Reader's Digest: March 3, 2023

Leaving London for LA: two fascinating essays that are not—despite the venue—about books.

In one, Jorge Cotte dissects the second series of Mike White’s acerbic tragicomedy, The White Lotus:

Like other satires of wealth and luxury, The White Lotus articulates the very promises it seeks to undermine, and it is hard to dissipate those kisses after they cloud the air.

A running theme in this and other reviews: the audience’s complicity with the show’s pampered protagonists, “fatty with ignorance and marinated in acid.”

In perhaps the series’ best comic moment, the wealthy-but-woke nouveau riches, Harper and Ethan, share their doubts about having kids, with everything that’s going on—a euphemism that prompts baffled curiosity from the couple they are with: “Really? What’s happening?”

Like Harper and Ethan, we pat ourselves on the back for paying attention—Harper is so anxious that she cannot sleep—but we may be no better than they are at expressing what we fear, or doing anything about it:

Har…