You're listening ad-free on Amazon Music.

I want to tell you my secret now.

I see death.

Silent drain is people.

No.

I am the father.

Oh, gosh.

What's in the box?

You blew it up.

Damn you all.

Hell.

Hello and welcome to another Slate spoiler special podcast.

I'm Dana Stevens, the movie critic at Slate. And today I am joined by Isaac Butler, who's the co-host of Slate's working podcast, as Slate contributor, and also the author of the upcoming book, The Method, How the 20th Century Learn to Act, that's coming out next year in February, and by Rachel Syme, who is a staff writer at The New Yorker and has written something lovely on Jennifer Coolidge and The White Lotus. I'm sure that we'll get to that and to her take on that character and to this whole show. I'm really happy to be talking to you all here. I've already covered the White Lotus in a different Slate podcast, the Slate Culture Gab Fest, where we argued about it, and I was the one on the panel who liked it the most. And now I get to talk and maybe argue about it again with both of you. I can't wait.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Dana. Yeah, thank you. So I guess maybe I'll start as I often do with the spoiler special. Since this is not a review, this really is about, you know, getting into the fine details of the story, I just want to know overall how you both responded to this piece of television and, you know, whether you've been going around passionately advocating for it or rewatching it or just letting it recede into memory or what. I'll start with you, Isaac. What did you think of The White Lotus?

Yeah, I really liked it. I particularly enjoyed, you know, the performances and the music, which I'm sure we'll get into later.

And, you know, the way the whole thing was put together.

And, you know, certainly have enjoyed talking about it with people over the weeks as it's happened.

I would say that part of my enjoyment of it is a little bit divorced from its actual content in that like it was a television show with complicated characters whose problems were not easily resolved and long scenes with beginnings and middles and ends and like subtext and stuff and that that's not how a lot of TV feels like it's operating right now. And so I just felt very

grateful to be able to have some of that again. But then I also enjoyed the story itself.

I have a lot to say about that. But first, I'm going to jump over to Rachel and just get your

general response to the show. Okay. So my general take on this show is that I really like it.

And I am a passionate advocate for the work of Mike White in general. I think he's written some of my favorite movies in television. Obviously, Enlightened is a show that I think was gone too soon from HBO and is brilliant and amazing, and so I'm always excited to see what he does next. Obviously,

...