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Checking In on ‘White Lotus’ and ‘Four Seasons’
23 Plays3 months ago
Pour a sbagliato and join us under the cabana as Jordan and Niv discuss the dark side of leisure, first leading into Tina Fey's 'The Four Seasons' on Netflix (2:01). They discuss the actors, where some of them (specifically Steve Carell) have disappeared into their late careers (5:23), and recount the cast, characters, and what makes this show appealing to create (8:44). Finally, we psychoanalyze a core relationship dynamic of the show (31:39), and how weaponized incompetence plays a role.
Then, they move to White Lotus (41:09). They discuss one of hosts' personal connection to Thailand as a setting (55:55), the various characters taking to the resort this season (1:15:40), and how the show's penetration into the mainstream has been an impairment (1:31:16). They get into the juicy gossip behind the scenes (1:40:53) before discussing the final takeaways on the show moving forward (1:48:53).
Podcasts referenced:
https://overthinkpodcast.com/episodes/episode-106
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/critics-at-large/is-travel-broken
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Transcript
Introduction to the Zeitgeist Vacation Edition
00:00:24
Speaker
Happy August everyone! Welcome to Zeitgeist Vacation
Summer TV and Movie Experiences
00:00:30
Speaker
Edition. We talk about all the latest TV and movies while we listen to the latest music. Whether you've been on the front lines of Love Island, USA or watching a classic during these hot summer days, there's nothing like a trip to some distant locale to drive a deep wedge into a long-standing friendship or to make you dive headfirst into the sea to escape your family.
00:00:48
Speaker
Just kidding.
Discussion on HBO's The White Lotus
00:00:49
Speaker
Or am I? In the second half today, we're going to be talking about HBO's The White Lotus. Starting up with me today is my co-host, the victor of Venice, the titan of Tuscany, the judge of Jamaica, the baron of Bangkok, my co-host, Niv Elbaz. How you doing
Niv Elbaz's Italian Vacation
00:01:06
Speaker
today, man? I've never been to Jamaica, so I'm glad that you lied immediately. Well, talk to me.
00:01:12
Speaker
Where have you been vacationing nowadays? I just had my first vacation in a year in central and northern Italy. So I went to like Venice, Florence, went to the Tuscan countryside, and I ended up in Rome, which was really, really nice. I was with my family.
Family Drama During Vacations
00:01:32
Speaker
Also hadn't seen them in the air, like my sisters, my parents, my niece and nephew, my brother-in-law, all of which I miss very much and made the holiday that much more special. So yeah, had a good time.
00:01:43
Speaker
That sounds like your vacation had very little drama going on. i mean, there was some drama. There was always some drama when it comes to like family, right? And I feel like that's the nice thing about White Lotus, even though it's like heightened mellow drama.
00:01:58
Speaker
There is like a core of truth to it. I actually you're related a bit to the family in this White Lotus season a little bit, especially because- related to the Ratlifts in some way? Probably not entirely. Not entirely. imagine that you and the Ratlifts have a lot of difference between each other.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, but shades and tones, you know, like I'm so much lesser and I truly mean lesser degree. You guys don't love each other that way. Yeah.
Netflix's Four Seasons and Tina Fey's Style
00:02:23
Speaker
Now, before that, we're going to be talking about the Netflix show Four Seasons. Niv, tell me about it. So we were planning a little peek behind the curtain. We were planning this episode and we were thinking about doing a episode on the White Lotus. And you brought this to my attention as the new Tina Fey show. Now what's unique about this show is that it's very different from Tina Fey's usual fare.
00:02:48
Speaker
ah Are you a 30 Rock fan? No, but I've seen some of her other stuff like Mean Girls, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, all of those ones I really like. But I'm not a huge fan of 30 Rock. Me neither. Not too much. I don't necessarily always super gel with the style of Tina Fey humor, especially the 30 Rock style. I think that there are certain actors that she loves to work with continually that just don't really necessarily sit well with me in terms of funny.
00:03:17
Speaker
I think that's one tough thing about comedy is that it is so subjective. And what's unique about these two shows is that they are more or less dramas with a little bit of comedy sprinkled in. Now, we're talking first about Four Seasons, which is a show that debuted on Netflix a couple of months ago. It is getting some Emmy attention. And I think what's unique about it is it is much, much more serious of a Tina Fey show. Do you think that's more your bag? Yes and no. I feel like it still approaches some of that Tina Fey drama. I feel like a lot of her are stuff, other than 30 Rock, but I would even say Kimmy Schmidt deals would really like hardcore themes. And Mean Girls dealt with like hardcore themes. When I say hardcore, I just mean like real human themes, right? As opposed to something that's light and comedic. um And I just feel like it's always under the guise of something light and comedic.
00:04:13
Speaker
Because in Mean Girls, it talks about just like bullying and how harmful that can be and sort of that peer pressure. Whereas Kimmy Schmidt is basically you're surviving in a world past a post-traumatic experience.
00:04:27
Speaker
And I feel like those two things, even though like it is under the guise, once again, under something that's very light and very comic, there is something that is intensely human about it. And that's what I at least appreciate about Tina Fey's intention as a writer. She's very consistent in that.
00:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's true. And I think that does show the sign of a very mature writer is the ability to be able to create that gravity underneath something that might otherwise be a little bit more lighthearted.
Steve Carell's Versatility in Acting
00:04:57
Speaker
The Four Seasons is a reimagining of the 1981 Alan Alden movie of the same name.
00:05:02
Speaker
I believe they both are still streaming on Netflix. If they are not, it means that the Four Seasons 1981 recently taken off I had my co-producer, Jolin, help me end this episode by touching that movie a little bit so I have some idea of what might have changed from the early adaptation to the new show. The show was co-created by Tina Fey and Lang Fisher and Tracy Wigfeld.
00:05:26
Speaker
And it stars several SNL alums, several more new talents, some theater actors, and some really rock solid comic actors in the form of Steve Carell and Kerry Kennedy Silver, who about 10 years ago were in some of the most popular TV shows on the planet and are now kind of sitting around for the most part. I mean, the interesting thing about Carell is that he moved into drama and then more or less stopped doing stuff for a very long time. And this is kind of his first major role in several years, which is really cool.
00:05:59
Speaker
Were you a Carell fan? I love Steve Carell. I think he's one of the best like actors of at least our generation. And I mean, more of that millennial generation, you know? Like I never like I appreciate him in the office. I mean, we've had constant conversations about like the US office and how I don't think it's the best show on Earth.
00:06:16
Speaker
But I've always appreciated him specifically as like an actor and like 40 year old Virgin and even like Bruce Almighty, which went on for him to star in Evan Almighty. And those other like early comedic roles, I really, really enjoyed him. And I really enjoy his more dramatic roles. I think he's actually a really great dramatic actor. And I really love the roles where he gets to combine that, like the Big Short. I think the Big Short is one of his best performances I've ever seen him in. Huge Steve Carell fan, big Coleman Domingo fan as well, who also stars in this. who We have like a shared experience with Euphoria.
00:06:53
Speaker
Absolutely. And Will Forte, he's a very consistent comedic actor all the way back to watching him and like as guest starring in How I Met Your Mother has always been like a treat because he is just a really good but underrated actor. I don't think he's in enough things. Forte is definitely underrated. My favorite performance of his is in a movie called Nebraska with Bob Odenkirk. I think it's a- Wow, deep cut. Yeah, incredibly underrated movie. Really, really good. One of the best movies of that year. Those three are legends at this point. And I don't know why you said Steve Kerl's not working. He has like his own show. I think it's called Space Force on Netflix with John Malkovich. Didn't Force get canceled? I don't know, but it was there. It existed. And he just did a movie with, I think, Jesse Armstrong, the guy who did Succession. What's that movie called? Yeah, that just came out this year. One of his bigger roles in a number of years. But yeah, Space Force was kind of the thing that was keeping him running for a number of years. But it was the only thing really he was doing. And it was a
00:07:57
Speaker
I would say a pretty minor show. It had a pretty solid rock solid cast. But hey, I gotta be honest, that show kind of dropped like a lead balloon. I don't know anybody who saw it. I know it was kind of topical when the first season came out. But by the time the second season rolled around,
00:08:13
Speaker
It's just fascinating because in what world is a show that literally stars Steve Carell and has John Malkovich in the lead cast drop like a lead balloon and nobody ever heard of it. I mean, it does have some of the best comic talent of our generation.
00:08:27
Speaker
And yet I could not name a single person who watched it. Yeah, me neither. I just remember seeing memes about it. I feel like that's the contribution it made. Sort of memeable or even like real worthy sort of like clips.
00:08:40
Speaker
But you're right. Sometimes even the best talent gets lost, but then they just reappear. That's how Hollywood works for better and for worse. Well, as an actor, let's litigate the talent really quick, because I do think that the way in which the creators, including Faye, cast the show was really inspired.
00:08:57
Speaker
One of the three core groups in the show, obviously. So the show takes place within four seasons. It utilizes prominently the overture, the Vivaldi score, the four seasons.
00:09:12
Speaker
and it catalogs the lives of these people throughout the course of a year so one couple is tina fey and will forte both of whom are snl alums fey was prominent during the 2000s as a writer became a cast member after being a staff member three years she is best known for impersonating sarah palin in the 2008 election she was also in we can update i think She was, in fact, I believe she was writing for Weekend Update before she ended up being on it. Faye was on SNL from 1997 to 2006, starting as a cast member in, I believe, the year 2000.
00:09:48
Speaker
Forte was on SNL from 2002 to 2010, so they had a number of years
The Influence of Mike Schur on Modern Comedy
00:09:53
Speaker
where they were on the show together. Well, star of the show, Steve Carell of this show, Four Seasons, was not on Saturday Night Live. He actually did host the so show several times throughout the years, including in 2005 when Faye and Forte were both on the show.
00:10:06
Speaker
ah Steve Carell at that time was headlining a show that I think you mentioned, and I agree, is an imperfect show, but something that is undeniably part of our shared cultural footprint. And in a way, I don't think The Four Seasons exists without it, which is The Office.
00:10:22
Speaker
The Office created this new style of comfort comedy, which in many ways has underlied everything we know now as prestige TV. When we're looking at the Emmy calendar coming through this summer, the Emmy nominations were recently released, and once again, The Bear has been nominated for a number of things in the comedy category.
00:10:44
Speaker
Despite the fact that the show is undeniably more dramatic than it is comedic. Now, why would a show end up being more dramatic and yet end up in a comedy category? I think by and large, that is because of the wave of shows inspired by The Office and similarly, its creator named Mike Schur.
00:11:06
Speaker
So of course, we all know Mike Schur from The Office, but he also did Parks and Recreation, and was part of the show The Good Place. a bunch of other things. Right. He's currently working on A Man on the Inside starring Ted Danson. A fun, but I think somewhat um lesser show than a lot of his other work. But nonetheless, he created the footprint.
00:11:26
Speaker
And I don't think that a comedy like this exists without it because it relies more heavily on character and more heavily on the kind of relationships, the interconnection, the... What's the word I'm looking for? Chemistry, the chemistry between these characters. And that's, I think, something that also largely motivates this show too, because you do see actors in these three couples all interconnected between their shared talent. For Faye and Forte, that's comedy. For Domingo and Kalani, I think they're more theater trained. And then you have Anne and Nick, and these two characters are played by Krell and Kennedy Silver, who both have a pretty unique standing in early two thousand s TV as well well. Because they come from a very much sitcom background, right? So you have two theater actors, two suit sitcom actors, and two essentially like sketch actors, very much in their couplet as well. I think that was intentional. And it's interesting that you bring up the chemistry, right, because this is a very tight show, you know, there's not a a huge amount of actors in it. There's literally 1234567 main ones, we'll get to the seventh one soon. um
00:12:39
Speaker
But essentially, it felt very insular to itself. it felt self contained. And the reason I say this is because it is very much about sort of that chemistry each of these actors and sort of characters have with each other. And it made me question as I was watching it, especially because three of the actors in the show, the main actors are theater actors. So I asked myself many times, why wasn't this just a play?
