THE LAST OF US FINDS SOMETHING NEW

Episode 103 of THE LAST OF US aired last night. And it's a very interesting episode to watch for the ways that it deviates from the expected. 

First, it's an hour and 15 minutes long, basically as long as an HBO season finale might run and almost as long as the series premiere. 

Second, it has nothing to do with the main characters. Instead, it's the story of a survivalist named Bill who basically takes over an entire abandoned town after the military supposedly takes its people to a safe zone (but actually kills them). Years after he is firmly ensconced, a man named Frank stumbles into one of his many traps. And the two fall in love. The episode is their almost 20 year love story, which ends shortly before Joel and Ellie arrive. 

And it's a pretty extraordinary love story. There are plenty of gay romances to be found on television these days, but they almost never have the kind of vulnerability and patience that you see here. Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman are perfect in their roles, and the writing is exquisitely understated.  

There's a third thing that makes 103 stand out: it sets up more rules for the series. Usually by 103 a series is fully up and running—we've been taught what to expect, what a show is and isn't. But by giving us this standalone vignette, creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin are telling us this show is not just going to be plot driven. In a sense it's not even just Joel and Ellie's show. It's the story of how love thrives (or dies) in this world, how people have tried to protect what they love.

I don't know about anyone else, but for me the fact that the show has this bigger vision makes it immediately so much more interesting and exciting. As popular and great as the source material is, there is that question, Does the world need ANOTHER zombie show? And with 103, Mazin & Druckmann show us this maybe isn't that at all. 

For anyone out there who might be writing something that is in a familiar genre, it's worth asking, How is my take fresh? What's the thematic thing I'm bringing to the material that is significantly different? What is my story about, not in terms of plot but in terms of our own struggle to be human?

TREASON DUMBS DOWN ITS CHARACTERS

I love a great British spy show, and just after Christmas Netflix released TREASON, a five part British spy thriller starring Charlie Cox (Daredevil) as the acting head of MI6 after his boss gets poisoned by what seem to be Russians. 

There's a lot of twists and countertwists and of course you don't know who you can trust. But watching the first couple episodes I was particularly struck by a repeated move writer Matt Charman makes. It's not a great one, unfortunately, but it is pretty common in suspense stories: Dumbing Your Characters Down. 

Here's what I'm talking about. We've got our hero Adam Lawrence who is made the head of MI6 because his boss is poisoned and near death. With that event Lawrence gains complete authority. He is the new head of MI6, with all the power that comes with it. 

And that's really important, because Adam soon learns that a Russian agent who he worked with and had an affair with abroad has in fact been working behind the scenes to set up each of the successful missions that got him to where he is today, including now poisoning his boss. So without ever knowing it, he's been set up as a double agent, and she is now going to use him to get information she wants. 

The problem is, from that moment forward in the first two episodes, Adam goes from one erratic act to another, ditching his detail repeatedly, providing key information from her to his men that they knew nothing about. And no one raises an eyebrow. Apparently we're supposed to say, Well, he's the boss, but especially in light of the attack on his boss, it's impossible to understand people not asking questions about what's going on here. And no one does. They've been written dumber than they must be. 

The same thing happens with Adam's wife Maddy. When he takes on this new job she is right there for him, 100% supportive and encouraging. But then within 20 or 30 minutes she is upset that he's working so much and then doubting what he's telling her to such a degree that she's willing to tell her friend the CIA operative in town and to use her recording equipment to try and record him when he's on the phone. Which all seems like the opposite of how she should be, given how she is introduced. 

When this kind of stuff happens, it's for a pretty simple reason: the writer feels stuck. They think the story needs to go one way, but don't see an authentic way to get there. They basically cheat to get to the hand they want, in this case Adam free both to act to save his daughter (who gets kidnapped) and also able to be constantly tempted by the Russian agent, and Maddy drawn into his story in a big way. (She ends up becoming a sort of operative for the CIA, even planting a tracker on him, all of which is insane.) 

There's really two lessons here. First, Respect the Rules of Storytelling.  If you establish someone "gets" their partner's life and challenges, then it should have to take an awful lot to change their mind. You have to earn that change of heart. And that's not just about information that is revealed; it's about time spent on letting that information eat away at the character. Turns on a dime just make a character look crazy. 

Second, Write Your Characters to the Top of Your Intelligence. The smarter you allow your characters to be, the harder you make things for your protagonist, and the most satisfying the story is. When you cheat and let a character or organization go dumb, you don't just distract the audience, which is suddenly checked out of the story and questioning the writing/directing; you undermine the hero's journey. Their successes feel less earned, and suddenly we're not on the hero's side in the same way that we were. 

It's sort of like having a little kid's older brother come and play on the grade school football team with them. That grade schooler may be great, but all we're noticing is how the presence of his older brother is preventing the grade schooler from experiencing any real challenge. His greatness is immaterial now; he's being babied. 

 

THE LAST OF US DOES THE TWO STEP

 

The end of the LAST OF US pilot again returns to the two scenes I wrote about yesterday, which I won't mention again here other than to say that the ending is a clear response to that second one, a way of showing us how much of the old Joel is still in there, still desperate to *mumble mumble watch the pilot mumble mumble.* And there's a sense there at the end that he's invested. 

The way that the ending plays out, and echoes the opening, has a certainly literary flair, but it also runs the risk of seeming a bit too pat. It's a bit convenient, really, that he'd be faced with the same situation. I love a bookend, but the danger is always that you call attention to yourself and the work in such a way that pulls the audience out of the story. You want the audience to cheer because you're that fucking good, not because you just wrote a scene in which you take a bow, basically. 

