White Lotus

White Lotus Finale

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

OK, I have now watched the Season 3 White Lotus finale and am ready to discuss! (I managed to avoid all spoilers yesterday—except for one: I knew there were going to be multiple deaths, thanks to a headline in the NYT.)

In my opinion, it was a very good ending with one truly excellent scene. When the three childhood friends (three women over forty) finally share deeply and openly, Carrie Coons’ monologue brought me to tears:

I’ve been most intrigued by this trio the entire season. Although we’re nothing like these three (other than being white and over 40), my two high school besties and I go on vacation together about once every ten years (usually for a milestone birthday). We live in different cities and usually meet up in a fourth city that we all want to see. We did Chicago when we turned 40, New Orleans when we turned 50, and were planning to go to Montreal for our 60th.

Even though we’re not in each other’s lives on a super regular basis, I get a deep feeling of love and fulfillment whenever I am with them. Our lives have taken different paths, but we started in the exact same place at the exact same time. It’s like Laurie (Carrie Coons) said:

“But I had this epiphany today: I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning, because time gives it meaning. We started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together. And I look at you guys and it feels meaningful and I can’t explain it, but even when we’re just sitting around the pool talking about whatever and name shit, it still feels very fucking deep. I am glad you have a beautiful face and I’m glad that you have a beautiful life. I am just happy to be at the table.”

When you have friends you’ve known since junior high—nearly 50 years for me—there’s a bit of God in that. Women know this.

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White Lotus Avoidance Day

~ MaryG ~ 1 Comment

My husband and I are major consumers of “prestige TV.” We get all the channels and watch all the shows. (Severance, Succession, Hacks, The Last of Us, The Bear, Handmaids Tale, etc.) We watch together and we talk about the shows. TV is our thing.

Sometimes a show is too violent for me, so I relinquish it to my husband to watch while I’m at choir or doing something else. (For example, I bailed on The Sopranos fairly early on and I never watched Breaking Bad.) I always have a few shows I’m watching on my own, because I stay up later than him. Currently, I’m watching Marie Antoinette on PBS Passport on my own. Downton Abbey is another example of a show that my husband didn’t watch with me, though he fully embraced The Gilded Age, so it’s not that he won’t watch period pieces. (We’re big fans of Wolf Hall.)

We plan our TV watching out in advance. Sometimes, a very important show—like last night’s White Lotus season 3 finale—needs to be watched live (rather than on demand) in order to avoid spoilers, which will undoubtedly be everywhere today!

We fully intended to watch the White Lotus season finale live last night, but then my husband got tired and wanted to save it. Obviously I wouldn’t watch it without him, so now I will spend the entire day trying not to read anything about it, which basically will require staying offline altogether.

So, as the stock market crashes (I’m assuming another Black Monday is underway) and people are distracting themselves by discussing whatever happened on White Lotus last night, I will try to finish reading my library book today.

Ironically, the book is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (author of Normal People) and I could totally see it getting made into a Hulu series (like Normal People did) that I would end up watching on my own because my husband doesn’t like shows that are too “relationshipy.”

Comments closed due to abject fear of White Lotus spoilers.

Related: Consider the Source

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