TV Review: White Lotus Season 2 Is A Class Analysis
Season 1 of White Lotus thrived, like most HBO originals, on its ability to make deluded characters flaws oddly likable. If there is one thing HBO Max can do, it is create a series that enthralls us with peoples´ fallacies, flash, and hypocrisies, and Creator Mike White continues this ¨tradition¨ for Season 2, but with a little less splash and more self-analysis.
If White Lotus started with a bang, its follow-up feels more like a loud whimper, which might divide some whom adored its bombardment of craziness and feelings. If anything Season 1 felt like an HBO Max novela, but Season 2 quiets to become a richer, but not as spectacle, view of money and its divisiveness. Whether it is how we treat a partner or the staff, we seemingly view our kindness to be given according to monetary measurements.
Like last season, bodies are ranking up and no one knows whom is the murderer, but, like a passing episode of Dateline, it seems no one cares. Instead, our new couples, staying at a luxurious Italian villa, are wrapped in the comfort of their lives and the discomfort they have with themselves and their partners. For Ethan (Will Sharpe) is new money with an oddly childish demeanor. He has walked into a career jackpot, and to celebrate he invites his old buddy Cam (Theo James), whom embodies what happens to privileged frat boys post grad, his wide Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who literally believes they are perfecto together, and his wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) who judges everyone whom even thinks there could be such a thing. Jennifer Coolidge´s dynamic Tanya is not far in believing the same thing, but is relying on her assistant/ emotional baggage handler Portia (Haley Lu Richardson) to help her believe again because her new husband, Greg (Jon Fries) is not. Yet, not all relationships are marital.
A family trip between Albie (Adam DiMarco), his father Dominic (Michael Imperioli), and his grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham) has three generations of men contemplating life, happiness, and what the point is of ¨success¨ when life is something you can only enjoy excessively: and even that does not guarantee feeling genuinely alive. Frankly, watching so much privilege get existential and depressive is why staff like, Sabrina Impacciatore’s Valentina or Beatrice Grannò’s Mia, cater to the guests like one would a patient; understanding you haver their health in your hands and a potential lawsuit if it is not 100%. Their roles are particularly interesting as a sort of veil lifted between people who invent their problems emotionally versus those whom are simply trying to survive their financial ones.
Personally, I enjoyed this subtly more serious season of White Lotus, but, again, understand why some will prefer the more boisterous, bombastic first season; even Tanya feels a little dampened. Yet, what is undeniable is that White and HBO Max have created a series that explores the nuances of joy when you have access to everything but your own self-awareness.