00:13:04
Speaker
essentially like a two act play or even like a four act play because it's the four seasons essentially, but like four mini acts because I felt like the thing that made the show work and not work for me were very similar to each other. What I liked were the characters and sort of the emotional highs and lows the characters had endured with each other. But I didn't like the characters as well, meaning when I spent so much time with them, you could start seeing sort of their shallowness. Not necessarily maybe shallow is too too harsh of a term, but they're limited scope of the world. Yes, there are limitations.
00:13:38
Speaker
And that's where I wanted to bring this as well. Because you mentioned sort of like Steve Carell and The Office and Michael Schur creating this footprint, this sort of style of comedy.
00:13:49
Speaker
I argue against it. I think there was someone else who made exactly this style of comedy. But this is like the other sort of side of that coin. because I agree with you with Michael Schur in a more positive sense, but in a more negative sense, especially because Happy Gilmore 2 is out. I feel like this is very topical.
00:14:06
Speaker
The person who created essentially the holiday production, which is Adam Sandler. Adam Sandler is famous for essentially in between, I think, like 2010 and the 2020s. He created sort of a bunch of these movies, you know, just go with it, or even the big movie with Chris Rock and Kevin James.
00:14:26
Speaker
The grownups, he created sort of these holiday movies, because he would get a bunch of money, he'd get a bunch of his friends, and he would just go travel to these like exotic locations. And he would essentially get paid to holiday. And he created these low comedy movies that would be really successful on Netflix, because that's where they would appear on Netflix, it made him very successful as well. And i think that that's actually the true influence in a show like the Four Seasons. where you get a bunch of like these actors who are clearly all friends with each other. And they make like this really straightforward project with each other that you know, is not that deep.
00:15:04
Speaker
And that's very like light and comical and you know, human in some ways, but in other ways, still feels quite limited, as you said, and what ends up happening is again, connecting it back to this word I used shallow, there comes a shallowness with this kind of project.
00:15:20
Speaker
Because you can see that the actors themselves are not being challenged because they're in these like really amazing locations and they're not talking about anything truly deep. Whereas you know, White Lotus often does the opposite with these amazing locations, it actually like criticizes why they're even in those amazing locations in the first place. So again, watching it alongside White Lotus was wild. It was really wild. And that's why I wanted to bring this up. No, you make a great point. And you're identifying the two differentiating factors between the shows, which is that White Lotus is pretty high drama.
00:15:58
Speaker
And Four Seasons is low stakes. And I'm not going to litigate the White Lotus part just yet. We can definitely do that in our second half. But the first half is talking about how Four Seasons, as you said, is a limited show, in your words.
00:16:16
Speaker
I don't know if i necessarily agree that it is a limited show, but I do agree that the characters and their viewpoints are... are limited. Now, what is the difference then? And what would be the factor that would make it not a limited show?
00:16:28
Speaker
I think to me is the challenge within the show, which is that these people are put in stakes and
Renewal Speculations and Audience Expectations
00:16:36
Speaker
locations that challenge their limited beliefs. And I think that that drama does largely bring them out of their shell and makes them better people. Now, I also do think it's important to note that this show is in its first season and they were renewed for a second season. Also wild. Which shows... Ridiculously wild.
00:16:54
Speaker
But go on. Interesting. I might watch it. I think that the show is largely very successful. I think that the show does what it needs to do, but I also would not consider this to be prestige TV in a traditional sense. It feels more in line with the new version of the old network show where it is kind of soft and not frightening in many ways. White Lotus is well known for having a body at the beginning of the season. Nothing about the four seasons seems that risky.
00:17:26
Speaker
And what's interesting about it is that anyone who's seen the show to the end knows that there is an immediate conflict between to that initial premise, which is that near the end of the first season, there is something that happens that's very, very dramatic and completely flips the script there. And I would say that that was largely my least favorite part of the show because I think it subverts what the show is at its core.
00:17:51
Speaker
Now, I don't know, Niv, if you necessarily think it's worth spoiling that particular plot detail. We have a very good track record that in the first half, we usually don't spoil things. So I agree. Let's keep that up. But I will say this, I agree with you that it wasn't handled very well by the show. I think it was very cheap in some ways. And and in other ways, it did did feel real, the dramatic moment.
00:18:14
Speaker
Because again, that's how life operates sometimes. But at the same time, i will say that I would have preferred that to be the dramatic moment that happens in the end of the show.
00:18:24
Speaker
I would prefer that to be the inciting incident. I would have thought it would have actually been more interesting if that was the inciting incident. Fascinating. So you kind of wish the four seasons was more white lotus coded. Yeah, because I think there's something to be said that this show is ultimately about letting go.
00:18:41
Speaker
You know, it is about letting go of something. I think all sort of three couplets are learning to let go of something and it doesn't necessarily mean the the partner in question, right? It also just means letting go of of their youth of sort of like this emotional wall they they've been building with each other. There are so many things that are coded under, okay, I'm at this age where I need to start letting go of something.
00:19:06
Speaker
And I feel like that's very real because even like a lot of these characters are in their later years, I would say sort of in their later midlife. Middle age. Yeah, but like later middle age, you know what I mean? It's so it's different.
00:19:18
Speaker
And I feel like it's in that boundary where they're like still young ish in the sense of like their middle age, but they're getting up to like, oh, I'm getting old. And there is like something inherently dramatic in that age group that in between that I did really like when it did get explored. It wasn't explored that deeply. And because of it, the show felt very limited because it touched on interesting topics, but it never actually dove deep into them. And that was my issue. I felt like it needed a really strong inciting incident for the show to be carried sort of by its dramatic tension into its themes and sort of like the conversation it was trying to make under like its more comedic intentions.
Critique of Four Seasons' Storytelling
00:20:00
Speaker
But what ended up happening is that the inciting incident felt also kind of like a very basic thing. And not necessarily bad, I just feel like it's something that you see every day in your life.
00:20:12
Speaker
These things happen more often than not. There's something that drives a wedge between the couples, and it feels very sort of really ordinary. And when you watch a show, you know, it's ah writing 101, you want the inciting incident, the initial drama to really grab you so can propel you into watching the rest of the story. and it just doesn't happen. I remember watching those first two episodes and I even messaged you being like, it's a slog.
00:20:35
Speaker
It's such a slog to get through these first two episodes. I've been stuck on the second episode for a week. And these episodes are like 20 30 minutes. You know what I mean? So they're designed to be light and easily digestible. But I think because especially that second episode was so boring to me, I just couldn't get hooked.
00:20:54
Speaker
And it wasn't boring out of design. it was boring out of intention. meaning it just felt as you said limited in its scope so we have nick and ann who that would be steve corral obviously well known for playing the boss on the office and you have carrie kennedy silver who is best known for her performance on reno 9-1-1 where she was featured on every season of the show including the 2020s revival on do you know where reno 9-1-1 came back I want to say Paramount.
00:21:25
Speaker
No, sir. It came back on Quibi. Oh, it was Quibi original show. And it was chief you were right on the money because it originally did run on Comedy Central, which is owned by Paramount. And they ran a number of shows where she was featured throughout the years. But the Reno 911 show did debut on Quibi and eventually, I believe, moved to the Roku channel.
00:21:47
Speaker
But regardless, so ah Nick and Anne are the central couple in the first bit of the show, which I believe is springtime. And throughout springtime, we learn about Nick finding more passion away from his marriage than around it and at the end of the second episode it is revealed that both Nick is interested in leaving his marriage and his wife Anne has created a surprise 25th anniversary vow renewal ceremony which leads to a very literal exemplification of their marriage blowing up
00:22:22
Speaker
Nick believes that Anne is slightly unambitious in her later years. He believes that his life should be full of more ambition and verve. And he has built her this clay kiln, a kiln not made out of clay, but a kiln for clay, to be clear. And the kiln, while the vow renewal is going on, it bursts into flames, showing the literal exemplification of their marriage bursting into flames. Coming into the fold is the seventh character that you alluded to, Ginny. Ginny is played by a younger actress. I would consider her to be the ingenue of the show in many ways, despite the fact that she is, i believe, a year or two older than myself, which What is this actress's name? Do you have that off the top of your head? Erica Henningsen. Do you know her from anything? Yeah, she was in like the musical and I mean like the stage musical Mean Girls. She wasn't in the movie, but she was in the musical. She sort of like originated the role of Katie Heron on that stage show. Also Tina Fey, who wrote that musical. So I'm guessing that's how they know of each other and how she sort of got this opportunity to star in the show.
00:23:28
Speaker
But from everything else, you know, she is mainly a theater actress. That is what she is. The Four Seasons has been sort of like her first like main role on television. Her other one has been Girls 5 Eva, which is also produced. That's another Tina Fey show. That show was originally premiered on Peacock, where she has an overall deal with Universal. Ironically enough, all of the Peacock first look deals that Tina Fey has currently operated on that service has ended up moving in some way, shape, or form to Netflix. Four Seasons was originally slated at Universal, and they did finance the show, but because they wanted a wider exposure rather than debuting it on the Peacock service, which is, i think, successful in a way, but ultimately due to their reliance on the Bravo network,
00:24:21
Speaker
debuting on there. They have a show called Traitors, which does very well. They have Love Island USA, but the scripted stuff doesn't seem to be working quite as well on Peacock. Moving four seasons over, I think was a very, very smart choice.
00:24:33
Speaker
I think she's the breakout in a lot of ways. And I think what a testament, right, to be a breakout in a show like this, where you have literally like giants like Coleman Domingo, Tina Fey, Will Forte, and of course, Steve Carell.
00:24:45
Speaker
And other like established theater actors like Marco Calvino. There's not a weak link on the show. I think that's what makes me enjoy it so much. But at the same time, i think so much of it is potential. I think it had the parts for it to be like a really astounding show. And it's like the failure of expectations, right?
00:25:03
Speaker
The expectations for me, at least, are too high when you're presented with talent like this. Fascinating. Talking about the theater actors of the show, good time to talk over Marco Cavani, who I actually think was my favorite part of the show. He's taking over for Rena Moreno's character from the original movie, plays this really hot-headed character named Claudia. This character has been gender-swapped to Claude. It is a gay character rather than a straight couple from the original 1981 movie.
00:25:37
Speaker
In a significant modernization, Claude is Danny's husband and an architect. Danny has concerns over his health. In the original movie, the health concerns, from what I gather, are more of a side area. I believe that the movie obviously truncates a lot of things. That sounds like maybe that would have been a positive for you, Niv. But it's nice to be able to see characters grow and develop.
00:26:00
Speaker
They are in an open relationship. That is a particular aspect of the show. And throughout the show, you do see Claude being somewhat protective over his husband. In many ways, it's the most love-filled relationship in the show because these characters are very clear and communicative, particularly
Exploring Relationship Dynamics in Four Seasons
00:26:21
Speaker
Claude. And Danny acts as, I would say, more so the avoidant character in the show. And I think that that dynamic really works for me.
