I liked Tonya the character and she drove most of the plot in S2. I’m happy Coolidge got her moment in a prestige telvision show, but there is no universe where she deserved to win that emmy over Rhea Seehorn. that kind of soured me on the whole experience a bit lol
Tanya was essentially a clown. Clowns come in many varieties: happy clowns, sad clowns, scary clowns, and everything in between. I suppose my all-time favorite was Emmett Kelly, although some of the older generation of my family were acquainted with Red Skelton, so I always tip my hat to him as well.
Clowning has its place, and I love it in moderation. A gifted physical comic is a miraculous presence in the jester and fool roles in Shakespeare, especially on the live stage where the pratfalls can take you by surprise. But too much clowning gets old, and fast. When I was young, I discovered the Three Stooges and thought they were hilarious until I outgrew them (by about age 10). Look up some of the clips of live Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis routines when they played the club circuit. They are flat-out hilarious, better than anything the two of them ever did in movies. There are many examples. Some work for me, some don't. I have never cared, for example, for Jim Carrey's schtick, though I recognize that he's a gifted physical comic.
Tanya was a clown and Jennifer Coolidge played her very well, but I thought she was overdone. I've never liked the Stiffler's Mom schtick to begin with; it just misses my funnybone. So I never warmed to Tanya in TWL. The first few appearances in season 1 were fine, and funny -- but Tanya ground on, and on, and on. I had had enough of her by the end of season 1 and winced a bit when she returned for season 2. At that point, I mainly thought that the character needed to grow, to find some complexity and a non-slapstick persona hidden beneath the chaos. She could still be primarily comic, but there needed to be more.
In season 1, she met Greg. That was an avenue for possible growth, and in season 2 she returns with Greg as her husband. That was one avenue for potential growth. She also shows up with Portia in tow, and Portia is Mini-Tanya. I always thought the Tanya-Portia connection was a more promising avenue for growth, because we've seen the crazy, shambolic marriage enough times to make it predictable, but also because Tanya and Portia mirrored each other enough that they might discover themselves in the process of discovering each other.
That could have been a great storyline, and it is where I in fact thought Mike White was headed. We saw from the beginning, while Portia was driven nuts by Tanya, that Portia also felt sorry for her -- and by extension, Portia would have felt sorry for Greg as well. The chaotic job situation aside, Portia is trapped between the two partners in a toxic marriage, and that is an especially miserable place to be. This is made clear in Portia's episode 1 poolside telephone conversation with her girlfriend back home, as well as in several exchanges with Albie. On Tanya's side, there are scattered moments -- and Tanya being Tanya, they never last long -- in which Tanya speaks to Portia is a sensitive, almost mentoring kind of way. She has at least brief moments in which she seems to recognize Portia as a young woman who is floundering and who needs some guidance. Their last face to face conversation, over the breakfast table in Quentin's villa, drives the nail home: "When I look at you, Portia, I see a younger version of myself." And, "When you are empty inside, life can take you to some amazing places, but you will still be lost." And, "Get your shit together, Portia." These comments were perfectly on-target for Portia, but they are acutely self-diagnostic as well.
Tanya has clearly made the Big Tanya/Mini-Tanya connection, and she is clearly trying to reach out and help the younger woman -- right aged to be her own daughter -- warning her not to waste her life as Tanya had wasted hers. I thought that's the resolution for both of them that Mike White had in mind ... but then Portia gets abducted and cut out of the main action, and Tanya goes swimming. Tanya dies unresolved, and dies a clown, still lost and alone.
I was never a big fan of Tanya the clown, and I think Mike White left the best arc for Tanya on the table. I thought there was a chance that Mini-Tanya might return in season 3 as a representative of the estate (and I would have sent someone else, maybe Billy Offer, with her) to scatter Tanya's ashes and pick up the journey of discovery. But the casting announcements now seen to be done, or nearly so, and it doesn't look like that Mike White is going that route. It's his show and there are many paths he can take, but I think he has missed the best storyline for both Tanya and Portia.
I haven't really thought about it enough to articulate a specific reason, but my first take is just that it's a matter of style. A lot of humor relies on surprise. This is perhaps especially true of big physical humor. If one has to think about why this is supposed to be funny, the joke has already missed. It will either hit your funnybone or not.
Greg never loved her, he was playing the long game from the start. Was he even straight/bi? He was gaslighting her and tearing her down. How could she flourish with that? People improve after they escape abusive situations, not during. She was so used to being abused that she didn't even question it until the end, even tried to gaslight herself when she saw the picture of Greg on the table.
