Tomorrow Never Knows: notes on The Last Anniversary, Black Doves and The White Lotus

Last January, the Doomsday Clock was reset at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been to human extinction. Meanwhile, I turn on the TV, and it feels like every third drama is post-apocalyptic. Maybe some people find that comforting — that whatever happens, at least we get through it, even if we’re hunted by zombies, stuck in a silo or trapped underground. Me, I prefer not to think about the end of the world, thank you very much. I haven’t written about TV since May of 2024, so here’s the last of a series taking on nine shows I watched in the last year (none of them set in a dystopian future). Some of my favorite series — The Pitt, Adolescence, Ludwig — were just as good as the critics promised and I have nothing to add, so I won’t be writing about them here. I’d rather focus on shows that came and went without sufficient fanfare, or ones where my opinion differs from popular consensus. Let’s do a roundup of some recent dramas.

*****

Like someone out of a Hallmark Movie, melancholy millennial Sophie Honeycutt (Teresa Palmer) finds herself the unexpected owner of a secluded island home, left to her by the grandmother of a guy she once dated. The grandmother of a guy she once dated. Sounds crazy, no? Everything about this place screams crazy, and there’s absolutely no reason that after one look at her new home — and the army of unfriendly faces that come out to greet her — Sophie wouldn’t head for the hills, or at least back to the big city. (The grandmother passed over a host of family members — a sister, two children, three grandchildren, all of whom live next-door — to leave the house to a virtual stranger.) But Sophie doesn’t bail, and despite a plethora of plots that seem overly familiar, neither do you. There’s something oddly alluring about the (fictional) island of Scribbly Gum, located along the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Sophie feels it, and you feel it too.

To be fair, Sophie has good reasons for wanting to make a fresh start. Her job in Sydney, writing puff pieces for a woman’s magazine, isn’t doing it for her anymore. She hasn’t had a good pitch — or even a usable one — in weeks; hell, she can’t even manage to show up to staff meetings on time. She’s been freezing her eggs, via IVF, hoping that the right man will come along, but she’s 39, and her standards have gotten woefully low. She’s terrified to turn away potential candidates, unlikely as they may be; she ends awful first dates with open-ended clichés like “I think you’re a really great guy,” and these drab, crass and needy men end up giving her the brush off. It’s done a number on her self-esteem. She suffers from idiopathic craniofacial erythema, which produces uncontrolled facial blushing, but as she puts herself through a series of mortifying scenarios with men, you wonder if she’s only making her condition worse. The letter from her ex’s grandmother promised there was someone on the island who might be her soulmate; how is she supposed to pass that up?

We don’t know how many times Sophie met her ex-boyfriend’s grandmother Connie, but she keeps flashing back to their first conversation, when he brought her home to meet the family. (It’s a lovely scene between two great actresses: Palmer, whom I’ve never seen more expressive, and Angela Punch McGregor, who’s been serving up memorable screen performances since The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith in 1978.) Sophie and Connie are sitting on the porch with a rainstorm imminent, and Connie offers the 31-year-old advice for the future: “Make up your own story, just like I did, and write whatever ending you want.” It will take Sophie six episodes — virtually the whole miniseries — to realize that that advice wasn’t the secret to success Connie postured it was; it was, unwittingly, a cautionary tale, one that sheds light on the dysfunction that’s devoured the residents of Scribbly Gum Island. History has been reprocessed as stories, and stories repackaged as entertainment. And the women there have spent decades repeating the same stories, or — as Connie admitted in a Freudian slip — making them up. No one has tried to get to the heart of what’s true.