But then, at the start of 102, we get Joel actually NOT all in, in fact not in at all. Like, he wants to murder the girl, and has to be talked out of it. Which feels a lot more right. 

Now, from a writing standpoint the way you justify that contradiction is that at the end of the pilot he's operating on instinct. Honestly, I'm not a fan of that kind of justification; they fall into the broader category of "(s)hey crazy" justifications that writers often use basically to get what they want. (See: Almost every major plot point in OZARK.**) But given that we spent 40 minutes at the start of the pilot building that justification, it's not like Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann didn't do their best to pave that runway.

** I loved a lot about OZARK. Some incredible performances there. But the number of times the plot turned on someone completely losing their shit or the introduction of someone new who was clearly crazy was A LOT.

But the bigger thing that struck me is how the move to have Joel now refusing to help Ellie is enabled by the weekly episodic structure of THE LAST OF US. It's not uncommon for a series to end the pilot in a way that suggests a definitive direction for the main character(s), and then have that determination fall apart right away in the second episode. It can seem like a bit of a cheat, and it is a little bit like the old serials where it looks like the hero is falling into the mouth of the shark and then in the next week's film he gets caught by the heroine swinging by on a vine. 

And there are definitely shows that get lost in this one beat. Like, you're in episode 4 or 5 and once again we're back to "I'm not doing this shit!" And it feels repetitive and also undermines our care in the character. It's true, nobody likes a whiner. 

But if there's one point where you can almost definitely get away with it (i.e. the audience will cut you some slack), it's the top of the second episode. The way I think about it is, the end of the pilot is the promise of the show. This is what this show is going to be: Joel protecting Ellie. 

But promise doesn't mean it's what every episode is going to show; it means where the show will eventually get to. So yeah, you can backtrack in the top of 102 with a good reason (and Joel and Tess definitely have one). That's a pretty classic Two Step, actually. But then that's the problem that the episode has to solve. 

There can still be more room for development in that issue, too. Again, it's the promise. But you have to be careful not to get repetitive. Having played the game, I should know where 103 and 104 are headed, but I can't remember exactly how they pan out.  From a storytelling standpoint, what I'd like to see happen is that, faced with another opportunity to bail, Joel makes the decision of his own to see things through, and not because he's forced to. There could be reasons for doing that which have nothing to do with Ellie. But we definitely don't want a repeat of the feet dragging, or deciding yes under intense duress. Because they've now played that card two episodes in a row.

THE LAST OF US MAKES THE TIME JUMP PERSONAL

THE LAST OF US, the new zombie-ish video game spinoff series from HBO (and game creator Neil Druckmann and CHERNOBYL creator Craig Mazin), debuted last week, to great acclaim (and apparently great audience numbers). 

And early on in the pilot Mazin & Druckmann made a really nice choice that I think is worth highlighting. 

The series begins basically on Day Zero of a fungus-based plague transmitted through bites that drives victims insane. And we're with Sarah and her dad Joel and her uncle Tommy as they try to navigate what very quickly escalates from just another day to a total horrow show in their small Texas town. 

And—and this is a VERY VERY BIG SPOILER, so if you haven't watched the show or played the game and ever plan to, DO NOT READ THIS YET. 

In fact I'm so invested in not ruining this for you I'm actually going to add some space here so there's hopefully no chance your eye will have accidentally seen what I'm about to write. Let's take it from star Pedro Pascal's other show, THE MANDALORIAN (which weirdly has some very strong similarities with this show). 

Seriously, if you're not through the pilot yet, DO NOT SCROLL PAST GROGU. 

Okay, I warned you...

Seriously now, I warned you...

SO, at the end of that Day One sequence, which Joel and Tommy spend fighting like Hell so as to get Sarah away from the sudden mobs of insanity, a cop stumbles upon Joel with Sarah. And, afraid that they might be infected, despite all of Joel's begging, he shoots them, killing Sarah. 

I KNOW, right? It's quite a moment. 

Then the show jumps ahead 20 years, like a lot of post-apocalyptic world stories do. They've given us the backstory we need on our main character, now let's get into the main story proper. 

 It's here that they make a really small but really meaningful choice: they make the change in the world super super personal to Joel. That is to say, when we cut to today, they don't just show us how everything is overgrown, cars and highways are a mess, Boston is walled off—sort of your typical stuff. 

They give a girl who wanders to the wall from the outside and collapses. And she gets brought in and scanned for infection by a police officer, in a brilliantly written and performed scene. (That character, whose name is "Kind FEDRA Officer," is played by Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah.) It seems like everything's fine; that's what the cop tells her. 

Then we cut to Joel, in his new life basically burning bodies—and one of the people he's working with sees what's in the back of one of the trucks and can't handle it and asks him to do it. And he looks and we see that it's the masked body of the girl, who has been killed because she was in fact infected. 

And without any reaction, Joel picks the girl's body and throws it in the fire. 

You could have had Joel burning bodies without the story of the girl and we'd have had a sense of how much the world has changed and he has. But you add that girl and it's SO MUCH more personal. 20 years in he's so fucking shut down he doesn't even see the parallel to his own life. 

And having someone else see the body first and be unable to do it underlines that all the more. 

And then, to really cap it all off, they just move on. Which once again makes it super clear how this world is and how Joel is in it.