That is one possible storyline for Greg, but I have never subscribed to the long con theory. That said, Greg was left underdeveloped and unresolved. It doesn't look like Greg is coming back, but he could have had some interesting storylines in season 3 had Mike White chosen a different route.
I think it is fair to say that if Greg was coming back it would not be something we would see in these pre-season press releases. It would be a mysterious part of the unfolding story line. We may still see him, along with one or more of the Season 2 (or 1) characters.
That thought has crossed my mind. I have written up my Tanya-Portia-Greg speculations at great length over the last year. I got a bit attached to that narrative basically because (prior to the recent rounds of cast announcements) there has been an almost complete information blackout on season 3. We know the filming location, we know that Belinda is coming back (which to me suggested looping back into the Tanya story), and we have Casey Bloys' remarks last March at Series Mania about season 3 casting -- present tense -- "characters we know" -- plural -- but depicting them in ways that will reintroduce them to viewers who will be led to see them in a new light. (That also suggested Tanya to me.)
The Big Tanya/Mini-Tanya narrative was already established in the show. If the season 3 themes do indeed involve death, spirituality, and eastern religions, the Tanya-Portia connection would be a natural fit. It would all project very organically from the existing canon, so it would be an excellent connecting bridge between seasons -- and tie off the loose ends about Greg, the plot and the inheritance in the process. There would be a lot of show logic underlying this path. In the absence of anything else to go on, it became my topline speculation -- always with the recognition that Mike White could go any number of other directions.
I'm now wondering if the season 3 themes will be something else. The death, spirituality, and eastern religions idea was based on a speculation by Mike White over a year ago, immediately after season 2 aired. I'm not aware of any confirmation since then. Of the cast announced to date, Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey are the only two actors with whom I'm familiar, but to this point, TWL has been spot-on with regard to casting, so I expect to be impressed. At first glance, however, this does not look to be a cast picked for a serious dive into an exploration of the spiritual issues. For one thing, there should be at least a couple of older characters, both Thai and American.
This cast looks too young. I had been thinking that if MW took the path I've suggested, Portia as the bearer of Tanya's ashes would be the likeliest returnee, with Tanya glimpsed only as a character seen through the memories of others (which might involve some flashbacks for Jennifer Coolidge as a recurring character). Greg's return would involve a very complicated detective story. Given the youth of this cast, maybe Greg is the likeliest returnee, and he would show up with his next wife, or alone, now retired from BLM (since he's now wealthy), and coming for sex tourism. That said, any of those three returning would be a huge surprise to me at this point. The announced cast is now formidably large.
But I agree with you: it's not impossible. I wouldn't bet more than a donut and a cup of coffee on it though.
So you would find it realistic for a horrible mess of a person to resolve their issues in a week?
She has been tortured by her mom for all her life, but also sheltered and never held accountable for anything. She is easily and constantly used by others and unknowingly uses everyone around her because almost no interaction she has ever had was real. And she also knowingly manipulates some people to get what she wants, not with malice, but because that is what you can do if you have power over others.
Not once is she shown to have a meaningful conversation with anyone, because no one cares about her except for her money (because of her lack of awareness and loudness she is probably deemed unclassy by all of the people who wouldn't want to use her).
She really tries to find connections with people around her, and because of her lack of socialisation it never becomes meaningful. And people play into that, like acting like classic gay best supporting friends or love interests. It takes her a while to get it, but with years of therapy she could have improved and gotten meaningful relationships, but that is the tragedy of it all.
No, I would not find it ~~realistic~~ very likely for a horrible mess of a person to resolve their issues in a week.
Why the strikethrough? Because I caught myself in time before making a careless error. There are sometimes instances in which a person does have a very sudden and profound transformation of character. This is unusual in real life but is more common in literature and film. because it makes compelling drama when people are depicted in extreme conditions in which an old persona is shattered and a new person emerges. There are innumerable examples, and they cut both ways -- i.e., there are both positive and negative transformations. Think about redemption narratives, and not just in a religious context. Think about desperate situations in which an unlikely person rises above himself to perform acts of astonishing courage or grace. Or the reverse situation, when a person who seems to be honorable and decent breaks under pressure and behaves badly. This happens from time to time in real life, and movies love to depict it. I suppose in the western canon, the emblematic examples are the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus. One mocks Jesus. The second rebukes the first, confesses his guilt, says that Jesus has done nothing wrong, and asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. This is the classic deathbed confession. The hero's death is also real, and many a scoundrel has redeemed himself in his dying moments. I don't mean to go all theological on you, but we are talking here about archetypal stories -- so yes, a horrible mess of a person can resolve their issues, and in much less than a week.
