Television creator Mike White is no stranger to using the format to contemplate the complexities and dualities of humanity under capitalism. His last HBO vehicle, Enlightened, tackled the subject in 2011, following its lead Laura Dern as she has a corporate-infused nervous breakdown, rehabilitates herself in Hawaii, and comes back to confront all of the nefarious ways big business made her sick — only to be confronted back by its unwillingness to bend.
While Enlightened was a critical success, a pre-Trump viewing world didn't necessarily crave wealth satire like we do today. In 2011 we could give a nod to the accuracy, and maybe even the relevance or necessity of poking fun at the cogs of corporate America, but it didn't feel essential. Today though, we are in the second year of a fluctuating global pandemic that has laughed in our faces at our inability to work as a global community. We are staring down the barrel of a pre-apocalyptic climate report. We are painfully clear that capitalism does not work for the planet, nor humanity. We are in a collective existential crisis that has primed us perfectly for HBO's The White Lotus. (And perhaps it is all the more dark that a show is the salve to what needs to be systemic societal change).