For me, the takeaway is, If I'm doing a first act/pilot time jump (and it doesn't matter if this is scifi, romcom or drama), how do I make my details of the "new universe" not only specific to it, but personal to the character?

WHITE LOTUS DOES BATTLE IN DIALOGUE, PART 2

I want to look at one more dialogue sequence from WHITE LOTUS; it's a scene I've already written about before in terms of the unexpected catharsis it provides. In 206, Harper wakes up to find Ethan mad that she still doesn't believe him and then they end up talking about their relationship. 

The thing I had noted before is how exhilarating it is to watch Harper, who has for most of the series been the one insisting they're fine, they're the "good ones," now in a place where she's willing to be real and acknowledge the challenges in their relationship. 

But it's also a great sequence in terms of the battle that happens. It begins in a very clear way: I feel like you don't believe me. It's not fair. BAM, right away he sets out his goal/want, what he's aiming for—stop disbelieving me, which is really another way of saying, stop making me feel uncomfortable. 

The way the sequence opens is such a great example of how to do dialogue. You don't need a lot of banter beforehand. A character can just name their desire or position, and off we go. When in doubt, don't dick around. Just get into it.

(Along these lines, an editing idea: Once you've got the basic plot and scenes the way you want them, go back and look at the beginning and the end of every scene. How long does it take to get to the thing the scene is about (i.e. for at least one character to name their desire)? 

And at the end, how long do you go on after one side wins? At least in my scripts, this is often one of the major problems. I just love the banter. If you can merciless in cutting a lot of that stuff away, it can often really energize your script.)   

So, Ethan has made his desire known: he wants Harper to reassure him that everything's fine. It's a totally unreasonable desire, given the fact that a) he spent the night with two hookers, and b) he pretty much lied about it, too. But that in some ways makes it even better as his desire, because it puts the conflict right out there. 

It takes a minute to get to Harper's own desire in the scene. At first she's just willing to mollify him, but  he doesn't believe her. (Again, so unreasonable and therefore so great. This scene reveals SO MUCH about Ethan.)

But then he insists, they've always been honest with each other, and we get her position: "No, we haven't." In other words, I don't want to bullshit, I want to be real with you. 

And what follows is just so great. She doesn't attack him, but her questions about the truth of their relationship absolutely do refuse to give him the reassurance he wants. And he goes from trying to keep the conversation about whether he cheated, which suddenly is a MUCH safer conversation to have—to speechlessness, as she names what she fears: "Maybe something has died. We are too young to be this old. I’m sure you don’t want that part of your life to be over do you. I don’t." 

Mike White, Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe do a masterful job of making those lines play not like a monologue, but a continuation of the battle. Harper waits a beat after each sentence to give him a chance to speak, and White cuts back to Ethan, giving that dialogical sense. But Ethan has nothing until she's done, when he tries another route to disarm this suddenly very real conversation: I'm just exhausted. We can work on this. In other words, please stop freaking me out, like I asked you to.  

And the conclusion is pretty much the purest, most distilled form of everything that's come before. Harper wonders, "Do you even want me?" For her, this is the heart of the matter. And his response is a the purest form of dodge: "I love you." 

She's so wonderfully disgusted with that answer: "So depressing," she says. She's trying to be real, and not only won't he go there, he's trying to shut the whole thing down by appealing to some marriage fantasy. 

We get one last beat: he questions how him loving her could be depressing—one more time, trying to push her to see things his way, aka to help him feel better. And she relents. "No. I love you too." Then she changes the subject to something more normal for them: Is he going to go running? She could care less, obviously; but she's legitimately trying to signal to him, everything's fine. He doesn't have to be worried or uncomfortable any more. In other words, in a very authentic way she's trying to give him what he wanted. 

But he doesn't go running. He tells her he doesn't know what he wants to do. And as she walks off he just sits there, running his hand through his hair, unsatisfied with his win. 

There's just nothing better than giving someone what they want—in his case, a conversation that leads to her telling him everything is fine—and it being a disaster.  

There's also something wonderful about a fight that isn't two people completely disagreeing. Shouting matches are exhausting. Harper definitely wants a real conversation, but she's also coming from a place of love, unlike Ethan, who is basically a child who stubbed his toe and wants mommy to make him feel better. 

++

And that ends what unexpectedly became a month long riff on WHITE LOTUS. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it. 

Come back next week for... THE LAST OF US...TREASON...and other stuff!

WHITE LOTUS DOES BATTLE IN DIALOGUE

Most scenes, even pleasant ones, have a conflict at their center, built around the characters' wants. Simple Scene: I walk into a supermarket, see they have bananas on sale and go for them. So does someone else. Maybe we debate it; maybe we have a physical altercation. Maybe we do something else entirely, even something benign, like talk about the weather. There can be a million strategies we each use to get what we want. But eventually one of us is going to get those bananas. One of us is going to win and one is going to lose. 

I love looking at dialogue scenes in this way, thinking about what is the want that each character has going into a scene, and then how do they battle it out. 

And there's a couple great examples of how writer Mike White does this. Today I want to talk about episode 205; tomorrow, I'm going to end all this writing about WHITE LOTUS with my very favorite scene of the entire series (so far).

So: there's a moment in 105 where Bert and Dominic have dinner by themselves. Dominic is concerned because Albie is now dating Lucia, who Dominic had originally hired as a sex worker for the week. 