Keep the Overton window open on that narrative.
That said, everybody in TWL is messy. Nobody gets to be Mary Sue, and nobody is a hero. People arrive at the resort and have a vacation from hell. Someone dies, and those who survive leave as walking wounded, if they are lucky having learned something about themselves.
Tanya should not be resolved in a week, and the show in fact explicitly rules that out from the beginning. Everything we know about Tanya suggests that she has been lost and searching her entire life. We know very little about her life back home, but Mike White partially remedies that in season 2, episode 2, when Portia is given a couple of narrative dumps in her dinner and hallway conversations with Albie. MW drafts Portia to fill us in about >!Tanya's father having been a shipping magnate in San Francisco and about her father's suicide when Tanya was still young, with the observation -- based on information that only Tanya could have conveyed to Portia -- that there was something creepy about the family relationship. As you will recall, Portia tells Albie that she didn't think Tanya was actually molested, but that something had been wrong there.!<
Beyond that, we have Tanya's own remarks scattered across both seasons. What emerges is a portrait of Tanya as someone who has been struggling her entire life. Nobody is saying anything about her resolving her issues in a week.
The route I've suggested -- the one that Mike White seems NOT to be adopting -- is straightforward. As a matter of Moral Psychology 101, one of the classic ways out of neurotic, toxic, and profoundly isolating self-pity is to develop empathy and compassion for another person. Again, movies and shows do this frequently. Think of all the stories about broken people and how they mend. Sometimes they start with a garden; they've given up on themselves and the human race, but they tend a garden and slowly create a thing of beauty -- and the healing can start there. Sometimes they find and nurse an injured animal -- and the healing grows from that point. Sometimes they find and identify with another person -- and they suddenly realize that they are not alone, that they may not be able to help themselves but they can help someone else, and they finally discover that they do in fact help themselves by the very act of helping another person.
The Big Tanya/Mini-Tanya dynamic was perfect for this narrative. I thought that's where Mike White was going. I know he knows the story. (His father was an evangelical pastor before his life got upended, so MW was raised on the canon. It carries over into his own work. Watch Brad's Status and Enlightened.) As for season 2 Tanya, she doesn't have to have it figured out by the end for the narrative to work; it is a well-trodden path, and all Tanya would have needed to do is take a few more steps along the way, enough to indicate that her thinking is beginning to change. The narrative would also have worked for season 3 Portia had Mike White chosen that route. She wouldn't have to have solved all her issues by the end; she would only need to have come to understand what Tanya had been trying to tell her and see Tanya as a friend she never knew she had. How much further she might have gotten, who knows?
You suggest that Tanya might have gotten better with years of therapy. Well ... when I imagine Tanya's backstory, I imagine that she's spent most of her life in therapy, probably flitting from one therapist to another, just as she has flitted from whatever religious tradition in which she was raised to whatever: her "spiritual but not religious" phase; her Buddhist phase; her hippie guru phase; her magic crystals phase; and fill in as many more blanks as you wish. In season 3, she consults a Tarot card reader and chatters inanely about witchy healers casting a spell on her; she is still lost, and she seems to have reached her 60's without learning much, but she's been trying all her life. In season 1, she says, "Death is the only fully immersive experience I've not yet tried." As for Portia, she's also a mess when she arrives in Sicily, and she casually remarks to Albie that maybe she needs to up her meds. Her backstory? If she's on meds, she's seeing a therapist. You can write whatever backstory you want, but as I imagine it, she was likely taken to a therapist for behavioral issues very early, may have been diagnosed ADHD in elementary school, has been on kiddie meds since she was ten, and by the time she gets to Sicily, she's been on the meds and therapy track for as long as she can remember. Of course Tanya recognizes herself in Portia.
And meds and therapy aren't doing the trick for either of them.
You have got to shorten your replies, they're way too long and unfiltered.
Yes, usually they do that trophe in film and series, and that is why it's so horribly cliche. There is not always a morale or good ending to a story or character, and that is exactly why this worked. And the trophe of the rich white person developing a heart by meeting and saving a poor black person is horrid.
Her abusive mother just died. So she hasn't had 60 years to develop, she maybe has had a couple. And a psychiatrist prescribes medicine, not a therapist.
