I have been putting off watching The White Lotus for a few weeks now just due to being all over the place and not having the time to jump into it, but the other night I finally managed to do so with zero understanding of what it was. I had known that Walton Goggins was in the third season, though that was the full extent of my knowledge beyond the show simply having incredibly high ratings. I jumped into it not knowing anything at all, and I think that ended up giving me a really cool experience with the show. Setup as an anthology series, The White Lotus is a show that follows in the direction of films like The Menu and Triangles of Sadness. If you haven't seen either of those: they're both stories that take a look at the more luxurious sides of life for the elites, but also hold their own poisons that inevitably lead to something catastrophic taking place. The idea that the elites have their own weird, chaotic lives and somehow, somewhere, things spiral way out of control for them. The White Lotus (season one at least) isn't entirely the same, though it does take place in a resort in Hawaii named The White Lotus, where various individuals and families are all found within one space over the course of a week, many of them being from incredibly wealthy backgrounds and either escaping or celebrating something.
The first episode definitely threw me off a little, it was one that felt incredibly slow, but beautifully shot. It was an episode that purely focused on setting the stage more than anything else. Introducing some of the characters and their main backgrounds. For a first episode it makes sense, after all there are only six total episodes within the season, at a runtime of about 40 minutes in length. Even so, that episode really didn't tell me anything about where things were going, I felt uncertain about watching another episode due to how long it felt and how little it said. Watching that second episode was absolutely the best decision to have made. That slow first episode that introduced things wasn't the best, but that serious undertone didn't prepare me at all for the chaos that was to unfold throughout the rest of the season. All you do know from the first episode is that there was a death, a body is being boarded onto a place that's departing Hawaii. To which the show goes back in time and starts from the arrival of the guests. This tiny bit of mystery definitely added to the story throughout the season, as you're constantly making guesses as to who it is that died and how. It pulls you along incredibly well as you see the lives of these people at the resort slowly crashing for different reasons.
One thing I really liked about the show was that it didn't play up these rich characters as evil people, there isn't anything particularly wrong with many of them, they're displayed as ordinary people that just have a bit more money to play around with. They still each hold their own struggles in life, whether it is the ways in which work occupies their time, or the struggles of maintaining relationships. One family comes from a wealthy background in which the mother is the CEO of a search engine, and the children are just broken with poor influences in their lives. The son being addicted to his phone, who throughout the season makes the best growth in any of the characters: slowly putting the phone away and learning to socialise and have fun actually living. With the rich family having their personal problems, there's contrast in a couple that are on their honeymoon. A woman that is a failing journalist writing clickbait articles for a few hundred dollars every now and then, and her rich husband that's the real breadwinner. Her conflict arising throughout the season as she struggles to come to terms with the strong class differences they have. His family insisting she doesn't need to work ever again, and her wanting to work and strive for something with meaning.
The differences in the characters felt quite refreshing, I mentioned that they aren't intentionally evil and the elitist mentality isn't exaggerated to comically evil levels. They genuinely don't seem like bad people. This is often mentioned with an extremely annoying and liberal character that's pulled along for the holiday with the family, a friend of the teenage girl that is clearly poisoning her mind with drugs and idiotic philosophies. The teenage girl just parroting any of that nonsense on to others. Her friend making it seem like her friend's family are these evil white people that thrive on the exploitation of others within the system. A few heated conversations throughout the season show that that's just how things are, it's not a case of genuine exploitation, but the rich get rich and why would they throw it all away? Logically speaking on the nature of greed and altruism. Naturally a bit of both are found within people, but both sides of the extreme help nobody. The same sort of mentality is found within the newly-weds, where the husband's family don't speak on work as something negative, but bring a fair question regarding why bother doing it if you simply don't need to? This showed the characters handled really well, you don't end up hating them, well, at least not all of them. Many of them seem generally harmless. Even down to the staff of the resort which themselves are displayed in a similar manner. One one hand you have the rich, and on the other you have the people ready to potentially exploit them.
Much of the show speaks on the nature of humanity. The monkey side of the brain that runs around acting based on its instincts. Even if that doesn't seem entirely apparent to us in the moment. How it leads us to specific actions in life that we either may regret or change us without realising. This was seen in multiple characters throughout the show, but I think the best character breakdown came from Armond, the resort manager. Starting off friendly and welcoming with a soft Aussie accent and slowly descending into madness. Reacting purely on impulse and burning all of his bridges. An incredibly strong character, especially in the humour side of things. This show is riddled with dark humour and throughout the season it'll definitely generate some laughs, but Armond shines the most. Sometimes given a little less screen-time than others, but when he's there, you really see the tensions between everyone growing, the connected narratives they all have within that one week. Armond not being someone of great wealth, nor does he hate those who are, but his conflict with the guests as they push his buttons became something that carried the humour forward, from arranging a 'romantic dinner' on a boat that secretly was booked by another woman with the intentions of scattering her mother's ashes into the ocean, to stealing drugs from a lost and found backpack and going entirely off the rails.
That said, the performances from everyone else in the show were also really good. Each character has their strengths and something to offer the show. Each character feeling like a real person and not exaggerated to unbearable levels. Strong character development for each of them throughout all six episodes. No story felt like it didn't get some closure by the end.