The scene begins with each of them blaming the other for where things are at. Bert says Dominic modeled this behavior. Dominic says Bert actually did the same with him, and it fucked him and his mother up. Bert insists, We had a good marriage.

There are the two wants: Dominic wants Bert to see he was a terrible father and husband, and responsible for Dominic's woes. Bert wants to believe he and his wife were happy. The conflict is clear, the battle lines, drawn. 

And it's a battle of myths. Each of these men has fabricated a fiction in which they are not to be to judged for their behavior. In Dominic's he is the victimized little boy. In Bert's he's the husband of the year.  (He actually thinks of himself as thoughtful for not having rubbed his wife's nose in his affairs.)

The thing I love about the scene is how equally paired they are. Dominic's strategy is to get more and more personal in trying to get his father to face what he's done. He starts from the fact his mother knew Bert was cheating, and then goes deeper and deeper into the consequences of that knowledge—how Bert's choices made her life hell, how she died bitter, and finally how it has wrecked his own life. 

You'd think that Bert reducing his wife to a bitter woman at her death would be the last shot fired, the worst thing that Bert did. And objectively that seems accurate. But instead Dominic positions his own suffering last, as though it were the worst thing Bert did. 

(And if that sounds like a ridiculous assertion for Dominic to make, yeah, it is. White uses this battle scene to also reveal just how deluded and narcissistic Dominic is. It's always great when you can get a scene to serve multiple purposes at the same time.)

Bert's strategy is also one of increasing intimacy. He starts with his general thesis: "We had a great marriage." Then, hearing his wife knew everything, he asks, "So why did she stay?", using his wife's actions to suggest her feelings. His next comment goes further, asserting straight up, "She loved me." 

And when Dominic turns the conversation to his own experiences as a result of his father, Bert also makes the move to a personal, first person sharing: "I loved her. And she loved me."

Their last back and forth is really interesting: Dominic says, "It's not that simple." And based on what we know now, he is clearly correct. Bert was a serial adulterer and his wife suffered as a result. 

But then Bert responds: "Yes, it is." Another simple, declaratory sentence, put just as authentically and calmly as Dominic. And Bert's right, sometimes it is as simple as that they loved each other, no matter what else happened in their marriage.

So in the end we're left with a tie. They're both right (and both ridiculously deluded). 

From a storytelling point of view that creates tension for us; we enter into a scene expecting to be a winner. What the hell is this? It's a great moment of fucking with our expectations.

And in doing so, that lack of resolution becomes a way of highlighting what's really important here: not the battle, but the fact that these two men are absolutely the same. How can there be a winner when two men are making literally the same arguments? I knew her better, she felt how I said, my myth is correct.  

And in that sort of uncomfortable space of inertia, we're given a glimpse of the endless hall of mirrors that is their relationship. These men are forever trapped in this dance, because they each refuse to see beyond their myths.

In the finale we get that moment where the two of them and Albie all check out a passing woman. And one interpretation of that moment is, Albie is going to become just as awful to women as they are. But I actually think what he shares with them is more that sense of mythologizing. With Lucia's prompting he imagined himself as her savior, even after it's so clear that that is probably not true. And in a sense he was doing that with Portia, too, and his grandfather. Underneath his mild-mannered demeanor he really is Superman. 

Which is another delusion (and inertia) entirely.

WHITE LOTUS SETS US UP

As I was working on yesterday's post I was rewatching the characters arriving to Sicily in 201. And it made me appreciate all the more how well thought out Mike White had this story. 

Of all the characters who get off the boat, the only one that has any trouble is Tanya. She loses her balance as she's stepping onto the pier. 

It's such a small detail; but it absolutely alludes to what's going to get her in the end. 

AND, as though to seal the deal, after she gets off the boat, Valentina and she talk about her husband, who is already here. And Tanya makes the comment that she's been texting and he hasn't been answering. 

Again, small details, but information that matches up perfectly with where Tanya's story goes. 

It's a great reminder that after I've got my ending, it's a great idea to circle back and see if I've got some elements in the opening that seem innocuous, but are actually going to get paid off at the end. It can be tiny, tiny stuff—a momentary wobble on a pier. And if I don't have them there already, is there room for some? 

++

There's another payoff of sorts like this, too: in 202 we learn that Ethan's pattern is to go running and then jerk off to porn. And when we get to 207, where do we find Ethan: in bed, basically creating a porno of Harper and Cameron in his head. But now instead of getting off he's trapped. The moment reads as obsession, and parallels with a similar fantasy Harper had in an earlier episode when she thought Ethan had been cheating.

But then the thing that Daphne teaches him —and "teaches him"—is that secrets and fantasies like this are what make a relationship work. They create the passion and eros. And with that in mind, Ethan goes back to Harper, and basically inserts himself in his own porno with her. Mike White even cuts from them getting down to the volcano erupting. 

*chefs kiss* 

WHITE LOTUS DRAWS A GREAT CONTRAST

Last time I noted how the repeated structure of the episodes—we start in bed, then with breakfast, etc. etc.—becomes a means of showing how characters are changing over the course of the season. Ethan starts with a very clear structure to how he starts his day; by the finale he's completely lost it, and he's lying in bed, obsessing over the possibility that Harper and Cameron had sex.

