Sepinwall destroyed it. I used to agree with him WAY more than I do these days (I don't think his criticism is progressing well as he ages, but he's not incredibly wrong on quite a few points, most of which were already made even here before he went to print.)

Here's what I do predict will happen. Mike White did go a little off the rails, and Mike White will probably disappear into some therapy with the criticism for a few months. White both doesn't give a fk, and also gives way too many fks.

Wildly entertaining entertaining season of TV. Does Mike White hear every bit of this, go into some crazy bunker having heard it all, and come out with something that equally throws both middle fingers in the air, and says I heard it all? My guess would be yes.

And where I'm disappointed in Sepinwall these days is- was it messy? Yes. Was it entertaining enough for A LOT of people to diabolically nitpick every week? 1000% yes. Is that what has long since been lacking in in TV for the past 10 years? 10000% yes.

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As a mostly self-contained season of scripted television, The White Lotus does not allow itself to be as mysterious or unknowable as the monk argues that our own lives are. So "Amor Fati" offers resolution aplenty. But given how predictable, contrived, and/or outright silly these resolutions are, maybe it would have been better if there had been none at all?

This was already the bumpiest of the series' three seasons. Expanding to eight episodes (after six in the first season and seven in the second) resulted not in more depth, but to certain ideas Tim's murder-suicide fantasies, the friends' decades-old resentments being repeated much too often. The stories of both Belinda and Gaitok felt badly underfed, as Lotus creator Mike White's level of interest in the non-wealthy and/or non-white characters has dipped with each passing season. If not for the specter of the mass shooting teased in the season-opening flash-forward, the whole thing would have felt like a meandering tone poem, elevated by some good performances (especially by Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood, and Carrie Coon), the occasional zinger (mostly from Parker Posey's Victoria), and random bits of sexual experimentation (Lochlan giving his brother a hand, Frank's monologue about his ladyboy fantasies).

But having seen the shooting in context, as well as all the other climaxes or lack thereof I wonder if maybe these deaths aren't now the promotional cart driving the narrative horse. Or if White has simply run out of things to say about the terribleness of the idle rich, but has become too successful himself through this show to stop. The first (and still best) and second seasons reached their creative high points in their respective finales, where "Amor Fati" just summed up all the things that weren't working about Season Three.

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https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-recaps/the-white-lotus-season-3-finale-1235310499/

His most correct line- by far.

And exactly what I meant by I'm personally sure we see Mike White go into the bunker saying "these various scenes ABSOLUTELY destroyed." People can be curious about who died along the way, but 5+ people in body bags for shock value across the board isn't exactly what people were sticking around for for 8 weeks.

And also, we have these great character monologues about how people have either grown, or figured themselves out quite a bit over 7 days (which was 8 weeks to us), but then nobody gave a fk when all these people died. Which *maybe* was the commentary, but I don't quite think it was the intention.

White's usually better at tying threads than that, and over-prioritized shock value.

That doesn't make it great TV.

But I expect we'll see something different than that in S4.

There are 2 reasons I think this will go into a little bit of a bunker.

1) HBO has *never* had an issue with 2-3 year breaks, or considering that a momentum loss. Even if you stripped out the various writers strikes that have caused delays, they always allow it it, and *almost *encourage it. That is NOT the same as Paramount.

2)Mike White is like the polar opposite of Taylor Sheridan. Like Taylor will pump out however scripts he's asked to to buy however many ranches or whatever it is he wants.

White is like waaaaaay more emotionally invested in perfection. He's secured his bag, he ain't buying ranches, he'd rather get it all the way he wants super sloooooowly exactly the way he wants it. Like why it takes an 8 episode show 6 months to shoot, that's insane. The answer is one person's obsessive perfectionism that takes criticism a lot, and is writing/adjusting every line of the script on the fly himself, and also trying to direct the damn thing at the same time. Taylor Sheridan ain't hearing your criticism rather than go to therapy. He'll just pump out 2 more spinoffs and buy 2 more ranches as his therapy instead.

I don't expect to see S4 until at least Q3 2027.

And Sepinwall can move on from writing angry criticism to 500 page oral history books of messier shows like The OC (which I did read) tied in with their creators than actual relevant TV criticism.

Sorry, I should have been more clear, but I meant story momentum, in terms of White/HBO potentially not wanting to veer too far story-wise from whatever it was this season that caused viewership to increase week over week. Otherwise, yeah, I completely agree that we're not getting season four until the second half of 2027 at the earliest.

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Sorry, I should have been more clear, but I meant story momentum, in terms of White/HBO potentially not wanting to veer too far story-wise from whatever it was this season that caused viewership to increase week over week.

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I *really* think, that White/HBO will have learned from this season that the viewership didn't go up because we were actually concerned which of 5-8 people ended up in a body bag.

Anecdotally, of course, but never in the 25 years I have been discussing TV with people has this show come up randomly as often.

I could not tell you the number of times this show has come up over the last 2 months, and I got exactly 2 responses. 1)"How dare you ask me that, of course I am." Or 2) 5 days later "ok so I went on a deep dive on this thing I never heard of and am now caught up." More than anything I've ever seen.

It was everything from talking to a NC Parker Posey lookalike I was set up with at a bar, who's name I still don't know, bc I just proceeded to call her Parker Posey for the rest of the night (and was slightly concerned I offended by doing so, to which it turns out I certainly did not), to other people I had to compare to the Fancies without using the "the Fancies". (Luckily, I never ran into any incesutous brothers, but it's only Monday)

Not one of these absurd number of people I kept managing to find myself in these conversations with (and I don't make a point of brining up TV in real life) cared who ended up in a body bag. (Or 5 body bags, or 8, I can't keep track).

