Anonymous wrote:Reports that Laura Dern will replace HBC. I can see that - looking forward to it.

Also reports that Jennifer Tilly is up to replace her -- I would be thrilled with either her or Laura Dern!

Anonymous wrote:S 2 was absolute perfection.

Also a sucker for S2 due to Sicily.

Reports that Laura Dern will replace HBC. I can see that - looking forward to it.

Damn I’m too slow—I meant about the TEA!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why HBC left the production but I'll be honest and say I don't mind. I never felt like she was a great fit for the show. I like her a lot and also think Mike White is pretty brilliant with casting and also writing characters for specific actors, so I was hopeful. But when they announced she was being replaced, my first thought was that it makes sense because she never felt like a good fit for his vibe.

Yes, yes, but I still want the tea.

I do too.

PP, so do I!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why HBC left the production but I'll be honest and say I don't mind. I never felt like she was a great fit for the show. I like her a lot and also think Mike White is pretty brilliant with casting and also writing characters for specific actors, so I was hopeful. But when they announced she was being replaced, my first thought was that it makes sense because she never felt like a good fit for his vibe.

Agree. I think she's best in a straight dramatic role like The King's Speech but she can be too much and Tim Burton dod her no favors in making her into a goth weirdo. I have a feeling this season is going to jump the shark. There are too many actors involved and a strange assortment of them besides. HBC and Sandra Bernhardt seems like overkill of extreme personalities. I saw a list of about 20 people who have signed on. How many storylines can there be? I'll be interested to see what this looks like.

The season is taking place during Cannes and Mike White has talked about wanting to explore the art world. I suspect many of the cast who has signed on have smaller, almost cameo roles, playing actors, directors, or other creatives who might pop in for a scene or two but are not central cast. Think of Sam Rockwell in Season 3.

Yes it could be a mess, but could also be amazing. I'm imagining a season with his standard 3-4 main storylines but then augmented by very memorable scenes where the main characters interact with more heightened or extreme characters dropping into the hotel on their way in or out of the film festival. Like imagine Sandra Bernhardt in a very small dose but playing right into that grating, obnoxious quality she has (that people on this thread are saying they hate) in order to provoke one of the main cast characters in a specific way. That's how I imagine the season playing out. If he can pull it off, could be really epic.

I also wonder of maybe HBC was actually going to play a smaller role like this, someone they were using in smaller doses, and that is why they are able to just replace her and rewrite the role after shooting has started. Maybe like Rockwell, she was being brought in for one or two special scenes where her character does or says something really wild, and they saw in rehearsals that it wasn't having the desired impact, and decided to go a different way. That would make it easier to rewrite (because you'd be talking about rewriting just one or two scenes, perhaps even just one monologue or very pointed exchange of dialogue) and also make it more reasonable that they could pull in someone else really great on a last minute basis. It's not that hard to get an actor to fly into the south of France for a week of work during peak season there, to work on a hit show. Many are already in the vicinity. It's not like with Thailand where getting actors to commit required more logistics and was more disruptive to their lives.

PP here. Your vision sounds really good. I hope it does turn out to be like this!

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why HBC left the production but I'll be honest and say I don't mind. I never felt like she was a great fit for the show. I like her a lot and also think Mike White is pretty brilliant with casting and also writing characters for specific actors, so I was hopeful. But when they announced she was being replaced, my first thought was that it makes sense because she never felt like a good fit for his vibe.

Yes, yes, but I still want the tea.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:S 2 was absolute perfection.

S 2 was the worst of the 3 in my opinion. It was sort of slow and boring.

Yeah, I thought S2 was not as good. A lot of time spent on the prostitutes and the gay dudes on the yacht, but not a lot of other good storylines; however, I loved Meghann Fahy and Jennifer Coolidge.

Parker Posey and the interesting Thai setting made S3 more interesting/exotic, and the relationship between the three middle-aged friends was interesting and not typically shown on T.V.

I liked everyone in S1 except for breakout star Sydney Sweeney, whose character was unlikeable in every way.

I have rewatched all three seasons and think they are all actually uneven but all have enough great moments to make up for the stuff I don't like.

I found the family storyline in Season 1 really boring and didn't care about the college girls or the dad and his midlife crisis. The teenage boy storyline was sort of interesting but underdeveloped. However I loved the battle between the rich finance bro and Armand the concierge over the hotel suite, enjoyed watching Alexandra Daddario play the bro's kind of oblivious bride realizing her new husband is an entitled jerk, loved Jennifer Coolidge's entire arc. The Hawaiian setting winds up being the most bland of the three in retrospect, probably mostly owing to it being Covid when they filmed and they were very limited to just the Four Seasons resort where they filmed.

I really loved the shift to a non-tropical setting in Season 2, loved the two couples and their weird vibes. Enjoyed Jennifer Coolidge but disliked Haley Lu Richardson's character (though I like HLR normally) and found the murderous gays plot silly and ridiculous. Also I loved Sabrina Impacciatore as the hotel manager, but she was underused. I liked the 3 generations of men storyline but I think too much time was spent on it. I thought the two Italian prostitutes were funny and fun and liked how their stories intersected with the hotel guests but didn't love how they resolved.

