It's no secret that I don't really like television as a medium, or at least not most contemporary versions of it — from poe-faced prestige dramas that get too much attention to repetitive cable schlock so generic even Netflix won't shove it down your throat. Nevertheless, I somewhat accidentally ended up watching season 1 of HBO's The White Lotus last week, and hey, I like it quite a lot!
I can think of a number of reasons why. First of all, The White Lotus is a series that was conceived from the start to have an ending — an ending it would reach within six episodes. This makes the series short, easily digestible, snappy, satisfying to watch and immune to the padding and bloat that consumes just about any other show adhering to the normal format of introducing more and more plot lines and hoping you don't get cancelled before you can resolve all of them.
Furthermore, its structure, with each episode covering a day at the eponymous hotel from early morning to late night, allows for a tight structure and for key exciting events to be more evenly spaced out. Whereas many other shows have taken to advancing their stories only in the first and last episodes of any given season as a result of Netflix's loathsome "binge watching" model, The White Lotus makes for the kind of experience you sit down for on a weekly basis. It perfectly balances satisfying its viewers every week with leaving them hungry for more.
Another advantage is that The White Lotus has all of the thematic and psychological richness one would expect of a "prestige" drama series while also being deeply hilarious. Nevertheless, I would not by any stretch of the imagination call it a "sitcom". It simply doesn't have the trappings of a sitcom, or even the sense of humour of one. In fact, I can't really think of any particular kind of show that The White Lotus is like. It is obviously indebted to satire, and to the cringe comedy of shows like The Office, but still, outright calling it those things is weirdly unsatisfying.
I would say this proves that The White Lotus has carved out a niche all for itself, at the intersection of its influences. If there were a way to describe its sense of humour, I would say it is there by virtue of, rather than in spite of, its exploration of its complex and socially topical themes. Viewers are expected to engage with the drama to get the comedy, and in turn, you kind of also need to laugh at the comedy to appreciate the drama. As a result, rather than "a prestige drama with jokes", The White Lotus is something wholly more clever. I've always found the label of "comedy-drama" to be a bit silly on a conceptual level, but this show proves that such a hybrid can perfectly exist and even thrive off of its paradoxical nature.
Does that mean the show is a flawless exception to the presumed rule that prestigious television drama needs to be cynical and dour? Not exactly. There's still a whiff of that desperate need for validation so many HBO shows have, with the occasional full frontal nudity and casual disregard for taboo feeling more like a toddler standing on his tippy-toes to look like a grown-up, than like the raw honesty these elements are supposedly still synonymous with.
A bigger problem, however, is that while the dialogue is excellent, many characters still feel more like designated "roles" in the story than like actual human beings. The White Lotus rather quickly reveals its hand when it comes to its characters and what they represent, and it hardly ever really deviates from that. What you see is what you get: Marc, the bumbling dad whose entire character arc is a increasingly humiliating series of escalating emasculations is a comment for toxic masculinity. Olivia, his obnoxious daughter who constantly chastises her parents on sociopolitical issues, but treats her own brother like crap, is a send-up of liberal hypocrisy. Rachel, the journalist who married into money and now has to deal with her husband's petty entitlement, might as well be wearing a T-shirt that says "I am the audience surrogate". The way in which these characters trade barbs and bounce off of each other is nothing short of brilliant, but it's still clear The White Lotus is interested more in how ideas and ideologies clash more than in how individuals do.
Nevertheless, The White Lotus is an easy recommendation. It is breezy, yet rich; clever, yet supremely watchable, and perhaps most importantly of all, enjoyable on various levels — as both casual late-night entertainment as well as as a morality play for armchair psychologists to really sink their teeth into.
You do have an HBO Max subscription, right?