00:26:29
Speaker
especially when you have these two characters. But I think the word is really simple. The dynamic between these two characters is not overly dramatic. Claude is not even domineering like Kate in the other relationship, which we'll talk about in a second. He's also not disenfranchised like Nick, but he is a fiery and emotional presence that can occasionally cause some discomfort, particularly in his husband, who is often catacly. cagey and doesn't, I think, want to deal with this underlying health condition that could put his life at risk.
00:27:06
Speaker
And I think that that's something that while maybe a little simple, I think that's something that's really relevant. These are things that are really important to note. I've had, you know, many friends who have some kind of underlying condition that could put their lives at risk and that danger is real.
00:27:22
Speaker
And when you really see it come to fruition, It proves the point. You know, these things are scary, and i think the show does a pretty good job at articulating without giving anything away how scary and fragile life can be.
00:27:37
Speaker
But equally so, it's a beautiful world that we live in and the people that we spend our time with are a important person. light in our lives. And we see, i mean, even more so near the end of the show, the way in which these characters really are a bastion of light.
00:27:56
Speaker
Even while sometimes they might have squabbles, never in the show do I feel like these characters are at danger of not having an affinity and love for each other. Even after Anne and Nick break up, Anne is still a very important part of the show because they're all friends and they're never not going to be friends.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I think that the character chemistry is the thing that cinches it for me. i think it's really interesting to our cultural zeitgeist when you connected Danny and Claude to anxious and avoidant attachment theory.
00:28:28
Speaker
We really are living in 2025. Look, I agree with you. And even that was a reference to what I agree with, right? The show does a really good job at taking sort of the minutia of relationships and sort of dissecting them, presenting them.
00:28:42
Speaker
Even when I say dissect, again, my issue is that it's not too deep in terms of what they're going for. They're able to present all the issues longstanding couples have with each other in such a way that you're just kind of like, oh, that's interesting. Oh, you know, like that feels real.
00:28:56
Speaker
Oh, you know, like that is something that makes me think a little bit. But like I said, it always comes back to the same issue. It sort of explores in a way that makes it feel like, all right, I'm just gonna go under the sand with my feet rather than dig deep into what all of this means and how it all connects to something larger and deep and more profound. Because i think that's the main thing I struggle with. I don't think the show was made for my demographic.
00:29:24
Speaker
I truly mean that. I think it was made for middle aged people. I think it was made for that demographic, because even though I find so much of this interesting, I can't truly connect with it unless it goes into something a bit more intellectual or profound. I think it's too light for me and I feel it's just made for like Midwestern moms.
00:29:45
Speaker
I don't think that's a wrong statement. I think that maybe you have a different view on what that kind of entertainment looks like and how valid it is for you personally. But I also do think that as someone who was born from a Midwestern mom who does no longer live in a suburb, but is still, I would say, suburban at heart, not suburban, we lived in a small town. But I think it still stands that I grew up in a Midwestern household where this sort of daily life was much more realized. And i think maybe to someone more worldly like yourself, I can kind of understand why this might seem kind of trivial.
00:30:25
Speaker
Not necessarily trivial, but it feels like a massive disconnect. Again, I don't think it's a bad show at all. I just think if we're using the word of the day here, think it's limited. And I think it's limited with intention. It's limited on purpose.
00:30:39
Speaker
And I think that's my issue with it. There's so much potential to this show. It has like Emmy award winning writers, it has Emmy award winning actors and Oscar nominated actors.
00:30:49
Speaker
Right. Ultimately, they could have done a lot more with the show. i think what instead happened is that they went the more Adam Sandler route and the Adam Sandler route. I have nothing against it. I think what Adam Sandler did is sort of ingenious.
00:31:04
Speaker
We watched a Sandman movie the last time you were here in LA. There is nothing wrong with the Sandman. There's nothing, he's a genius, but at the same time... Genius is a strong word. No, but he is. He is ah incredibly intelligent cinematic entrepreneur. He was great in Uncut Gems.
00:31:20
Speaker
No, because he knows what he's doing. No, that's true. He knows that, like, he does the movies he wants to do, and he knows they're going to be a success. And he knows he can ask for an enormous amount of money. And what he does, and again, this is a testament to who he is, because he is, like, an objectively good person from every source out there. He just takes his friends, and he has a good time, makes a movie, and calls it a day. he gets paid for wherever he goes, and he gets paid extra for just doing the film. Like just to make it clear, when Grown Ups came out, he bought every co-star of his like a Maserati or something, every single one of them, he bought them a car. So there is something to be said that this is like a trend in Hollywood that is still happening today, that really well known actors or really powerful comedic actors specifically do a project like this that's easy, simple and gets a lot of funding, but it turns out to be just a holiday. And this is exactly what this is.
00:32:16
Speaker
Let me combat that with another buzzword. Are you ready to talk about weaponized incompetence? So in a lesser version of the show, I think you would see something that is more Sandler adjacent, right?
00:32:29
Speaker
When you are looking at a... comic duo or trio or quadrudo maybe a word maybe not that crew is going to well let's look at a recent film Ricky Stenicki which was I think a great comic movie of a old tradition created by a comic voice of a bygone era wherein four guys pretend to have an imaginary friend into their adulthood in order to get out of major life events such as the birth of a child. So Ricky Stenicki is there out, right? And that showcases something that we have seen and has become part of our cultural lexicon
00:33:13
Speaker
for better or for worse. And that's weaponized incompetence. So I'm going to read from Psychology Today, and I'm going to talk about how I think that this show details weaponized incompetence in a way that is in fact nuanced and actually gives credit to the men that might be considered incompetent when they in fact they are not. And I'm talking about Will Forte's character here, which is the duo that we have not mentioned and I would like to talk about before we move on to the meteor second half here. Weaponized incompetence is, from Psychology Today, also considered strategic incompetence, which is when someone knowingly or unknowingly, usually unknowingly, just demonstrates an inability to perform or master certain tasks, thereby leading others to take on more work. This often occurs in, I'm speaking now here,
00:33:59
Speaker
In a domestic settings, where you have a partner, usually a woman, who is doing the laundry, and the man will do something that is uncouth in that particular domain. So imagine the dad putting the tighty-whities in with the colors, and the tighty-whities turn bright red. This would be an example of weaponized incompetence. This is something that wouldn't be abnormal if you had your 10-year-old or twelve or 13-year-old child Doing your laundry for you, that would be considered probably a legitimate thing because the kid won't necessarily know and they're willing to have grace because, you know, parents understand their children make mistakes. Ideally, adults probably know how to do their own laundry.
00:34:42
Speaker
In many cases, in domestic settings, the man is relegated to taking on certain tasks and the wife is taking on a lot of the domestic tasks. And this may be because the husband says, oh, baby, you just do it so much better. I just can't do it the same way as you. And it can be considered a loving gesture from the man, but often the woman ends up feeling like they are taking on more of the load. And this is where we bring in Kate and Jack.
00:35:11
Speaker
In the original 1981 film, Kate, who is a Fortune magazine editor, is the one who is planning all the group's quarterly vacations, which is a task she secretly hates. And that conflict is more aligned towards the larger group in the 2025 series.
00:35:27
Speaker
That is no longer the case, and a lot more characters are planning the trips. But Kate still acts as, and I'm going to interlink this together... The anxious avoidant character.
00:35:38
Speaker
I would say her husband, Jack, is much more of a down-the-middle kind of guy. He is, I would say, relatively emotionally intelligent. He is, i would say, the peacemaker within the group. He is the guy who is always willing to keep the peace, whereas Kate, I think, is pushing back a little more. And throughout the series, you do see situations in which keeping the peace may not be feasible.
00:35:59
Speaker
Kate trying to morph Jack into the version of the husband that she wants rather than the version of the man that he is. And furthermore, I think that it is ah moment where we see, and this is where I'm bringing this all together here, the case in which she perceives him to be incompetent, when in fact he may be more competent than she's giving him credit for, but she is not willing to see things in his viewpoint and to take a moment to step into his shoes. And this is, again, another example of how I believe The Four Seasons as a show is not reinventing the wheel.
00:36:33
Speaker
It is not trying to be something it is not, but I think it is a much more, if minor, domestic show that showcases real conflicts that happen in the context of marriage and highlights things that might be true in certain relationships.
00:36:50
Speaker
The wife might feel really wound up and that she can't trust her husband to do anything, but that might be some kind of traumatic response. Often women have gone from relationship to relationship to relationship expecting that men behave a certain way and flag certain traits as incompetence.
00:37:10
Speaker
But in reality, us guys can do stuff. Us guys are willing to do stuff and we're willing to take on tasks. But occasionally the reach becomes so narrow that you aren't able to really be able to explore these ventures and make
Cultural Respect in Travel
00:37:26
Speaker
honest mistakes versus making things that are truly incompetence, which I think speaks true to life. I mean, to a degree, I've been single for so long now, so I don't know anymore.
00:37:37
Speaker
Look, I will say that relationships, it doesn't matter if it's like male with female, male or with male, female with female. It doesn't matter. Relationships are relationships. It doesn't even matter if it's friendship or romantic because even that's a relationship. It's just about how much you invest and how much you are secure in it.
00:37:54
Speaker
Going back to like the whole like avoidant anxious attachment theory that has dominated our psychological zeitgeist in 2025. You know, there is a third one, which is secure, right? And that's sort of this one that everybody strives to be a secure attachment. And I think that when you are in a stable relationship with one another, it ebbs and flows.
00:38:16
Speaker
There are periods where you are stable, but then you revert to being your previous attachment, where it'd be anxious or avoidant. Maybe sometimes you even switch. I don't know, haven't delved too deeply into it, even though I can confirm that I myself am an anxious attachment usually.
00:38:31
Speaker
ah Shout out knowing that I saw but the point I'm trying to make and it's very simple right ultimately any relationship is about you investing in something you working on something you stabilizing something because you're just building and building and building and building and building and it takes two people to build it that's why I said that friendships and romantic relationships are very similar in fact the best romantic relationships are where your base is just a friendship. And that's sort of your cake.
00:39:02
Speaker
The cake is the friendship. The icing is the romantic stuff. It's just the topping. It's the thing you add. And I think that what this show really does well, it connects to exactly what you're speaking to. At the core, the six people, the three couplets are friends.
00:39:18
Speaker
they're all sort of in this relationship with each other. It's not the healthiest relationship by any means, right? Because they're traveling together, they're in each other's lives to a degree where they feel like they're all in this quasi romantic relationship with each other. And a big part of the conflict is when that seventh person comes in.
00:39:38
Speaker
All of a sudden, the equilibrium has been thrown off by Erica Henningsen's character of Jenny, because all of a sudden she comes in she's younger, she doesn't connect with them very well.
00:39:49
Speaker
And they're just kind of like, this doesn't fit, but it has to fit because we love Nick. Again, it's a relationship that you have built, they have invested in. And in relation, they're just kind of like, all right, we have to let this new person in because we can't lose Nick.
00:40:06
Speaker
We've invested too much. We've done too much. We've established too much. And I like that. Because again, connects to something very real that when you invest so much into a relationship, any kind of relationship, it's really hard to let it go.
00:40:20
Speaker
Sometimes, if not often, it's often necessary to let go of something. That is a great way to end our conversation on Netflix's The Four Seasons, which has been renewed for a season two, and all episodes are currently available to stream on the Netflix streaming service.
00:40:36
Speaker
If you have not watched White Lotus season three, this is your first and hopefully only spoiler warning. We are going to be talking spoilers in the second half about the White Lotus season three, which is currently streaming on the site now known as HBO Max, hopefully permanently. And are going to take a quick break and listen to some music. And then we're going to come back and we're talking the White Lotus.
00:41:03
Speaker
Stay tuned.
