Yes,
indeed I am looking forward to the finale of The White Lotus, Season 2
on HBO Max. Attached is from the New York Time this morning! Good morning. The finale of “The White Lotus” airs tomorrow. Here’s to being a fan, without going overboard. |
 | | María Jesús Contreras |
|
I
try to lead a pop-cultural life free of regrets, but a couple of
Sundays ago, in a nearly postprandial fugue following a viewing of “The
White Lotus,” I did something I wish I could take back. |
I
read every comment, every fan hypothesis, every impeccably researched
theory for how the season will turn out in the aftershow discussion
thread on Reddit. |
I
did not intend to ruin the show for myself. I wished only to convene
with (or lurk among) other enthusiasts, to enjoy the glorious and
increasingly rare experience of processing an episode of a show in real
time, just after it’s aired, before the rest of the internet has had its
way with it. |
Instead,
I emerged from a hallucinatory hour (or was it three?) of reading
certain that I knew exactly how the season would play out, who would
double-cross whom, who would live and who would meet with a watery
death. (The fact that there is, indeed, watery death in the offing was
established in the season’s first episode.) |
While
I wish I hadn’t entered Reddit’s den of Lotus sleuths, I do not regret
the other slightly obsessive — but, crucially, plot-preserving — fan
research I’ve been conducting. |
I am glad to have listened to this week’s “Fresh Air” interview with Mike White,
the show’s creator, in which he discussed how his love of “Fantasy
Island,” “The Love Boat” and “Laverne & Shirley” informed this
season. I am also glad that I looked up White’s favorite books (he, like Torrey Peters,
who spoke to The Morning earlier this year, loves “Independent People”
by Halldor Laxness) and reserved many of them from the library. I read
with gusto this interview with Simona Tabasco, who plays Lucia, and listened to this episode of “Las Culturistas” with Meghann Fahy, who plays Daphne. I watched Aubrey Plaza respond to fans on social media, and I rewatched Jennifer Coolidge’s charming Emmy acceptance speech. |
I’m
happy to know more about the people who make the show that I find so
compelling. I just wish I hadn’t let my fandom lead me into the
fluorescent-lit land of plot despoiling. |
And
so it is that my excitement for tomorrow’s finale of “The White Lotus”
is mixed with some grief and some relief. I’m sad to bid ciao to the
enchanting vistas of Sicily; to the characters I’ve found myself
wondering about as if I knew them personally; to what has become, for
me, appointment television. But I’m looking forward to having this
season’s mysteries resolved definitively and, maybe even more, to
watching next season spoiler-free. |
- “The White Lotus” is “positively haunted by movies and the fantasies they engender,” writes Carina Chocano in The Times.
- F. Murray Abraham and Michael Imperioli got Covid at the same time while filming in Sicily.
- The show’s costume designer discusses dressing the Gen Z characters.
- “If
on a fine day the unsuspecting visitor strolls to the parapet to look
at the view, cardiac arrest may be the reward.” From 1979, “The Scenic Overkill of Taormina,” the town where this season of “The White Lotus” was filmed.
|
Meanwhile enjoy this photo from my collection:
2 comments:
I love this HBO series. It’s very entertaining and amusing. I can’t wait for the 3rd season to start.
You may also want to watch on HBO the series Succession and Westworld. Although Westworld became quite difficult to understand in the later seasons, seasons 1 and 2 were amazing. Have a happy viewing.
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