Tuesday, 17 February 2026
White Lotus, Seasons 1–3 (2021–2025, created by Mike White)
Around this time last year, I was suddenly inundated with ads and strangers' recommendations and think pieces about this show White Lotus I’d never heard of. I certainly took my sweet time getting around to it, and slightly-less-sweet time getting through (the first season of) it. Eventually I was able to piece together what the show is about and why it’s so popular.
White Lotus is a drama comedy anthology show with a star-studded cast that satirizes the lives of the wealthy in separate but interconnected seasons, all taking place at a different resort in the same chain. Each season boasts four sets of characters in similar and often overlapping forms—married couple, intergenerational family, close friends with hidden tensions, and the staff at the hotel or of the guests. These sets of characters interact to a minimal extent (often with the exception of the staff) but their stories align with a set of similar themes. There’s an almost literary quality to their arcs, with these monumental changes or stagnations in character development that feel reminiscent of a vaguely short story-style “revelation” or “undoing” more than anything. But these arcs are the driving force of the story, otherwise quite mild in plot.
The mood is particularly interesting, especially when compared to the visuals and how they develop over the three seasons that have been released. It always begins with this vague impression of a place, a luxurious resort in a beautiful location, and an introduction at the tail end of their travels as they arrive on a boat. But then the tide settles—removing these characters from their lives, suspending them in time, away from the rest of the world even as it clearly moves on outside them. They are, narratively as well as atmospherically, on vacation. This is complemented by flat or tousled hair, mismatched outfits by bad packers, cuts to shots of trees, statues, and animals, a stunning instrumental soundtrack. But these same elements can be used to disorient: recontextualizing beautiful statues as something foreboding, pushing the percussion to make the music tense in mundane moments, making characters appear disheveled and distracted. Stranger still is that this disorientation never quite leads to proper tension, despite the framing knowledge that something deadly will occur during the course of these people’s vacation. The seasons differ in whether they ramp up tension throughout or stick with a more consistent tone and conflict, but they always end in a slightly underwhelming culmination of the main stories, reaffirming that indeed this is just a blip in these characters’ lives, except for the ones who die.
My enjoyment of the show was heavily dependent on the season, its conflicts, and its characters. The second season was the strongest, and the first the most difficult for me to get through by a wide margin. There are plenty of commonalities between the seasons in their structure, general ideas, and recurring character types and traits, but they are distinct as the style develops, season-specific themes are varied, and different dynamics and actors reveal new angles in similar stories. It works as a satire without sacrificing compelling characters (For reference, this is the weakest part of the first season). I’ve spoken before about caricatures of wealthy people or public figures that may be cutting in a political cartoon but are insufferably boring to watch television about. It’s not just that this show doesn’t do that, but that it actively allows for complex and interesting characters within that satirical intention and portrays a spectrum of change for them in their main conflicts of the season.
This show is really doing something different with its vacation and destination setting, dynamic characters yet critical eye, and thoughtfully crafted narratives. I characterized the character arcs as literary earlier, and strangely enough that’s also how I would characterize the show as a whole. I’m not necessarily interested in seeing these traits or this distinctive style replicated elsewhere, but it has a clear and compelling perspective—and technical ability to achieve that perspective—that I have to give it major kudos for.
Wednesday, 18 February 2026
The 'Burbs (2026, created by Celeste Hughey)
The ‘Burbs is a television adaptation of a 1980s cult classic comedy horror film that I’ve never seen. The television adaptation presents a version of the suburbs that is full of strange figures and stranger secrets. New parents and newlyweds Samara (Keke Palmer) and Rob (Jack Whitehall) move to the house where Rob grew up. Distracted by an infant and nosy neighbors (Julia Duffy, Paula Pell, Mark Proksch, Kapil Talwalkar), Samara becomes convinced there is some sort of conspiracy about the Victorian across the street and its new owner (Justin Kirk), while Rob seems to be hiding something about the girl who died there decades ago.
The tone of the show is relatively consistent in its comedy-thriller feel, if a bit unsteady at times as it attempts to balance the dark secrets of the town and its inhabitants with the jokes. Mainly this means that there is a poorly timed joke in the midst of more serious scenes, though it truly wasn’t that egregious. The jokes falling flat was more of a consistent problem throughout, and poor timing was just one reason; others included lapses in character voice and a refusal to really push various premises as far as they could go. The show was definitely cheesy, although it also had its charm at other moments.
There is a major shift in the season that changed my opinion of the show overall. I was enjoying it well enough as a cheesy comedy with an actor I enjoy, but suddenly it stopped being about this group of oddballs and unlikely friends and was then following the set of childhood friends with a dark past. This made the two halves of the season feel disjointed, reducing the significance of the first half and making the setting of the suburbs and all its flaws and virtues suddenly feel insignificant. When it comes to the tone-balancing issues as the stakes ramp up, I just found myself wanting for that initial oddball cast instead.