00:41:09
Speaker
Yes, this is a break. no not the music you were promised. That involves a thing called licensing, which happens on the Zeitgeist homepage, which is on Mixcloud. I personally curate the music for every single episode. It's easy to start the episode in this exact spot and pick up where you left off.
00:41:29
Speaker
If not, no worries. Let's just pretend you were listening. And we're back. Thanks to everyone who is listening on Mixcloud. You just heard some great music. So the next part we are going to be talking about is, of course, White Lotus. But before that, let's talk about the ethics and psychology of travel. So... of course, the whole idea of going on a vacation, as we were talking about at the beginning of the episode, is that it is supposed to create a moment of natural enjoyment. And in essence, hopefully you evoke this state of flow moving into a space that is unfamiliar to you. You can experience things that are new and novel, hopefully find relaxation in a new space. But as many people have probably experienced in their lives, I would say the majority of people, that vacation is not always exactly what you think it is going to be going in. The act of curation and planning that is involved in vacation can often become more of a stressor than it is a factor of joy. One creates a vacation in order to engage in that flow state.
00:42:32
Speaker
But when you are limiting yourself, that creates a limiting mindset. So when you are locked into obligation alongside a family or a group of people, you are then in a state of core paradox where you are trying to create a situation and hyper curate a situation in which you are able to be in the moment and enjoy things.
00:42:55
Speaker
But everything around that situation, including now our smartphones, are doing the very thing that we are trying to escape when we travel. So that is, I think, one of the driving and motivating forces for programs like the Four Seasons and White Lotus. We are in a space as a society now, particularly when you get into the upper and lower upper class, Where you are looking to optimize yourself in your work life and that optimization mindset can then move into the world of vacation. So Niv, when you are going on a vacation, do you like to do a lot of planning or do you like to live in the moment? I usually like to do a lot of planning because I realize that when i visit a place, I want to respect sort of its history and try to go to places that would would offer me unique experience that I would enjoy.
00:43:50
Speaker
Because again, I always realize my time is limited when I travel. So that's why I try to plan ahead. For example, I i was just in Italy. So my sisters and i came up with many experiences we we each wanted to do that we sort of connected with.
00:44:04
Speaker
My younger sister really wanted to learn pasta making. So we had like a pasta making class in Tuscany. My older sister really wanted to be in the Tuscan countryside and experience that countryside. So we rented a villa.
00:44:19
Speaker
And I really much like my dad, I really want connected to going to like historical places. So we went to the Colosseum, we saw the statue of David, you know what I mean? So those are the kind of experiences that that I want, especially when you're traveling with but other people like bigger groups, because you need to sort of share that plan.
00:44:41
Speaker
You can't just live in the moment. If I were to travel alone, i think I would be more open to to sort of live in the moment because it would still be under my control. And i i feel I would feel like I would have more wiggle room in terms of like exploring a space.
00:44:57
Speaker
But when I'm around other people and I need to share sort of that exploration of that space, then I feel like you have to plan it. Exactly. You have to create a sense of balance within the community in which you are in. And it sounds like, Nev, you've guys created that balance really successfully. Every person in your group found something that they personally enjoy, and they brought that to the vacation. And so every single person was able to experience something different, but you guys were all able to find a level of enjoyment within that.
00:45:28
Speaker
Do you feel like every act that you guys did was successful in that regard? Did everybody get the thing out of it that they wanted to? For the most part, I feel like there was some resistance to certain things. Like my younger sister really didn't enjoy going to the historical places. She thought it was boring.
00:45:44
Speaker
I remember she threw a fit in Pisa when we went to the Leaning Tower because she- Classic younger sister. Yeah, and I don't blame her She's young, she's 20, and she just wanted to, in her words, do fun things. Bro, the 20-year-olds in our audience being like, excuse me, I'm an adult.
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, but at the same time, i get her still like it comes from a place of love and understanding. She wanted to shop. She wanted to go to nice restaurants. She wanted to party, like go to bars and clubs and stuff like that. And she just wanted to be a 20 year old.
00:46:16
Speaker
It made sense. And really, either the people on this trip were, you know, more than a decade younger than her or over a decade older than her.
00:46:27
Speaker
So she felt very much alone in her experience. And it made it sort of challenging for her to accept like, OK, what I want is truly unique compared to everybody else.
00:46:38
Speaker
And it's hard for me to accept that. Whereas me and my older sister, you know, we had very similar objectives in terms of what we wanted to do and see. And even my parents.
00:46:48
Speaker
For me, like I can be such a big stickler with shopping. I really hate when you're on vacation and then you go shopping for like clothes or other things because I'm just kind of like, I always have this question of why you're just like wasting time when you can do this sort of shopping wherever you are in the world because I promise you there is Tommy Hilfiger and Banana Republic everywhere, or for my sisters, there's Hermes everywhere and Dolce Gabbana everywhere. That's true.
00:47:18
Speaker
And I know that certain members of your family got sick of eating Italian food in Italy. Mind blowing for me. My mom really struggled because she doesn't like carbs. So yeah, it was just kind of the thing where she can't enjoy anything. And especially because we're Jewish and she is kosher. She really struggled with the whole like pork thing.
00:47:38
Speaker
And we were in northern Italy. Their whole thing is like pork the cold cuts and sort of like the wine and the cheese and the meats. And of course, the meaty pastas, you know, the carbonara, I believe, was invented northern Italy. So, no, it was invented in Rome. Yeah, even in Rome, it was a challenge for her.
00:47:57
Speaker
So there is something to be said that when you're traveling, especially with other people, you have to not just be balanced, you have to be diplomatic and respectful.
00:48:08
Speaker
You don't need just need to be respectful to whoever you're traveling with. You also need to be respectful towards the space you're in. Like I remember there were a bunch of times we were in museums and I felt we were being a little disrespectful and it wasn't because of anyone. I don't think it was anyone's fault.
00:48:23
Speaker
I think because we were traveling with my niece and nephew, we only saw like the important pieces of art and then we would dip because it was also like 30 degrees. It was something crazy in Florence.
00:48:35
Speaker
And um remember just thinking to myself, like, next time I'm here, I'm going to do this right. That's what I kept saying to myself. And it came from like a place deep inside me where I was just kind of like, I really just want to re-experience this to really respect this space.
00:48:49
Speaker
And there was another thing, which was we went, me and my parents went to a Michelin star restaurant. One of the few times I've ever gone to a Michelin star restaurant in my life. We went to this island off of Venice and my parents just didn't connect with it.
00:49:03
Speaker
They just didn't vibe with it. And I didn't vibe with it really either. But I at least was like, all I'm in this experience. I chose this experience. I was interested in this experience.
00:49:14
Speaker
So I'm going to give it the benefit it deserves. I'm just going to enjoy myself. I'm going to be interested because when you go to a Michelin star restaurant, what ends up happening is that they take you through the entire menu. They tell you the story. If you watch the movie, the menu, it feels like that.
00:49:28
Speaker
It's very accurate. That was the world that you were in. I mean, every Michelin restaurant can be a little bit different because there are some smaller and Michelin restaurants, but the sort of, you know, yeah, uppercase Michelin restaurants are often in that line. They're in exotic locales, maybe tucked away. They have a garden that you can explore. It was to a T. I watched the menu two weeks ago for the first time and I was like shocked how parallel those experiences were just minus the murder.
00:50:02
Speaker
ah You know what I mean You feel super privileged by going to like a museum with this really famous piece of art or you go to this restaurant that's really famous and and such a unique experience.
00:50:14
Speaker
that not everybody gets to have, because that's what it means to travel. You're experiencing something not everyone gets to experience and not something someone every day gets to experience, right? You even experience it once in your lifetime.
00:50:29
Speaker
And I think there is a pressure, it's a very well warranted pressure to sort of live in that moment and respect it and be a part of it. And I think so many people, just like White Lotus has shown in season one, season two, and season three, that there are so many people that take those experiences for granted.
00:50:48
Speaker
I've never been okay with that. But I'm also entitled and privileged in that way, because I grew up outside of the country I was born in. Let's hold on to that bit for just another second. You obviously have a perspective where you believe in respecting the space and taking a vacation as a moment of learning. I'm Kaylee. I'm Kaylee. Not Kaylee Spaney. That's not that's not the actress. Even though even Sarah Hook. Kaylee Spaney. They look similar. They do look similar. Kaylee Spaney is a actress that played Priscilla in the episode we did last year. You guys can check that episode out.
00:51:26
Speaker
But yeah, great actress, both great actresses. I'm Sarah Catherine Hook. You're totally in line there You are amidst a family of Ratcliffs, it sounds like. But i want to I want to talk about these as individual elemental components, and then let's start plugging it into the four seasons, because I think you have given a really lovely perspective, and I think also dived in deep. Thank you for sharing, by the way, in the ways in which maybe certain aspects of the trip are frustrating.
00:51:52
Speaker
They aren't necessarily going to be things that are going to completely wreck the trip, but certain aspects might be really frustrating having to do something that you feel is menial in the grand scheme of things. Now, that speaks largely to vacation as means of enjoyment, which is where I think my main thesis comes from, not necessarily as an area of study, because obviously, I'm probably more in line with your younger sister, although maybe a little older, but I think that the main aspect of going to a new place isn't necessarily always to study it, but rather to enjoy it. And so enjoyment can look like different things. Maybe to you, in fact, study is the enjoyment. And it is 100%.
00:52:35
Speaker
hundred percent Awesome. So to enjoy oneself, you are immersing yourself in the space and that will create what I was talking about earlier, that flow state. So vacation allows you to atomize the idea of enjoyment into a specific space.
00:52:50
Speaker
And it is a scientifically fluid way to concretely measure or perceive that enjoyment, right? It is a petri dish to create fun, which is something that is unscientific and unexplorable.
00:53:03
Speaker
But because it is that unique space where you're in a maximize fun territory, that is ideally the situation where your fun levels would be the highest. So it also creates a forced conference confrontation of the self because you are no longer in an area in which you are yourself being a new space that gives you a North Star to be able to explore the you-ness of you. And depending on who you are, that might actually be a huge problem.
00:53:35
Speaker
You know, for Timothy Ratcliffe specifically, that creates a huge, huge issue, and it gives Ratcliffe more or less a crisis of life. So talking about the ethics and sociology of fun, that leans directly into what you were talking about with your folks and your siblings wanting to go shopping.
00:53:55
Speaker
When you are on vacation, a lot of people's first instincts is ultimately to be selfish. And I'm referencing here a podcast called Critics at Large. I'm going to post that in the Spotify link. that i Spotify lets you do that. ah Hopefully I can post these elsewhere on our the other RSS feed, but the studies in which I am conducting these. Here, before we dive in, is Critics at Large, the episode Why We Travel, and the Overthink podcast. This came out last year in 2014 called Fun. Overthink. Fun.
00:54:26
Speaker
And their idea of fun is ritualized play, which can be a dominant feature of going on vacation, right? Experiencing new things, having these classes like making pasta or eating.
00:54:41
Speaker
having these experiences in which your mind is expanded, like going to a Michelin star restaurant. These are spaces in which I think ritualized play comes into form. I think some of the best Michelin restaurants exemplify play where you are able to enjoy a food that you may have never seen in the form in which it is presented. So that is, I think, the highest form of Michelin food. And I think it in some ways also grounds what can be occasionally an over-aestheticized version of things that we enjoy every day.
00:55:13
Speaker
But in the four seasons, this perfectly exemplifies the ritualized play. So their quarterly trips are familiar safe containers for working through tensions. But in the White Lotus, you mentioned this earlier, it heightens that dramaticism. And instead of it being something low stakes and familiar, it operates in a place that is so different from the rituals of these characters, specifically the Ratcliffe's, that we are now in a space of total newness.
