TV Review: Dark, Unsatisfying, and Lazy, But There's Always Next Time...

In the Hollywood Reporter's recent oral history, Mike White bristled at the thought of The White Lotus lapsing into a formula.

- Stuart Heritage

In the Hollywood Reporter's recent oral history, Mike White bristled at the thought of The White Lotus lapsing into a formula. For most of its third season, this didn't make a lot of sense. After all, in its depiction of the obliviously wealthy, its whodunnit structure and its now-mandatory transgressive sex scenes, a lot of this year's season felt like The White Lotus by numbers.

The finale went a little way to change things up, though. In the first two seasons, the long-promised deaths were both whoops-a-daisy accidents—in one, someone walked into the blade of a knife; in the other Jennifer Coolidge fell off a boat—but this season ended in good old-fashioned murder. After last week assaulting the man he thought killed his father, Rick (Walton Goggins) was tracked by him back to the hotel. In retaliation, Rick shot him. Rick's girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), was caught in the crossfire of the ensuing shootout, and then Rick was shot by hotel security.

Where The White Lotus was once led by farce, it now found itself being led by grim violence. It was at least in keeping with the episodes that preceded it. This year's