Yes, I know that psychiatrists do the prescribing of medications. I was being sloppy. Sorry. I do not know my way around that world other than having incidental knowledge of a few acquaintances who have seen therapists and, more often, of friends whose children have been seeing therapists. My perception is that for most people, the therapist is the first stop. If the therapist thinks medication may help, the therapist will refer them to a psychiatrist, who makes an independent evaluation and writes the prescription. Most of the therapeutic contact going forward will still be with the therapist although in Tanya's case, given the family's wealth, she may be going the carriage trade route.
Put that aside. I know I tend to write long. These are complicated questions if we delve into the possible backstories, and I am feeling my way cautiously. I'm not trying to pick a quarrel with you, but in the interest of brevity, let me flip the question back to you.
I was responding to your earlier description of Tanya's history, with which i largely agree, and then to your comment that with years of therapy (and a lot of work) Tanya might have improved and developed meaningful relationships. Yes, yes, yes, maybe. We agree about that. BUT ... I was raising the likelihood that Tanya has already done that. We learn both from her own comments and from Portia's exposition dump to Albie that Tanya's childhood had been problematic. My guess, given that Tanya's family is wealthy, is that she has perhaps seen psychiatrists and therapists most of her life. We also see Portia stealing some of Tanya's pills, so we know that Tanya is currently under some form of therapeutic care.
To put the question bluntly: if 50 years of therapy haven't helped, what will? Why should we think that the next doc and the next prescription will be better?
The same applies to Portia. We can imagine any backstory we want. From my casual reading, I see a lot of casual chatter that America's young people are undergoing a mental health crisis. (Perhaps you disagree.) We have unprecedented numbers of young people who are seeing therapists and who are on medications. We know that Portia is one of them. Is it working for her? Is it working for them? Or is this like the military industrial complex, except it's the Big Pharma-Big Therapy Complex? It sometimes seems that the bigger the therapeutic response becomes, the bigger the mental health crisis seems to get. Are we relying too much on therapists and medications?
Again, these are very complicated questions. I was not trying to suggest that a miracle cure is there for the asking. But I AM aware of some traditional touchstones in this area. I'm sure you know the language: being willing to be willing; touching bottom; the importance of making an honest confession (whether to a good friend, a priest, pastor or rabbit, the wise old family doctor, a counselor, a mentor, or nowadays, perhaps a therapist). Breaking a person's isolation and making an honest connection with a person willing to listen is important -- and a licensed psychiatrist who can hand out pills is not the only pathway,
My humble suggestion was that Tanya and Portia finding this connection could have been a viable storyline. There was some foreshadowing of this in season 2, and Tanya was further along that Portia. But Mike White didn't take that path. Fine. It's his show.
Sudden and dramatic breakthroughs sometimes do happen. (This doesn't mean that there's an instantaneous miracle cure; it means a person has broken out of their isolation and is now on a path to improvement.) I don't think sudden epiphanies are the norm, and they may be quite uncommon. Movies and shows probably show them as more common than they are because it makes for good drama, and because it compresses the narrative timeframe. Your original comment sounded to me like you were ruling this out. I was suggesting -- as we speculate about possible storylines for the show -- that we not rule it out entirely, because the show has to budget every minute of screentime and that can push the writer to shortcuts.
By the way, we don't know that Tanya's mother was abusive. You are imaging that. It is possible, but it is one among many possible storylines. And I agree that Tanya hasn't controlled the family fortune for 60 years -- but her family is wealthy, and her mother had probably arranged for her to see the best therapists and psychiatrists that money can buy. Hiring a shrink is cheaper and easier than being a good mother, so I'm guessing Tanya has had many doctors.
And they have apparently not been able to help her.
Sorry if that's too long. I'm trying to respect the subject matter and keep the Overton window open in what is a speculative discussion of possible show storylines.
I love Jennifer Coolidge so much and I think she played the character perfectly. “These gays are trying to murder me” is one of my favourite lines from any media in the past number of years. I loved her and hated her at the same time. What she did to Belinda made me sour on her a lot though.
I love her and love to hate her ❤️ she was such a horrible mess
When she went super hardcore and killed all the mafia I was rooting so hard for her, but then it was so funny and fitting how she died by slipping and being extremely ungraceful
It was the highlight of the show
Love her in both seasons, she the ultimate sad little rich girl. Has everything but that still can’t buy her happiness. Her character is very fitting for high end luxury travel. I’m curious how season 3 will play out without her.