Shortly after Sophie arrives on the island, Connie‘s granddaughter Grace and her husband invite Sophie to dinner, and Grace offers to tell her a story — a funny story, she promises — that will encapsulate her relationship with her mother Enigma. Grace, it seems, has a peanut allergy, and when she was young (sometime after her dad ran off with his dental hygienist), her mother would stop speaking to her for days on end. One time Grace trekked mud into the house, and Enigma gave her the silent treatment for nearly two months. On Day 53, Grace took a candy bar full of nuts down to the beach where her mother was sitting, and threatened that if her mother didn’t talk to her, she would eat it. And her mother didn’t blink. Grace proceeded to take a bite, confident that Enigma would stop her — but she didn’t. When she went into anaphylactic shock, her mother didn’t even help her search for her EpiPen — she had told Grace it was up to her to know where it was at all times. Fortunately, Grace did know, and saved herself. And at that point Enigma — after watching her daughter nearly kill herself just to reopen the lines of communication — told Grace (with a sense of pride at her own parenting skills) that she’d taught her an important lesson that day: that she had no one to rely upon but herself, and that she had to be resourceful. Grace has turned decades of emotional pain into a story, one she’s so desperate to tell, she works it into the dinner conversation; Sophie sits there in horror, uncertain what’s more disturbing: the cruelty that Grace has grown inured to, or the fact that she’s chosen to frame it as “a funny story.” (“It’s nothing new,” Grace explains, as if the length of the abuse somehow excuses it: “Mom lashes out; I apologize. That’s been the dynamic forever.“)

But then, all of the women on the island have seen their lives reduced to a set of stories. Enigma is a bit of a local celebrity. Born to a couple named Alice and Jack Munro, she was abandoned as a baby and discovered by Connie and her sister Rose, who proceeded to raise her. (She came to think of Connie as her mother.) She earns a living profiting off “the Baby Munro mystery,” leading tourists around the island, showing them where she was found and where she was raised, and selling souvenirs and baked goods on the side. She defends the “historical integrity” of her tours, but it’s theatre. No one has actually tried to uncover the details of her abandonment, because they might not be as entertaining as the story she’s created for herself. (Sophie does some digging and finds out more about Alice and Jack Munro in a few days than the others have in fifty years.) With Enigma having commanded so much attention, Connie’s other daughter Margie has emerged with no sense of self; she’s the warmest and most well-meaning of the group, but she too is clinging to meaningless traditions. (When she shows up at Sophie‘s, suggesting she take over Connie‘s role baking goods for the Baby Munro tours — what’s become known as “the family business” — and Sophie insists she doesn’t know a thing about cooking, Margie is undeterred: “We’ll start you on the marble cake, then graduate you to the chocolate drip with cream cheese icing drizzled with a dark chocolate ganache. How does that sound?”) As for Margie’s newly-divorced daughter Veronica, she’s a harridan, angry that her grandmother left the house to her old schoolmate Sophie and determined to make her every moment there unpleasant.

Eight years earlier, as they sat on the porch awaiting the rainstorm, Connie had described her relatives to Sophie as a group of women who “have never been happy.” At first, that feels like a pretty accurate assessment — but you soon realize there’s another way of looking at it. As the rest of the family sees it, the issues stem from Connie, who ruled with an iron fist. It’s possible that Connie was such a strong-willed matriarch, the other family members began to lose their sense of individuality. As a viewer, it’s difficult to identify the characters at first — to figure out who’s close to or even related to whom. And then you realize that’s the point; there are so many layers of hurt and unhappiness in play, it’s hard to sort it all out. Grace — traumatized during the premature birth of her child, and unable to bond — has begun to romanticize Alice Munro’s death; she keeps seeing images of her in the water, beckoning her. But then, everyone on the island is bedeviled by visions of the past. The island invites them to engage in dark fantasies: not merely to relive old regrets, but to agonize over them. But none of the self-reflection has led to insight or understanding; you sense that, over time, each of these women has gotten stuck, and gone a little mad. (Rose is having conversations with ghosts: mostly visions of her late sister, begging her to come clean about the past.) The Last Anniversary lets us see how this family has been buried under the weight of the skeletons they’ve kept hidden away. Will Sophie become the island’s next victim, or will she be a catalyst for change?

John Polson is an award-winning actor who reinvented himself decades ago as a producer and director. I first spotted his name on Without a Trace, and Dick Wolff keeps him busy on his Chicago and FBI franchises. But I became aware of his talent as a director on Elementary, and in particular, on the third season closer, “A Controlled Descent,” in which Sherlock wrestles with his sobriety during a hunt for his kidnapped sponsor. Polson could do the melodramatic set-pieces that were the bread and butter of those sorts of procedurals, but he excelled at more nuanced work that brought character development to the fore, and let the action grow out of it. He was a master of — as the Elementary episode title indicated — the controlled descent, where characters fall prey to their own frailties, and bit by bit, the narrative begins to splinter.

