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Jake Lacy: "The White Lotus"

 One issue I had with "Friday Night Lights" was that characters were always "popping in." If you needed to chat with Coach, you would just drive up to his front door.


Seeking advice about a possible abortion? Surprise Tami Taylor in her kitchen, even though you've literally never been in this kitchen before.

(Workplace dramas--"The Good Fight," "SVU"--do not need to invent reasons for characters to be in one room together. If you work with someone, you see that person constantly, perhaps more than you see your spouse.)

One thing I admire in "The White Lotus" is that Mike White invents plausible reasons for plots to intersect (without using a workplace). I personally resist the temptation to speak to other hotel guests when I'm on a vacation, and yet I can believe that White's characters might fraternize at a bar, on a boat, by the pool.

This week's wonderful Lacy/Daddario story has Daddario wondering if Lacy is just in the marriage for sex. (She has compelling evidence, but also, Lacy is a bit mysterious, as actual people tend to be.) The question becomes more urgent when we see Lacy flirting with Connie Britton's teen charges at the pool. These two teens--who are weighing their own questions about lust, and about sexual power, and jealousy--suddenly become a "part" of the Lacy/Daddario marriage.

Lacy wants "romance stuff" for his peeved wife, so he tries to book an exotic dinner sailing jaunt. The hotel manager--unhinged because of his own loneliness, and sexual frustration, and addiction problems--sees a way to "injure" Lacy, who maybe deserves an injury. So Lacy gets booked on an evening trip with Jennifer Coolidge, who plans to toss her mom's ashes in the sea, and who has warned the staff that she may be "an emotional wreck."

The actual sea event--a highlight of the series--becomes even richer because Lacy (conflicted, enmeshed in his own mom drama, irate) must witness Coolidge's behavior. Coolidge speaks for herself: "Mother was cold. She tried to be a mother. She told me I couldn't dance ballet, even though I was thin. She was always lusting after men, to fill her own bottomless emptiness....But I miss her. I want my mother. Mother. Mother. Mother....."

Do you see how Coolidge is *also* speaking for everyone *else* in Mike White's universe (and certainly in the world of "The White Lotus")--?

I can't wait for the second half.
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