Liars and Saints

 Yesterday, I was in a small hot tub; I watched as a ten-year-old boy slowly and deliberately spat a wad of mucus into the tub. This kid's father was distracted. Surely, the act wouldn't happen again? Then it happened again. Before I could stop myself, I was interceding. I sternly announced that there was to be no spitting in the hot tub. The father observed none of this. Later, my husband spotted the father pointing at me. Perhaps there would be a physical altercation! But--to his relief--Marc saw that the father was not notably mobile. We could outrun him. All this interested me for a few reasons. Had I been impetuous--speaking directly to the kid and not to his parent? What if the father had *sanctioned* the spitting? Did my spouse really think that an altercation could be in the cards? And what was going on in the kid's head? Was the spitting a cry for help (as in the little Spatafore's public pooping incident at the end of "The Sopranos")? This is what I ...

  It has become increasingly clear that Mike White is using the new "White Lotus" season to explore the Alex Murdaugh case. (Look around online.) To recap: Alex Murdaugh came from a powerful Southern family. He developed an Oxy addiction, and he stole from his clients to pay for the drugs. At the same time, his troubled son became implicated, or semi-implicated, in the death of a young gay man. Then the son drank too much, crashed a boat, killed a friend, and abandoned the friend's corpse without any (visible) regret. Finally, Alex Murdaugh murdered his son and his wife--this was an apparent effort to distract the country's attention from Alex's own fiscal misconduct. There is speculation that the son was secretly gay. This seems to be on Mike White's mind. The Schwarzenegger character clearly has a disturbed relationship with his own sexuality--which shines through his unnerving reference to his brother's "young cum" and his boastful declaration...

  It's difficult not to narrate your life on Facebook and to present your milestone events in a self-flattering way. "My husband -- right before he was named head surgeon at Cornell...." "I was humbled to receive a rare honor Saturday night...." "Look what she gave me for my birthday!" For this reason, it's a treat to see the toxic frenemy trio in Mike White's new season of "The White Lotus." In the standout scene, Michelle Monaghan complains that a friend has derided her mid-life crisis vacation. "And I said," she notes, "this is not my mid-life crisis. This is my Victory Tour." Clearly, "victory" is a concept that interests Mike White; in this way, the new script reminds me of White's film "Brad's Status." There is speculation online that the Schwarzenegger plot may be about incest. Maybe so, but it could also simply be about "winning." Schwarzenegger craves "more money,...

  Mike White has his fingerprints all over the penultimate episode of "Freaks and Geeks"; it's an hour about money, sex, and power. The part that feels the most like a rehearsal for "The White Lotus" is a subplot concerning little Sam. After months of longing, Sam has landed a few dates with his crush, Cindy. Unfortunately, Cindy's special glow is only skin-deep; she reluctantly joins Sam for a screening of "The Jerk," and she delivers a lecture about poor people. "If they really want security, they should just get jobs." A classic Mike White moment occurs when Sam gives Cindy a family heirloom: "Well, how much did it cost? .....I won't wear it now, because the metal would be cold on my neck...." (The discussion of cost takes me right back to the "Pineapple Suite," and the ensuing credit card arguments, in the first season of "The White Lotus.") An odd misstep for White is his "sex" plot. He has...

  Before "Enlightened," before "The White Lotus," Mike White made a splash with "Freaks and Geeks"; he wrote an immortal episode called "Kim Kelly Is My Friend." White likes to consider problematic connections between women. In "Lotus," Tonya seems to recognize that Belinda is a human being--until Belinda becomes expendable. In "Enlightened," Amy tortures herself with questions about what her buddy, Robin Wright, might be saying on the phone. This same kind of tension runs through "Freaks and Geeks": Lindsay suspects that Kim Kelly isn't really interested in hosting a nice, cordial dinner, but, also, it's hard to say no to the invitation.  Also, White writes about class. If a certain kind of "bad girl" invites a well-groomed "A" student to visit, this is a kind of statement. Kim Kelly wants to impress her own mother, so she talks at length about Lindsay's money and her (fictional) lake...

   "Freaks and Geeks" seems like a spiritual sequel to "My So-Called Life."  Famously, "Life" begins when its teen protagonist dyes her hair and decides she wants a new best friend. "Geeks" starts with its heroine renouncing the Mathletes--and skipping Latin class on a Tuesday. The heroine--Linda Cardellini--has a new crush (Jason Segel). The crush takes her to his garage to show off his drum set, and he offers unsolicited advice: "You have to find the one thing that you live for. The thing that throws on all the lights. And just live for that. I'm nuts about these drums. My drums are why I am on this planet...." Later, Cardellini's father is enraged about the missed Latin class. "It's only the basis for our entire civilization. I believe that Janis Joplin skipped some of her classes. And do you know what happened to her? She died." Cardellini's mother deploys another kind of tactic: "I'm just relieved...