And that makes him an ideal fit for The Last Anniversary. With someone less subtle at the helm — a director more inclined to go for the jugular — you can imagine what a mess of soap opera clichés this show would become. The aging millennial in need in a fresh start; the new mother with post-partum depression; the elderly sisters harboring a secret. (There’s even a hunky gardener who’s up to no good.) I compare this at the top to a Hallmark movie, and if you just read a synopsis, you might mistake it for one. But tonally, it has none of the Hallmark hallmarks. As Polson shoots the story, it’s elusive and elliptical; the past exists in reverie, but so does the present. The atmosphere is woozy and dreamy; he keeps us blissfully off-balance. By refusing to be a generous guide — to highlight the key story beats and personality traits — he forces us to examine the characters more closely. By skirting excess, by taming the “big moments,” he invites us to hunt for details we might otherwise have overlooked: details that elevate common plots to something ripe and unfamiliar.

There are men in the cast, but most are incidental. Only Grace’s husband (Uli Latukefu) makes an impression; he’s a burly heartthrob, and although he’s asked to fill an unenviable role — caught between Grace and Sophie, and desperate to avoid hurting either — Latukefu manages it with an impressive lack of self-consciousness. But this is a show about its women, and it’s fitting that the soundtrack is filled with Peggy Lee and Julie London and Carlene Anderson, all at their most soulful and sad. The title sequence says it all. Set to Agnes Obel‘s haunting “Riverside,” it features candids of the principal characters, laid out in the form of a family tree. But the camera moves a touch too quickly, and you can’t quite make out the connections between characters. So you take in what you can, and try to get a handle on the bigger picture — just as you do watching the series itself. And you trust that by the time the show nears its conclusion, you’ll have heard enough stories and assembled enough pieces to put the puzzle together. The Last Anniversary requires patience and effort, and I don’t think either is too much to expect of an audience. I haven’t read Liane Moriarty’s 2005 novel, so I can’t speak to the faithfulness of Samantha Strauss’s adaptation. I’ve heard the usual platitudes that “the novel is better,” but that said, this is a superior piece of writing, and although elements may be omitted — as they often are when works are condensed for the small screen — I can’t imagine how the narrative could be any more packed with detail and still maintain some semblance of sense and sanity. It’s rich in insight and feeling — but only if you’re willing to put in the work.

*****

I don’t read a lot of reviews anymore — I don’t agree with a lot of reviews anymore, so why bother? — although I have such affection for Lucy Mangan in The Guardian that I’m tempted to start an “I Love Lucy” fan club. But I did skim through quite a few write-ups of Black Doves; I kept skimming because I didn’t see one mention of the feature I found most appealing: how funny it was.

Black Doves is a covert British organization charged with collecting secrets and selling them to the highest bidder. But Black Doves, the series, despite its facade as an espionage thriller, is in some ways a buddy comedy about two besties who keep getting in over their heads, but have either other’s backs. Keira Knightley is a spy and Ben Whishaw is a hitman, and their unconditional friendship is the most appealing thing about the series. Knightley’s Helen Webb has spent the last decade of her life attaching herself to a British politician — even to the point of marrying him and having his kids; Whishaw’s Sam Young had to give up the love of his life, Michael, when enemies got wise to his work and threatened Michael’s life. Black Doves maintains an admirable level of tension — it’s very much in the tradition of every spy thriller from MI-5 to Slow Horses — but there are times when events spiral out of control so quickly, yet in such neat synchronicity, you can’t help but giggle at the beauty of the design. As bad as things get, they can always get worse — and do. And yet the way the characters judge the relative importance of unfolding events — what they choose to prioritize, and why — is fascinating, and frequently hilarious. Occasionally, the series reminded me of (of all things) Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, that great Emmy-winning soap parody from 50 years ago. Mary couldn’t figure out what to focus on first: the massacre of the family across the street or the waxy yellow build-up on her kitchen floor. Helen and Sam are trying to juggle matters of national security and personal affairs that are of interest only to themselves; the issues of global importance should come first, but it’s the private matters that sustain them. Without those, how can they do their jobs properly? Aren’t they allowed to be a little selfish?