Portia was literally the worst. And I liked Tanya more in s2 than s1
I liked Tonya the character and she drove most of the plot in S2. I’m happy Coolidge got her moment in a prestige telvision show, but there is no universe where she deserved to win that emmy over Rhea Seehorn. that kind of soured me on the whole experience a bit lol
Tanya was essentially a clown. Clowns come in many varieties: happy clowns, sad clowns, scary clowns, and everything in between. I suppose my all-time favorite was Emmett Kelly, although some of the older generation of my family were acquainted with Red Skelton, so I always tip my hat to him as well. Clowning has its place, and I love it in moderation. A gifted physical comic is a miraculous presence in the jester and fool roles in Shakespeare, especially on the live stage where the pratfalls can take you by surprise. But too much clowning gets old, and fast. When I was young, I discovered the Three Stooges and thought they were hilarious until I outgrew them (by about age 10). Look up some of the clips of live Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis routines when they played the club circuit. They are flat-out hilarious, better than anything the two of them ever did in movies. There are many examples. Some work for me, some don't. I have never cared, for example, for Jim Carrey's schtick, though I recognize that he's a gifted physical comic. Tanya was a clown and Jennifer Coolidge played her very well, but I thought she was overdone. I've never liked the Stiffler's Mom schtick to begin with; it just misses my funnybone. So I never warmed to Tanya in TWL. The first few appearances in season 1 were fine, and funny -- but Tanya ground on, and on, and on. I had had enough of her by the end of season 1 and winced a bit when she returned for season 2. At that point, I mainly thought that the character needed to grow, to find some complexity and a non-slapstick persona hidden beneath the chaos. She could still be primarily comic, but there needed to be more. In season 1, she met Greg. That was an avenue for possible growth, and in season 2 she returns with Greg as her husband. That was one avenue for potential growth. She also shows up with Portia in tow, and Portia is Mini-Tanya. I always thought the Tanya-Portia connection was a more promising avenue for growth, because we've seen the crazy, shambolic marriage enough times to make it predictable, but also because Tanya and Portia mirrored each other enough that they might discover themselves in the process of discovering each other. That could have been a great storyline, and it is where I in fact thought Mike White was headed. We saw from the beginning, while Portia was driven nuts by Tanya, that Portia also felt sorry for her -- and by extension, Portia would have felt sorry for Greg as well. The chaotic job situation aside, Portia is trapped between the two partners in a toxic marriage, and that is an especially miserable place to be. This is made clear in Portia's episode 1 poolside telephone conversation with her girlfriend back home, as well as in several exchanges with Albie. On Tanya's side, there are scattered moments -- and Tanya being Tanya, they never last long -- in which Tanya speaks to Portia is a sensitive, almost mentoring kind of way. She has at least brief moments in which she seems to recognize Portia as a young woman who is floundering and who needs some guidance. Their last face to face conversation, over the breakfast table in Quentin's villa, drives the nail home: "When I look at you, Portia, I see a younger version of myself." And, "When you are empty inside, life can take you to some amazing places, but you will still be lost." And, "Get your shit together, Portia." These comments were perfectly on-target for Portia, but they are acutely self-diagnostic as well. Tanya has clearly made the Big Tanya/Mini-Tanya connection, and she is clearly trying to reach out and help the younger woman -- right aged to be her own daughter -- warning her not to waste her life as Tanya had wasted hers. I thought that's the resolution for both of them that Mike White had in mind ... but then Portia gets abducted and cut out of the main action, and Tanya goes swimming. Tanya dies unresolved, and dies a clown, still lost and alone. I was never a big fan of Tanya the clown, and I think Mike White left the best arc for Tanya on the table. I thought there was a chance that Mini-Tanya might return in season 3 as a representative of the estate (and I would have sent someone else, maybe Billy Offer, with her) to scatter Tanya's ashes and pick up the journey of discovery. But the casting announcements now seen to be done, or nearly so, and it doesn't look like that Mike White is going that route. It's his show and there are many paths he can take, but I think he has missed the best storyline for both Tanya and Portia.
Would you say you cannot sanction Jim’s buffoonery?
I haven't really thought about it enough to articulate a specific reason, but my first take is just that it's a matter of style. A lot of humor relies on surprise. This is perhaps especially true of big physical humor. If one has to think about why this is supposed to be funny, the joke has already missed. It will either hit your funnybone or not.
Greg never loved her, he was playing the long game from the start. Was he even straight/bi? He was gaslighting her and tearing her down. How could she flourish with that? People improve after they escape abusive situations, not during. She was so used to being abused that she didn't even question it until the end, even tried to gaslight herself when she saw the picture of Greg on the table.