  First, I made three predictions about this season--and I scored a 33/100! That's a failing grade, but it's not a zero. Early in the season, Mike White had Cameron screaming about his luggage. ("He just gets like this sometimes.") I guessed that Cameron would not be responsible for the killing, because he seemed too much like Jake Lacy. Having "the Jake Lacy guy" end someone's life just felt too repetitive. Mid-season, my husband texted me with rumors about Greg engineering an eventual murder of Tanya. I said, "That just seems too elaborate for Mike White, imo." Wrong! When I finally accepted the reality of the murder plot, I was touched by Tanya's effort to help Portia, and I wrote, "Maybe these two will save each other in the finale." Wrong again! I just want to mention how moved I was by Valentina's story. At the start, Valentina seems repressed and gratuitously mean. (She tells Tanya, "You look like Peppa Pig.")...

 A few more thoughts on "The White Lotus": *Mike White speaks with Terri Gross this week, and he acknowledges that "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" is an influence. You see this in the two young married couples. White was raised on "psychodramas." Cameron and Daphne seem to attract and to repel each other: they call each other nasty names even as they're hopping into bed. There is some speculation that one of Daphne's children is actually the spawn of Daphne's trainer; he is blonde and blue-eyed, like the trainer, and Daphne shows his photo when she (wrongly) believes she is showing the trainer's photo. *The season looks at the gap between fantasy and reality. F. Murray Abraham thinks he will have a fabulous homecoming in Catania; in fact, he is dismissed from the property. Valentina has a long gay affair, in her head, with her employee; in fact, the employee is not only uninterested, but also fully heterosexual. Tanya believes that she...

  If you're following "The White Lotus," here are a few thoughts: *The Ringer has made an extended comparison between Portia and the Helena Bonham Carter character in "A Room with a View." In the Merchant Ivory film, HBC travels to Italy and then must choose between a gentleman and a tough, swarthy dude; she really wants the tough, swarthy dude. It seems plausible that Mike White, an LGBT writer, would deliberately borrow from E.M. Forster, the godfather of all LGBT writers. *Another influence seems to be "The Portrait of a Lady" (from another OG gay novelist, Henry James). In "Portrait," a naive American woman finds herself in Europe; she is soon under the spell of the worldly European Gilbert Osmond, who is not the person he seems to be. Famously, James's heroine loses her innocence when she spies on Gilbert; she detects something carnal between Gilbert and his "friend," Madame Merle. Mike White takes the idea far, far off int...

 I woke up thinking about "The White Lotus," and about a few great speeches. Jennifer Coolidge worries that her new boyfriend will reject her once he reaches "the innermost layer." She says, "There are the polite layers, and layers under layers, but at my base I'm just an alcoholic mess. That's the core of the onion. And why can't we just go there right away?" Later, on a date, Coolidge bursts into tears, thrusts her mother's ashes at her man, and shouts, "I'M CRAZY! GO!!! FLEE THE CORE OF THE ONION!" And her date has the most romantic line in the series: "You're not that crazy. I still want to fuck you." I also loved Molly Shannon--series MVP?--taking on the idea of the trophy wife. "It's not so bad to be a trophy. Trophies shine. They glow. They give the owner joy and pride...." Steve Zahn: "Is it wrong to assault you, and steal your land, and make you dance a little dance at dinnertime? Sure...

  Three cheers for Mike White, who is just around fifty years old, and who has, under his belt, "Enlightened," "Brad's Status," "Year of the Dog," "Beatriz at Dinner," and several other major achievements. White was tapped by HBO to create "pandemic content," and he decided to ask several TV stars to quarantine with him on a Hawaiian island. It's a tribute to White's brains and charisma that stars tend to follow him from one project to another: Molly Shannon ("Enlightened," "Dog," "Lotus"), Connie Britton ("Beatriz," "Lotus"), Laura Dern ("Dog, Enlightened"), Luke Wilson ("Enlightened," "Brad's Status"). White essentially tells one story over and over: A needy, affluent, white person embarrasses herself in varied settings. Amy Jellicoe ruins a bridal shower when she feels a need to give an improvised speech about immigration. Brad, of "B...

For Pride Month, I'll spotlight an LGBT writer whose work has meant the world to me. He is Mike White, the brain behind "Enlightened," "Brad's Status," and "Beatriz at Dinner." White writes in a comedy-of-manners tradition, although his stories can veer toward tragedy. He has a special gift for lightly mocking the pretentiousness of well-intentioned well-off white liberals. Maybe my favorite moment in his "corpus" is when Ben Stiller, in "Brad's Status," awaits his son's Harvard admissions interview. Ben would like to humble-brag. "My son has many options...." he says, to another waiting parent, "but it seems like he will definitely give Harvard some consideration."  The woman smirks. "Aha," she says. "So you're saying Harvard really has a shot....at scoring your son?" I admire Mr. White -- and I look forward to his new TV show, which will begin on HBO very soon.....