That line — “We’ll get through it as a family” — is one of the last lines we hear Thomas Ratliff say in the season finale of The White Lotus. Given everything that’s happened up to this point, it really makes you pause and think… Will they?
The guy has been through it — multiple failed suicide attempts, a pretty intense near-familicide situation, almost killing his younger son, all while spiraling into financial collapse. It’s dark. Weirdly timely, too, considering the state of things. And yet, when he says these words, the line almost plays like a punchline.
It's possible the moment stuck with me because I had just returned from New York — a.k.a. the emotional crime scene of my childhood. Walking around there always feels like navigating a memory minefield. Outside of my sister’s 9th birthday sipping frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity — most of it was pretty rough. Our family went through our own kind of financial unraveling. Not Ratliff-level, but enough. Layer in assault, cancer, Alzheimer’s… you can see why the West Coast started looking real appealing...
And yet — somehow — we did get through it. All of us. Together. What held us together wasn’t some dramatic declaration or promise, but this very specific, shared need to laugh through the chaos. I remember during the cancer years, my dad—almost blind by then—would ask us to crank up the volume anytime The Nanny came on. Fran Drescher’s accent, that classic New York whine… it just cracked him up. And in that moment, that was everything. I honestly think trying to make my mom laugh during that time became one of the biggest driving forces in my work. Like — if I could do that for her, maybe I could do it for others, too.
Even now, my sister and I live on opposite coasts, but we still crack each other up over the absurdity of what we went through. There’s something sacred about that kind of humor — the kind that only someone who was there can fully get.
Which brings me back to The White Lotus. No, Mike White doesn’t exactly leave the Ratliffs with much to laugh about. But the whole show is satire. That’s part of what makes it so brilliant. Even amid all the depravity, the moral decay, and yes — the incest — it’s still funny. Sometimes painfully so. It’s like the darker it gets, the harder I’m pulled in. These characters are just the worst, but it’s that exact “ugh, thank god we’re not them” energy that makes it work.
Mike White knows exactly what he’s doing. The humor isn’t an accident — it’s the hook. The thing that keeps us watching, even when it feels like a Greek tragedy. He gets us laughing at the absurdity of other people’s behavior, and then, sneakily, has us reflect on our own.
Now, at LOC, we’re not really in the business of using satire to create connection. Our whole thing is about making sure people never feel like they’re the butt of the joke. But in the right hands, darker humor — satire, irony, gallows comedy — can actually be powerful. It can expose truths, start conversations, make people feel seen in ways they didn’t expect.
There’s this old belief that if you want someone to really listen, you’ve got to get them laughing first. And maybe that’s Mike White’s entire strategy. Disarm them with humor — then make them feel something.
Whether you’re an Emmy-winning screenwriter, someone navigating a family illness, going through a rough patch yourself, or just devastated that you have to wait for the next season… if you can still find a way to laugh — at any of it — that’s not weakness. That’s resilience. That’s hope.
