Make Republicans Uncomfortable Again
A little sabotage this week, as a treat
There was a great scene in this week’s episode of The White Lotus. If you’ve seen the episode, you know the scene. If not, scroll a couple of paragraphs down to avoid spoilers.
[MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW]
In the scene, the women I believe we’re all referring to as “the three awful friends” are having dinner. They are all fortysomething American women who have known each other for decades but, given the disparate directions their lives have taken them, rarely get to hang out. One is a successful actress in LA, one is a successful lawyer in New York, one is a successful wife in Austin, Texas.
Over the course of their mealtime conversation, the Texas one— played by Leslie Bibb— admits she voted for Donald Trump, and acts as though she expects the other two awful friends to just accept their political differences and move on. The two other awful friends react with disgust, and in a later scene, Bibb overhears them talking about her in a way that indicates that her tenure as an awful friend is coming to an close. The two who did not vote for Trump are discussing whether they can stomach the sort of person who could vote against their own interest as women. They are laughing and enjoying themselves together, at her expense. Texas awful friend’s face darkens. She is about to experience… a consequence.
Mike White couldn’t possibly have known that Trump was going to win the 2024 election when he wrote the script in 2022, or when the show was shot between February and August 2024. The interim events between the episode wrapping and being shown give it new weight, and offer the storyline as another installment in the increasingly popular post-inauguration genre of Trump Voters Experiencing Consequences as entertainment. The genre started as stories of Trump voters upset that their friends and family members were cutting them off over their political beliefs, and has expanded into Trump voters who are shocked that the Trump’s policies are hurting them instead of the other, browner and poorer people that the policies were supposed to hurt instead.
The Trump talk scene been the most talked about scene of the series thus far, except for maybe when a pill-popping Parker Posey’s character had to take a Lorazapam before a massage, in order to relax.