Set during the holiday season, Black Doves begins with a shot of a drunken Santa, which is an apt image; there’s something festive and intoxicating about the series. Early on, Helen has discovered that her lover of several months has been murdered. She’s determined to get answers — and justice — and infiltrates his flat by posing as, rightly, his partner. The landlady couldn’t be sweeter, and shows her to his room, where Helen hopes she’ll uncover something of value. While there, awash in reverie, she hears the front doorbell ring; two female policeman announce themselves to the landlady, insisting they’re there to collect any personal belongings. It’s more than a little curious, that, since the landlady had confessed to Helen that the police had already been there — and Helen realizes she’s been compromised. She alerts Reed, the woman she works for (it’s Sarah Lancashire, both tightly wound and gleefully untethered, sort at the point where her portrayals of Catherine Cawood and Julia Child meet), and Reed instantly texts Sam, the assassin who’s been dispatched from Italy to watch over Helen. Except he’s currently getting fucked by a guy he picked up in a hotel bar. You sense not a lot would keep him from finishing, but this is about Helen, and her safety trumps his satiation; he looks back longingly at the naked stud standing at the window, sighs, and takes off.

And back to Helen. The landlady reveals innocently to the (fake) police that the dead man’s girlfriend is upstairs, we cut to Helen on the landing — and then we hear a shot and a thud. It’s obvious what’s happened — the landlady has been plugged — but because we’re too far away to catch Helen‘s reaction, it reduces a violent death to two sound effects: sort of like a comic button. (Wile E. Coyote used to die like that.) And then, as the assassins make their way up the stairs, and we sense the action intensifying, Helen‘s daughter FaceTimes her, and she feels obligated to pick up. (Like Sam, she has her priorities — in this case, a refusal to shirk her parental duties, whatever else is going on.) Heaven forbid her daughter actually has a good reason for phoning, but no: she simply wants to know where her mother is. “Go back to bed,” Helen says three times, with escalating intensity, capping it off with a speedy but sincere “I love you.“ And she’s barely hung up before she’s engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the assassins. Limbs are stabbed and broken, and pretty much every free object in the room becomes a weapon — before Sam appears and shoots one of the assassins dead, her blood splattering all over Helen’s face and clothes. “Sam!” exclaims Helen, her face beaming with affection. “Hello, darling,” replies Sam, cool yet totally devoted. And then, covered in blood as she is, Helen defaults to the question that feels most pressing: “A fucking shotgun??” Sam cautions her that they need to move, and fast, but Helen needs to weigh her options: should she greet him warmly, wipe the blood off her face, or grab the top-secret contents from the safe she located earlier? And that one moment cuts to the heart of the issue plaguing all the characters in Black Doves: there aren’t enough hours in the day for everything they have to do. They can multitask like mad and still come up short. So how do they prioritize?

Timing is everything in Black Doves, and timing is consistently awful. Midway through the series, as Sam is making inroads with his ex Michael, convincing him that they could, in fact, have a normal life together, he’s forced to burst into his flat asking him to shelter three fugitives: Helen, a defecting CIA agent, and a wounded triggerman. (The triggerman is a woman, but as Sam informs Michael, the term is gender nonspecific. That Sam thinks — as he’s potentially placing Michael and his daughter in unimaginable danger — that this is the right time to school him on the subtleties of gangster grammar is precisely what makes Black Doves so entertaining. No one allows themselves to get consumed by the danger at hand; they all find a way to compartmentalize it, or minimize it, or ignore it.) Needless to say, Michael isn’t pleased with the request: “When I said you could come by, I didn't mean bring the whole fucking rogues' gallery.” But he welcomes them just the same. Unlike a lot of characters dragged suddenly into the world of espionage, Michael doesn’t get off on the sense of danger — far from it. He’s just a good host. Everyone has manners in this world, even the assassins. When Michael asks Sam what’s wrong with the triggerman, who seems wounded, Sam replies, “We think she got shot, but she's being very coy about it.” She has a reason for that: “I don't like to make a fuss.” No one likes to make a fuss on Black Doves; they’re knee-deep in life-and-death decisions, and they may all be murdered within the next five minutes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t act civilized.