But that repetition of action—watching them all wake up, for instance—also becomes a way of establishing contrasts (and sometimes similarities) among characters. So often in those opening sequences, we'll cut from one character or couple to another character or couple they're paired with. So in 105 we go from Albie having sex with Lucia—and her treating him a little bit like a child (which fits)—to Portia, the woman he was initially paired with, who is in bed with a sleeping naked Jack, the sex clearly passed. Their relationship is clearly a lot less naive and innocent than Albie is with Lucia. And to underline that, Portia gets the call from Tanya saying they're going to party in Palermo and does Portia have some proper clothes, to which Portia rolls her eyes. Of course she does. She's no dope. 

But there's also a sort of world-worn quality to her moment that we don't see with Albie; at the end she takes the blanket off the bed and Jack is just lying there passed out and naked. And there's not much sexy about it. He even scratches his ass. He is basically the human equivalent of a used condom.

So the two beats speak to each other, highlighting the differences in their journeys and point of view. And at the same time, there's something similar here, too, in the underlying lack of satisfaction. Albie thinks he's happy, but we know he's being played. The moment is not what he thinks it is. And pretty soon we'll discover actually they're both being played. Even as their journeys look different, or opposite, they are actually in another way on the same journey.

In the finale White gives us all of the couples in bed: Ethan and Harper; Cameron and Daphne; Albie and Lucia; Dominic; Tanya; Portia and Jack; and Valentina and Mia. And while they're each different, the thing that stands out is how they're all kind of the same. In each one of these moments, the two people are on different wavelengths, are going in different directions. Ethan is going crazy while Harper is fast asleep, looking the best she has all week; Daphne is doting on her kids while Cameron won't come to the phone, and literally has to force himself to smile before going to her; Dominic is looking at pictures of his family and crying; Tanya is complaining about Portia for not being there; and Portia is discovering her phone is missing and maybe she's in trouble here.

Albie and Lucia seem quite different—they're curled up in bed, very lovey dovey. He tells her he's going to get her the money she needs; she tells him she doesn't want him to go. It would be the opposite of these others, except she's playing him. 

(I love how White gives us this moment and also has Tanya first so very happy about the night she's had—changing up the tone keeps the sequence from feeling repetitive, as does making Cameron and Daphne's moment all about their family, and Portia's much more of the opening of the final act in a horror movie.)

The sequence ends on what is a great punchline. Of all the couples on the show, the one that is actually happy is Valentina and Mia—not any of the guests who actually pay so much to come here and relax, but the repressed lesbian and the somewhat aimless singer. And they really are happy; the scene starts with the maid coming in and Valentina being discovered, which given everything we've seen of her seems like it should lead her back to repressed and aggressive. But no, even if she's scared and vulnerable, she's also happy. It's so totally unexpected that it's the perfect conclusion. 

Shared situations are another way that White does this same work of establishing character and relationship by way of similarity and difference. When each group gets off the boat in 101, they're given champagne and have a bit of interaction with Valentina. In two of the three cases, Valentina says something blunt or inappropriate—that's something they share.  But they each react in different ways. Among the DiGrassos, Albie and Dominic just take the drink; but Bert immediately flirts up the woman who serves them. 

In the party of four, Harper refuses to drink, which makes Ethan so uncomfortable he forces her to hold the glass. And Cameron and Daphne just sort of roll with it—the Harper and Ethan drama doesn't really mean anything to them (and won't). And then Tanya gets a glass and chats with Valentina; meanwhile Portia is completely ignored. 

You want to who your characters are, and also how they relate to each other—watch them do the same thing.

WHITE LOTUS KNOWS HOW TO USE REPETITION

Before I finish with WHITE LOTUS (until Season 3!), this week I want to point out a couple last things that I really enjoyed. 

Today, it's about the openings of episodes. Part of the premise of the show is that we follow the characters  day to day over the course of their whole vacation. So episode one is when they arrive. Episode two is Day Two, etc. 

And each episode also follows the same pattern. We start with the characters waking up (or it being morning, anyway). We watch them have their breakfast. They go off and have a day. They have dinner at night, and maybe more.

That simple choice to structure the episodes in a repeated pattern has a great impact on the story. More specifically, it creates a sort of template for each character that makes any changes in them stand out more clearly. 

Take Ethan. We learn on Day Two how he begins his morning. he takes a run before Harper gets up, comes back when she's gone, and jerks off to porn before he's caught by Harper. 

We don't know if that's how he is every day, but because that's what we're given on that first morning, it's the thing we're going to compare each next day to. And so the next day he does the run, but when he comes back Harper is there, looking sexy, wanting him to want her. And he ignores it. Which underlines an important point: while Ethan desires to have sex after a run, he doesn't desire to have sex with his wife. 

Each next morning is going to start with Ethan in the bedroom. And the scene that ensues is going to be about Harper and sex. In episode 4 he's still in bed when Harper calls, his personal pattern completely out the window by his night with Cameron, Mia and Lucia. (It's the first signal that the wheels are coming off for him.) And the conversation is all about sex without ever saying it; she's worried he slept with someone. He's freaked out that he was with Cameron and the ladies. 

Episode 5 is going to start for Ethan with him discovering the condom that Harper found in the room, and a conversation about whether or not he slept with either of the ladies. In episode 6, Harper wakes up to find Ethan moping because he can't get it out of his head that Harper still doesn't believe him. (Ethan, ugh.)  Which leads to a conversation about what? What to do with the fact that Ethan is no longer sexually attracted to Harper—exactly where episode 1 and 2 told us we were going.

And then at the start of episode 7 we watch him doom-fantasizing about Cameron and Harper having sex, his patterns completely forgotten and his brain pretty much unhinged. 