00:55:42
Speaker
How does it look like to be selfish in a group? Obviously, that's going to create a lot of conflict. That's why I think White Lotus is such a great place to start when it comes to finding character conflict, because instantly these characters are primarily in a space where they are encouraged to be self-motivated.
00:56:02
Speaker
But equally so, they are in an environment that traps them in social groups, in cliques. And that automatically creates this immediate divide of the self. And that is one of the major aspects of White Lotus as a whole. So I also want to talk largely before we dive into the show and let's talk about Thailand, use that big word, Thailand, which is where you grew up. And that is the setting of this White Lotus. season.
00:56:32
Speaker
This is also for our audience out there. Why we wanted to do White Lotus season three and not two or one, i think I'm very happy we waited to do this Thai season. And as soon as we learned that this was going to be set in Thailand, I think that you and I both clicked the go button because this is something that is, I think, incredibly personal to you. And I am very interested and maybe even a little concerned about what you thought about this season, specifically in its Thai representation.
00:57:01
Speaker
Because I think that the show did a great job in seasons one and two of portraying the local culture. So we are talking about Thailand. Tell me about it. I grew up in Thailand.
00:57:12
Speaker
i left my home country when I was like six years old. And then I moved to India. My dad was working there. We moved there. Me, my older sister, my younger sister wasn't born at the time.
00:57:25
Speaker
and my mom, we moved to Mumbai. It was a really difficult period for my mom. It was the first time out of her home country. For me, it was like a grand adventure because it was like the first time I ever lived outside of anything I'd ever known. But then i moved to Thailand because that was like sort of the conversation. My mom really disliked living in Mumbai. She had like this very westernized sort of upbringing to a certain extent, and she was not used to something so Eastern. And when we moved to Thailand, we moved specifically to this neighborhood with an international community because that's where the international school me and my sisters went to. So it was very sort of like insular within itself, meaning that it was a bubble.
00:58:08
Speaker
You didn't really feel like you were in Thailand, you felt like you were in an expatriate village inside Thailand, which is what it was. And my dad also built hotels like being covered in Thailand because I was like, Oh, you know, I was in my dad's hotels.
00:58:22
Speaker
growing up. So it was a thing I really connected to. And I was really excited for White Lotus to cover Thailand because I was just kind of like, finally, this is essentially my true home. To a certain extent, there's only two places I consider really my home, which is like Nanteburi, Thailand, which is a city just outside of Bangkok, where I grew up. I lived there for 12 and Chicago, where I did my bachelor's and master's and I met you.
00:58:48
Speaker
Those are two periods of my life that I consider the most important to me. So having Thailand be a massive point of conversation, not only through White Lotus, but in the world, I mean, like, even especially now there's a war going on in with Cambodia right now, which is crazy.
00:59:03
Speaker
But the point I'm trying to make is that there was high expectations because I saw so much connected to this. Well, thank you for sharing that as well. So initially, this show did not originally want to use Thailand as a space.
00:59:20
Speaker
The theme of mindfulness, I think, was added in in a it's not an omnipotent force in the show in the way that I think a lot of other particularly Hawaii in season one feels somewhat omnipotent to the show.
00:59:34
Speaker
In seasons two and three, we are transported to different locales. And I think the characters are interacting in these spaces in interesting and novel ways, but you aren't really seeing the same connection to it. And I think it is important to note that Mike White spends a lot of his time outside of the show in Hawaii. And I think writing about Hawaii really signals a writing what you know.
00:59:58
Speaker
And the farther and farther Mike White gets through this show, i think I personally am starting to see him start to stretch the bounds of his own knowledge and experience.
01:00:10
Speaker
Mike White's initial interest was actually Japan. And that is the location that I think he probably most wanted. But it also wasn't super feasible for him as time moved on.
01:00:22
Speaker
There aren't a lot of tack Incentives going on in Japan and he ended up getting sick and contracted bronchitis while in Thailand and he was revived and that was the ultimate inspiration for this season.
01:00:34
Speaker
But there were other places that they were thinking about as well in Bali, South Korea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka. And Niv, I believe in Thailand, I think you might have this information more readily for me.
01:00:47
Speaker
They end up going to a four seasons resort to film. And this is not the first time they've used the four seasons. No. As a white lotus. No, I believe they've used it for the past three seasons. And...
01:00:59
Speaker
I feel like that was also knowing that knowledge is what inspired me to be like, oh, let's pair the show Four Seasons with White Lotus because the White Lotus is really based off the Four Seasons hotel chain in terms of like- It's to a point where they actually branded a Four Seasons White Lotus as a tie in for season three.
01:01:19
Speaker
And actually, this is kind of the first season in which White Lotus has become more commercial. I walked past a fashion collaboration with White Lotus at The Grove the other day, and they have this huge window display of all this kind of flowy vacation wear.
01:01:37
Speaker
And that really shows that White Lotus has become a commercial product for better or for Yeah, it has. mean, because it's become mainstream. You can't avoid being part of the cultural zeitgeist. That's why we're covering it But there is something to be said that it has really reached a point where it's not so much like a niche HBO show anymore.
01:01:57
Speaker
It's one of the core standing shows on television right now, similar to how you know, Ted Lasso was or succession because people are talking about it's like a water cooler show.
01:02:09
Speaker
And what I mean by water cooler, it just means like people come up to each other and they're like, Oh, did you watch the most recent episode of White Lotus? Wasn't it crazy? Was it insane? You know, oh, what's going to happen next time?
Expectations for White Lotus Season Three
01:02:22
Speaker
Because it's also what happened to me.
01:02:24
Speaker
and I think it especially happened to me because a lot of my friends are from where they're from Thailand. They grew up with me there. So we had a lot of opinions and a lot of thoughts week by week about sort of what we were watching.
01:02:38
Speaker
Some of it was good and some of it was not so good. Let's talk about the good and not so good parts. We should start with Thailand as the first character that we talk about. So the function of the Thai DNA within the context of the show is a retreat in which everyone leaves their cell phones at the door And they are scheduled with a certified practitioner to achieve a more mindful life. So that means meditation. That's going to mean other things. But I think mainly the things that we focus on are meditation. And ironically, a lot of the show versus maybe some other things in previous seasons actually does not have any of our characters being.
01:03:20
Speaker
Broadly doing these structured activities that we saw in seasons one and two, the structured activities are much, much, much more of a side effect. And the characters that they do interact with from the resort... immediately become in the example of the three girls.
01:03:39
Speaker
They were called the fancies on the Ringer's prestige TV podcast network where they were doing the recaps. They called them the fancies. And that crew was the Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon, Michelle Monahan trio. So the girls and they just co-opt this whole system to become what they personally want. Their personal drive isn't to come in and calm the mind and settle the body to become a better and less ego-driven person, but to rather expand their egos and to interact with this space as tourists rather than, as you mentioned, people who respect the culture. The first season of White Lotus really made it a point to dissect the ways in which we as tourists are strangers in a strange land.
01:04:26
Speaker
And I'm curious whether you believe that the third season is attempting to subvert these expectations of what Thailand might be, or whether it is playing into tropes that maybe you've witnessed in the past.
01:04:43
Speaker
I think it's playing into tropes in some ways. i think for me, I wish I could speak more to this, but I felt like there was a disconnect between season one season two, and season three for me. i really My favorite season was season two in Italy.
01:04:58
Speaker
And I think because it actually talked about the relationship between the natives of Italy, like the people are actually from Italy, To the guests, I really enjoyed that and sort of like how Italy is this very picturesque old world, like European country that also similarly you go there to sort of retrace your history or whatever that may be. And in season one, like it just talked about how Hawaii has become sort of this theme park for Americans, which I also really connected to. But again, that's that's me as an outsider. I connected to those things because I was just kind of like, OK, it talks about something very deeply here.
01:05:36
Speaker
And I enjoyed that with Thailand was interesting because I felt like a lot of the Thai characters did not. Most of the Thai characters almost didn't interact with the guests at all.
01:05:47
Speaker
And I found that to be really disappointing Because my understanding of Thailand, especially since my dad was in the hotel business, it came from this sort of like idea that when people came to visit Thailand, it wasn't for this like spiritual awakening, it was to party, it was to go to the islands like Koh Samoy, Koh Phi Phi, to go to the archipelago of Phuket, and Bangkok, going to the walking street, because and essentially like any place where you could get drugs,
01:06:19
Speaker
and party and do whatever you want because that's what thailand is it's for tourists at least it is treated as sort of a release and to some extent i like appreciate the spiritual like like a theme that's happening in white lotus like i did appreciate it because it is sort of a form of release. It's actually a far more better dramatic release in terms of what the story was trying to tell. It told the story with a very strong intention. In fact, a lot of that inspiration came from Mike White visiting, like, I don't know if it was specifically Japan or Thailand, but he had bronchitis and they had to give him like a steroid to sort of like save him. And he started hallucinating and he had this idea like spurned from that moment, like born from that moment.
01:07:10
Speaker
where he was like, what if like Westerners came to to Thailand, just have like a spiritual awakening, because he had a spiritual awakening, essentially from that experience or a spiritual revival.
01:07:22
Speaker
And again, that part is interesting. But I feel like there is a massive disconnect. And this is the part I didn't appreciate. in that Thailand is so much about it. The culture is so rich, just like in Italy, just like in Hawaii.
01:07:39
Speaker
But i don't I don't feel like it was nearly as explored as much as the other seasons because I feel like the show has become so mainstream that more and more and more scene actors and more mainstream actors have, it's almost become like a privilege to be part of like the White Lotus cast.
01:07:58
Speaker
It's the thing that everybody wants to be on. It's this and the bear that every actor in Hollywood is like, get me on. I'll work for free. Yeah, and that's the issue because it's become sort of this thing. And again, it goes back to my whole like Adam Sandler vacation theory because you're essentially grabbing like really level names. You are giving them like a certain amount of money. Again, everybody was paid the same thing.
01:08:23
Speaker
i believe you told me this. It was $40,000 per Yeah, so that's 320k per actor on the full season. That's insane in today's standards. There are people who've been paid like a million per season.
01:08:38
Speaker
And, you know, it speaks to such a testament of Mike White's talent that it's a privilege now to work on White Lotus. But there is something to be said that, you know, I believe the the filming was around six months, if not more.
01:08:54
Speaker
So these people lived with each other for such a long time that it did sort of become like this very long standing vacation or sabbatical even because they were in these high level like locations, meaning like hotels and they went to restaurants, they had like really nice restaurants, they went to spas, again, all part of filming, but also that's what ah was available to them.
01:09:18
Speaker
And it was most of the time paid for. um So that's my issue in some ways, because when you do a show like this, you focus so much on like the privilege and the excess.
01:09:31
Speaker
And what the first season and second season did so well is that they talked about the characters who don't have the privilege, who don't have the excess. And they talked about it in such a smart way that wasn't really done before, which is they put focus on the actual natives who don't actually get to experience the privileges and the experiences that their own countries provide to tourists.
01:09:57
Speaker
And that is what I connected with because I grew up as a privileged, entitled person in a country that wasn't my own. My dad built hotels and I was constantly privileged in that way where I would get the best experience whenever I'd go to his hotel. Like I would have Thai people. They were catering to me because one, that was their job. But two I was entitled.
01:10:19
Speaker
I had the privilege. watching you know season one and season two of white lotus it really served as a reflection to myself being like huh i went through this experience and it doesn't make me feel nice in a good way it made me be reflective and that's why i really waited and really hoped a season in thailand would happen so it could show a similar thing and when it didn't it didn't just disappoint me on like a creative level It disappointed me on an emotional level because it was just kind of like this show sort of opened up something to me that I never really had the maturity to see back then, that specific type of privilege.