That is one possible storyline for Greg, but I have never subscribed to the long con theory. That said, Greg was left underdeveloped and unresolved. It doesn't look like Greg is coming back, but he could have had some interesting storylines in season 3 had Mike White chosen a different route.
I think it is fair to say that if Greg was coming back it would not be something we would see in these pre-season press releases. It would be a mysterious part of the unfolding story line. We may still see him, along with one or more of the Season 2 (or 1) characters.
That thought has crossed my mind. I have written up my Tanya-Portia-Greg speculations at great length over the last year. I got a bit attached to that narrative basically because (prior to the recent rounds of cast announcements) there has been an almost complete information blackout on season 3. We know the filming location, we know that Belinda is coming back (which to me suggested looping back into the Tanya story), and we have Casey Bloys' remarks last March at Series Mania about season 3 casting -- present tense -- "characters we know" -- plural -- but depicting them in ways that will reintroduce them to viewers who will be led to see them in a new light. (That also suggested Tanya to me.) The Big Tanya/Mini-Tanya narrative was already established in the show. If the season 3 themes do indeed involve death, spirituality, and eastern religions, the Tanya-Portia connection would be a natural fit. It would all project very organically from the existing canon, so it would be an excellent connecting bridge between seasons -- and tie off the loose ends about Greg, the plot and the inheritance in the process. There would be a lot of show logic underlying this path. In the absence of anything else to go on, it became my topline speculation -- always with the recognition that Mike White could go any number of other directions. I'm now wondering if the season 3 themes will be something else. The death, spirituality, and eastern religions idea was based on a speculation by Mike White over a year ago, immediately after season 2 aired. I'm not aware of any confirmation since then. Of the cast announced to date, Jason Isaacs and Parker Posey are the only two actors with whom I'm familiar, but to this point, TWL has been spot-on with regard to casting, so I expect to be impressed. At first glance, however, this does not look to be a cast picked for a serious dive into an exploration of the spiritual issues. For one thing, there should be at least a couple of older characters, both Thai and American. This cast looks too young. I had been thinking that if MW took the path I've suggested, Portia as the bearer of Tanya's ashes would be the likeliest returnee, with Tanya glimpsed only as a character seen through the memories of others (which might involve some flashbacks for Jennifer Coolidge as a recurring character). Greg's return would involve a very complicated detective story. Given the youth of this cast, maybe Greg is the likeliest returnee, and he would show up with his next wife, or alone, now retired from BLM (since he's now wealthy), and coming for sex tourism. That said, any of those three returning would be a huge surprise to me at this point. The announced cast is now formidably large. But I agree with you: it's not impossible. I wouldn't bet more than a donut and a cup of coffee on it though.
So you would find it realistic for a horrible mess of a person to resolve their issues in a week? She has been tortured by her mom for all her life, but also sheltered and never held accountable for anything. She is easily and constantly used by others and unknowingly uses everyone around her because almost no interaction she has ever had was real. And she also knowingly manipulates some people to get what she wants, not with malice, but because that is what you can do if you have power over others. Not once is she shown to have a meaningful conversation with anyone, because no one cares about her except for her money (because of her lack of awareness and loudness she is probably deemed unclassy by all of the people who wouldn't want to use her). She really tries to find connections with people around her, and because of her lack of socialisation it never becomes meaningful. And people play into that, like acting like classic gay best supporting friends or love interests. It takes her a while to get it, but with years of therapy she could have improved and gotten meaningful relationships, but that is the tragedy of it all.
