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.)
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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!
