I’m coming at White Lotus a little bit after the zeitgeist; as I write this, the third season is currently airing, and I understand the metatext (each season a new location, with some overlapping characters) in a way the original viewers of the first season probably did not. And it’s hard not to enjoy the framing device! It’s a great canvas that Mike White has engineered for himself: six hours is a good amount of time to stay with a series of folks, long but not too long, and its easy to get interesting actors who might not otherwise be interested in committing to an HBO series for fear of overcommitting themselves.

This being a miniseries (or at least miniseries-series) also helps in that, frankly, I can’t imagine spending that much more time with many of these characters who all feel either insufferably one-note or insufferably two-note. (That is the point, you might argue: it is a satire, meant to reveal the human condition as through the prism of the upper class. I would argue back: okay, I get it.)

Still, it’s a good watch. Mike White has a flair for both dialogue and casting; to the extent that this show gets brought up in the same vein as Succession (which I think is trying to deal with bigger questions and ideas), these scripts (perhaps even more so. than Succession) are modern, surgical, and deeply clever, and the actors clearly love them.

Coolidge gets (got?) a lot of the attention for reviving her career in a delightfully lampshaded performance, but to me the hallmark of the show was Connie Britton as Supermom. There’s a sincerity in her performance (which, like Coolidge, feels somewhat in conversation with her previous role in Friday Night Lights) and her ability to switch from unflappable and warm to, in alternating (and incredible) scenes sharply bitter and deeply, shatteringly, unloved.

★★★