01:10:54
Speaker
And unfortunately, the show has become too mainstream and in a lot of ways has become privileged itself. I really want to hone in on this. I feel like White Lotus as a show has become entitled and privileged in its own way.
01:11:06
Speaker
That I feel like the thing that made it work and made it so powerful to begin with has sort of been dulled. They can't cut the ties of what is inherent in the show's DNA. Exactly that.
01:11:17
Speaker
That's an interesting point of contention. Although a difficult thing to be able to materially prove. That's a tough thing to rebuff because I think that my broad take would be agreement. I don't think there's any reason for me to...
01:11:32
Speaker
Disagree with that. It certainly seems as if Mike White is leaning more towards the privileged white characters, but I do think it is important to speak to that agreement that the characters that are largely connecting to these main plots that do work at the resort are white. There are a lot of white characters on the show. Yeah, lot.
01:11:53
Speaker
That work at the resort. The maitre d' that we all know is kind of now a white lotus staple character. That maitre d' is a white man. The only non-American character that comes in contact with an American character would be Belinda and Pornchite.
01:12:08
Speaker
where Natasha Rothwell's character returns for season three after being the spa manager in season one. And she is coming to Thailand to do some work there.
01:12:19
Speaker
But she's also having a little bit of a vacation. And she has a relationship with Pornchime. Am I saying his name correctly, Pornchai? Pornchai is correct. But also the owner of that specific White Lotus is Tala Hollinger, played by Lekh Patravadi. It's something to be said that even when it shows a character who's Thai, who's in a position of power, she's the owner of that specific White Lotus.
01:12:43
Speaker
It also is interesting that even though she is powerful, she is like a famed actress in her backstory. She's also specifically married to a white person, which is a very classic Thai thing. Like a lot of rich Thai people marry white people like it is like a stereotype in in Thailand. But I also find it interesting because it's also such a trope.
01:13:06
Speaker
And the Thai characters are in a lot of ways isolated, but also when they are connected to the story, they are connected in a way that is just kind of like, they can't stand on their own merit, like in the previous seasons.
01:13:20
Speaker
It's true, and I think that's largely because they are relegated not to main or even secondary characters, but kind of tertiary. The character that you just referenced who was this famed actress who becomes the head of the resort, her last name is Hollinger, like her husband, and her first name is...
01:13:38
Speaker
Sritala? Is that correct? Yeah, Sritala. So she is secondary because her husband ultimately is the target to Walton Goggins' character, Rick, who comes to this resort for a very specific reason, which is to kill a specific person. And he comes alongside his doting British girlfriend, Chelsea, played by Amy Lou Wood.
01:14:01
Speaker
And it's interesting to see the ways in which this show is operating because you are seeing a lot of actors placed here who you can tell are a specific vision of Mike White. Mike White particularly advocated for Amy LeWood as Chelsea. She is, I would say, kind of a huge breakout on this show. She played a major character on the show Sex Education, but has largely been unknown. She's not been in a whole ton of stuff. Walton Goggins, on the other hand, is a well-established character, long-known TV actor who's been in the prestige world since before prestige TV came into parlance. He was on The Righteous Gemstones as a lead.
01:14:42
Speaker
He was on Justified as a lead. i know him as a regular actor in Tarantino, where I usually play someone very racist. And Goggins and Lew Wood together are a huge, I think, charismatic and dare I say a cute couple on the show, but they also are indicative of a different mindset. They're not coming to the White Lotus for anything. i mean, but she does. In particular, I am kind of also interested in the fact that they are operating in a space that you thought was much more obvious, which is that Rick ends up going to Bangkok and partying with his friend Frank, who is stunt cast played by Sam Rockwell. Stunt cast. I mean, that role was originally made for Woody Harrelson, so it was always supposed to be like this shock stunt casting.
01:15:30
Speaker
And it didn't end up happening because there was essentially like a scheduling conflict. And Leslie Bibb, who plays Kate in the show, one of the main characters in the show, She is Sam Rockwell's like partner.
01:15:41
Speaker
So they got in touch with like Mike White and they were able to make that happen. Can i clarify something really quick? So I love what you're saying. I do believe that Woody Harrelson was not scheduled to play the character of Frank, but rather Rick himself. He was slated to play Rick first because, and i it is entirely possible that Frank was written as a way to still keep him on the show, but ultimately he left due to either pay dispute or scheduling conflicts.
01:16:08
Speaker
But the reason why Rick was, i think, maybe initially meant to be specifically a bald man is that if you look at Woody Harrelson, bald, kind of bald. He is in the show. I would say that White Lotus season three operates in a more symbolistic method more broadly. And we can talk about the active symbolic character in the context of all of these characters.
01:16:29
Speaker
identities throughout the show but the symbol of Rick is paralleled in the show by the symbol of Gary Gary is bald and Gary we all know him as played by John Grease yes famed John Grease from Napoleon Dynamite John Grease we all recognize him in previous seasons as the character of Greg yes indeed Greg and Gary are the very same person So the initial concept for the show was that there were two bald men who have these younger girlfriends and they are kind of at odds with each other.
01:17:02
Speaker
So that was the initial premise. And of course, Woody Harrelson left and Goggins came in and Goggins doesn't really fit the part, but he's not totally unlike the part either. Yeah. And I mean, he is old and Goggins is balding and he's a fantastic actor as many of these other cast members are. So moving from the Goggins and Rick and Chelsea crew, I guess it would be a good enough time to we've touched on Belinda. We've touched on Greg Gary.
01:17:30
Speaker
There is also the character of the girlfriend who is an actress that I am not as familiar with named Charlotte Le Bon, who she plays Greg's girlfriend. I think she does a great job on the show. She There are a lot of worldly actors on the show, not just Thai actors, not just American actors, but people from kind of all across the globe. It seems like in this season, we are getting, I think, a little bit of a broader conceit. There have been a lot of reports about deleted scenes on the show. And I think it's very clear on the final product that that is the case. Yeah, so especially in that last episode.
01:18:04
Speaker
Which I have major issues with. Putting a pin in that. Let's lead that up here. So the Ratliff family, perhaps the crew of people that got the weirdest and shortest shrift in those final episodes, starting with Timothy Ratliff, who plays the patriarch.
01:18:17
Speaker
So I think this was an area of discussion when we were talking earlier about your family's experience where you felt a little bit of a connection. So you considered yourself to be the Piper Ratcliffe, who is the middle child. That's what I was going to say. Niv, are you a middle child? I am a middle child. And it's funny because it's parallel, not just in that I'm the middle child, but I am the only son of like three children and I have an older sister and a younger sister. Piper is the only daughter and she has an older brother and a younger brother. And like, again, you know, these people are quite wealthy.
01:18:55
Speaker
They're theoretically the most wealthy people visiting the resort at that time, at least in the beginning. So i really, really related to that. I really connected with that because my dad reminds me of Jason Isaacs. Like I actually felt like in a different, weirder world, the Ratliff family were an exaggerated version of my family.
01:19:16
Speaker
I really hope. Hey, from what I know about your father, he is a lovely, kind person. He is. He is a lovely, kind person. way in which I am going to be speaking about Timothy rate Ratcliffe is anything but.
01:19:28
Speaker
Yeah, but that's what I mean. Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe. I just felt like they were dark mirrors. Not even that. I feel like. A dark mirror indeed. Yeah. big A version of him that could have been, right? Not not even that. Timothy Ratcliffe is a white collar criminal.
01:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, because that's what I mean. If you take like the worst and most specific and most like exaggerated part that becomes like so dramatic and unreal in certain ways, like essentially, i want to put it this way that you would appreciate the Ratliff's are expressionist versions of my family.
01:20:03
Speaker
They're like the heightened, super heightened versions of my family. I think there is a delicate spectrum in which we dive into therapy here. I'm gonna stop it right there. but so Timothy Ratliff, you know, that maybe some Freudian therapy. No, no, I'll put it this way.
01:20:21
Speaker
My dad is a businessman. I'll put it this way. My dad is a businessman. I'm not leaving this alone because this is funny. um My dad is a businessman. Ratliff is a businessman and clearly the patriarch moneymaker of the family. My mom is also, she's quite spiritual, but in a way that disconnects from the rest of her family.
01:20:40
Speaker
She's really into like numerology. She's really into things that are more connected to religion, but in a way that is very traditional to her worldview. She doesn't connect to sort of like cultures that are outside of her own in some ways.
01:20:54
Speaker
or very much different
Family Dynamics and Character Comparisons
01:20:56
Speaker
from her own. I think she has a really difficult time really, really diving into and understanding something that is beyond her understanding. And that's not a slight against my mom, it's just something she didn't grow up with.
01:21:08
Speaker
She likes to hang by the pool. she like I mean, that's a great way to experience life. She likes to be in her comfortable spaces. You know, my older sister, i think she is very, very, she's a go-getter. Like, I think she is very, very driven. And I think like she sometimes feels like, you know, so much of the responsibility is placed on her a lot of the time, especially in our family dynamic. She organizes everything. Like my parents just leave a lot of that responsibility on her because they just trust her. But that's a lot of pressure.
01:21:39
Speaker
And I think and Patrick Schwarzenegger's like character of Saxon, I feel like that is actually his most noble trait. Ironically, like my sister, Natalie, really connected with Saxons. She really liked his character. She really liked Patrick's performance.
01:21:54
Speaker
And i thought to myself, huh, it's really interesting because you're both the oldest child. and in a lot of ways, she actually found him to be a very tragic character. And I always found that fascinating because I really disliked him.
01:22:06
Speaker
I thought he was the most over the top character in the show. And it's interesting with Sam Nivola's character of Lachlan because he's very different from my younger sister. Lachlan is a very quiet person and he's very reserved. He's very closed off. My sister is not, she's very vocal, she's very confident, but there is something to be said that Noy can get peer pressured.
01:22:29
Speaker
There is a sense that even though she is very confident, she is the kind of person when push comes to shove, she feels like she gets shoved. And I feel like that's such a younger sibling syndrome to have.
01:22:40
Speaker
And that's what i mean when I say like, oh, these are exaggerated versions of my family because we follow the same basic, and I really mean this, the basic family dynamic. Where as the middle child, Sarah Catherine Hook, Piper, she's there for a similar reason that I stated, like she's there because she's interested in the culture.
01:23:00
Speaker
She's trying to experience the experience, much like Amy Lou Wood's character of The Girlfriends. They're there for the right reasons. They're in Thailand, not to party, not to get drunk, at least not initially. Yeah, at least not initially. But be able to explore the place in a valid and... I think you've actually nailed exactly the core drama within each of the characters by comparing them to your family. so thank you for that. You're welcome. And I think by that explanation, it also gives me a better idea of what you mean by the dark shadow of your family. Because truly, I do believe that you have a wonderful and great family. And this is- I do. This actually completely aligns with that because ultimately, you're talking about a motivating factor of what makes a person a person, which is fundamentally different from how that is expressed, right? So Timothy Ratliff and his son Saxon are both driven people.
01:23:52
Speaker
And so I'm sure with your older sister, you see that level of drive mirrored from the patriarch, your father. yeah And the patriarch of this family does obviously set a very clear and important precedent, which is that he is someone who is selfish, but not cruel, and greedy, but fundamentally good-hearted.
