Television is the most painful medium. Shows come and go, only a few stick around for a few seasons, fewer are remembered decades on, and even when the best of them end, you’re left with an empty stomach. Great movies and books—even good ones—leave you nourished. “Bingeing” is an appropriate word, because after you watch five episodes of something, you feel like you’ve been hollowed out. I’ll never watch Succession again, and I’ll never rewatch the third season of The White Lotus, because it’s just too painful. Rick and Chelsea: DEAD. The Ratliff family fake-out deaths are complete sans Piper, and a skeletal Scott Glenn gets popped as well. Why were there only eight episodes? This should be a 10-episode series. The White Lotus goes to Thailand was the best season of the show so far by a mile, and it will stay with me in ways that the previous iterations didn’t. I forgot who died last time besides Jennifer Coolidge. It was just her.
Mike White said Sunday’s finale was a piece of filmmaking that he “couldn’t believe” he accomplished. But even though White writes and directs every episode of the show, there’s zero visual coherence to the show, leaving mostly great writing floating in a sea of coverage and smudgy long lenses intended to make it look more “cinematic.” The White Lotus looks glitzy for a reason, but the camera work is so indecisive and jumpy that the show can never establish a visual rhythm to match the often extraordinary emotion of its actors. There isn’t a single cast member that fell short, and I’m only being hard on the show because the writing is so great.
Could The White Lotus in Thailand been a two-hour movie? 150 minutes? Three hours, absolutely, but that’s not realistic; the drawback, and the draw for most, is that over eight episodes, eight weeks, you get to know these characters and you live with them. I’m sad that Aimee Lou Wood (Chelsea) died along with Rick (Walton Goggins). She was my favorite. I loved her. And it’ll take a few days to get it out of my system. It’s only natural, even when you’re watching an old show an episode or two a day; even Twin Peaks leaves you feeling a bit lost, a bit empty after it’s over. You just wish you could spend more time with these characters.
That’s what makes Chelsea’s death even more brutal: there’s no way she’s returning for the teased “all-star” season. I hope the Ratliffs make it back. Mike White said people who were upset with Sunday’s finale don’t like being “edged”—well, if you run back all eight episodes, everyone gets at least one superlative moment or monologue (Leslie Bibb’s smile, Sam Rockwell’s monologue and Goggins’ reaction, Parker Posey slurring words in Southern like “Lorazepam,” “Piper,” “Buddhism,” and “Thailand”). But that’s about it. I didn’t find the show “slow” or “plotless” like so many; in fact, the show’s quality took a noticeable dive whenever something had to happen, like the snakes escaping, Lochlan “seeing God,” the abominable slow motion montages of embraces that look ripped straight out of a credit card commercial. The White Lotus probably benefits from being so lavish and loose, but ultimately, what could be a great show in every aspect is merely a delivery system for dialogue, plot, and characters you grow to love. That’s fine, I like Big Macs, but this could be so much better and healthier. Ten episodes, 90 minutes for the first and last.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits