Review: The White Lotus, Season 2
The White Lotus is back, and it’s just as stunning and beautiful, as funny and as skin-crawling, with its ensemble just as rich and unpleasant as ever before. Writer and director Mike White brought us to Europe for the most recent instalment, bringing on board some legends of acting including F Murray Abraham, The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli, and Jennifer Coolidge (returning from season 1), as well as contemporary stars such as Aubrey Plaza and Theo James.
The acting itself is among the show’s strongest features. Abraham and James, as well as Italian actresses Beatrice Grannò and Simona Tabasco, all bring a captivating and devilish version of charm to the show. Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe, her on-screen husband, as well as British actor Leo Woodall, are brilliant at portraying conflicted characters with multiple emotions fighting to get to the forefront. Coolidge, as in the first season, proves a master in effortlessly flipping between comedy and drama at the drop of a dime.
The newest season very much structures itself alongside the same model as the first season, but manages to do so without falling into the typical movie sequel trap of just doing the same thing but bigger and louder. The ensemble is expanded, new relationships are introduced to the hotel, and characters backstories play a much larger role. This season starts in the same way as the first, whereby we’re informed that it ends in the death of a (likely) main character, and what then plays out is the week leading up to this event.
The first episode, “Ciao”, is a masterclass in character introduction. After just an hour of TV, we come away feeling like we know each of the characters, understand what’s lacking in each of their relationships, and have a pretty good idea of where the tension’s coming from. We know that not a second of intimacy will be enjoyed between Greg and Tanya, we suspect that Ethan and Harper’s relationship won’t be as secure as they think, we can already see Albie trying to break the chain of generational infidelity, we can see Valentina inserting herself between Isabella and Rocco, and we can assume that Mia and Lucia will wreak havoc in multiple ways throughout the week at the hotel.
This promise, along with the structure of each episode marking morning to night of a new day, makes the show easy to keep returning to, as well as aiding in our ability to track the character journeys and the rising tension over time. By the time we’re watching the penultimate episode, if we didn’t already know from the prologue that something terrible’s about to happen, we definitely know now, as shots begin to linger, the framing gets more claustrophobic, the score feels more sinister, and the cinematic language is more akin to a horror rather than the quirky comedy the White Lotus sells itself as.
The finale keeps its cards close to its chest right to the very end, where it delivers a crescendo of heart-stopping action and drama, experienced in as White Lotus a way as possible, brought to life with killer visuals and choreography. It’s a strong ending that provokes a full palette of emotions, teetering between the humourous and the devastating. The death/s are impactful as the show treats it in a very human way, as it did with the first season; while it is very critical of its main characters and encourages us to be too, it always gives them something that stops us just short of actively routing for their deaths, given at the end of the day they are just people trying to enjoy a holiday.
Like the first season, The White Lotus challenges the idea many of us hold that an expensive holiday in a hot country equates to instant happiness. It makes apt a line once spoken in an SNL sketch where Adam Sandler is promoting Romano Tours, where he states “If you’re sad now, and then you get on a plane to Italy, you’ll still be the same sad you from before, just in a different place.” Perhaps then, it holds some weight that, despite their evident flaws, the only characters having anything close to a good time are Cameron and Daphne, both content in the knowledge that they both often have to look elsewhere for emotional stimulation and don’t need to know everything about each other, and Grandpa DeGrasso, who has evidently forgiven himself for mistreating his late wife.
In doubling down on this, one of the great ironies of the White Lotus is how appealing it makes the vacation experience look, in spite of how little fun everyone seems to be having. This is in part due once again to stunning cinematography that beautifully captures the hotel’s most elegant features, a vibrant colour-palette, and a music score that ties seamlessly to the environment and helps liven the many transition shots between scenes.
This season feels a more all-round polished experience than the first, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Both feel like a study in how the White Lotus, as a vacation resort, acts as a petri-dish for the emotional baggage and incompatibilities of its guests, the sort of stuff that can slip under the radar amidst the hassles of day-to-day life. This effect manifests itself in different ways across the two seasons.
In the first, it brings about the general undoing of the relationships between characters, as well as plunging the resort itself into disarray. In the second, these undoings feel much more focused, with a common theme being characters become the one thing they dread or hate. For example, Portia, having ranted about her boss Tanya in the first few episodes, soon has to suffer hearing from Tanya that she reminds her of herself, and Valentina finds herself overstepping the mark with Isabella, something she’d previously berated Rocco for.
Many characters find their journeys arriving at the same destination, with much of the cast getting the one thing they want, be it at the cost of a stark decline in their moral standards and those around them. Even the deceased are afforded a form of catharsis before their untimely end.
One key way this season differs is that it lacks at times the rough charm that the original perhaps had. The first was arguably much more unpredictable as we were watching the characters worlds come apart at the seams in real time, and the experiences were as bewildering to the characters as they were to us. This latest season in contrast was propelled heavily, A. by character backstories, whereby damage had already been done before coming to Sicily, and B. by schemes formulated off screen.
Many of the decisions made by characters this season are either motivated by plans we aren’t aware of, or in response to events we haven’t seen. This leads the show down a mystery route, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but it does mean we lose the personal connection we had with the characters in the first, as even if we didn’t agree with the characters, we at least empathised with them as we were clued into every decision they made.
Where this at times works in S2’s favour, however, is that it provides much more basis and ammunition to form predictions, and if you can work your way through the season slowly, scouring for clues during rewatches and theorising the meaning behind certain bits of information, the predicting stage can be just as fun as watching the show itself. This was one way in which weekly releases aided the viewing experience of this White Lotus season, something I’ll go into at greater depth in a future blog.
Overall, the newest White Lotus season was thrilling, funny, sinister, cleverly written, and while there were aspects it lacked in comparison to the original, it warrants praise for going in a different direction at times and taking bigger risks. A rewarding viewing experience, and the good news is we get to do it all again next year, as The White Lotus has been renewed for a third season, meaning we can begin theorising who may or may not be returning. I say get Shane back.