/italic] are, reaching completely unnecessarily for such vivid phrases as "dropping a dookie."

Pot, thy name is kettle.

My episode ranking;

1. 5 2. 3 3. 6 4. 4 5.1 6. 2

I enjoyed this series, but it was the fact that there wasn't any real payoff to anything was pretty underwhelming.

^^^ Please stop, you're embarrassing yourself. Your retort doesn't even make sense.

My comment was meant for R485.

So we go from a rubber cock and balls in ep. 1, a rimming scene in ep. 4, and finally a scat scene in ep. 6? Way to end on a high note Mike White.

Mike White should have either dug deeper with these characters or crank up the soapy campiness to 11. It's too middling.

There's no way Nicole would have sat down on the plane without triple checking everyone was there.... in their assigned seats. Quinn running away to row around the island was such a toddler tantrum. The only time I've seen something like that was at a 4 year old's birthday party at a pizza/arcade place. One kid didn't want to leave because he was having too much fun and threw a huge fit when his parents came to pick him up.

I'm sorry, but only white parents would let Quinn's shit of "WAAAAHHH I'M 16 AND I DON'T WANT TO LEAVE HAWAII" fly because they don't want their kids to hate them.

So I guess we can expect "The White Lotus: Aspen" as our next destination for Season 2! We'll get to see Jennifer Coolidge have another drunken emotional breakdown when Greg dies there.

R491 and others "There's no way Nicole would have sat down on the plane without triple checking everyone was there.... in their assigned seats. Quinn running away to row around the island was such a toddler tantrum"

Of course not. But I believe Mike White wanted to give us a fantasy ending, at least for one of the characters. Quinn made a mad dash to the beach before anyone could catch up with him. If the show had extended two more hours, you know Quinn would have landed back on the beach just to face his parents waiting for him, probably with police escort. He got his fantasy, it was just short-lived.

The missing end cut away shot is Dillion at the hotel getting off the front desk phone announcing that the plane went down and there were no survivors.

I wanted to know more about Paula and Olivia.

Does anyone have a theory on the hot guy who hit on Jennifer Coolidge? Was he an escort? Not sure it was clear what was going on there

If you're one of the people on this thread who keeps offering theories on who dies and why--you're wasting your time. And totally missing the point. This is a masterpiece of character development. Someone will die, but who and why is not something you'd be ever able to figure out. it's not a murder mystery because you dont know who died, who did the killing, and why.

It's over now so i know the answers but ive been saying this for weeks

R495 Olivia's love/hate and then love again with Paula is bordering on the lesbianic. Why is she is so desperate for Paula to love her?

R496 he was just thrown in there to illustrate how she's grown, if ever so slightly, as a person by not rushing off with someone who gave her an ounce of attention.

Mike White seems to reuse a few jokes and symbols from "Enlightened." First it was the "Mexican Pharmacy" joke and now the focus on epiphany turtles. First with Amy Jellicoe seeing a divine turtle during rehab, and now with Mark and Quinn looking at the majesty of a turtle with the sunlight reflecting in the ocean in an almost spiritual way.

R498 Olivia doesn’t seem to have too many friends. I think Paula is more popular, that’s why. It’s clear Olivia is using Paula to feel better about herself. They are frenemies and both know it.

Alexandra Daddario’s acting was absolutely amazing this last episode, and the ending, tho disappointing, totally matches the character. I have lived what she lives in the show and her scenes made me almost cry. I know all of you hate her but I really feel her story.

Wildly uneven. And ended with shit. It was like a hopped up Love Boat episode.

The idiot son is white colonial.

[quote] Alexandra Daddario’s acting was absolutely amazing this last episode

Her acting was one note the entire way through and she has the pupils of a junkie

[quote] This is a masterpiece of character development.

Jesus wept.

That was a lovely arrangement of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." 💩

6 hours I will never get back.

I don't want a second season without Armond.

Fucking Shane has no repercussions and gets his wife back.

Why is this thread dead?

Was there a new thread that I missed?

Lots of tilted slo-mo shots do not a masterpiece make.

This resort has EVERYTHING: abused trophy wives, runaway minors, jilted spa workers, SHITTING IN A SUITCASE…

It honestly didn’t connect for me that Rachel and Shane were reconciling at the end. I thought they were saying their last goodbyes, with Rachel offering Shane reassurances that this was for the best and she was happy, and Shane, for his part, reacting the opposite to how we would otherwise expected, putting his wife’s happiness before he is own and accepting it was over.