At the end of the day, this show wasn’t horrible, I just wasn’t entertained by it. Towards the end, it began to lose my attention as the pacing became hard to follow. The cliffhanger ending for the whole season felt like that of a single episode, making it feel unresolved by a single thirty-minute synopsis rather than bait for another season. It was a fine binge watch, but there was a lot of unrealized potential.
Thursday, 19 February 2026
Iron Lung (2026, dir. Mark Fischbach / Markiplier)
Imagine please, if you have not yet had the chance to watch this film, the length of a submarine from the rear, a narrow interior with sweat gathering on pipes along its sides, dark and lit by the same yellow light as appears on the stairs to either side of you, strips of light meant to guide you safely in the dark down the incline of a movie theater. It’s a cool experience. Claustrophobic, which I like, but quickly bringing in dynamic angles despite the limited set we remain in for most of the film.
This is a movie that has, due to the nature of its creation, gotten a lot of attention online. I was fortunate to avoid most of that discussion before I saw it, so I managed to go in with a fresh perspective save for a basic synopsis and the knowledge that the audio mixing is lackluster (Indeed this is true, and I’d recommend watching it with captions if you’re able). If you have, like me, escaped the discussions on this film, then you’ll want to know it’s about a man (Mark Fischbach / Markiplier) who has been convicted of a deadly crime and who is sent in a submarine into a sea of blood on a faraway planet to retrieve some unknown item. What occurs after this is a cycle of broken promises as the man in the submarine attempts to gather photographs and physical items from the bottom of this sea in aims of freedom from this submarine. As he explores the depths further and further, the horrific, cosmic nature of the creatures in this sea of blood is revealed.
As mentioned, the vast majority of this film occurs within the submarine, a choice I quite like and demonstrates an impressive variety in the cinematography despite the limited setting. I go back and forth over whether the claustrophobia of the film would be increased with fewer angles, but I like them so I’ll abandon that potential. What is a bit more surprising is the abundance of other characters. Simon is the only one we really see, but there are a series of voices encountered in different ways that allow the story to really move along. The nature of this method of interaction as inspired by a video game is actually charming, but it also means the plot is prioritized over Simon’s character, a choice that makes this movie what it is and is part of the reason it does not quite reach its full potential. Because we aren’t getting to explore the world, Simon’s life, or his perspective, it can be difficult for the audience to orient themselves if they are not familiar with the source material. So much focus is placed on the mechanics, a choice which does not work in film as it does in a game.
This pretty quickly begins to affect the pacing of the movie. We’re inundated with quicks of the ship and its functions, but none that amount to much. There are moments and scenes that never came to fruition, and more I’m sure I forgot. At one point, something unrelated triggered a memory of an earlier moment and I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t recall if it was resolved. Furthermore, I assumed there was more moments like this, but I couldn’t ruminate on this for long because there was so much other stuff to remember. And despite all this, I couldn’t accurately grasp the lore or the characters’ complexities, assuming either were present. The pacing issues were most egregious in the climaxes, of which there were three. Three distinct times in this film, I thought it was coming to the end, and I was only correct one of the times. When the first one came around, I was thinking about how we were about two hours into the movie—but we probably had another hour to go.
My overall impression of the film was that it’s amateur. Which is it. That is why I will attempt to word my next two paragraphs constructively, with the caveat that I am writing to my own audience. If I were to critique this film, I would emphasize two things. The first, that it needs to slow down and simplify. We need time to sit with some of this information and moments. Despite the fact that I felt every minute of the runtime, I was constantly overwhelmed, not bored. There were only a few times when my mind was able to slow down. With such a limited setting and cast, these overwhelming moments could be used sparingly to create more of an effect. That amateur feeling comes in part from this sense that everything is packed in there to keep an audience interested and communicate everything. But it served instead to be overwhelming and muddled. Simplifying the scope of the story and slowing down the pacing gives time for ideas to develop more fully.
The second thing I’d emphasize is a variety of emotion in the characters. I think some of this is the performances and direction, and some of it the writing and sound mixing, but there was so much yelling in this film. A more varied approach to these characters would allow them to be more distinct from each other and bring in an emotional resonance that was not present. The immediate jump to anger—to frustration and fear displayed in shouting, only sometimes intelligible with everything going on—betrays a lack of understanding of how these characters’ minds work, their backstories, and their personalities. If their complexity (generally something good to aim for, especially with this film’s central concept) is not communicated in their words and actions, then it should be in their performances.