I think there's gonna be a course correction to say- this random scene sht was what we were watching for, we barely cared who died. And either how dare you suggest I wasn't watching this, or how dare you waited until week 5 to tell me the girl I was trying to set you up with was already on TV and she was Parker Posey already.

I haven't seen anything like this since Lost, and it had nothing to do with deaths or body bags, but ALL the rest of the things that were happening.

Of course some great monologue, but I liked Laurie line about normally she's hard for superficial reasons, but it was nice to be hated for real reasons.

Also last song of this season fittingly was Billy Preston's Nothing From Noting.

It was never about him not having a father. He spent his whole life thinking some rich ***** murdered his father.

Quite different.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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It was never about him not having a father. He spent his whole life thinking some rich ***** murdered his father.

Quite different.

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Rick literally said, over and over again this season, that his father being murdered "ruined his life." What does the murderer being rich have to do with that, in any tangible way? IMO, if the rich thing matters somehow, it honestly kind of makes Rick's motivation even worse, story/character-wise.

Got nothing to do with him being rich. But it makes it that much worse when you think your father was murdered by some greedy ******* over a business deal.

I say this as someone who's uncle was murdered by a greedy ******* over a business deal. I understand it's not the same as I knew my uncle my whole life, but just making a point.

Sepinwall: It's interesting, I used to religiously read his stuff and now it's just, trifling criticism.

He has forgotten what it's like to be a fan and takes his role way too seriously.

Rudyjax said:

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Sepinwall: It's interesting, I used to religiously read his stuff and now it's just, trifling criticism.

He has forgotten what it's like to be a fan and takes his role way too seriously.

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Maybe putting him behind a paywall at Rolling Stone caused him to lose touch with common fans. He lost criticism on his own criticism?

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Maybe putting him behind a paywall at Rolling Stone caused him to lose touch with common fans. He lost criticism on his own criticism?

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He goes heavy on Substack, which is free.

He's def just lost his fastball.

The stupid exit from Twitter, like many did, where he got a ton of engagement and built his name, really didn't help.

I think What's Alan Watching on Blogspot was great. he was a fan writing about his shows.

Everything I read he likes I hate now, and evertyhign he hates I like.

And my tastes haven't changed that much.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. I used to read him religiously, even sometimes for shows I didn't watch because he was such a great writer. Now, I barely, if ever check in on what he has to say.

Has anyone else taken the mantle of being The TV critic or is it all podcast now?

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Underwhelming climax, wanted more chaos. Particularly after the longest buildup of any of the seasons.

I don't dislike Belinda like many on this thread but couldn't stand Zion or their relationship. Felt so unnaturally corny.

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Five, almost six bodies was not enough? What?

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Number of bodies was fine, chaos doesn't automatically mean more death (although Lochlan should have died imo so yeah I guess I wanted that 6th). The 3 women's conflict being fixed in a minute and half is what I thought was the biggest let down.

Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Underwhelming climax, wanted more chaos. Particularly after the longest buildup of any of the seasons.

I don't dislike Belinda like many on this thread but couldn't stand Zion or their relationship. Felt so unnaturally corny.

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Five, almost six bodies was not enough? What?

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The 3 women's conflict being fixed in a minute and half is what I thought was the biggest let down.

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But do you think that was ACTUALLY fixed?

How did they revert back to their old dynamic after that last dinner?

FtWorthHorn said:

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Woof. Just a brutal season. Somehow Mike White has decided the thing people want from White Lotus is more dead bodies. And in doing so he just had several main characters meander around for 7 episodes to get them into position to maybe kill someone.

Fewer episodes and no dead people. That would fix it.

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I'd rather have more episodes and more storyline. Seems like a few episodes ... not much happened. S1 didn't have that feel.

Tailgate88 said:

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FtWorthHorn said:

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Woof. Just a brutal season. Somehow Mike White has decided the thing people want from White Lotus is more dead bodies. And in doing so he just had several main characters meander around for 7 episodes to get them into position to maybe kill someone.

Fewer episodes and no dead people. That would fix it.

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I'd rather have more episodes and more storyline. Seems like a few episodes ... not much happened. S1 didn't have that feel.

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I think it's because it was 6 episodes with some tighter plotting and more interesting character arcs. And when you're doing a story of a few groups taking a weeklong vacation to one location, I think tighter is better. If you start to expand, you end up with what happened this year - many episodes where you're just waiting for a character to get to the endpoint that you sketched out when you started writing.

FtWorthHorn said:

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One Louder said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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How did they revert back to their old dynamic after that last dinner?

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The way women always do: pretend everything is fine and even over-compensate until they can get away from each other. They brought everything to the surface and acknowledged it but i didn't see where anyone sought to make a change based on their conversation. Laurie admitted she was just happy to be "at the table" since all her efforts at happiness have failed. Kate and Jaclyn were affirmed by Laurie so they still have pity for her.

As a 52 y/o woman, I've lived this situation...definitely not in this form, but I have.

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I took this differently, though. I thought the series opens (and demonstrates via the 2 person conversations) that they all go into the week judging each other. And that, unsurprisingly, creates conflict through the week. But both Jaclyn and Laurie both screw up pretty badly in their efforts to live new lives/find themselves. And ultimately Laurie recognizes that having friends she can rely on despite hurting each other, occasionally or regularly, is in fact important to her.

Said more simply, their friendship and presence is more important to her than their relative positions, success, or past slights.

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I agree with that observation so I guess it all depends on how everyone defines "fixing" the situation. If I remember correctly, when they're all lounging on the couch together, Kate is the one in the middle which is symbolic of their dynamic. She's the "peacemaker" of sorts and kind of "mothers" the other two.