That was my read.

R513 Sadly their ending was the most realistic of them all.

r496 Yes Rose

r429 at first I thought Olivia was fake crying and was going to rat out Paula to her mother.

I can’t make my way through all the posts but I’m probably not the only one who thought Shane getting the pineapple knife for ‘intruders’ was shaping up for Rachel to be murdered.

I just finished this.

I cried when it was over.

This was so beautiful.

I haven't been moved like this by a TV series in I don't know how long.

This episode had so much tension. I honestly didn't know who was going to die.

I thought maybe it was going to be a domestic violence situation with Rachel. I thought Quinn was going to be sacrificed to the ocean. I thought Tanya's lover was going to croak.

Ultimately, I can't imagine this series ending any other way than the way it did.

I felt bad for Armond. I related to him in a lot of ways, especially when he made the speech about wasting his life. I was sad when he died, but I also felt like Shane kind of gave him what he wanted: an end to his misery.

In the end, I thought the stories provided a lot of honest truths that are often hard to swallow. The way Mike White intermingled these characters was so masterful. Not a lot happened in this series plot-wise, but so much was going on underneath. I hope if they do a Season 2 it will be as good as this one. Otherwise, I hope they don't bother.

That was my sense of it too, R513. And yes, R517, I thought that Shane might murder Rachel in a fit of narcissistic rage.

Really R517? As soon as Armond walked out to dinner after replaying all of SHane's shit (pun intended) in his head, I knew where that knife was headed.

When Shane first started talking about violence and then went and took a shower leaving Rachel crying on the bed, I believe R517 may have been talking about.

By the time Armond entered the room later in the episode and took a shit, things were headed in a different direction.

The way Shane told Rachel to double-bolt the door, because a killer could get in, was very menacing (right before he took a shower). I thought she was going to get the knife.

Everyone followed through in a way that was true to their characters, ultimately, and that's what matters.

Belinda and Quinn, underdogs who were not awful, are the only two who ended up with any kind of character growth in the end. Belinda's was a long-suffering empath always putting herself in a vulnerable position of sympathizing with people whose problems are less serious than her own probably are, and she reached her limit.

We never really got to know Quinn because he is internally focused, but what we did learn was that while his sister protests too much, she is the same as her parents, and while he always quietly acquiesced to everyone, he is nothing like them and he broke free (even if this storyline is crazily far fetched).

The series was described as a social satire and so the end was going to be dark and aimed at skewering how people really behave, not by having people 'do the right thing' as they do in movies. Everyone else carried on in self-interest.

As I watched it, Rachel's decision in the end was inevitable and it is kind of brilliant anyway IMO because this episode did slyly shift the sympathy from her to Shane. Both are pretty terrible, really, but while she seems "nice," everything she does is selfishly motivated *and* goes against her better judgment, and while he seems petty and unkind, he has done a lot to make her happy in a way he can understand how to do, and he puts up with a lot from her. He's a total asshole, but he's making way more of an effort in the relationship. She has had so many opportunities to articulate what the fuck he is doing wrong when he asks her and she just stands there crying. This actually gave me a whole new perspective, honest to God, on nagging wives. Maybe they need to do it to make oblivious men grow. Rachel is too wrapped up in feeling like a "victim" of his thinking she's "hot" to ever correct his behavior, which he seems he would receive from her.

The Slate article describes the outcome with Shane and Armond as predestined and inevitable and that didn't occur to me while watching but now it makes sense. They've had an increasingly hostile cat and mouse thing going on the whole time. Armond reached his limit of tolerating people like Shane (Belinda just began to her reach her limit.) and Shane was as obsessed with revenge as someone in an Elizabethan revenger's tragedy. So yeah, as they kept up their Tom and Jerry antics and Armond took to self-medicating and giving in to losing control, and Shane unnecessarily took it as far as getting the guy fired, it makes sense storywise. And thematically, it totally makes sense that Shane would get away with murder scot free while the poor Hawaiian guy is presumably in jail for for a victimless crime, and we'd get to see Shane with his hangdog face become relieved for getting his trophy [wife] in the end, and Kai doesn't even matter enough to show and wrap up his story.

Like Armond told Lani to be, she and Kai were just invisible native servants on colonized land. They have no voices at all and their tragic fates are only told by rich white people.