The show doesn't spotlight the way each Ethan opening scene is set in the bedroom and is about his sexual relationship with his wife. It's more like an Easter egg for us to discover; but I think it also helps Mike White to understand and organize his show. He goes into the writing of each next episode knowing Ethan's first scene has to be in the bedroom, and it has to be about his sex life with Harper. 

A repeated situation gives us something to compare to. It helps focus character arcs, both for the audience and for the writer. 

Here's one more: Valentina. She's not staying at the hotel, so her pattern is totally different. Her first beats are almost always about walking into the hotel lobby at the beginning of the day, and they emphasize two  things: the way she treats her employees, and her connection (or lack thereof) with everyone else. 

Episode 1 sets the pattern: she's standing there with her staff, waiting to greet her guests, and she's unreasonably rough on them. She wants things perfect, and also she apparently doesn't care that it alienates them. Episode 2 we see the same thing as she comes into the lobby: harsh comments, deep investment in being professional, and in the end she's at her desk standing, all alone. That last beat, that's her problem in a nutshell, and the journey Mike White is going to take her on: from severity and loneliness to vulnerability and love. And each day, what is usually her first scene in the lobby is going to key, as her employee Isabella says nice things to her and Valentina ends up falling for her.

It's interesting, though, on day 5, before the lobby she runs into Mia. Really that scene is Mia's; she's the one with the goal—to get to play while Guiseppe is recovering. But Valentina's approach with her is also completely different than what we've seen before. Instead of being abrupt and dismissive, she's softer.  And as she's talking to Mia she puts on lip balm. It's the most feminine thing we've seen her do.

Obviously, that's not about Mia, it's about looking good for Isabella. But the fact that Valentina is willing to show herself getting ready like that is itself a step forward. Actually it's probably the kind of thing she'd yell at her employees for. 

And that moment makes episode 7's opening that much sweeter: first of all, for the first time she's not at her post, or even on her way there. No, she's woken up by the cleaning lady in a hotel room that she has snuck into. She's chucked aside any trace of her professionalism. 

And who is she with? Not Isabella, but Mia, the girl before whom she was willing to be more normal and vulnerable. The girl she told to call her by her name. 

Maybe the most surprising thing of all, after the cleaning lady leaves Valentina doesn't freak out. She's happy. And when she goes to her post, looking pretty much a mess—again, such a change—she remains happy. 

Once again, the pattern of the episodes creates a sort of platform to see the arc of the character. As her behavior (and look) changes in that opening beat, we see her journey progressing. 

I'm going to talk about the repeated structure a little more next time, and then end on a conversation that I really like. 

Until then, ciao!

WHITE LOTUS KNOWS HOW TO MURDER A FINALE

Obviously the biggest storyline of the finale concerns Tanya. There have been a number of hints over the course of the season that Tanya may be in some kind of danger. There was the fortuneteller; being befriended by the mysterious Quentin, who sometimes seems to be intent on getting her high and other times to think of death as a beautiful choice (and also is fucking his nephew Jack); the strange old picture she discovers at Quentin's villa of a man that looks like her husband Greg sitting with him; and the fact that Jack seems to have pretty much kidnapped her assistant Portia (and also told her that his uncle has no money). 

And the finale pays off all of that in tremendous fashion, using so many different great storytelling techniques. Here's some of my favorites. 

THE HEAD FAKE
 

Up until somewhere in the middle of 206, if you were going to be worried about anyone it seemed like the right choice was Tanya. But once Portia starts to be alone with Jack, things get less certain. He is unpredictable, violent, and also keeps refusing to take her home. 

In the early going of 207, while Tanya's story is more weird than anything—what is the deal with that photo, and why do Quentin and his friends seem to keep fucking around with Tanya's head—Portia's has a lot more evident signs of danger. 

• Her phone is missing; Jack clearly took it, but won't admit it. 
• Jack brings her back to bed and puts her arm around her, so she can't get away. 
• Jack keeps refusing to take her home. 

Even after Portia talks to Tanya, and a real possible danger to her is clear, the dangers to Portia remain much more evident and scary. Jack yells at her when she tells him she knows he was fucking Quentin, and then refers to her as a job he has to do. Instead of taking her home he takes her to an abandoned street in the middle of nowhere (which is that much scarier because by this point Tanya finds herself approaching a similar position—the mob guy Niccolo is going to take her back to shore alone, and Tanya is certain he's going to kill her en route).

In the end the threat to Portia is all a way of keeping us guessing about whether Tanya is in real danger. At the same time, using Portia in this way doesn't feel like a cheat (which is a frequent problem with head fakes). Jack's final words to her make it clear, she has been in danger all this time, and remains in danger. So at the end we see her at the airport, looking for sunglasses and a hat to hide herself. 

 

THE RIDICULOUS HERO 

The other thing that keeps us guessing at least until Tanya gets into Niccolo's bag, and maybe even after that, is the fact that Tanya is such a zany character. Other than the moment of truth conversation she has with Portia in 206, she never shows any kind of wisdom or groundedness about life. When we meet her at the start of the season she's hysterical, and once Greg leaves and she's with Quentin she's just blithely trusting and silly.  If there ever was a character who got what was going on wrong, it would be Tanya. 

