Dear Mr. White,
I’m writing to you as a loyal but increasingly twitchy fan of your hit HBO series, The White Lotus. First, let me congratulate you on creating a show where beautiful people look miserable in beautiful places.
Sunday nights are now when I often feel best about myself.
However, as much of a fan I am of pretty things, I would never sit and watch Benjamin Moore’s Cinnamon Slate (2113-40), a “delicate mix of heathered plum and velvety brown,” dry on a wall in real time. So why, my friend, can’t I look away?
For future viewers, I’m formally requesting an edit—that the 73 shots of Timothy Ratliff popping pills be reduced to fewer than 37. I’m not sure if it’s the way he dry-swallows or if my narrow esophagus is just jealous, but either way—enough.
Same goes for the gratuitous shots of The Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen temple in Bangkok. Sure, the gold Buddha looms large and is impressive, but so is my credit card debt, and I don’t film it from six angles.
Let the record show that your glacial pace of rising action has forced me to lose the will to fold my laundry. I’m not sure if this happened while waiting for Rick Hatchett to finally confront Jim about his childhood trauma or if it was Gaitok taking six days to figure out the Russians robbed the hotel.
On Monday morning, my coworker asked what I did this weekend, and I embarrassedly told the truth: “I yelled at the TV, waiting for something to happen on White Lotus. ANYTHING!”
I used to be someone who hiked and read books. Now, I just think of ways to tell my wife that the monkeys aren’t to blame while I pretend she and her friends are not like the middle-aged Mean Girls talking smack as soon as someone leaves the room.
But I keep returning, thinking, “surely, something will happen in the next scene.”
In conclusion, I remain a loyal viewer—loyal in the way one is to a houseplant that refuses to grow but still somehow inspires hope. I just ask that next season, you consider flirting with the radical idea of pacing.
Five episodes, maybe?
One big thing per hour?
I beg you to speed things up. If not for me and my dirty laundry, then for my job security, my increasingly worried therapist, and so we can finally learn who got shot before the planet becomes a gas giant.
Sincerely,
A Viewer Who Could Have Learned to Speak Thai in the Time it Took for Anything to Develop
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