I didn't expect the pooping scene to be so graphic. But I'm sure Frances McDormand approves.

I knew it was Armond who dies the moment he had his slo-mo perfect dinner seating sequence.

I had to LOL so hard at the scene of Rachel and Shane. It was basically a spoof of a rom-com ending where one chases to the airport to profess his or her undying love to the other. And I don't Shane loves-loves Rachel. He just can't admit that he was wrong picking Rachel and proposing marriage. Shane is kind of a Trump douchebag who must believe that he's always right and everything is fine as long he gets what he wants. I mean, he doesn't notice how miserable Rachel is in that final scene at the airport and he will probably never get it.

[quote] There's no way Nicole would have sat down on the plane without triple checking everyone was there.... in their assigned seats.

I wonder if that was some attempt to show Nicole let go of her control and micromanaging issues? Or maybe, most likely, I am reading too much into it. I mean, she was eager to butt in and tell the burglary story to Shane when it was a conversation between Mark and Shane with Mark wanting to tell the whole story.

Belinda's crying felt too over the top for me. She must have encountered dozens of flakes like Tanya in her profession. And the Tanya she met was a big ol' mess. I think it would've been more truthful for Belinda to just shrug her shoulders and count the money in the envelope. But then she would've probably given Rachel better advice (if she wasn't so hurt by Tanya flaking on her).

[quote] He was even doing homework the last day there so maybe they will indulge him some how for a week.

That wasn't homework. He did research for that Polynesian Sea trip called Hokulea he was so eager to do. The show made a point to make the title of the book (like any other books used on the series) very visible.

[quote] The thing is, Shane isn’t terrible.

I agree..... His immediate reaction to stabbing Armond - who really was a major dick to him - was to apologize.

At some point, I thought Rachel would pull a Gone Girl and fake her own death to get away from Shane.

[quote]His immediate reaction to stabbing Armond - who really was a major dick to him - was to apologize.

Someone less terrible would have dialed 9-1-1.

... or applied pressure to the stabbed area to decrease the blood loss.

Or ... something to save the guy's life ...

[quote] Belinda's crying felt too over the top for me. She must have encountered dozens of flakes like Tanya in her profession. And the Tanya she met was a big ol' mess. I think it would've been more truthful for Belinda to just shrug her shoulders and count the money in the envelope. But then she would've probably given Rachel better advice (if she wasn't so hurt by Tanya flaking on her).

I don't agree. Yes, Belinda working at the spa of a rich people's resort surely encounters flakes all the time. But she says to Tanya during their brief courtship that she is never 'seen' and it feels really good to be seen for once. She had a wall up and at first knew this lady was just superficially grateful, and then she let down her guard slowly and after talking to her son, who urged her to take the opportunity, she let a little shimmer of hope in. Then, even as she saw that Tanya was really not interested, Belinda hung onto that hope, as people do.

What happened is that, just as Olivia preys on Paula and is studied in colonial exploitation and applies those practices to her black-ish 'friend,' Tanya preyed on Belinda and is studied (via her mother) and applied emotional-vampire practices she understands to Belinda.

Tanya's approach to all relationships is to open the floodgates and overwhelm people so they push her away, and she knows it.

Belinda's approach to relationships is to lock the gates and not let anyone in, to appease needy people for a living but always keep a professional distance. She is practiced in it but she is used to dealing with people who may be superficially nice to her sometimes but not with someone like Tanya who "love bombs" her ( as people have said Shane did to Rachel).

Belinda and Rachel ended up in sort of similar situations, meeting self-interested people who pursued them aggressively and broke down their walls even though they really knew to know better. But Rachel is a trophy who Shane wants to show off, and Belinda was more of a tool that is used once and then hidden away in a drawer and forgotten. Both women understood fully how they are seen and used but both gave in and played along. And both of them ended up where they began: Rachel feels like Rapunzel and always will, and Belinda's walls are back up as she's abandoned her hopes for a better opportunity.

[quote] ... or applied pressure to the stabbed area to decrease the blood loss. Or ... something to save the guy's life ...

I'm a little surprised Shane didn't search around for gloves and then pack Armond's stab wound with his own poo.

[quote] But she says to Tanya during their brief courtship that she is never 'seen' and it feels really good to be seen for once. She had a wall up and at first knew this lady was just superficially grateful, and then she let down her guard slowly and after talking to her son, who urged her to take the opportunity, she let a little shimmer of hope in.