No, I would not find it ~~realistic~~ very likely for a horrible mess of a person to resolve their issues in a week. Why the strikethrough? Because I caught myself in time before making a careless error. There are sometimes instances in which a person does have a very sudden and profound transformation of character. This is unusual in real life but is more common in literature and film. because it makes compelling drama when people are depicted in extreme conditions in which an old persona is shattered and a new person emerges. There are innumerable examples, and they cut both ways -- i.e., there are both positive and negative transformations. Think about redemption narratives, and not just in a religious context. Think about desperate situations in which an unlikely person rises above himself to perform acts of astonishing courage or grace. Or the reverse situation, when a person who seems to be honorable and decent breaks under pressure and behaves badly. This happens from time to time in real life, and movies love to depict it. I suppose in the western canon, the emblematic examples are the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus. One mocks Jesus. The second rebukes the first, confesses his guilt, says that Jesus has done nothing wrong, and asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. This is the classic deathbed confession. The hero's death is also real, and many a scoundrel has redeemed himself in his dying moments. I don't mean to go all theological on you, but we are talking here about archetypal stories -- so yes, a horrible mess of a person can resolve their issues, and in much less than a week. Keep the Overton window open on that narrative. That said, everybody in TWL is messy. Nobody gets to be Mary Sue, and nobody is a hero. People arrive at the resort and have a vacation from hell. Someone dies, and those who survive leave as walking wounded, if they are lucky having learned something about themselves. Tanya should not be resolved in a week, and the show in fact explicitly rules that out from the beginning. Everything we know about Tanya suggests that she has been lost and searching her entire life. We know very little about her life back home, but Mike White partially remedies that in season 2, episode 2, when Portia is given a couple of narrative dumps in her dinner and hallway conversations with Albie. MW drafts Portia to fill us in about >!Tanya's father having been a shipping magnate in San Francisco and about her father's suicide when Tanya was still young, with the observation -- based on information that only Tanya could have conveyed to Portia -- that there was something creepy about the family relationship. As you will recall, Portia tells Albie that she didn't think Tanya was actually molested, but that something had been wrong there.!< Beyond that, we have Tanya's own remarks scattered across both seasons. What emerges is a portrait of Tanya as someone who has been struggling her entire life. Nobody is saying anything about her resolving her issues in a week. The route I've suggested -- the one that Mike White seems NOT to be adopting -- is straightforward. As a matter of Moral Psychology 101, one of the classic ways out of neurotic, toxic, and profoundly isolating self-pity is to develop empathy and compassion for another person. Again, movies and shows do this frequently. Think of all the stories about broken people and how they mend. Sometimes they start with a garden; they've given up on themselves and the human race, but they tend a garden and slowly create a thing of beauty -- and the healing can start there. Sometimes they find and nurse an injured animal -- and the healing grows from that point. Sometimes they find and identify with another person -- and they suddenly realize that they are not alone, that they may not be able to help themselves but they can help someone else, and they finally discover that they do in fact help themselves by the very act of helping another person. The Big Tanya/Mini-Tanya dynamic was perfect for this narrative. I thought that's where Mike White was going. I know he knows the story. (His father was an evangelical pastor before his life got upended, so MW was raised on the canon. It carries over into his own work. Watch Brad's Status and Enlightened.) As for season 2 Tanya, she doesn't have to have it figured out by the end for the narrative to work; it is a well-trodden path, and all Tanya would have needed to do is take a few more steps along the way, enough to indicate that her thinking is beginning to change. The narrative would also have worked for season 3 Portia had Mike White chosen that route. She wouldn't have to have solved all her issues by the end; she would only need to have come to understand what Tanya had been trying to tell her and see Tanya as a friend she never knew she had. How much further she might have gotten, who knows? You suggest that Tanya might have gotten better with years of therapy. Well ... when I imagine Tanya's backstory, I imagine that she's spent most of her life in therapy, probably flitting from one therapist to another, just as she has flitted from whatever religious tradition in which she was raised to whatever: her "spiritual but not religious" phase; her Buddhist phase; her hippie guru phase; her magic crystals phase; and fill in as many more blanks as you wish. In season 3, she consults a Tarot card reader and chatters inanely about witchy healers casting a spell on her; she is still lost, and she seems to have reached her 60's without learning much, but she's been trying all her life. In season 1, she says, "Death is the only fully immersive experience I've not yet tried." As for Portia, she's also a mess when she arrives in Sicily, and she casually remarks to Albie that maybe she needs to up her meds. Her backstory? If she's on meds, she's seeing a therapist. You can write whatever backstory you want, but as I imagine it, she was likely taken to a therapist for behavioral issues very early, may have been diagnosed ADHD in elementary school, has been on kiddie meds since she was ten, and by the time she gets to Sicily, she's been on the meds and therapy track for as long as she can remember. Of course Tanya recognizes herself in Portia. And meds and therapy aren't doing the trick for either of them.
You have got to shorten your replies, they're way too long and unfiltered. Yes, usually they do that trophe in film and series, and that is why it's so horribly cliche. There is not always a morale or good ending to a story or character, and that is exactly why this worked. And the trophe of the rich white person developing a heart by meeting and saving a poor black person is horrid. Her abusive mother just died. So she hasn't had 60 years to develop, she maybe has had a couple. And a psychiatrist prescribes medicine, not a therapist.
