James Poniewozik

The final episode was fantastic in this respect, dealing with the hospice experience and so on.

But also, you know, and I realize that people are, like, running from this description probably right now, an incredibly funny show in a way that, you know, was...

Honest and cathartic and daring Michelle Williams is fantastic in it.

Jenny Slate is very good.

It was an example of something I think I always look for in television, which is the idea that

Uh, funny is not the opposite of serious.

Uh, and that you often can, and frankly, often need to, uh, use humor in the service of kind of deep and powerful ideas.

And, you know, sex and death doesn't get much more deep and powerful than those.

She was terrific on Trophy Wife, by the way, an unfairly maligned show.

It's at least foggy.

Yeah.

I will say I loved the first season of White Lotus, and I just, I don't like its trend lines.

You know, I think the second was not as good, and then the third...

was less than that.

But it does have this sort of love boat aspect to it where there are multiple stories playing out and different guests.

And there are likely to be elements within that that you can connect to even in a more subpar season.

It's been such a long year.

Jim, tell us about Long Story Short.

Okay, so when I put together my best lists at the end of the year, you know, there's a top 10 list.

It's always a little bit of a lie because, like, really, any given year, I have, like, three or four shows that are my real favorites, and then I'm choosing from a grab bag of, you know, 20 or 30 other shows that could be on there.