The White Lotus Needs to Stop Checking In

“The White Lotus” has become the entertainment equivalent of ordering a $27 cocktail because the glass is interesting. Season 3 still has immaculate locations, poisonous rich people, and enough ominous flute music to make a spa menu feel threatening. But the show’s once-nasty little bite has been replaced by a polite nibble. Everyone is miserable, nobody is surprising, and the murder mystery feels less like suspense than a decorative throw pillow.

Mike White is still capable of landing a great line, and Walton Goggins remains the human version of a haunted antique shop. But the show now spends so much time arranging its vacationers into symbolic little dioramas that I can see the writers moving the pieces. It’s not bad television. That’s the problem. It’s prestige television with the dangerous edges sanded off.

Benny’s Picks

“The Studio” — Apple TV+
The funniest show about show business since “30 Rock” understands that Hollywood executives are not evil masterminds; they’re panicked toddlers with access to private jets. Seth Rogen is perfectly cast as a movie boss who wants to make art while behaving like a man trapped inside a group text he started himself. Watch the first episode, “The Promotion,” and then try explaining to anyone why you’re laughing at a person having a professional breakdown.

“Hacks” — Max
Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder remain one of television’s great double acts: one weaponized by decades of fame, the other weaponized by unresolved feelings. The jokes are sharp, but the real pleasure is watching two difficult women slowly become less unbearable to each other. That is what character development should feel like: not a redemption arc, but two raccoons agreeing to share a dumpster.

“The Rehearsal” — Max
If you missed Nathan Fielder’s bizarre masterpiece, start with “The Fielder Method” and prepare to question whether reality television has ever been real. It is funny, creepy, tender, and so elaborately constructed that you may briefly suspect Fielder has rehearsed this paragraph. He probably has.

“The Pitt” — Max
Skip the glossy hospital soap opera and watch this instead. It’s tense, fast, and deeply uninterested in letting doctors deliver inspirational speeches while the patient waits politely. The show understands that a hospital shift is mostly logistics, exhaustion, and someone asking for a blanket at precisely the worst possible moment.

Skip It: “The White Lotus” fan theories
Stop trying to identify the body and start asking whether you’re enjoying the trip. If your favorite part of a television season is a Reddit spreadsheet explaining who might be dead, the show has successfully turned itself into homework.

Sleeper Pick: “Somebody Somewhere” — Max
Quiet, funny, and devastating in the way a voicemail from an old friend can be devastating. It has no resort murders, no billionaires, and almost no plot machinery—just people trying to remain lovable while making terrible choices. Frankly, it’s the vacation I want.