Mike White's strange, mesmerizing voice still works; he's still "got it." One theme he likes is addiction. In "Enlightened," the Luke Wilson character asks not to be saved. "I'm sad. My dog died, my marriage ended. Let me have my drugs." Similarly, Laura Dern's character has a history with drug abuse--and she has a kind of addiction to her married colleague, who has abandoned her. You can draw a line from these people to Michael Imperioli, in "The White Lotus"; here, we have a guy who says, "Sex has ruined me," and who then (once again) chooses sex. Imperioli's sadness is wonderful. Also, we have a sense of why he is who he is; this guy's father will blithely borrow moral lessons from Greek myths. "Hades raped Persephone, and Demeter forgave everything. A transgression isn't bad; you just have to be sure you get away with it ." Another favorite Mike White topic is uncertainty. He loves to have one ...