I am aware that these notes imply a certain distinction from the movie that is in many ways contrary to what it presents. And in most cases I’m at least slightly more self-conscious about doing that. But for this particular film, I think this is less an instance of disliking the movie the director intended it to be and more being unable to parse what that is. Part of this comes from it being an adaptation—and not just that but an adaptation of a video game, a medium entrenched in its own composition, which I say with appreciation—but most of it comes from an unfocused application of elements to developing the central ideas. The bones of an interesting story are here—a statement I make in part because I love submarines and isolated environments—and while I don’t think this is it, I believe Fischbach can develop those skills to demonstrate a distinctive perspective and voice in his filmmaking. He certainly has the ability and passion to make such a small budget work, and the goodwill of his fanbase to continue testing new ideas and methods.
Sunday, 22 February 2026
The Four Seasons, Season 1 (2025, created by Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, & Tracey Wigfield)
There is a particularly bothersome response that crops up for certain shows and films, that rejects any sort of criticism right out of the gate, and that overlooks legitimate responses people have to the thing, no matter how well-intentioned they are. I see this more often with particular types of stories, the common denominator of which is that they inspire a feeling of relatability in certain viewers. But because they rely on relatability in order to say what they want to say, it makes anyone with an issue with the (in this case) show, easily countered by the simple declaration that they did not understand it.
I struggle with whether or not I think this show is partially to blame for this response, or if it’s just the emotional charge of the subject matter. The Four Seasons, after all, is about three couples who are old friends and who are dealing with related struggles of decades-long relationships and growing older in a young world. After one friend, Nick (Steve Carell) leaves his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver) and winds up dating the much younger Ginny (Erika Henningsen), their tradition of group vacations are forever changed. Meanwhile, the other two couples, Kate (Tina Fey) and Jack (Will Forte), and Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani), deal with marital struggles of their own.
The show is a well-structured eight episodes, spending two episodes each on a different vacation over the span of a year. They’re pretty quick thirty minute installments, with enough interpersonal intrigue to keep you watching. While it’s categorized and presented as a dramedy, it prioritizes the drama over the comedy, made more prominent when only some of the jokes land and many are, like the rest of the show, reliant on a relatable sort of humor. To get a bit into the behind-the-scenes, I was shocked to hear about the plans for a second season, as the show works as a self-contained miniseries. It ends at a satisfying point and wraps up the season’s conflicts in a way that feels complete and satisfying. I’m not sure I will watch it, but it gives me a new perspective on the show I’m not quite sure what to do with.
In general, the drama is on the stronger side, although there are some stylistic choices and Netflix-original-typical pitfalls that undercut it at times. While the couples’ issues are distinct from each other, they are related around common themes and work for the characters’ lives. There’s this frustrating yet interesting device where seemingly big moments happen offscreen, with the audience learning about them as the couples debrief with each other, often as they get ready for bed. It definitely communicates the relationships between these characters and allows the audience to get a particular feeling of long-term marriage, but it also serves to deemphasize a lot of the drama of the show. This is sort of whatever on its own, but it’s combined with this Netflix need to restate what just happened as a visual or subtle comment, explicitly and aloud. This is vastly more frustrating and, frankly, insulting to the audience. It’s by no means unique to this show, but it’s so poorly hidden here.
But I started this review talking about the annoying rejection of any criticism, which if you haven’t guessed by now, is people complaining that if you don’t like the show (or even if you just had mild criticisms of it, like me), you simply don’t understand marriage. Perhaps I could’ve overlooked seeing this online if someone wasn’t in my ear telling me this every time I had a comment on the show while watching it. Because it’s really not fair to judge the show on this seemingly frequent response, or my semi-negative viewing experience. But at the same time, I think there is a reason this comes up, which is that the show relies on that relatability too frequently. It mainly appears in the resolutions to conflicts coming as defenses of the marriages between the characters, rather than any kind of character change. This is most prevalent in Danny and Claude’s relationship, one of the best in the show as their dynamic is engaging and unique, why they work together and also why conflict arises between them. But (major spoiler, fyi) much of their conflict disappears when Danny must defend his husband against a rude comment made by Kate—despite the fact he has treated Claude in a similar way to how Kate characterizes their relationship. This acts as the turning point for both couples, and it very nearly works. Except the big shifts in Danny and Claude’s dynamic happens offscreen. It’s not that these beats don’t make sense (far from it), but that the show demands we simply imagine what happened during them, rather than getting to ever see them. They’re not plot holes, because I was never confused about what happened or unable to fill in the blanks, but they serve to uphold this idea of marriage, without ever exploring what that means for the characters.
With all this in mind, the show is just fine. It strikes a nice balance between intrigue and shying away from drama and conflict to have a mild tone throughout, but relies too heavily on relatability to work for me. That said, Anne’s fashion sense after her divorce was genuinely stunning. These artsy, organic looks, with bold colors and gorgeous silhouettes, have not left my mind since watching the show. I have little else to say about the costuming outside this, but genuinely her character is such an inspiration for my own wardrobe.