But Tanya was very upfront about her flaws, like that she latches onto people and that she's a big mess and dealing with some serious issues. And yet Belinda let down her guard down for the rare chance for getting an investor, an emotionally unstable investor. I'm sorry, but as I see it Belinda gambled and lost, but still got a consolation prize (the cash in the envelope).

I think what makes characters like Belinda and Rachel a bit tricky is that they seem to lack life experience, because no real person would let it go this far with Shane or get too emotionally invested in someone like needy Tanya just because she showers you with compliments.

R532 Yes, and I think Belinda knew 100 percent tht she was going to lose. But she wasn't self-defeated; she was defeated by a lifetime of external circumstances. This time, she as Charlie Brown kicked at the football Lucy put down, knowing Lucy would pull it away, and Lucy pulled it away and Belinda fell on her ass. She cried because she knew better than to believe Tanya actually saw potential in her rather than dangling a shiny thing to get her attention and to draw compliments out from her, but she did it anyway because it was a chance she couldn't pass up. I think the crying was totally believable. Yes, she kept the money, and you can tell by the way she sets it aside, she has gotten huge tips from crazy rich people before. She has to process her emotional loss in the moment; it's more significant than the money.

The way this show dealt with Belinda's emotions made it a million times more authentic than the typical TV reaction of her shrugging and counting her dolla bills. It makes Belinda 'seen' by us, whether you want to see or not that she is a human being with feelings and not just a servant used to her lot in life and grateful for a wad of cash.

[quote] It's Austin Stowell

Looking at his IMDB page, I realized that I was an extra, 10 years ago, in a movie in which he co-starred. He was a nice guy (I got an acknowledgment from him, unlike from his co-star, Liam Hemsworth) but I had no inkling how hot he was!

Basically, all the bitching that Tanya did about how her mother damaged her emotionally beyond repair was simultaneously put into action by her causing emotional damage to Belinda in the same way.

Yes, Tanya knew how her mother's emotional games worked but she was engaged in that toxic relationship and just like Olivia understands, explains and resents her parents' flaws, she also emulates them. So does Tanya, knowingly.

And Belinda probably could articulate the rich white ladies' flaws to her son or someone else (if anyone cared listen to her), but just like everyone else, recognizing the flaws doesn't mean that she wouldn't fall into the same behavioral patterns.

Rachel's flaw is that she has no sense of another person's feelings. She's bad at gauging how other people think or feel. She didn't get that Belinda wouldn't give a shit to listen to her summarizing her life's laments. She didn't get it that Connie Britten would have been hurt by a shoddily repackaged article. She didn't get that people see her as a trophy-wife-in-the-making.

Kitty's advice is a good summary of what a rich person thinks makes a good plan for a young beautiful wife. It's not just "marry rich," it's "run a charity, throw parties, it's fun and can be effective." Her "No, don't do that" was the redirection she showed up to offer, and then the explanation could make a kind of sense to Rachel.

[quote] She has to process her emotional loss in the moment; it's more significant than the money.

That is a really good point. I didn't consider that it could be her process to deal with the loss.

Belinda's intended business is to "help" people with their problems. The old white woman gave her an envelope full of cash for Belinda's new business. So Belinda got what she wanted, but without the strings of the old white woman being around all the time. So she won.

Paula got her boyfriend arrested and his life ruined. But she got him to blow a load in her first. So she won.

Armond lied, doubled and tripled-down on the lying and ended up dead. But he got to get really high and stick his face in the bellboy's ass. So he won.

All in all, the oppressed did pretty well for themselves.

r539 is Barbara"so this is working very well for them" Bush's ghost.

R539 I don't know which Trump you are, but get off of the Data Lounge before we drop a house on you.

I have no interest in seeing another season if this. It’s basically a Fantasy Island episode

I so didn’t need to see that pooping scene

R469 R492 I believe the next season will be at another White Lotus resort. Doubt they would have a resort called White Lotus in Aspen. Maybe White Lotus Fiji?

The pooping was gross and graphic, but I think it was functionally helpful. Although Armond really went off the deep end and took "all the drugs," mixing liquor and, what 85 lines of coke and who knows what other drugs, we are used to seeing drug use like that in entertainment as a sort of "the character has lost control" trope without real consequences, and without registering the magnitude of the mistake. Especially since this is a black comedy, I think viewer reactions to the drug bender probably were not to be shocked or to take it very seriously. With so little left that shocks and alarms viewers today, the show found a way to do it. IMO, if this were not entertainment, the drug use would be a lot more serious than Armond's crazy (but harmless) revenge impulse, but since it is entertainment, the stakes of the drug use just aren't felt in a real way.

