More Thoughts on "The White Lotus: Sicily"

SPOILER ALERT:  DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE VIEWED ALL SEVEN EPISODES.

by Eric Blume 

One of the things that separates The White Lotus from many other TV programs, which are usually divided amongst several writers and directors, is that the show has a very, very specific point-of-view.  Even though other great television series (Succession, Severance, etc.) have a unified tone and the individual episodes are kept in harmony by the showrunner, it’s a different thing to have the same person actually writing and directing every episode.  Mike White views the universe and views characters comically.  He sees the world as an outsider does, with an arched eye towards human behavior, and he sees people as funny and full of contradictions.  He also lends to White Lotus a truly gay sensibility, in terms of the way he frames his actors, the way he films male and female bodies, and the way his empathy shifts between characters in a roundelay of surprising reveals, each character granted grace notes, psychology, and humanity... 

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Emmys: Will Returning Shows Dominate Drama & Comedy Categories?

By Christopher James

Can both of last year's Emmy winners prevail in much more competitive conditions?

When it comes to the Emmys, voters tend to stick with what they know. Once a show gets nominated for Outstanding Series, it will forever be on the Emmys radar and a threat to repeat its nomination. Yes, some shows drop off but prevailing wisdom says that, when filling out a prediction sheet for the Emmys, always start with what was nominated previously before adding in new shows.

However this year that may prove to be a somewhat difficult predictive approach. Due to the pandemic, some shows were not eligible each of the past two years, forcing the Emmys to choose new favourites to nominate. Now, most of their former favourites have aired new seasons, including some programs that had laid dormant for many seasons. What we have, then, is a returning show bottleneck...

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Emmy Category Review: Outstanding Drama Series

By Abe Friedtanzer

Last year, Succession was pretty far out front, and it feels like this year’s juggernaut, The Crown, has just as easy a path to victory. But this category does include a varied slate, welcoming back two past nominees, two freshman series, one sophomore show, and a handful of extremely high nominations totals. It’s worth looking a bit more closely at each of the top-tier nominees, many of which we’ve covered extensively in our category-by-category analysis. 

I’ll try to avoid major plot details in my analysis – but if you’d like more spoiler-filled descriptions, click on the episode titles...

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Emmy FYC: "For All Mankind" for Drama Series

by Lynn Lee

If you’re old enough to remember the Challenger explosion – my earliest memory of watching a national disaster on TV – you may, like me, see it as the de facto end of the Space Age.  Not that NASA abandoned its mission or that space ever completely lost its grip on the public imagination.  One need only look to the Mars Rovers and the recent advances made by SpaceX and Blue Origin for evidence to the contrary.  But even the most exciting breakthroughs no longer command the universal attention that the Apollo missions or, yes, the Challenger debacle did back in their day.  There’s also a growing sense that space travel has become the province of the ultrarich, and that as a species we should– taking a page out of Gil Scott-Heron – maybe think about fixing our problems here on Earth before laying claim to other worlds.

For those who hold onto the ideal of outer space as a gauntlet for human progress, there’s a tendency to look back wistfully at the golden age of space exploration, notwithstanding the more uncomfortable facts underlying the myth...

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