WHITE LOTUS 206 has so much we can talk about. Wow wow wow.
For today, let's talk about Point of View. There's such a big POV shift in the Ethan and Harper and Cameron and Daphne story. In the first 5 episodes, we get to see the world through each of their points of view, but the central character is clearly Harper. She's the one whose fears and neuroses are on full display from the start, and she's the one driving the conflict. (You could definitely say Cameron and Daphne are drivers, too, especially Cameron. But really do they ever seem like subjects of their own? No; they're antagonists in the Ethan and Harper story, much as Quentin is in Tanya's.) (Oh God, poor Tanya.)
With the Cameron and Ethan party, we begin to a shift. We start to see the world through Ethan's eyes as well as Harper's. She's calling him and he doesn't answer. Meanwhile he's curled up in his bathroom while Cameron is having sex with two prostitutes.
But even so, Harper is still the one driving the story, doubting Ethan, and then in this episode asking the really hard questions. But with that—and specifically the moment in which Harper goes with Cameron to get drinks—the balance radically shifts to Ethan, and his growing fear that Harper cheated on him with Cameron. It goes so deep into his head, in fact, that we even see him imagining Harper and Cameron having sex when Ethan comes to the door. (In a sense that moment parallels Harper's wild fantasy/experience of all the men stalking her.)
We haven't lost Harper's point of view entirely; Mike White regularly cuts away to her considering Ethan as he grows more and more paranoid, but the focus is really on Ethan and the fact that he doesn't know what happened. And neither do we, a position that makes us identify with him all the more (even as he is clearly losing his shit and not at all recognizing this is the position he has just put Harper in).
I'm not sure when the last time was that I saw a show do anything like this. But I think it illuminates how we can play with an omniscient point of view, as you often use with an ensemble show. Withhold something significant that someone has done in an omniscient show and we can generate a lot of audience interest and surprise, precisely because we've taught them to expect they'll be told everything.
And yet doing so doesn't feel like it breaks the rules of the show, I think because White doesn't fully shut Harper's POV out, and because the hypothetical of her with Cameron has been set up multiple times (even if it seems mostly preposterous). (Cameron is so awful.)
Your mileage may vary on all this, but for me the real takeaway is to consider the POV of my piece and consider what sorts of expectations that seems to build in viewers. The more I understand what I'm teaching them, the more I can later fuck with them.
TOMORROW: I really want to go on to 207 but there's so much here! So I'm going to spend one more day on 206, and then do the finale. (And then I may go back and do a few more odds and ends on the series. There's so much here!)
