The White Lotus and the American Zeitgeist

No TV show has seemed to catch our national malaise as well as HBO’s The White Lotus. Set in a five-star resort in Hawaii, catering to families and honeymooners who don’t have to sweat the steep bills, the White Lotus is a seeming paradise. But it’s soon revealed as a hellhole of class, sexual, racial and generational bitterness and conflict. The ability of the shows’s creator, Mike White, to extract twisted entertainment from this is a testament to his talent, and that of the stellar cast. There are very few characters who emerge in a good light — Quinn, the teenage boy disaffected from his materialistic family and increasingly drawn into the world of indigenous outriggers, is a favorite of mine. But a poisonous miasma hangs over the entire White Lotus gallery of humanity. Is this America at the end of its reign? It sure feels that way. Or maybe it’s watching the explosive climax of the six-episode series as Kabul falls to the Taliban.