Would Paula really get off the hook so easily? Detectives would want to know how Kai knew the right combination for the safe and would have all the family members plus Paula questioned. They wouldn't just let them go that easily. Same with Shane. He murder a guy (in his words self defense) and they would let him go away the next morning?

[quote] It’s basically a Fantasy Island episode.

Funny you mention that. There's a new FI show that aired its first episode last week, and it's ... well, not quite like the 80's version. Bisexual tryst and cannibalism. That's just the first episode.

R539 is Rudy Giuliani, believing he's got an ace argument up his sleeve for federal court.

"I told him the combination, but only because it was my friend's birthday and I thought it was cute."

Also, all the busboys high on drugs would get fired.

[quote] They wouldn't just let them go that easily.

r546, of course they would. Not only are they highly valued tourists, the Mossbachers and Shane are super rich tourists with big shot lawyers drawing even more unpleasant media attention to a hotel resort and an island that relies on tourism.

The characters have to be based on real people. I'm so impressed with the Nicole/Olivia characters, one of the most believable mother/daughter personality pairing I've ever seen. Olivia understands her mother's flaws, doesn't understand she has the same traits, criticizes her mother, is basically ignored by her mother, who dotes on the son, emulates her mother in a way that's subtle almost to the point of being invisible because she has a different generational view. As someone who studied fiction writing, I think it's pretty extraordinary. A person wouldn't say "Olivia acts just like her mother," and yet this little snippet of their lives gives us a flash of awareness that Olivia is going to cast off her rebellious shell after college and become a more ruthless version of her mother, empowered with the natural ability, the apprenticeship under her, and greater cunning from years of 'sleeping with the enemy' (Paula).

R550 Maybe not. How many young white guys are there to draw from on the island as help? (One more than before with Quinn there, I guess.) I get the feeling The White Lotus is not going to hire Hawaiian locals to replace the white guys' roles of interacting personally with guests, since the local people are told to be invisible.

R553 "How many young white guys are there to draw from on the island as help" Ummm, many

Mike White is obsessed with Hawaii, ocean, diving and turtles . I can't blame him

Are there, R554?

Did they ever say where they were? I was under the impression the whole time they were in a very remote area, nothing like Oahu. The vacationers took a small boat there and the only thing we ever saw from the distance of the water was The White Lotus resort. It looked isolated.

It will be at a new hotel so I doubt there will be any of the employees showing up again, probably just one or two of the guests showing up at a new place amid a new group

The ending totally made sense and stuck with the theme of rich, white privilege winning out. The cops or whoever were shaking Shane’s hand - as if he was being congratulated for taking down some menacing intruder. The monster Shane was talking about, though, was actually Shane, picking on a service provider because his money and privilege weren’t being recognized. And just when , psychologically, Armand thinks he’s getting one over on Shane, Shane accidentally kills him, but it’s okay because in the privileged world, Armand was terrorizing Shane. And then they all go on their merry way without thinking twice about the mess they leave behind, because in their world, they can’t be bothered with messes.

Since people love Belinda and feel bad for Kai, I can imagine one of them washing up at a foreign resort and getting some marginal karmic repayment. Kai could get out of jail and flee the island to start over and because his disappointed family rejected him or something, or Belinda might use her money and "start over" elsewhere. She probably is not native to Hawaii, so she moved there and could move again. Kai can be a shirtless fire twirler in many locations.

But Mike White also referred to this as an anthology series, so if he goes the Ryan Murphy route, he could shuffle the deck and recast some of the same players as different characters. Jennifer Coolidge made such a splash, she could be White's Jessica Lange and could be cast in a radically different role to show she's way more versatile as a dramatic actress than we've seen.

The pooping scene was smart because it’s a side of our everyday (if you’re lucky) animal nature that is never shown on television—it’s very familiar and still very shocking. It goes back to the repeated theme that no matter how nicely we claim otherwise, our animal natures rule us (Mossbacher dad’s speech about how no one cedes privilege).