At its best, Black Doves maintains an enviable level of tension and character-driven humor. Joe Barton, its writer and creator, has a knack for creating characters who can wisecrack their way through danger. And not the sort that we’ve seen for decades, who are too clever for their own good. Barton’s characters simply recognize that the world has never been more dangerous — and the human race is probably doomed — and as a result, there’s really nothing to do but hold onto the things that are dear to you: friends, family, good manners, good sex. In the old days, heroes would sacrifice everything to save the world. Now they’re not so foolish. Recognizing that mankind is hurtling towards its own destruction has skewed — or perhaps broadened — their priorities. Yes, they’d like to save the planet from nuclear devastation, but they’d also like to attend to some personal matters that feel equally pressing. (At the climax of the series, Helen is given a choice: “It's the life of your friend versus de-escalating two nuclear superpowers.” She doesn’t think twice before picking Sam.) Barton’s previous series, The Lazarus Project, benefitted from the same newfangled look at life’s concerns (its first season found the leading man going rogue to put the love of his life before the fate of the world — and we didn’t judge him for it); maybe that smart and quirky look at how we greet the coming apocalypse is Barton’s trademark, and given the current status of the Doomsday Clock, his voice seems particularly valuable. Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw are masters of the kind of deadpan double-take that doesn’t diminish the danger they’re in, but rather explains how they’ve been able to endure it; they’re ideally cast. They remind us that if the world is ending, all you can do is keep a steady head and, if possible, maintain a sense of humor. And at the very least, you can be a courteous host.

*****

Is anyone else tired of those in media res openings that shows today cling to like a cure-all? I find myself mistrustful of every new series I start, waiting to see if five minutes in, they reset the timeline. The third season of The White Lotus began with a scene of quiet meditation interrupted by the sound of gunfire — then flashed back a week to the arrival of the guests at the latest White Lotus resort, this one in Thailand. White Lotus is so deified at this point, it’s almost blasphemous to speak out against it, but I didn’t care for the in media res shooting and — like even the most devout critics — I found the first three episodes slow. One publication asked creator, writer and director Mike White about the sluggish start, and he grew defensive:

Part of me is just like, bro, this is the vibe. I'm world-building. If you don't want to go to bed with me, then get out of my bed. I'm edging you! Enjoy the edging. If you don't want to be edged, then get out of my bed. Do you know what I mean?

White’s comments were crude, but also seemed disingenuous. Did he always intend to start in media res, or did he realize the early episodes needed a hook to sustain interest? (Once the show telegraphed that there would be a shooting, you sat there studying each new arrival not just as a guest, but as a potential perpetrator or victim.) And as to the notion that he was “edging us,” that feels disingenuous too. At this point, I’d argue he’s edging himself. The casting and the camerawork aren’t exactly subtle; this is a show that at times seems no more than an objectification of the male form. In episode 5’s “Full-Moon Party,” when Arnas Fedaravičius — a Vogue Scandinavia cover model who presumably wasn’t hired for his acting skills — showed up in Jaclyn Lemon’s room, primed for sex, he couldn’t just disrobe. He had to step away from the bed so she could watch him disrobe, which he did in slow motion, a button at a time, exposing his six pack. And when his pants came down, and he walked toward her bare-assed, White repositioned the camera behind him. You could argue that the six-pack shot — filmed from her point of view — was designed to let us see his eagerness to arouse her, but who was the ass shot for? Women and gay men? Or for White, perhaps, in the director’s chair?

The first season of The White Lotus said something about the way we both idolize and despise the rich and powerful, and about how impervious they are to pain — a message that’s become only more relevant over the last few months. (From what I can tell, the wealthy in this country are the only ones who aren’t currently fearful for their futures.) Although the season postured that the ultra-rich were just as burdened with problems as the rest of us, even if those problems — as presented — were tinged with a comic edge, its final reel amplified what we already knew: white privilege (straight white privilege, to be exact) is the closest thing to a “get out of jail free” card. In Season 1, it was the gay hotel manager who was killed, the Hawaiian waiter who was arrested and the Black masseuse whose dreams were dashed; the guests made out just fine.

But since Season 1, the show has lost any semblance of thematic clarity and focus; it’s become a soap about rich tourists. And the passion the media pours into finding meaning that isn’t there is almost comical. Publications from The New York Times to Forbes, from Time to Vulture dissected every episode of Season 3 — as if it had something to say about the times we live in. Maybe it has something to say about the times they live in; according to the critic from Vulture, scenes from Season 3 were “so ugly and so relatable” that she found herself “reaching for the remote, fighting the unbearable urge to switch it off.” (My own urge to reach for the remote stemmed from a much more traditional response.) Maybe the show is representative of a lifestyle these critics crave, and they need to convince themselves they crave more than just self-absorption and self-indulgence. I find myself amused by how many critics — prestigious critics — wrote lengthy thought-pieces after each episode: often contradicting each other. (To Vulture, Season 3 was about how “none of us can really outgrow or outrun ourselves”; Forbes insisted it was about “letting go.”) White Lotus Season 3 was good, trashy entertainment that reviewers were determined to elevate to a work of art; how else could they get their editors to let them write about it?