And here, too, finding out she might be in actual danger does not make her any less hilarious; in fact it makes her moreso. She runs around the boat like a crazy person, drops her phone, tries to get the ship's captain to understand even though he doesn't speak English—and delivers that ridiculously hilarious line from the top. And sitting at table with "the gays" she has this crazed look on her face that is in the hands of the great Jennifer Coolidge remarkably funny. 

When she grabs Niccolo's bag and runs to the bedroom, raise your hand if you thought it was going to have nothing of value in it? Even on rewatching the sequence it still seemed possible. And Mike White does a great job of building the case slowly: first she pulls out rope—and doesn't even notice it; then she has duct tape, which is a bad sign. But then and only then does she get to the gun, which seems to confirm her suspicions.

 It's worth noting, even to the moment of her death there's room left for questioning what's going on: Quentin says nothing in response to her hilarious question of whether Greg was cheating on her—even after what she's gone through, she's still her crazy self.  Then one of his friends leaps off the boat, and the fear on his face is so palpable that it almost makes you wonder about it all. 

We definitely shouldn't, because Jack has already told us Quentin and company are very dangerous. But still, it's all so crazy, we do. 

It's important to remember, the phrase "the ridiculous hero" has two parts to it—there's the silliness, which extends even to her death. But then there's also the heroic. From the moment she thinks she's in danger, Tanya is ACTIVE. And she makes bold decisions. Namely: 

• She tries to find a way off the boat. 
• She tries to call for help. 
• She tries to get the captain to help her. 
• She grabs Niccolo's bag. 
• She pulls the gun and uses it to kill the men threatening her, even as she's weeping in horror and fear the whole time. 
  

That last sequence is maybe the most incredible in the entire series. And what makes it so effective is that it's so far from where we expect to find Tanya, or where she was at the beginning of the season. Rather than complaining or weeping she is fighting for her life, even though she is fucking terrified. And SHE WINS. 

(It's a classic hero's journey: When you take a big risk, you earn a big win.)

And Mike White makes it all seem even scarier by keeping the camera trained on her face, where we can't see what's going on. (We're like C3PO with his head on backwards and being carried around by Chewbacca, but in a horror movie.)

A BUTTON THAT CAPTURES A CHARACTER

Tanya's story could have ended there, and it would have been fucking great. 

But that's not really Tanya, is it?  She might be heroic in a moment but in the end she's still the one who is so self-involved she thinks it's okay to ask Quentin whether Greg is cheating on her as he's dying from the bullet wounds that she inflicted.

And she's so dotty and clueless she doesn't have the common sense to realize she doesn't need to try and jump or climb into the dingy, she can just jump into the ocean and pull herself up into the boat. She doesn't even seem to consider doing that, I'm betting because it would mean ruining her dress or just being a mess, which is all very not Tanya. 

Some might say, ah why not leave her on the hero moment. It's so damn satisfying. But that's not really Tanya. Tanya is the one who has come to completely depend on others to take care of her, and without them, without Portia, she makes hilariously stupid decisions. 

Madame Butterfly killed herself for love; Tanya fell of a boat and hit her head by accident. That's just as much her life in a nutshell as Daphne saying the goal of life is to refuse to be a victim.

A BACKGROUND VIBE

As things really start to kick off for Tanya–Quentin is about to tell her to go with Niccolo—what does Mike White show us? The volcano erupting. No one on the entire island seems at all interested in it, or at least no one on the show. But it's a great visual way of expressing the danger that Tanya is in (and in a fantastically Italian mythology manner). Blood is literally pouring out of a mountain, y'all. Something bad is going to happen.

BCWYWF

In the early episodes Portia kept complaining that what she really wanted was an adventure. Well, she got one. And insofar as she chose Jack over Albie, she got one by her own choice, too. It's a nice payoff moment to have the two of them meet again at the end, each of them having gotten a wish that didn't go the way they wanted, and then exchange numbers. 

It's especially sweet that it's Portia who asks to trade numbers. All the way along it was Albie pursuing her; but here at the end, having experienced what she has, she's desperate for his boring ordinariness. (Can their relationship possibly work? Hard to believe. But you can see her trying her damnedest for quite a while.)

++

I may have a couple last thoughts about WHITE LOTUS next week. Otherwise we're moving on to INSIDE MAN (Netflix four parter with Stanley Tucci and David Tennant) and other good things!

WHITE LOTUS REFUSES TO SKYLER WHITE

WHITE LOTUS 2nd Season Finale: WOW WOW WOW. What an episode.

There's so much to talk about, much of it about Tanya—wow, that story. But as a first run at the episode, I want to concentrate on Daphne. 

If you look at the overall run of the series, Daphne seems like one of the least active characters. Up until the finale what actual choices has she made?  Really just one stands out: she takes Harper to the villa and then sets them up to stay overnight without warning Cameron. That's it. 

The fact is, she has been making other choices, but they're most the choice not to respond directly to Cameron's various misdeeds, not to react. Some would argue she's in denial of those misdeeds. At one point Harper asks her how many times she thinks Cameron has cheated on her, and her answer is one, maybe. 

But I don't know, it never came across that way to me, perhaps because her whole m.o. is to refuse to be a victim. If he's going to be an an ass, let's do girls' night at a villa. He's going to sleep around? Okay, well she can get a side piece, too. 

It's such a delicate balance, writing a character who we know is being lied to. A big writing rule, which I call The Skyler White:  When a character doesn't know as much about their lives as we do, it can lead to us respecting them less. On BREAKING BAD, Skyler WHite should be the most sympathetic character, given what her husband is doing, but instead many disliked her, in no small part because her ignorance of what Walter was doing made her seem dumb and weak. 

