The White Lotus (season two), a review

Yeah, so you fuck your uncle?

Spoilers, yall.

I should start this review off with some grand statement about the season of television many of us pretentious tv people sat through for almost two months. I should, but I won’t. Because I have bigger squabbles with ‘The White Lotus’, or more importantly, a segment of the fan culture surrounding it.

For those who don’t know, this show is HBO’s mid-level product in the current run – somewhere between ‘And Just Like That’ and ‘Succession’. The first season was good enough to engage audiences and produce viral moments, plus some awards show buzz, but it’s a fundamentally flawed season of television. The second is, as I’ll discuss later, a more competently told story and worse overall product, but that’s not what’s pissed me of.

That would be a tweet.

Now, I’m definitely overstating my rage here. I’m more annoyed than actually angry. But (without linking – no clicks from me!) there was a tweet on twitter.com that compared Mike White, the show’s creator, to Ryan Murphy. Something to the effect of calling White the writer Murphy wishes he was. People have described this season as “nuanced” and “mature”.

In a season of television that ends with Jennifer Coolidge shooting a boat of conspiratorial, murderous gay men dead, and doing a slapstick fall to her own death via head donk.

I am not the Murphy defender the world deserves. He’s done too much harm to my brain via shows like ‘Glee’. ‘Hollywood’ (2020) took a minimum of 37 years off my already endangered lifespan. But the man’s best ability is, and has always been, writing. Not – to be clear – storytelling, but the act of taking a predetermined series of events and building character around them with dialogue. Given the framework of a real-life situation, he shines. For example, ‘Feud’, or the first two seasons of ‘American Crime Story’. I get that in the current media landscape, Murphy is an easy target. His work has massively slipped in quality in the past five years.

Again, see ‘Hollywood’.

But I think what gets me is that White’s writing isn’t better than Murphy’s. It’s just that is writing is more obviously self-aware. White’s writing on ‘The White Lotus’ would never be able to include something as achingly sincere as an estranged mother/daughter duet of Poker Face by Lady Gaga. There’s a knowing quality to even the most personal moments. Yes, art is subjective, but I do think I’m fundamentally correct.

Also, the criticisms that have always followed Murphy exist within ‘The White Lotus’.

·      An over-reliance on expository dialogue.

·      An obsession with a certain type of campy performance.

·      An inability to end stories satisfactorily.

To repeat: the final episode of this season ends with a giant conspiracy and murder via an iconic older actress.

But let’s take a step back, shall we!

‘The White Lotus’ is a HBO television series in which various groups of wealthy travellers visit different locations of White Lotus branded resorts across the globe. Both seasons begin with a dead body, and end with the reveal of the dead person. While there is some spotlight given to the staff of these holiday destinations, the real focus is on the wealthy having a miserable time. There are running themes around race, performance, gender, sex, and class.  

If that sounds kind of heavy, don’t worry, because while you will be lectured to, it’s kind of funny. Or dramatic. But usually there’s a dry, awkward humour to the dialogue that, when it hits, is hilarious. A little shallow, but again, this is a mid-level product.

C-List television.

Season one, taking place in Hawaii, was the “race and class” season of the show. It’s arguably more interested in the staff than the second season, and because of this, we get discussions of Indigenous Hawaiians working through their feelings about tourism exploitation. This is balanced with the tokenism felt by the character Paula, who struggles between her clear affection for her rich, white friend Olivia, and her disdain for the world she inhabits as a black girl. The same world that protects her when she fucks up.

I’m not going to get too deep into the implications of the show season one finale. Paula encourages a fake robbery of her friend’s family for the Hawaiian boy she’s hot for, it goes wrong, and he goes to jail for it. Olivia protects Paula from the fallout and brings her home. It’s the televised equivalent of a shrug. Other people have already gone over how ridiculous and bad the finale is at handling the fallout of a full season of build-up.

The second season also has a “race” angle, but luckily for the show, it’s understated enough that you can almost miss it. Ethan and Harper are not white, and that adds another layer of tension between them and their companions, Cameron and Daphne. There are some funny little lines, but it’s mostly just window dressing to the othering between the two couples. They’re not as tacky, not as affectionate, not as white.

It ultimately means very little and isn’t interested in suggesting otherwise.