Season 3 did a great job taking advantage of the setting and incorporating Thai culture and ideas into the plot of the show, but the Thai cast was not as well utilized as the Italians in Season 2. Loved the 3 girlfriends plot the most, though the southern family was really interesting (especially Parker Posey) but that plot line dragged, and wound up really disliking the May-December couple with the guy looking for his dad and hate that the final episode wound up revolving around that. I felt the "murder mystery" aspect of S3 was the weakest of all of them and kind of wish they'd drop that conceit altogether, but maybe other people like it.

Based on my rewatch, I'm really excited about S4. I think South of France/Cannes is going to offer a lot of great opportunities for the show to do what it does best, I'm glad they took it that a direction instead of just another tropical resort and rehashing past themes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:S 2 was absolute perfection.

S 2 was the worst of the 3 in my opinion. It was sort of slow and boring.

Yeah, I thought S2 was not as good. A lot of time spent on the prostitutes and the gay dudes on the yacht, but not a lot of other good storylines; however, I loved Meghann Fahy and Jennifer Coolidge.

Parker Posey and the interesting Thai setting made S3 more interesting/exotic, and the relationship between the three middle-aged friends was interesting and not typically shown on T.V.

I liked everyone in S1 except for breakout star Sydney Sweeney, whose character was unlikeable in every way.

Sydney Sweeney played entitled, spoiled, rich girl to perfection.

Agree but the irony of that storyline was that it was Paula (the friend that Sweeney's Olivia brings along on the vacation) who winds up being the worst of the two. She convinced Kai to rob the family out of some perverted sense of justice over his native heritage, he gets caught, and then Paula lies and turns on him and go goes to jail while Paula skips off on her FREE vacation with her rich friend.

Olivia was also really tedious and annoying and hypocritical, but winds up just looking clueless and confused. Whereas Paula is an actual villain.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:S 2 was absolute perfection.

S 2 was the worst of the 3 in my opinion. It was sort of slow and boring.

Yeah, I thought S2 was not as good. A lot of time spent on the prostitutes and the gay dudes on the yacht, but not a lot of other good storylines; however, I loved Meghann Fahy and Jennifer Coolidge.

Parker Posey and the interesting Thai setting made S3 more interesting/exotic, and the relationship between the three middle-aged friends was interesting and not typically shown on T.V.

I liked everyone in S1 except for breakout star Sydney Sweeney, whose character was unlikeable in every way.

Sydney Sweeney played entitled, spoiled, rich girl to perfection.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:S 2 was absolute perfection.

S 2 was the worst of the 3 in my opinion. It was sort of slow and boring.

Yeah, I thought S2 was not as good. A lot of time spent on the prostitutes and the gay dudes on the yacht, but not a lot of other good storylines; however, I loved Meghann Fahy and Jennifer Coolidge.

Parker Posey and the interesting Thai setting made S3 more interesting/exotic, and the relationship between the three middle-aged friends was interesting and not typically shown on T.V.

I liked everyone in S1 except for breakout star Sydney Sweeney, whose character was unlikeable in every way.

Anonymous wrote:S 2 was absolute perfection.

S 2 was the worst of the 3 in my opinion. It was sort of slow and boring.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why HBC left the production but I'll be honest and say I don't mind. I never felt like she was a great fit for the show. I like her a lot and also think Mike White is pretty brilliant with casting and also writing characters for specific actors, so I was hopeful. But when they announced she was being replaced, my first thought was that it makes sense because she never felt like a good fit for his vibe.

Agree. I think she's best in a straight dramatic role like The King's Speech but she can be too much and Tim Burton dod her no favors in making her into a goth weirdo. I have a feeling this season is going to jump the shark. There are too many actors involved and a strange assortment of them besides. HBC and Sandra Bernhardt seems like overkill of extreme personalities. I saw a list of about 20 people who have signed on. How many storylines can there be? I'll be interested to see what this looks like.

The season is taking place during Cannes and Mike White has talked about wanting to explore the art world. I suspect many of the cast who has signed on have smaller, almost cameo roles, playing actors, directors, or other creatives who might pop in for a scene or two but are not central cast. Think of Sam Rockwell in Season 3.

Yes it could be a mess, but could also be amazing. I'm imagining a season with his standard 3-4 main storylines but then augmented by very memorable scenes where the main characters interact with more heightened or extreme characters dropping into the hotel on their way in or out of the film festival. Like imagine Sandra Bernhardt in a very small dose but playing right into that grating, obnoxious quality she has (that people on this thread are saying they hate) in order to provoke one of the main cast characters in a specific way. That's how I imagine the season playing out. If he can pull it off, could be really epic.

I also wonder of maybe HBC was actually going to play a smaller role like this, someone they were using in smaller doses, and that is why they are able to just replace her and rewrite the role after shooting has started. Maybe like Rockwell, she was being brought in for one or two special scenes where her character does or says something really wild, and they saw in rehearsals that it wasn't having the desired impact, and decided to go a different way. That would make it easier to rewrite (because you'd be talking about rewriting just one or two scenes, perhaps even just one monologue or very pointed exchange of dialogue) and also make it more reasonable that they could pull in someone else really great on a last minute basis. It's not that hard to get an actor to fly into the south of France for a week of work during peak season there, to work on a hit show. Many are already in the vicinity. It's not like with Thailand where getting actors to commit required more logistics and was more disruptive to their lives.

S 2 was absolute perfection.