Season 1 of White Lotus was lightning in a bottle: White’s inescapable affection for the folks he set out to satirize became part of its messy charm. It was a one-of-a-kind experience — which it should have remained. But of course, if something is a ratings hit these days, it’s never allowed to go away gracefully; the network demands more. When the show reemerged — no longer a limited series, but an anthology — it was clear that White had nothing left to say; he was essentially fulfilling an assignment. So he wrote a more traditional soap, with an eye towards story-lines and characters that would generate buzz. He traded themes for memes. (“The gays are trying to kill me.” Season 1 had done very nicely, thank you, without phrases designed for TikTok and T-shirts.) And Season 3 is more of the same. Despite what the major magazines claim, there are few thematic revelations; it’s a show about incident and innuendo masquerading as character development.

White’s formula is to titillate us with storylines that never materialize — that grind to a halt once he’s got “everyone talking.” His methods are so transparent, it’s hard to believe critics fall for them, but they do. One of the season’s most controversial scenes — in the aforementioned “Full-Moon Party” — was a sexual encounter between two brothers. But it was a meaningless one: they were both stoned out of their minds, and the younger one had a passion to please, so he jacked off his brother while screwing a woman. But still, up to that point, White had been careful to suggest there was something potentially incestuous about their relationship — until he was ready to admit that, in fact, there wasn’t. (His empty promises had led critics to see all kinds of issues fomenting between the two brothers that — as it turned out — weren’t there.) Mike White promises so much more than he delivers; that’s his method. There was a scene that got more attention than I would’ve believed possible, where three female friends briefly discuss politics, and one admits that her husband is a Republican and she considers herself an Independent — and when one of them asks if she voted for Trump, she deflects. This is a conversation that in no way impacted their relationship or any of the ensuing story-lines — it was simply there to get people talking, and indeed they did. The critic from Glamour led with the headline “I Can’t Stop Thinking About That Way-Too-Accurate White Lotus Trump Scene.” (That was two days after the episode aired. It’s been five months now; has she stopped thinking about it yet?) It was a throwaway remark with no follow through. Now, if the two characters had said they couldn’t be friends with a Trump supporter, that might’ve been significant. But being surprised by a friend’s political affiliation, then changing the subject — how consequential is that? It was a minor scene that became a media event.

White spent the season looking for new ways of telling familiar stories, but at the end of the day, I was unconvinced he had improved on the original models. Early in Season 3, Jason Isaacs’ character learned he was due to be prosecuted for white-collar crimes — then spent eight episodes hiding it from his family, downing his wife’s Xanax to avoid facing his fate. White positioned the story-line as Isaacs making peace with his destiny and alleviating his guilt, but clearly White didn’t feel that was enough to sustain interest, because he then threw in “fooled you” fantasies — one of Isaacs shooting himself, the other of him shooting his wife. And as with the in media res opening, I kept feeling that if White had chosen the best story-telling option, he could’ve done without the crutches. I found messages oddly mixed, and actors strangely utilized. Carrie Coon got a great Emmy-reel monologue in the finale, determined to let go of rivalries that had strained her relationships with her two friends. But given that one had set out from the start to sexually best her, and the other had a smarmy predisposition for playing the middle, that’s a pretty wild resolution — that the decent one has to apologize to the mean girls for the way they make her feel. It felt like White, in aiming for something different, came up with something fundamentally false. And speaking of bravura monologues, what was to be gained by stranding Sam Rockwell — after he rocked his episode 5 confessional — in a silly plot where he was forced to pose as an ill-prepared film director? And given how well White in Season 1 had showcased Natasha Rothwell’s uncommon mix of warmth, intelligence and fragility, was the best that he could offer her in Season 3 really a $5 million caper? (The only actor I thought was truly well served – and ran with what they were given – was Aimee Lou Reed. I would watch the season again just to watch her.)