Themes of Greed and Moral Complexity
01:24:10
Speaker
Because he's the breadwinner. Your father are all of those positive things, and I would say very little of those negative things. yeah But that being said, the, um, you're welcome. The characters within this show are ultimately driven by something that is a little bit evil. And Timothy Ratliff is way in deep in terms of a really awful, probably a Ponzi scheme.
01:24:35
Speaker
Where he gets a call from his ah co-worker played sneakily by Kiwi Kwan on the phone. And Kiwi Kwan lets him know that if he comes back to America, that he is good as dead. And Ratliff throughout the show struggles with that to a very literal point. I really want to make this distinction. He's not as good as dead because he would just go to prison.
01:24:57
Speaker
And that's why if we're talking about what this the major theme of this specific season is, it's the concept of death, right? Death is release. So he's actually viewing it as a way to escape.
01:25:08
Speaker
And that sort of becomes his like eternal drama. So I'm glad you brought that up. But I have to immediately be like, no, he's not as good as dead. Because that's actually sort of his solution to his problem. He just doesn't want to go to prison. He doesn't. I think that these characters are largely though driven by, like I said, greed, which is something corely evil. Right. yeah Even the most innocent of characters throughout the show are driven into something a little bit more nefarious. And Victoria Ratliff, played by Parker Posey, an actress that ah we all know and love. have so many notes here, guys. Oh, The cast of characters. Parker Posey, legendary comic actor who recently appeared in Boa's Afraid, but was featured in numerous entries in the Christopher Guest mockumentaries, including Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman, a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary. Spinal Tap is coming out later this year, Spinal Tap 2. I am not entirely sure if Parker Posey is going to be within that cast structure, but she was a legendary late 90s, early 2000s actress and is an absolute legend and has completely, think she is huge, huge presence as an actress. And is not often given her flowers, which is a key point to being somebody in a White Lotus show. I think that she is a huge takeaway for a lot of people. But I also think that as a Parker Posey character, I wish that she had done a little bit ah less of a broad accent personally.
01:26:37
Speaker
um She is acting in the show as sort of a proxy to a presence that is missed in the season. Yes. Which is Tanya, who obviously died at the end of season two. Victoria kind of takes on the role as a pill dependent Southern Belle matriarch. But that particular comedy I found to be a little bit less engaging personally. i mean, it's interesting because you're right. She definitely replaced Jennifer Coolidge's like presence in the show because as you said, her character passed away in season two.
01:27:04
Speaker
But I think that Parker Posey, I personally thought that she did such a great job at doing what she did because she is such a standout presence. especially compared to a lot of other characters on the show that dominate the screen. I mean, Jason Isaacs is an insanely seasoned actor and Parker Posey matches him at every turn. Same thing with Walton Goggins.
01:27:26
Speaker
Same thing as Carrie Coon, who we know from her Steppenwolf days. You know, so we know I never saw her on Steppenwolf stage. That before my time. I did. i saw her do bug. She was amazing in that play.
01:27:39
Speaker
You know, great actress, amazing Chicago legend, and really glad she's getting her dues in the mainstream as well. What Mike White does this really well, he makes really dominant characters and even the most quiet characters can be really dominant.
01:27:54
Speaker
There's a lot of like great stuff with Sam Nivola's character in this show. And Amy Lou Wood does the same thing as her character Chelsea, you know, she's a quiet presence, but she's a dominant force. So much so that her performance got nominated for an Emmy. Like White Lotus, it's really important to say, has been dominating the Emmy space alongside the bear and the studio.
01:28:15
Speaker
I'm pretty sure like half the actor nominations are just White Lotus people. So credit where credit is due that Mike White is really able to give them a platform for their acting. But at the same time, it's also worth mentioning that even though a character like Victoria Ratliff can be over the top, she's over the top with intention. At least that's my personal take.
01:28:37
Speaker
Let's ah talk the three kids. So there's Piper, there's Lachlan, and there's Saxon.
Structural and Thematic Critiques
01:28:43
Speaker
Saxon is the true product of corruption played by Patrick Schwarzenegger with a famous father. You at home can probably guess who his father is. Arnie. So Saxon is the eldest son with a quote unquote weird vibe to him.
01:29:01
Speaker
He, oh I would say, has the most threatening aura from the jump. He is kind of weird and weirdly sexual with Lachlan, who is played by Sam Nivola, who is the youngest son, 19 years old, looks up to both of his siblings equally and deeply. Nivola and all of these three characters are kind of up and coming Sarah Catherine Hook got her break in the seventh Conjuring movie, had major starring roles on Cruel Intentions on Amazon and Netflix's first kill from 2022. And Nivola, he debuted in Noah Baumbach's White Noise and also appeared in Oscar contender Maestro. Well done to him. And Schwarzenegger was actually up for Superman, the new Superman movie. he And he was in Gen V, the spinoff to the boys, where he played a Superman type character. He got his flowers there. Shout out Gen V, ah second season coming along. Yeah, coming along soon. Maybe replacing the boys in the zeitgeist.
01:30:00
Speaker
We are moving into, let's talk about the ah later half of the Ratliff family drama, wherein I think some of the biggest structural problems of the show come into place. So we have Piper, who she wants to be a mindful person. She wants to escape her family. She is largely a parallel to a character that we saw in season one of White Lotus.
01:30:27
Speaker
Oh. Yeah, i feel like there's a lot of that happening. There's a lot of like weird parallels with season one and season three. Like, because even I was going to say this, like Shane Patton, the character of Shane Patton, played by Jake Lacey in season one, the entitled guy. He's very similar to Saxon's character, who's also like this really toxic, masculine human being. And the other half of him is the character played by Alexander Daddario, who very closely mirrors Piper. Yeah, exactly. So that's my issue.
01:30:57
Speaker
Like, that's the other side of that coin with Mike White's work. I feel like that isn't necessarily intentional. I don't think he's trying to echo like previous seasons. I think that that is his limitation where he just goes back archetypes that we've already seen because he can't spread them out anymore. I think like he's sort of reached a certain limit to what he can do in terms of like character dynamics.
01:31:20
Speaker
And of course, to be kind, because he is a terrific writer and to give credit where credit is due, he does differentiate. I mean, like Saxon goes on a different sort of journey and so does Piper. But at the same time, the trope remains the same and it carries over the entire season and you feel it and you're just kind of like,
01:31:38
Speaker
Okay, I've already seen this. What do I do? Well, and I think that a trope can be well done, but it's about execution. Yeah, that is ultimately the nature of trope. Trope can be fun, but we need to be able to execute on it properly. And I think largely in White Lotus season three, you are getting interesting characters and I think noteworthy characters. But when looked at from the conceit of trope, I think the trope ends up flattening them more than effectively giving them a transcendental spiritual identity.
01:32:06
Speaker
And I think that is definitely the case with Piper. You really do see in the show, there is a huge drive to move towards depth in storytelling.
01:32:16
Speaker
Mike White actually cut a lot of material and it really shows in the second half. I think that the show is very unevenly paced this particular season, which is a darn shame because I do think that a better edited version of this show would transcend season two for me personally. i think that the characters themselves are really great characters, and I think that I wish I could have seen these characters in a show that serviced them just slightly better. I think that Piper particularly gets shunted. She actually, in the last episode, what was the last episode of the show, she hooks up with
01:32:52
Speaker
A younger character that we see very little of, but who plays a much larger role in the cut version of the show, which is Zion, who is the son of Belinda. So Zion, he is played by Nicholas DuVernay, who appeared in assisted living on BET and Bel Air on Peacock. And Zion comes in midway through, we actually see him in the opening structure of the show, which is actually really interesting and a break from that formula, which is that we open with a character connected to someone we already know, which is Belinda's son searching for his mother.
01:33:25
Speaker
This creates a familiar yet unfamiliar dynamic, which I think if we kept leaning into that throughout the course of the show, that would have given this new emotional stakes. I agree. I agree.
01:33:40
Speaker
so the fact that we wait until the very last moments of the show to see that final blood bath which we all know is coming and which by the point we actually get there actually feels a little underwhelming because of all of the stuff that's been built up particularly in the ratlift world You end up seeing not the character that you think is going to die, die, but instead a character who has been set up as sort of the emotional core of the season or one of the emotional cores of the season end up going away. And the Timothy Ratliff character, instead of creating this absolutely menacing bloodbath of convocation, I agree.
01:34:24
Speaker
wouldn't have been an easy watch but i think it would have done something brave in a way that i think that the show ends up simplifying oh and because it doesn't take those risks and a lot of the risks that it does take are left on the cutting room floor The Zion and Piper dynamic being cut from the show is something that I think is a mistake because that was a really brave choice. I think the character of Frank in the middle half is a really brave choice.
01:34:49
Speaker
I think Mook and her beloved, which is Guy Toc, I think those characters and the way that Guy Toc ends up having his soul corrupted on the show, that is a brave choice, although a little more telegraphed. These are aspects that I think show a version of the show that is really dynamic and actually digs deeper, which is hard to do when you've already had two great versions of the show. Now, this is not to say that White Lotus is not operating on most of its cylinders well, but I think we're getting to a point where this car is starting to hit its 200k mile run and it's starting to break down a little bit. I feel like that's ah sort of become the emerging theme of this podcast episode. I feel like we're talking about the limitations of creatives when they're sort of reckoning with a project like this or any type of project really.
01:35:38
Speaker
In Four Seasons, it was very much like, okay, let's talk about all sorts of themes having to do with being middle aged in a relationship. And here it talks about tourists like in Thailand and of course like death and this idea of spirituality.
01:35:53
Speaker
But it also talks about, you know, like we haven't even touched on this yet. What happens with middle-aged women or just any sort of female friend group on like a trip. or being like in an older, younger relationship. And I'm not saying that White Lotus hasn't done sort of these thematic explorations before and they haven't done them well. They have. i just think that this time around, the micro themes have not been very well connected to the macro themes.
01:36:21
Speaker
Right. There's sort of been like this disconnect or not enough deep exploration. And again, a lot of that has to do with sort of this what I feel is a betrayal to the original like shows pitch, which is like we're going to show you how the natives of said country don't even get to experience what their country gets to offer.
01:36:41
Speaker
because it's reserved to foreigners. Taking it even a step further, I agree with you that there were a lot of really cool ideas that were presented, especially in the first half. And I feel like what this show did, specifically this season, what it did really well,
01:36:56
Speaker
all the way back to the inciting incident. I mean, we also started this episode talking about how an inciting incident is really important because it sort of pushes the narrative, it pushes our interest in the inciting incident in White Lotus season three, as you said, was really, really impactful.
01:37:12
Speaker
We were already connected to the show and it immediately grabbed our our attention by providing us something familiar yet not familiar and sort of the execution failed because a lot of the shows failings this time around is that it presented a lot of interesting ideas, but it had very poor execution and almost nonsensical execution. Like we rushed a lot of things because there was so much going on as well that you couldn't keep up with everything either. You had to leave something on the cutting room floor.
01:37:44
Speaker
I think this time around, a lot of the characters weren't actually interconnected with each other. A lot of them went on their own way. Walton Goggins' character went to Bangkok and Amy Ulu Wood's character went on like a yacht.
01:37:58
Speaker
The family went on their own excursion. Half of them went to like a monastery. The other ones went on the yacht as well. The three ladies that, again, we haven't even talked about because this is a humongous season. Because they're siloed. Yeah. Michelle Monaghan, Jacqueline, Kate, and Lori, Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon, and Leslie Bibb, a trio of girls who on their own are a fantastic White Lotus trio, have very little connection to the broader scope of things. In many ways, the show has these characters that more or less just bisect. You have these characters who do actually interact meaningfully with Thai culture, which is important to say. Yes, they are largely around these Eastern European guys, but at least they're in a space that Guy Talk and Mook are also exploring, which effectively gives all of those characters a version of the White Lotus that I do think interesting.