 You could argue that Daphne is in denial, but her insistence that she will not be a victim seems to keep her situation from undermining her. Mike White and actress Meghann Fahy turns her character vulnerability into a strength.

It also suggests she knows exactly what is going on, too, that she's not as blind as she may play. 

Approaching the finale, it'd be easy to think there's nothing to tie up with Daphne. She's had no real arc per se. But Ethan's revelation of Cameron's infidelity ends up being the test of her way of proceeding. What will she do in the face of the reality that her husband has been cheating on her—and with the one woman she's made friends with? 

And Fahy delivers that incredible, silent moment of response. It begins with a startled look which is the only time in the entire series that Daphne's I Have It All Together mask falls away. Honestly she's been so implacably Zen about everything the whole time it's a surprise to discover there was so much more there—and that at the heart of it was deep suffering. It's a stunning, heart-rending moment (and another great example of how the suffering of a character wins us over).

But then, still without words, we watch Daphne take on that information and make a choice to be the person she has been saying all along that she is, the one who refuses to be an object of someone else's choices. And we get that beautiful monologue, which begins in a classic Daphne denial place--everyone is just a mystery anyway, blah blah blah—but then turns directly to the question of how we deal with suffering and betrayal. "I think you just do whatever you have to do not to feel like a victim of life, you know? You just use your imagination." It's the essence of who she is as a character, put into a few beautiful words. 

When it's organic to the moment, there's nothing so satisfying as having a character deliver a statement that captures who they are, I think because it feels so revelatory. Their words are sort of like the pay off of an episode or season—unexpected and yet in retrospect inevitable. We find ourselves thinking Oh wow, right, of course that's who they are.  

And then she seduces Ethan. Truly, the whole moment is *chefs kiss*.

SHORT TAKE: STORYTELLING IS ALCHEMY

I don't usually publish twice in one day, but when I was writing the last post I had this thought that wasn't really relevant, and may or may not have a lot to do with the fact that I'm reading Seasonal Fears by Seanan McGuire right now, but I wanted to share: 

Storytelling is an act of alchemy. A great storyteller takes a character of one substance and transforms them into something else. In WHITE LOTUS season two Mike White transforms lumps of INSERT NOXIOUS SUBSTANCE here into precious jewels. 

And the secret ingredient to storytelling alchemy, the philosopher's stone that allows that transformation to occur in a way that feels earned? Suffering. 

(Is my choice of photo meant to suggest Ethan is going to transform through suffering, too? I mean, I hope so? But I'm not holding my breath...)

 

WHITE LOTUS DELIVERS UNEXPECTED CATHARSIS

Hi! Happy New Year! Welcome back! Looking forward to digging into lots of great stories here in the year to come, starting with one more week on WHITE LOTUS, which I spent a couple weeks writing about before the holiday kicked in, along with the destruction of my internet connection—Thanks, Santa! 

One of my favorite things about WHITE LOTUS 206 is the sudden moments of clarity we get: Harper asking Ethan about whether they should even be together; Tanya warning Portia about the state of her life. 

In both cases, we're dealing with characters who have seemed the most self-deluded suddenly speaking real truth. To have them suddenly coming to these moments of clarity is all by itself enormously satisfying. You think of a first episode as setting up problems—Harper insists that everything must be her way (and also that she doesn't have to deal with anything real); Tanya, as different a character as she is, behaves much the same.  

We want to see those problems paid off in some way. And because Mike White sets them both up as so hard on everyone else, he leads us in the direction of thinking that pay off is going to be of the "they get what they deserve" variety. Given how obnoxious they are, we want to see them knocked down. 

And one could say that in both cases that has happened: Harper has been forced to confront the state of her marriage; and Tanya, her life. Part of the reason we're satisfied in those moments is the fact that even if they don't resolve the plot problems of those characters, they do show a change in the character that has been earned through suffering. 

They're also so satisfying precisely because they don't play out as we've been guided to expect. When you're writing a story, the sweet spot for the ending is always something that is unexpected and yet in retrospect absolutely inevitable. An audience delights in that very specific kind of surprise of realizing Oh shit, OF COURSE this thing that just happened had to happen. 

So in Harper's case rather than getting served, that means getting to place of personal vulnerability and risk. In Tanya's it's about thinking of someone other than herself, or just getting out of her head entirely. In both cases, having put their shit on everyone else for so long (in Tanya's case two seasons), the characters finally come clean. 

There's one other thing that's fascinating about these moments: they don't occur in the finale of the season (or even at the end of the episode). Story structure generally demands that we get catharsis at the end. Putting it an episode early is unexpected. It could have been confusing, too.

But here's the thing: in WHITE LOTUS, because we've watched these characters go on a personal journey, one in which they've suffered and eventually learned important things—they are now precious to us. Tanya is horrible at the beginning of this season, and yet at the end of this episode as she's being manipulated into getting completely wasted tell me you're not absolutely terrified for her. 

You (er, I) might think by giving us the resolution of those characters' emotional journeys early, Mike White has made 207 seem unnecessary, like THE RISE OF SKYWALKER after THE LAST JEDI. But instead, that resolution makes 207 that much more high stakes. Will these two be able to leave with what they've learned? Or will the new life that is now possible for them somehow slip through their fingers? And will it come as a result of their own choices (it really should) or another's?

(I'm so worried for Tanya.)