Southern Charm at The White Lotus
**SPOILER ALERT** Skip paragraph three if you haven’t yet finished watching The White Lotus
A show of hands. Who else still has the theme song to The White Lotus knocking around in their head?
What a season! I’ve been perpetually uncomfortable for the last eight weeks. I thought I’d finally be put out of my misery with the season finale. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It’s not like I didn’t know something really fucked up was going to happen at the end. But sweet, Bambi-eyed Chelsea?? I’m undone. And why did Mook turn out to be such a status-chasing tease?
Anyhoo…. I just love television.
My TV habit has always been extreme. I was a mere six years old when I matriculated from PBS to full network. Bless CBS, ABC and NBC for providing me the early education I didn’t even know I needed. How else would I have learned a planet called Ork was part of our solar system (which curiously was not reflected in my third grade curriculum)? Or the facts of life were gonna be a real bitch to navigate? Or the Korean War was mostly about cross-dressing draft dodgers? I watched it ALL.
I was told too much TV would rot my brain. But too much TV was not possible (and brain rot probably isn’t even a real thing). Shows had to be watched in real time. If your show wasn’t on, you were galavanting through the neighborhood with your posse of hooligans. I do believe there would have been a helluva lot fewer BB gun and firecracker maimings in the 70’s had One Day at a Time been available on demand.
Now, with streaming, I can watch whatever I want, whenever I want it. Like The White Lotus. In the middle of the day when I should be parked firmly at my computer typing until my fingers bleed. Glorious!
But do I dare reveal what I want to watch most? Drumroll.
It’s reality TV.
Give me The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise (chef’s kiss!), every Real Housewives franchise, Summer House, Winter House, Traitors, Southern Charm, Vanderpump Rules, Love is Blind, or Married to Medicine, and I could watch for three days straight. Easily. I’ve thought hard about this, and I can confidently say that if I were given the Sophie’s choice of having to give up one of my two main vices - reality TV and cupcakes - I’d swear off cupcakes forever.
Even the highbrow White Lotus was tinged with a little Bravo. Much has been made of Parker Posey’s accent, which I totally agree deserves the highest of honors. But what got me really giddy was Jason Isaacs’ dead-on impersonation of Thomas Ravanel’s voice from Southern Charm. I recognized it with his very first line, and it was masterful. A conversation between Timothy and Victoria Ratliff was as pleasing to my ears as Pavarotti’s rendition of Ave Maria.
Reality TV gets a bad rap - for being addictive and voyeuristic, for portraying women in a bad light (which is quite the judgmental and paternalistic accusation if I do say so). Should I watch the news instead? An uplifting segment on MSNBC about women’s dwindling rights perhaps? How about a six-parter on serial killers? No thanks.
Besides being thoroughly entertaining, reality TV helps me endure things I hate. The Housewives makes treadmill workouts almost bearable. Last July, when I was stuck in bed with Covid, the heavens parted and 30-plus riveting episodes of Love Island USA showered down upon me like magic stardust. I had to be weaned like a crack baby at the end of the summer.
I love a good, fiery conflict and a quick tongue. Spending an hour (or five) with a cast of reality show characters allows the introvert in me to be fully entangled in stupidly satisfying drama among folks I feel I know intimately, all without leaving my couch. At an event at my son’s school a few months ago, I genuinely believed I was friendly with a particular Housewife who was standing a few feet away. My husband had to stop me from giving her double air kisses and asking about her trip to Napa with the other ladies. “She doesn’t know you and will be scared if you approach her,” he whispered. Good catch. That could have been very embarrassing.
One may wonder what else I might do with my time. But this hobby really isn’t so different from, say, knitting. Collecting baseball cards. Chasing twisters. There’s not enough fun in the world, and TV is F.U.N.
We’re all looking for some relief from the insanity of the moment. While I continue to recover from my trip to The White Lotus, I clasp my hands together and thank the Universe for gracing me with a second season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Amen.