That’s a consistent trend throughout season two - many of the rougher edges seen in Hawaii are sanded off. The writing has less of the bite, but (until the end) it flows more naturally moment to moment. Many of the tensor moments of dialogue are left unsaid. There’s nothing as blunt as the season one discussions of gender and privilege, which is honestly for the shows benefit. Season two will age better than the first on this regard alone. But it likely won’t be remembered.

To compare seasons:

In one scene, Mark Mossbacher sits with his family (and Paula) as he processes the news that his father died of AIDS. In the midst of what is a clear moment of emotional turmoil, his daughter and her friend begin to dig into the how of the situation. “Maybe grandpa was a power bottom” is probably the most famous moment from the first season, and that’s for a reason. It’s a scene that’s both comedically brilliant and still holds emotional weight. Even if you don’t think it’s “good” writing, it’s impactful!

In season two, Harper has found the condom wrapper in her room, confronted her husband about it, and doesn’t believe him. In a passive aggressive rage, she sits with Cameron and Daphne during a wine tasting and proceeds to question the men about their sexual history. The moment builds to a climax where Ethan tells Cameron that he “has a bad case of memetic desire”, and that he’s smarter than him. Something that won’t be proven at all by the season’s end, because the finale is as flaccid as this scene and Ethan’s dick through most of the season.

There’s no point to any of this. Both Harper and Ethan walk away with an understanding that they need an understanding. Harper’s pessimism was right, so now she’s dressing like Daphne, and Ethan can finally get it up for a real woman instead of porn, also Daphne. I get that a show doesn’t have to mean anything, but this one clearly wants to. We get scene after scene that boils down to an admission that monogamy is ridiculous and they’re all fools for wanting it. But the only reason these marriages suck is because they’re filled with bad, selfish people. Maybe they’re blaming money, but this is also clearly issues of personality. Nobody is actually working to save their relationships, they just complain that they’re failing or gesture vaguely towards their sense of dissatisfaction.

You can tell White wrote for teen dramas.

But the performances moment to moment are great. If anyone is getting an Emmy this season, it’ll be Aubrey Plaza (go watch Black Bear). I’d be remise if I didn’t say that Meghann Fahy as Daphne is the highlight in all her scenes, no matter how superfluous. Seriously, she’s like if Leslie Mann was Anne Hathaway.

Viva la Daphne!

White clearly has envisioned this new season as the more character driven of the two, but there’s something cheap about one person explaining their dynamic with another repeatedly. Confessional writing constantly is just cheap exposition. Season one didn’t have this issue (for the most part) and again, the scene about the grandfather having AIDS is insightful and funny. But in fairness, the lows of season one are worse than the lows of season two.

There’s nothing as obnoxious in the second season as the attempts to tackle white feminism and “girlboss” culture surrounding Nicole Mossbacher. In particular, the scene where Nicole and other guest Rachel Patton meet is inarguably the least watchable and strangest interaction of either season. The worst season two gets is boring Italian-American men wandering around Sicily with a prostitute 2/3 of them have slept with. Lucia gets about as much pushback on leaving with a strange man in a car as your mother did when your cousins asked for a sleepover. The entire situation played with way less tension than you’d expect, and the humour of the scenes prior is the least of the season. Great scenery, though! I do want to visit Sicily and take pretty pictures.

Let’s talk about the big shebang, Tanya -and also Portia I guess.

Tanya in season one was an emotional vampire of a woman who happened to be dealing with the loss of her mother. Through her burgeoning relationship with the spa’s masseuse Belinda, she toys with the idea of helping people via her therapeutic talents, before running off with Greg, another guest at the resort. That betrayal is genuinely the most devastatingly human moment of the season (even with the generous tip left behind) and is played beautifully by Natasha Rothwell. Money gives Tanya an out for when she gets bored of her performances, whether they’re grief, pain or love. Collidge rightfully won an Emmy for this role, but she won’t win a second.

There’s a sequence in the first season where Tanya is attempting to eulogise her mother on a boat, but she ends up putting the ashes away and stumbling off to cry. Clothed in black, tears streaming through heavily applied mascara, this is a parody of grief. It’s heartbreaking but hilarious, and that balance is why she received such acclaim. To hear her repeating the word “mother” with such pain is tragic.

Nothing she does in the second season comes close.

There’s strains of Tanya in season two that I like, but fundamentally, she feels like a different character. In season one, she’s just as needy and theatrical, but less…arrogant? It’s hard to explain the shift in characterisation here. In the first season, she overpromises to Belinda constantly to hold her attention - always when she’s pulling away. There’s an underlying lack of self-esteem to her characterisation that motivates everything she does. Her anecdotes about her mother are about being torn down emotionally, and that lack of confidence is why people pity and support her. She’s figuratively and literally wandering aimlessly towards the verge of tears.