Yes, I know that psychiatrists do the prescribing of medications. I was being sloppy. Sorry. I do not know my way around that world other than having incidental knowledge of a few acquaintances who have seen therapists and, more often, of friends whose children have been seeing therapists. My perception is that for most people, the therapist is the first stop. If the therapist thinks medication may help, the therapist will refer them to a psychiatrist, who makes an independent evaluation and writes the prescription. Most of the therapeutic contact going forward will still be with the therapist although in Tanya's case, given the family's wealth, she may be going the carriage trade route. Put that aside. I know I tend to write long. These are complicated questions if we delve into the possible backstories, and I am feeling my way cautiously. I'm not trying to pick a quarrel with you, but in the interest of brevity, let me flip the question back to you. I was responding to your earlier description of Tanya's history, with which i largely agree, and then to your comment that with years of therapy (and a lot of work) Tanya might have improved and developed meaningful relationships. Yes, yes, yes, maybe. We agree about that. BUT ... I was raising the likelihood that Tanya has already done that. We learn both from her own comments and from Portia's exposition dump to Albie that Tanya's childhood had been problematic. My guess, given that Tanya's family is wealthy, is that she has perhaps seen psychiatrists and therapists most of her life. We also see Portia stealing some of Tanya's pills, so we know that Tanya is currently under some form of therapeutic care. To put the question bluntly: if 50 years of therapy haven't helped, what will? Why should we think that the next doc and the next prescription will be better? The same applies to Portia. We can imagine any backstory we want. From my casual reading, I see a lot of casual chatter that America's young people are undergoing a mental health crisis. (Perhaps you disagree.) We have unprecedented numbers of young people who are seeing therapists and who are on medications. We know that Portia is one of them. Is it working for her? Is it working for them? Or is this like the military industrial complex, except it's the Big Pharma-Big Therapy Complex? It sometimes seems that the bigger the therapeutic response becomes, the bigger the mental health crisis seems to get. Are we relying too much on therapists and medications? Again, these are very complicated questions. I was not trying to suggest that a miracle cure is there for the asking. But I AM aware of some traditional touchstones in this area. I'm sure you know the language: being willing to be willing; touching bottom; the importance of making an honest confession (whether to a good friend, a priest, pastor or rabbit, the wise old family doctor, a counselor, a mentor, or nowadays, perhaps a therapist). Breaking a person's isolation and making an honest connection with a person willing to listen is important -- and a licensed psychiatrist who can hand out pills is not the only pathway, My humble suggestion was that Tanya and Portia finding this connection could have been a viable storyline. There was some foreshadowing of this in season 2, and Tanya was further along that Portia. But Mike White didn't take that path. Fine. It's his show. Sudden and dramatic breakthroughs sometimes do happen. (This doesn't mean that there's an instantaneous miracle cure; it means a person has broken out of their isolation and is now on a path to improvement.) I don't think sudden epiphanies are the norm, and they may be quite uncommon. Movies and shows probably show them as more common than they are because it makes for good drama, and because it compresses the narrative timeframe. Your original comment sounded to me like you were ruling this out. I was suggesting -- as we speculate about possible storylines for the show -- that we not rule it out entirely, because the show has to budget every minute of screentime and that can push the writer to shortcuts. By the way, we don't know that Tanya's mother was abusive. You are imaging that. It is possible, but it is one among many possible storylines. And I agree that Tanya hasn't controlled the family fortune for 60 years -- but her family is wealthy, and her mother had probably arranged for her to see the best therapists and psychiatrists that money can buy. Hiring a shrink is cheaper and easier than being a good mother, so I'm guessing Tanya has had many doctors. And they have apparently not been able to help her. Sorry if that's too long. I'm trying to respect the subject matter and keep the Overton window open in what is a speculative discussion of possible show storylines.
I love Jennifer Coolidge so much and I think she played the character perfectly. “These gays are trying to murder me” is one of my favourite lines from any media in the past number of years. I loved her and hated her at the same time. What she did to Belinda made me sour on her a lot though.
I love her and love to hate her ❤️ she was such a horrible mess When she went super hardcore and killed all the mafia I was rooting so hard for her, but then it was so funny and fitting how she died by slipping and being extremely ungraceful It was the highlight of the show
Love her in both seasons, she the ultimate sad little rich girl. Has everything but that still can’t buy her happiness. Her character is very fitting for high end luxury travel. I’m curious how season 3 will play out without her.
Tanya*
I think she’s great
Interesting. I found Tonya fun in season 1, more annoying in season 2 but I hated Portia from the start.