We didn’t get Jennifer Coolidge whipping the gays into a frenzy this season, so White unleashed Parker Posey instead. Posey was marvelous — and misunderstood. Even The New York Times stopped gushing long enough to admit that Posey’s performance “has been divisive” — that she has “definitely been leaning into the comic possibilities of the role.” What else was she to do with the lines she was given? She gave exactly the performance White expected and counted on; ever since he struck gold with Coolidge in Season 1, he’s insisted on one broadly-played character that folks could quote and imitate. The Times critic, in rallying to Posey’s defense, noted, “It may help that I have spent nearly my whole life in the South and known many Victorias.” But that was my very issue with the character. I too know the Victorias of this world, and they’re not just funny, they’re scary. These are the women who vote against their own interests, and those of their daughters. By minimizing their smug self-delusion and crafting instead someone largely clueless and crowd-pleasing — the sort who, when she’s on vacation, doesn’t know if she’s in Taiwan or Thailand — White refused to wade into the muddy waters that made Season 1 so gripping. By choosing to leave Isaacs’ family in the dark at the end of the season — by denying Posey any insight into her future as a penniless pariah — he denied her the chance to explore the sense of angry entitlement that people of wealth often see as their birthright; by choosing to structure Isaacs’ story as he did, White stranded Posey as “comic relief.”

Contrary to all the critics who were determined to elevate the latest season of The White Lotus to a work of art, I kept thinking — as I was watching — of that late-‘90s teen soap Dawson’s Creek. And not the good parts — not the great string of episodes that emerged about halfway through Season 3. I thought of the first two, wildly overwrought seasons, which were all about outlandish plotting and gratuitous titillation. Those two seasons included a character gobbling Xanax to combat anxiety and depression, a wildly inappropriate (if not downright criminal) sexual pairing, a wife cheating on her absent husband, heavy drinking and reckless behavior, family arguments about organized religion, a “Ladies Night" that nearly deteriorated into a full-fledged cat fight, an aggressively straight character questioning his sexuality, a drunken orgy, a family business going belly up, revenge plots, physical assaults, psychotic breaks, hallucinations, criminal activity, contemplations of suicide and drugs passed around like candy. (Hell, the fifth episode of the second season was even called “Full Moon Rising.”) Mike White’s first TV job was, in fact, writing the first two seasons of Dawson’s Creek. White Lotus Season 3 gives you the impression he never stopped.

Want more? I make the case for my favorite sci-fi series of 2024, Constellation. Elsewhere, check out an essay called "The Fatal Blow", highlighting three noir-tinged dramas, Dark Winds, Black Snow and Blue Lights; an essay called "Negotations", in praise of three series that brightened my 2022: Minx, The Ipcress File and Inside Man; an essay called "Men in the Middle," highlighting four drama series that owe much of their success to the onscreen personas of their leading men: The Tourist, This Is Going to Hurt, The Responder and Around the World in 80 Days; an essay entitled "Rough Edges," in praise of two addictive comedies that I discovered in 2021, Back to Life and The Other Two; another entitled "Private Faces," highlighting two spectacular series that emerged in the fall of 2020, Roadkill and Life; and a fifth called "Unwilling Victims," taking a look at three recent series by and about women: The Trial of Christine Keeler, Deadwater Fell and Flesh and Blood. I offer up The Five Best TV Shows You Might Not Be Watching, Five Foreign TV Dramas You Shouldn't Miss, and my most personal essay, inspired by the death of my puppy Czerny in June of 2021, The 10 Most Comforting TV Episodes About Death.

If you like in-depth looks at hit shows, I delve into Rhoda Season 3, Maude Season 2, Newhart Season 7, One Day at a Time Season 7, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2; serve up my 10 Best Episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Designing Women, WKRP in Cincinnati, Everybody Loves Raymond and Kate & Allie; pen an appreciation of Mike & Molly; and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons. Or if you prefer dramas, check out my write-ups of of Criminal Minds Season 8, Judging Amy Season 6, Voyager Season 4, Doctor Who Series 8, Cold Case Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent, ill-judged Netflix miniseries), and fourteen essays devoted to all the seasons of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing, starting here. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries: not (necessarily) the best episodes, but the best whodunnits.