The show cravenly sucks up to white privileged liberals (you know, the regular HBO viewers) who can't get enough of their caste being shamed and self-flagellated. The show is entertaining with some good acting, but its "message" is banal and as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Unfortunately I think Kai’s life has been tossed away just the same way Paula tossed his necklace off the boat. My guess is jail and then a detailed future the way jail tends to do to young men who aren’t rich white boys like Shane.

*derailed

[quote] And thematically, it totally makes sense that Shane would get away with murder scot free while the poor Hawaiian guy is presumably in jail for for a victimless crime

Um, Shane didn’t murder Armond.

And the “poor Hawaiian guy” is a total pussy who didn’t even have the balls to rat out cunt Paula.

[quote] Belinda might use her money and "start over" elsewhere. She probably is not native to Hawaii

Hey, fuck you, man.

Slate sums it up pretty well, I think:

"By the time the plot is done, the rich leave better off than they started—even Shane (Jake Lacy), whose marriage is now, presumably, for keeps and maybe won’t be quite such a dick at his next hotel. The middle class characters are guilty and complicit, and the employees are: dead, disappointed, jailed. The White Lotus’s accomplishment is to feel enough like life that it appears as though the characters are making their own choices, as if structural forces aren’t all that there is, as if they are free. But they’re only free enough to play out a preordained story."

I could see Belinda becoming some sort of Lifestyle guru who shows up at a White Lotus resort hosting a convention for her brand (books, videos, spa merchandise, etc.). An entrepreneur who completely forgot, or is ashamed of, her roots.

I would love to see Murray Bartlett as a completely different character on the next White Lotus. He could be one of the guests.

Of course the gay dies. Isn't that par for the course in Hollywood?

What does it matter if the gay dies? Bartlett acted the heck out of that tragic character.

I wondered if Rachel's decision at the end was driven more by fear than anything.

She had witnessed the unrelenting anger in Shane for Armond and she probably wondered if the killing was premeditated (the "double lock" comment laying an alibi).

I bet she feared for her life if she continued to piss Shane off.

r560 makes a good point, re: animal natures and this show - the animal noises over the opening credits, Steve Zahn's monkey man routine, the shark family in the waters, the whales we see, the pregnancy water bursting on the floor in the first episode, and of course the most base animal act within every day humanity, pooping

R469 I read that next season will take place in another White Lotus hotel, in another vacation spot (not Hawaii). New guests, new hotel staff.

The banality of Mike White

R513, I have a different read. Shane would have been humilated having to go back home where everyone would know that his bride left him on their honeymoon. It would mean that he was a failure. A narcissist can never be put in that position. Rachel coming back to him allowed him to save face.

She will regret her decision. For the rest of their marriage, Shane will always have the upper hand because he knows how weak she is. Sure she'll have money, but it will be controlled by Shane and his mother. Her life is basically over. In the end, she kinda died, too.

[quote] The old white woman gave her an envelope full of cash for Belinda's new business.

But probably full of singles and fives.

My great-aunt used to have an envelope like that went we went on vacation, it was filled with dollars bills and five dollar bills that she could dispense as tips--maybe $300 worth at most, probably less.

So there may not have been a whole lot of money in there.

Rachel may have seen that she now has something over Shane, that he's been shocked and humbled by the fact that he killed someone, even if it was not intentional. She may also feel somehow responsible for Armond's death just because she was there was Shane and abandoned him that night.

As for Belinda, I assume the spa manager at a place like the White Lotus makes a decent enough living. Not six figured but not so little she's living paycheck to paycheck.

I love that Armond's replacement is wearing the pink (coral?) jacket in the last scene --it was the manager's uniform, not a personal choice on Armond's part.

And given that Mark was monitoring where Quinn was as they were boarding the plane, telling him to get with the rest of the family, he would have immediately noticed that Quinn wasn't right behind him.

Tanya cracked me up with her “SHY-EZZ” chair pronunciation!

Would Shane really gotten away with killing someone that easily, even if it was intentionally? What if it was a cleaning lady?

Well, r572, Armond was in Shane’s room, his shit was in Shane’s suitcase, Shane had previously been in touch with hotel management about his complaints with Armond, and Armond’s system would have been swimming with drugs and booze. So I don’t actually think it’s a huge stretch.

Sorry, that last was meant as a response to r579.

