‘The White Lotus’ and the Last Stand of Premium TV

Whatever criticisms people might have of the ‘White Lotus‘ Season 3 finale–and a lot of people have a lot of criticisms–you can’t deny that here was a successful season of episodic TV, full of compelling characters, funny dialogue, and outrageous incidents, told from the singular creative point of view. That’s something that, while not incredibly common, was still common enough during the Golden Age of TV (approximately 2000-2020, give or take a few years). We started taking it for granted, but we should appreciate whatever remains of those narrative skills before they vanish.

As we chronicled on this site earlier today, far and away the most popular movie in the world has children screaming video-game memes at the screen. That’s entertainment, and we shouldn’t discount it. But it’s also as distant from the worldview and storytelling priorities of Mike White and the White Lotus as the White Lotus is from a TV era of, say, Petticoat Junction.

The current TV year has shown us there’s still an audience for weekly serialized dramas, made with skill and creativity. The year’s best TV shows–The White Lotus, The Pitt, Severance, and The Studio–don’t have a lot in common stylistically, thematically, or content-wise. But they do share a showrunner’s narrative touch. It’s no accident that Mike White, Severance’s Ben Stiller, and The Studio’s Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are quintessentially Gen-X cultural figures. They grew up on narrative TV and learned their craft as writers and actors during TV’s golden age of narrative dominance. John Wells, of the Pitt, is actually a young Boomer, not a member of Gen-X, but we won’t hold that against him. His generation created and perfected TV as an art form. We should appreciate it as long as Boomers can get networks to green-light their better ideas.

It’s also hardly a surprise that this month’s most-anticipated TV debuts, Season 7 of Black Mirror and Season 2 of Andor, come from similar cultural roots, although these are British ones. One is a serialized sci-fi show about technology and one is a Star Wars saga. But Charlie Brooker, of Black Mirror, and Tony Gilroy, of Andor, have shown themselves to be masters of the narrative form. Brooker was born in 1971, and Wells was born in 1958. When you hand Star Wars over to Gen-X or Boomers, like Gilroy or Jon Favreau, you get a certain facility with consistent narrative tone. When you go outside that rubric, you either get bad shows by committee, or something worse.

I don’t know what will happen when these guys retire, or when the most successful showrunners of their generation, Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes, run out of ideas or retire to private islands. Certain millennials, like Mindy Kaling and Lena Dunham, have shown they can do it too, which may extend the age of narrative TV another decade or so. But I’m highly uncertain of what’s coming after that. We’d all better get comfortable with shouting video-game memes at computer-generated characters.