Season two sees her move away from this and to a more outgoing, forthright Tanya that feels false. Her one speech about her mother is about her relationships to others, but there’s less of the pathos in her remembrance of that relationship. The line that Tanya walks between performance and sincerity that season one so cleverly walked is blurred too far, and once Greg leaves it’s essentially gone. The writing is less honest and contains more ‘therapy speech’, which is fine, but it has a different vibe to her original characterisation.

But again, I did like parts of the way she is written here. Tanya being an excellent reader of people is built upon this season in a way that feels natural. Even if the conspiracy is ridiculous, her paranoia being correct is a nice touch that I think deserves credit. Granted it’s smashed by her obsession with cheating, but I will still give partial credit! She has maternal feelings towards Portia as well, which is an engaging dynamic I think many people are underselling. They’re two lost souls who need something solid in their lives, but Tanya at least has the experience to see that her listlessness is unhealthy and needs correction before it’s too late.

For the record, Haley Lu Richardson gets some of the best lines of the season, unappreciated by many watching because she’s playing a purposefully annoying character. Depressed young people aren’t usually the life of the party. This is the opposite of a dynamic duo; we have two women who don’t relate to each other and struggle to maintain even a professional relationship. Both are clearly too exhausted to pretend for the other at this point. Tanya needs company, even if that company offers very little warmth in return. But it is there, just deep within. Portia herself may be as clueless as Tanya, but it is sweet how her first instinct is to calm her down when they realise they’re being played. Maybe in a different show, they’d have built on that flicker, or even just acknowledged it.

But, man, that ending. Woof!

That Greg is a con artist is stupid but fine. We could work with that. But his con being the murder his rich wife in Sicily via his gay mafia friends he may be fucking on the side in some grand scheme to steal her fortune is a step too far. Realistic, unrealistic, who fucking cares? The twist is insultingly stupid. It makes the first season’s ending for Tanya insultingly bogus in hindsight, because it ties it to this mess.

Agree or not, you have to accept that the twist concludes this season with a thud.

On her head.

Returning to the Murphy comparison, what this ending reminds me of is the sudden speedrun that tends to happen at the end of every season of ‘American Horror Story’. Especially from ‘Coven’ onwards. After setting up a few dozen threads, the final episode rushes to end the story without tying everything together. There’s an action climax, scenes showing that everyone has settled into some sort of conclusion (satisfying or not), and we go one with our lives.

Or did - have you seen the ratings recently?

The trouble is that White is definitely setting up some level of thematic arc that doesn’t get tied up. Just like season one, in fact.

Season two is about sex more than anything, but what is it saying about sex? Characters cheat, cheat again, don’t cheat, kiss, have attraction, lack attraction, and it has no real point. Lucia and Mia fuck their way to a payout and a neat little hotel piano gig, but nothing spectacular. Francesca loses her virginity, and mellows out to an extent - maybe? Tanya is obsessed with being cheated on and completely ignores the murder plot even during a killing spree. Isabella and Rocco are engaged, so congratulations, I guess? Ethan and Harper now sort of hate each other but can finally consummate their marriage again. Cameron and Daphne are fine, I guess. Affection with an understanding. Portia gives her number to a weird incel-lite “nice” boy. Cameron and Ethan clearly want to fuck each other on some level. Trust is broken, truces are made, but it fails to give a reason. Maybe it’s just that monogamy doesn’t work.

Is Mike White against that institution of marriage? More at 11.

It’s a beautiful show, but the writing just isn’t there for me. It all sputters out like a bad hook up - all foreplay that seems to be going great but with a shockingly bad climax. I’m not saying don’t watch it. This isn’t as bad as ‘Euphoria’ (another mid-level offering) and I don’t think it’s broken or even particularly bad. But I do think the blinders are on for many viewers. I had fun in a broad sense, but my brain didn’t turn off. Maybe that’s a me problem. Sometimes you don’t need a great finale, but it’s unfulfilling to say the least. Nobody is happy with something mediocre. You’re stuck laying there on the couch, wondering why you bothered.

Enough with that half-formed metaphor.

If season two is chain-linked to season three, let it be Harper and Daphne on a girls trip!

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