Well, they have a history of issues between the two and zero justification for him entering the hotel room before Shane arrived. These hotels always have cameras and key entry is also digitally monitored. Add the statement from the staff boys about how obsessed he was with Shane and the shit and ruin in the suitcase and it’s a clear cut case. Then we have the issue if the break in which justified Shane’s fear if other shit going down.

The only crime that made no sense was Paula not getting arrested as an accomplice for the jewelry.

[quote]I would love to see Murray Bartlett as a completely different character on the next White Lotus. He could be one of the guests.

American Hotel Story: an anthology series

Wasn't a turtle also a plot point in Mare Of Easttown?

How much cash was in the envelope that Tanya gave Belinda?

[quote] Wasn't a turtle also a plot point in Mare Of Easttown?

Another HBO mediocrity.

[quote] How much cash was in the envelope that Tanya gave Belinda?

As r567 said, not that much. Probably a couple of hundred in small bills.

Tanya didn't *owe* Belinda anything.

So any cash she got she should be grateful for.

Yes, Tanya led her on, but anyone with any sense would know that someone as flighty as Tanya wasn't reliable.

R571 Rachel went back to Shane out of fear, but not fear of Shane. She was afraid of facing the wilds of life without the buffer of privilege conferred by her diamond ring (social security) and Shane’s bank account (financial security). She’s an example of Steve Zahn’s comment that no one cedes the privilege they have. Having gained the privileges of a trophy wife, she wasn’t able to give them up.

I don’t think Zahn’s comment is always right—there are some unusual and brave people in the world—but it perfectly fit Rachel. I was wondering the whole episode why she hadn’t called her mother yet to break the news, perhaps that should have been a clue.

So the only replacement rower they could find was a skinny kid who'd done it a handful of times?

Murray and La Coolidge should both get Emmys for this. And Sydney Sweeney should at least get a nomination.

A tiny thing that bugged me was that Quinn was awoken by the rowers and he jumped right in the boat. Didn’t he have to urinate first? Most people get up and pee as soon as they wake up. Although maybe he peed off the side of the boat when they were out on the water.

Sadly, the final episode reduced the show to an adult/highbrow version of The Love Boat or Fantasy Island.

R591 maybe because he was the one character who pursued the beauty of nature instead of the baser urges of natures (status and power)

I’m so relieved Quinn didn’t die. I just knew he was going to die in an “innocent dying for their sins” tragedy.

But poor Armond. He blew off one douchebag and ultimately paid with his life.

[quote] Tanya cracked me up with her “SHY-EZZ” chair pronunciation!

Me, too. I literally guffawed at that and had to rewind to hear the next lines.

Belinda's denouement broke my heart. I took her "I’m out" declaration to mean that she was through caring, even for herself. At the end, when she and the staff are getting ready to greet the boat with the new guests, she’s clearly putting on an insincere mask. She was trained to help people, but now she’ll just be going through the motions and accept that that’s her life. She’s like one of those teachers who gets burnt out and just sits there, passing time, pretending the kids aren’t even there.

I don’t know if that last shot of Quinn is supposed to be a memory of an earlier day or if he managed to get on the boat before his parents could get there from the airport. But no, he won’t be staying on the island. His parents wouldn’t be more than a half hour behind him.

[quote]But poor Armond.

He was REALLY bad at his job and made many stupid, unprofessional decisions.

He fucked up Shane's reservation. And instead of apologize and comp something, as any competent manager would have done, he exacerbated the situation with a high-paying customer. And then he sexually harasses employees and plies them with drugs.

As the Cell Block Tango said: He had it coming.

R577, Rachel has nothing over Shane. Shane got away scot free, he doesn't even feel remorse about Armond's death.

The only thing that will happen is that Shane will have a story to tell the folks back home about the "asshole" guy he got into a pissing match with and how he (Shane) was right. And his dutiful bride will sit there and nod in agreement.

[quote]Belinda's denouement broke my heart. I took her "I’m out" declaration to mean that she was through caring, even for herself.

I took it more that she was over rich, white people wasting her time with their self-indulgence over relatively minor problems.

[quote]And his dutiful bride will sit there and nod in agreement.

While looking at a spot of brown grease on her blouse that never did quite come out.

Maybe Rachel will wise up in Tahiti and leave Shane to join a rowing team.

Rachel’s whining about her career is the modern day Bill Hurt in “Broadcast News.”

She needs a Holly Hunter to give her the “I’m bad at my job but at least I feel bad about it” speech.

Ahahahahaha!

I was right!

R332