01:38:54
Speaker
Exactly what you're describing. So here's an interesting thing. You are talking about something where most times on a show we would call that underdeveloped. And in this case, I would say is overdeveloped. We've kind of overdone a lot of the things in this show that otherwise would have been important. The things that are so seminal to Mike White's writing, which is this line by line story.
01:39:17
Speaker
version of TV, which is, I think he does so well with character drama and TV-ness of White Lotus, becomes, i think, more and more, it falls into the trap of prestige, which is diving into larger and larger themes and scope.
01:39:35
Speaker
it's become part of the mainstream and it's falling under its own weight because of that. And I'm really glad you brought up the fact that the three ladies, Leslie Bibb, Carrie Coon and Michelle Monaghan, going on an adventure that I described, which is real Thailand to me, it's real Thailand, because the show did provide that it did provide like what I see Thailand as which is you know, like tourists coming to Thailand and experiencing a very Thai experience.
01:40:01
Speaker
song kran which is the water festival i really was happy that i got featured it's such a unique experience it's the water festival people go crazy meaning like they take water guns out to the streets and shoot you with water and they throw flour on you so it sticks all over you because of the water it's like such a cool awesome holiday that is very unique to thailand and it's a very summer touristic thing as well because tourists are just really attracted to that and also seeing Muay Thai, which is Thai kickboxing, also a very specifically Thai thing. That's what I appreciated.
01:40:37
Speaker
And it was shown and it was given respect, but it was 10% of the show. That was my issue, that it was 10% of the show and it should have been 50.
01:40:48
Speaker
And a way it could have been 50 is by putting more focus on the actual Thai characters. and not using Thailand through the lens of tourists, but using Thailand from the lens of people who actually grew up there who were born there.
01:41:03
Speaker
And I feel like that's what they did with Italy and with Hawaii, because even though they did show it from a touristic experience as well from touristic lens, they balanced it quite well with how people who actually have lived there their entire lives see it as well.
Meta-Narrative and Production Dynamics
01:41:18
Speaker
Before we go, i want to talk a little bit about some of the other broader context. You were already mentioning a little bit about sort of the meta around the show, which is inevitable when we go into criticism. But I think that the meta of the show is kind of part of the show, especially because it is now, as you said, mainstream, which is that now we're getting all of these think pieces about White Lotus not falling under its own weight, but sort of things within the foundation start to shake up a little bit.
01:41:44
Speaker
Which is just like if you were part of a rock band, right? The rock band might start to have tensions within them. You know, maybe one or another is having relationships within or outside the band that affect the band in some ways. You saw this in the 60s and 70s fairly often.
01:42:01
Speaker
And now, of course, in modern prestige TV, the history repeats in some ways. So the on-set tensions, I first want to label Jason Isaacs as someone who very clearly has a big mouth and short fuse for BS.
01:42:17
Speaker
He is someone who went to the press and mentioned that there was many situations on set during these six months with just as much drama off-screen as on Yeah, but he also has a publicist.
01:42:30
Speaker
Him and Parker Posey, obviously, were in very close proximity. i understand that she has sometimes her particularities. Isaac's has decades-long career. It's entirely possible that he has his particularities.
01:42:42
Speaker
Mike White certainly has his particularities, as does Cristobal Tapia Devere, who is the composer to this show. Oh, yeah. That was a bigger drama. That is a piece of drama that is very clearly charted.
01:42:56
Speaker
Tapia de Vir created the music to all three seasons of White Lotus. The first thing that really broke was obviously the debut episode. People were really upset about the new theme song because the theme song does not have that riff. Yeah, the famous riff.
01:43:13
Speaker
I can demonstrate if we need to, but I think we all know what we mean by that. The missing riff, which is a huge part of the show. And right before the finale, Tapia de Vier did two things. First of all, he leaked the original track, which included the missing riff that we all knew and love, directly incorporated into the existing theme song that Mike White had put on the show, granted cut down significantly.
01:43:37
Speaker
His partnership with Mike White then was publicly severed, to which Mike White went on a talk show to talk about this drama. So the creative conflict had been brewing since the beginning of their collaboration. Mike White constantly felt disrespected. He said he felt like a chimp rather than the show's creator, and he always, Tapia Devere, had a contemptuous smirk on his face during meetings.
01:44:04
Speaker
Quite the thing. Tapia Devere then ah revealed to press that he was not returning for season four. It is, i believe, public knowledge that he leaked this to press prior to resigning directly to Mike White. And they clearly had a lot of fights.
01:44:22
Speaker
So on Howard Stern, White mentioned that he didn't take notes very well. He called out the composer for not being a team player and wanting to do it his way or whatever. He wants people to think, this is Mike White, that people think that he's edgy and dark. And I don't know, I watch reality TV. So that's what White thought about the situation. He was very clearly interested in leaning into the drama in some ways. I mean, Mike White was on Survivor. He knows how to make the most out of a dramatic situation. And I think in many ways that probably did go... Good press for the show.
01:44:56
Speaker
I think he was able to manage that in a way that was both honest to himself. I mean, he certainly spoke his mind, but it also seems like that was a way to juice the show a little bit. It's too bad that Tapia DeVere is leaving the show. I do think that he is a fantastic composer. I'm very excited to see what he does outside of the White Lotus universe. And in many ways, i'm actually glad he's moving on. But I do wish it wasn't such a, as the show often is, bloodbath of slinging poop at the wall. Absolutely. So we obviously talked a little bit about the pay structure. It is noteworthy that every actor on the show only gets paid scale. We talked a little bit about the cut content, but I do want to note that there were a lot of dream sequences that are tied directly to what you mentioned, drug-fueled hallucinations that he was having early on. And ah formally, the fact that each episode of White Lotus initially was 90 minutes.
01:45:47
Speaker
or most of them were at least 90 minutes, and that he cut all of them down to one hour. So that showcases that Mike White is, i think, thinking more and more broadly about this show and has more and more ideas related to the show, which is great. I want more White Lotus in my life.
01:46:03
Speaker
I will keep watching more White Lotus as it continues to air. This season is, i would say, absolutely not bad. But in relation to the other two seasons, it is a shame that we are starting to see this level of fracturing going on. It's absolutely not a lost cause by any means, but I do hope that he learns a lesson in terms of Whatever drama was happening on the side, but also knowing what his limitations are moving forward and leaning into those limitations and going deeper into the execution that he is so capable of. So let's talk about some takeaways. What do we feel like is the next step for the White Lotus?
01:46:44
Speaker
From your perspective, do you do you agree? Do you feel like what he needs to do is lean further into what he is unaware of? Or do you think he needs to educate himself? I don't know if educate is the right word. I think he just, in my opinion, he needs to do one of two things.
01:47:00
Speaker
Either go back to the original pitch of the show, which was to balance foreigners and natives of a country and showing their respective lenses in a balanced and dramatic way. That feels very truthful to the culture and experience presented both the privileged into the disenfranchised or if you're going to do what this show sort of did, which is really focused on the more privileged end of things, which had a sort of this imbalance, I would do something crazier, meaning i would want the next season to be in like a ice hotel in Sweden, but go in that direction where it's like ultra privileged, ultra crazy in terms of like location.
01:47:39
Speaker
and explore that explore like how it's not necessarily the people living there that are being taken advantage of, but the environment itself, because you know, that environment gets heavily he used so much by tourists in Iceland and Sweden, and in Greenland, those are the most fertile and most beautiful like locations in the world, and they're constantly getting abused. So if you're not interested in focusing on people anymore, then go and focus on the environment more and how that's abused.
01:48:08
Speaker
Doesn't make two cents. I agree. I think that a new environment and maybe even someplace cold would definitely be great.
Future Directions and Listener Engagement
01:48:15
Speaker
A ski resort. Why not? I think that moving away from the expansion of scope could be a huge benefit. Obviously, we have a huge list of characters that we can operate with now. And I think focusing more on the character and less on the world around the character could be a major propping up.
01:48:35
Speaker
of what the show can be. Now, it would be a shame to lose the core tension of the show as a whole, which is the way in which these characters interact with their world. But maybe we can do more with less.
01:48:48
Speaker
You know, it is smart to understand what makes the show great. And I think that the people are going to follow. i think Mike White has ah really great thing on his hands wherein people are willing to give him space to make something that speaks to him and his beliefs and his identity. And I think that season three still absolutely showcases that to a T. I mean, it's very clearly the show that he wanted to make. But I also think it's very clear that when you are writing a script, and this is something that's constant in Hollywood right now, you're talking about the mainstream, this is a Marvel problem across the board, which is that they are creating huge swaths of material rather than walking in with a finished script that they're willing to just put on the screen. Know what the beginning and the end of each episode is and what that looks like from a individualized perspective each episode if not standing completely on its own standing on its own as a full work because when I watched this season my major problem was getting midway through the season I was looking at the clock and I was like when are things gonna start heating up because in the first season by episode five or six you were starting to see tensions start to rise and get really high
01:50:08
Speaker
And there were certainly things in this show that had that tension by that point. to The introduction of Gary, the introduction of incest, the introduction of Timothy Ratliff wanting to kill himself and ultimately trying to kill his children, which was a crazy turn of events and was a really dramatic turn of events. But by the end of the season, and we aren't getting this crazy drama. We're actually getting something that is much more simple and maybe sweet in some ways because you get to see Rick kind of come to terms with his own hubris. He ultimately decides to go after the man he believes killed his father and ends up killing his girlfriend. But I also think that that would have landed stronger if he liked his girlfriend more and if he went on more of an emotional journey, which I think in the case of the fancies, the three women, that was a space where I felt like these characters did develop. And while they ended in a place that was actually pretty subtle, that space was really, really well-trodden. And it makes for, I think, good TV.
01:51:14
Speaker
It shows that Mike White has what it takes to make a great season of TV. In fact, I wouldn't even say that this is a show I wouldn't want to rewatch. But I do think that it is a worrisome thing when you see a show that is in the mainstream falling into all of these pitfalls that we have seen before. Yep.
01:51:31
Speaker
But I mean, we've seen that as well with other shows of prestige. Like the bear. I think the bear is operating in a very similar way. I mean, it's still heavily, heavily acclaimed, but so is White Lotus. And I feel like that's sort of what happens when a show truly becomes part of the zeitgeist, part of the mainstream.
01:51:47
Speaker
It loses what it made it so special because and becomes as standard as Coca-Cola, which has positives and unfortunately negatives. But that is what we talk about. And that is where we go. We are always in the zeitgeist. And that's our show. Thank you so much for listening.
01:52:05
Speaker
If you enjoyed yourself today, you can review us on Apple podcast or Spotify or share this episode on socials through the platform of your choice. If you took issue with today's episode, that's where you can take to social. Feel free to ping us on Instagram at zeitgeist pulp.
01:52:18
Speaker
Most importantly, thank you all so much who have been listening on mix cloud and enjoying the music mix that I work so hard on for every single episode. Thank you so much to our associate producer today, Jolin Reyes-McKinley. She was working on the sidelines on a previous episode as well, but shout out to her.
01:52:35
Speaker
I'm Jordan Conrad. And I am Neville Boz. And we are signing off. Thank you so much for listening. We will be back on October 12th. We are going to be doing an anticipated episode. We've been planning for many months. The Modern Vampire featuring Nosferatu streaming on Peacock and Sinners.
01:52:52
Speaker
streaming on HBO Max. See you all then. Stay curious. And if you can't be curious, be critical.
01:53:25
Speaker
you